Watching the Stars - Reflections

Watching the stars here makes you think about watching the stars. You can see enough sky clearly enough to feel its vastness. When little white and red blinking lights cross your view, that's actually marvelous too. There are people up there! Jeez! You wouldn't see any such thing even 100 years ago. Just from watching, you wouldn't know that those guys aren't wandering around as far away as them stars.

It's incredible. It's sad that a majority of humans in the world don't get such a great view – or get it only occasionally, camping out. Jeez, we're lucky.

It makes my mate wonder why we're here.

I don't wonder that. I don't assume there is any real reason, in the sense of Allah or God or Begochiddy planning it all. Nature displays not only beauty but marvelous intricacy, a creative mix of simplicity and complexity, and even a sense of humor. We're just here, part of that. Tasked with surviving, helping the human race survive; and perhaps some (unconscious and miniscule) contribution to our race's evolution and improvement.

It seems we ought to try to do the best we can – whatever that means. I know what it means to me. It means something very different to Donald Trump, a member of ISIS, or Aaron Hernandez.

Helping its species survive is a key imperative for any life form. We find what seems like altruism in some pretty disrespected places. Rats will sacrifice food to share it with a starving rat; they'll delay gratification in order to try to rescue a trapped rat; in forests, trees use delicate root systems to share food with a tree that's in trouble.

How then can we not all get the message that irremediably fouling our nest, poisoning or even killing future generations of our kind, is a major no-no? 

Obviously many do get it, though sometimes to very limited degrees. People buy solar panels or Priuses. Some recycle and/or compost. 

But as a species – particularly in this part of the western hemisphere under our latest political turn – we're clueless. It's unfortunate to hear Steve Pearce flatly misrepresenting where things stand, particularly knowing how he's contributed to the tragic uncertainty by calling to formal hearings witnesses who would be a joke in any serious scientific inquiry. Could someone at least give him an intestinal-fortitude transplant, so he could say, “Yes, I know science says that, but doing anything about it could cost me my job”?

I'm no scientist; but if specialists were as unanimous about a medical procedure as climate scientists are, I'd listen!

How can we be so casual about such a threat?

You might say global warming is all nonsense. But that's hard, with Alaskan tundra melting, glaciers losing New-Jersey sized hunks regularly, and coral reefs dying. (Oh, and the bees? Bees pollinate stuff we like eating. Will Pearce do that once they're gone?) 

You might say that it's all too big and vast for us to do anything about. Well, we whipped Hitler and put men on the moon. As ballplayers say, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Where something matters, trying counts. (Particularly if you believe in God, who might help us do something.)

You might say that we're just tragically stupid. That this particular evolutionary experiment will simply fail, because the human race couldn't quite adjust its selfish drives, important for the individual's survival, to mute their selfishness when faced with a serious danger to the entire race. 

Might be true. Best I can do is try to mute my selfishness.

                                             -30-

[The above column appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 26 March 2017, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG-TV's website.  A slightly condensed spoken version will air on KRWG Radio Wednesday.] 

[Because the column discusses global warming (or climate weirdness, as I prefer to say), I'll hear from an acquaintance who is a meteorologist and denies that, historically, what's going on is anything out of the ordinary.  Some day, if I get time, I would love to learn more of the science.  My acquaintance can shower with me a bunch of graphs and figures and maps.  My personal scientific knowledge is too limited for me to assess them.  So, he asks, how can I presume to speak about this stuff, even write about it?  He has a point.  I am used to investigating things for myself and reaching my own conclusions, not relying on others, even others I tend to trust.  For a journalist and certainly for a lawyer, that's essential.  Here, unless and until I can break off a big chunk of time to study science, I have to rely on the experts.  I do so knowing that at earlier moments in time, medical experts used leeches and later shock treatment, while employees at an asbestos company thought nothing of bringing home asbestos pots for growing tomatoes, or of giving their kids asbestos stuff to play with.  

Science is imperfect.  Still, at the moment scientific opinion is more unanimous about global warming than about aspects of evolution.  Beyond the mere numbers, there are other factors that tend to increase my confidence in that fact.  Above all, follow the money.  We know that the Koch Brothers and several oil companies and many others would readily pay zillions for a peer-reviewed study showing conclusively that global warming was nothing to worry about, and/or is a natural occurrence to which human activities have not materially contributed.   There's no such study. Rather, opponents tend to say "Well, there's still some doubt about human contribution to climate change," just as some of the same people, unable to produce a peer-reviewed study showing the harmlessness of cigarettes, kept saying "The evidence isn't conclusive that cigarettes actually cause cancer."  Or they blow out of proportion some minor irregularity in connection with some study, hoping to impeach all scientific evidence that points to the same conclusion.  

Further, we can already observe significant and frightening events, including the dramatic disappearance of glaciers, the shrinking of polar ice, the melting of tundras, the death of coral reefs, etc. ]

[Our New Mexico sky is one reason I feel very fortunate to live here.  I've thoroughly enjoyed many other places I've lived; but the relative silence, peace, and isolation, combined with the unobstructed view of a particularly bright sky, with the nearby mountains just dark, jagged shapes in one direction . . . restores me.  In the press of daily life, we do not simply sit out back staring at that sky nearly as often as we should.]

Pope Francis's Climate Change Warning

Prince Myshkin, protagonist of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, is an “idiot” because he takes the words of Jesus quite literally, not realizing (as the mature adults around them do) that such sentiments are all very well in their place but not to be acted upon. 
 
Pope Francis seems a little that way. In a traditional situation where the Pope displays his humility, Pope Francis chose to do so with juvenile delinquents in a jail; and rather than any ceremonial washing, he chose to kneel down and give their feet a good washing. Clearly he didn’t get it at all!

He keeps getting himself in trouble by speaking plainly to power and saying things that just aren’t said. 
 
But like the Idiot, he’s no fool.

Notably, he’s suggested that while Catholic traditions consider homosexuality and abortion bad conduct, it might make sense in the 21st Century for the Church to prioritize its causes. 
 
The Church does not think people should make love out of wedlock, with same-sex or heterosexual loves, and where heterosexual conduct causes pregnancy, that pregnancy should not be terminated except by God. But to Pope Francis those individuals are not enemies, or lost souls. They are to be reached out to as people who have erred. Unlike some who seem drawn to religion as an excuse to bash others who have different beliefs, he endeavors to maintain human connections even while criticizing.

And the world has more urgent needs. 
 
Extreme and growing world-wide economic inequality threatens to destroy the fabric of society. The Church’s clannish protection of child-molesting priests has caused many more kids to suffer molestation by priests who should have been defrocked, not coddled and transferred. And scientists agree overwhelmingly that “global weirdness” threatens to destroy civilization as we know it, that human activities are a significant contributor to that, and that it’s probably already too late to spare ourselves at least some of the consequences. 
 
Further, since most secular governments are controlled by or beholden to wealthy interests that benefit from the growing inequality and can’t pause profiting long enough to address the mess humans are making of their nest, Prince Myshkin – uhh, the Pope – can clearly see that world-politics-as-usual ain’t gonna get it done.

And so we have this beautifully-written encyclical, Laudato Si. 
 
Good for the human population and great for the Church, which seemed to rival only Bill Clinton as an inexhaustible source of sexual jokes. Suddenly instead of preparing for the punch-line when someone says “priest” people see in their mind's eye a courageous fighter for good – and for the best-possible future.

Jesus may preach of love and fairness, but over the centuries love is not always what the world has experienced from the Church: the Inquisition was hardly love; the selling of indulgences was more like extortion than love; the long, vicious wars between Catholics and Protestants were not unlike the madness we see now between Shi'a and Sunni; and the Church's record during the Holocaust is a murky chapter marked by occasional heroism but frequent compromise – and worse. Then the priests who couldn't keep it in their cassocks, and the “organization men” who protected them.

Francis seems determined to right the ship. 
 
All is not light. An able cross-examiner would chew up the inconsistency between discouraging contraception and expressing concern about the environmental deterioration to which overpopulation contributes. 
 
But we are watching something remarkable. We are watching someone remarkable. The contrast with his predecessor – and with other world leaders is dizzying. Will we hear soon from Christian church leaders uneasy about our casual destruction of God's bounty.

We should not take this lightly. 
                                                  -30-

[This column appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-New this morning, Sunday, 28 June, and will appear shortly on the KRWG-TV website.]

[A recent "Sound-Off" in the Sun-News took the Pope to task, mentioning the Vatican's indefensible treatment of Gallileo and his nutty idea that the Earth actually revolved around the Sun, rather than the reverse.  Unfortunately, there's no parallel: then, the Vatican was too attached to its traditional view of things to recognize a promising scientific point.  Here, the Vatican has studied up on modern science and joined the chorus trying to get through to the folks who don't want to face some significant problems.  It's the Republican office-holders and office-seekers, like Rick Santorum, who are too stuck in their own ideological quicksand to move.  I mention Santorum because his objection that the Pope wasn't a scientist applies equally to himself, except that th Pope apparently worked in chemistry at some point in his youth, which, though irrelevant, is more than Santorum can claim.]

[Like Santorum and the Pope, I'm not a scientist.  Anticipating an attack on that ground, likely from a retired local meteorologist, I readily confess.  I'm not a hip surgeon or biologist, either; but when I'm faced with deciding who to have replace my hip or how to treat an illness, I read and listen as widely as I can, recognizing I don't understand every detail, and make the best decision I can.  I rely on secondary indices of credibility and draw reasonable inferences.  Here, the local fellow could cross-question me about his weather charts and make me look as dumb as a Republican Presidential candidate, but a couple of prominent facts stick out: the Pope is on the side of the overwhelming consensus of serious scientists (whose near-unanimity doesn't make them right, but establishes them as odds-on favorites to be close to the mark); peer-reviewed journals show a dearth of articles demolishing the idea of climate change (or global-weirdness); yet the vast wealth of the Koch Brothers and much of U.S. industry stands ready to turn a smart young scientist into Croesus if s/he can come up with a really significant disproof.  Even the U.S. Army, not noted for frivolousness or fads, is observing and dealing with and planning for the problem.  All of which seems pretty significant in trying to figure out who's right here.]

Tobacco is Great for your Health!

Widespread record high temperatures and record storms suggest a question to ask Steve Pearce or his people:
Does Rep. Pearce recognize yet that our climate is changing in dangerous ways and that our activities at least contribute to this change?

The last time I looked, Pearce called climate change "something that can’t be validated." As support for that view, he offered a clown from Canada whom the Calgary Herald accurately described as "a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than a practicing scientist."

Since then, some interesting things have happened.

One was a conference in Santa Fe sponsored by "Global Warming skeptics." Global warming skeptic and prominent scientist Richard Muller reported on a two-year study he’d done that was partially funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, a major funder of global warming deniers and tea party groups. (The Koch brothers run a large company that produces sizeable greenhouse gas emissions, and they oppose governmental efforts to limit or regulate those emissions and dent their sizeable fortunes.)

Muller was troubled by "Climategate," the flap over hacked e-mails of British scientists that seemed to cast doubt on their objectivity. Using climate-change-skeptic theories, Muller retraced their measurements to disprove them – but found out their measurements were right. His numbers match those of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

The skeptics’ theories involved claims that weather stations’ unreliability and the "heat islands" created by cities were creating an inaccurate appearance of global warming that accurate measurements would disprove. Muller now says that while those were reasonable questions, his figures validate previous figures showing the earth has warmed significantly since the 1950's.

That is, a reputable scientist motivated by his skepticism about climate change, and funded by folks who hoped he’d poke serious holes in the general view, took a hard look and found that the scientific numbers were right.

The U.S. military has charged ahead with plans to deal with and/or mitigate climate change, including preparation for the impact of climate change – and reduction of its own greenhouse gas emissions. Plans include solar technology so that Navy SEALs can power equipment or purify water while on the move. Military leaders see climate change as a threat to national security and an "accelerant of instability and conflict." The Navy is particularly vulnerable, with coastal military bases vulnerable to rising sea-levels and more frequent and severe storms.

The Republic of Kiribati, a Pacific island nation, is working out plans to buy land on Fiji so as to escape its own low-lying islands, doomed by climate change.

On June 26, June the second highest court in the U.S. found that heat-trapping gases from industry and vehicles endanger public health. The U.S. Court of Appeal for the D.C. Circuit called the EPA "unambiguously correct" that the Clean Air Act requires the federal government to impose limits. It rejected industry arguments that the science of global warming wasn’t well-supported, calling one key industry rationalization "little more than a semantic trick." In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had a duty under the Clean Air Act to determine whether Greenhouse Gasses endanger the environment – and, if they did, to regulate them. (The right-wing Court – on which five justice recently bought an argument against the Affordable Health Act that was almost universally laughed at before oral argument – might overrule this new decision, but it can’t overrule the climate.)

Even Exxon-Mobil, which spent millions trying to sweep climate change under the rug, has finally admitted that human-made emissions are contributing to change in the planet’s climate. Instead of denying climate change, Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson essentially says "Get used to it." Tillerson points out that humans have long adapted to change, and "we’ll adapt to that. It’s an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions." (The company at least now supports taxing carbon emissions. Does Mr. Pearce?)

One thing that has not happened is the publication of a peer-reviewed paper undermining the scientific consensus on the subject.

Of course, scientific consensus can be wrong. Most reputable scientists in 1902 doubted man would ever be able to fly, electric shock therapy is no longer the go-to treatment for emotional problems, and eggs are either terribly dangerous or wonderfully healthy depending on the decade.

Still, there’s no apparent reason to suspect the kind of scientific conspiracy some of Mr. Pearce’s allies allege. Unlike the days when science said the world was flat, the Catholic Church doesn’t have an Inquisition terrorizing scientists who might wish to dissent. Further, although Mr. Pearce’s allies like to claim scientists hew to the majority view to get grant money, the real money is on the other side. Pearce backers such as the Koch Brothers will fork over vast sums to anyone who can concoct a remotely viable objection to the scientific consensus that climate change is a serious and imminent problem.

With an impressive array of scientists on one side, along with the U.S. military, and few or no credentialed scientists on the other, one naturally wonders why Mr. Pearce still doubts global warming. Equally naturally, we notice that his position, while unsupported by the evidence to date, is a convenient one for his most powerful financial backers.

Fact is, Representative Pearce is beginning to look like some North Carolina Congressman still insisting that tobacco is harmless to smokers.


-30-[The column above appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, June 8th.  As always, it represents my views and not necessarily those of the newspaper.]

I hope I'll come to regret the adversarial tone of the column.  I hope that Mr. Pearce will exceed our low expectations of him and announce soon that he has changed his views (and at least some of his probable future votes) on climate change.  I hope he'll make a fool of me. 

Our representatives need to suck up their ideologies, stand up to their wealthy contributors, and look climate change in the eye.  

But then, I've long expected the Republican Party to replace the Elephant with the Ostrich.

Meanwhile, a couple of additional pieces of information / sources mentioned in the column or published since I wrote it nearly a week ago:

Here's a July 3rd piece from the Indianapolis Star on this summer as a suggestion of global warming to come:
http://www.indystar.com/article/20120703/NEWS/120703004/1001/news

Here's a recent NY Times piece on the subject, noting that "an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases -- produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests."
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

one observer's take on climate change and fires:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/pondering-a-link-between-forest-fires-and-climate-change/?ref=globalwarming



The Court of Appeal decision was published after I'd already drafted the column, but I inserted a paragraph on it.　

In rejecting the industry argument that the EPA couldn’t rely on scientific assessments by the Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Research Council, and others, the court wrote "This argument is little more than a semantic trick. EPA did not delegate . . . any decision-making to any of those entities. EPA simply did here what it and other decision makers often must do to make a science-based judgment."

The unanimous opinion continued, "This is how science works. EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question."

As mentioned in the column, there's no knowing what the present Supreme Court will do.  (If legal precedent were any guide, we wouldn't have seen, in the Affordable Health Care Act case, 98% of the serious legal experts saying there was no way the Court would accept such a nutty argument about the Commrce Clause, only to see the four dissenters and Chief Justice Roberts all buy the argument, despite a couple of centuries of precedent.)

However, the present appellate decision is based squarely on the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in AEP v. Connecticut.   In that case, utilities were being sued by Conn. and other states.  The Supreme Court held that the EPA occupies the field and that therefore states couldn't sue based on their own regulations.  The opinion stated  that the EPA had a duty under the Clean Air Act to determine whether greenhouse gasses endanger the environment – and, if they did, to regulate them.  The EPA appears to be doing just that.