Alan: The difference between "catastrophe" and "making the earth inhospitable for human life" is the difference between night and day. I hypothesize that Christians ignore/oppose/discard anthropogenic global warming evidence because a central credo obliges them to believe in God's unfailing providence. And since they are existentially immersed in a necessarily submissive chain of command, they can not bring themselves to believe that collective political action is necessary to prevent calamity.
At my house, God neither flushes nor takes out garbage.
What makes Christians believe he will provide these services for The Planet?
And what did Jews think when the trains took them to Auschwitz?
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Quotable: "I would have been shocked if this would have caused anybody to change what they thought. If people are persuaded by evidence, they would have been persuaded long ago." -- Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University. Timothy Cama in The Hill.
Climate divide heightening, as reflected by responses to release of U.N. report. "The divide between advocates and skeptics over whether to do something about climate change is widening, with both sides growing more certain of their convictions. A report this week from the United Nations warning of dire consequences from greenhouse gas emissions made headlines around the world and spurred calls for action from environmental groups. But the report landed with a thud in Washington, where both Democrats and Republicans clung more tightly to their positions about the prudent policy response to climate science....Experts and lawmakers broadly agree that climate change has become a more polarizing issue during President Obama's time in the White House." Timothy Cama in The Hill.
Some insight as to why: More information has the opposite of the desired effect. "There's a simple theory underlying much of American politics....It's what we might call the More Information Hypothesis: the belief that many of our most bitter political battles are mere misunderstandings. The cause of these misunderstandings? Too little information -- be it about climate change, or taxes, or Iraq, or the budget deficit. If only the citizenry were more informed, the thinking goes, then there wouldn't be all this fighting. It's a seductive model. It suggests our fellow countrymen aren't wrong so much as they're misguided, or ignorant, or -- most appealingly -- misled by scoundrels from the other party. It holds that our debates are tractable and that the answers to our toughest problems aren't very controversial at all. The theory is particularly prevalent in Washington, where partisans devote enormous amounts of energy to persuading each other that there's really a right answer to the difficult questions in American politics -- and that they have it. But the More Information Hypothesis isn't just wrong. It's backwards. Cutting-edge research shows that the more information partisans get, the deeper their disagreements become." Ezra Klein in Vox.
PURDY: Does tackling climate change need the politics of the impossible? "It's starting to feel like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could keep issuing its reports from here to eternity. The Fifth Assessment Report, released just in time to avoid April Fool's Day, continues a steady trend: our knowledge is increasing, just about everything that matters is getting worse, and all we can realistically hope to do is soften the edges of a slow-moving catastrophe."Jedediah Purdy in The Daily Beast.
Obama administration challenges draft of forthcoming report as too conservative. "U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is concerned that a crucial United Nations report on climate science may be too harsh in assessing the cost of fighting global warming....'The discussion of the economic costs of mitigation is too narrow and does not incorporate co-benefits of action,' U.S. officials wrote in a submission to the UN, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg. They said including only one side of the equation 'unnecessarily skews the information.' The comment refers to 'global consumption losses' identified in the report of as much as 4 percent in 2030, 6 percent in 2050 and 12 percent in 2100 as a result of action to protect the climate, according to a draft leaked in January. State Department officials are pressing to factor in improvements to public health and lower energy costs from increased efficiency that would happen if fossil fuels were limited. Those would offset the price to be paid for switching over to cleaner forms of energy such as wind and solar and paring back on lower-cost fuels such as coal." Alex Morales in Bloomberg.
Wind power cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, industry report says. "The growth of wind power in the United States is putting a significant dent in emissions, according to a forthcoming report from the American Wind Energy Association. Wind generation avoided 95.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2013, which is equivalent to taking 16.9 million cars off the road. That's a 4.4 percent cut to power sector emissions, when compared to the level of emissions that would have been generated if that power had come from fossil fuels. Wind proponents say that's evidence that the wind industry is playing a major role in meeting U.S. emissions goals." Kate Sheppard in The Huffington Post.
Other energy/environmental reads:
U.S. taps new energy sources, and potential geopolitical clout. Jackie Northam in NPR.
Feds hope $5 billion settlement a lesson for polluters. Elizabeth Shogren in NPR.
Interior Dept. says offshore drilling tests could begin this year. Tim Devaney in The Hill.
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