In February, Washington Post columnist George Will wrote a piece entitled “Dark Green Doomsayers.”  This column, joined by two others over the last three months, was littered with blatant mistruths and distortions about climate science.  For example, Will claimed that a study said global sea ice levels hadn’t changed in 30 years when in reality it documented a loss of 520,000 square miles.  Either painfully ignorant or deliberately deceitful, Will’s work has rightfully incited intense criticism of the Post.

Arctic sea ice is retreating rapidly, and global levels have definitely decreased. Will claimed that no change had occurred while sea cover the combined areas of Texas, California, and Oklahoma disappeared. Credit: NSIDC

The paper has taken halfhearted steps to redeem itself.  The Post’s ombudsman responded, but really just defended the paper and its editors.  Then the Post ran two powerful letters to the editor debunking Will’s columns (one of them written by the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), whose work Will also misused)…only to allow Will to misrepresent WMO data again in his third column!

Newspapers have a responsibility to provide accurate information to their readers.  Permitting such thoroughly disproven material to be published, even in an opinion piece, undermines the journalistic integrity of the entire paper.  And clearly others at the Post agree.

Because the editorial staff so clearly shirked their duty, serious journalists at the Post have stepped in.  A week ago, Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan finally chastised Will – from the Post’s news section.  Their article on sea ice decline included a paragraph that reads: “The new evidence…contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will.”

This is unprecedented.  The task of fact-checking or retroactively correcting an errant columnist should fall to the editors or ombudsman, not to writers on page 3. And this incident skirts a journalistic issue of great importance to climate coverage in general: opinions in news.

News articles are supposed to contain facts, not opinion.  In this case, Eilperin and Sheridan were justified because Will has been so verifiably and even quantifiably wrong in his recent columns that the existence of his errors is fact.  But subtly opinionated news has plagued global warming coverage for years.

At the beginning of the year, I set out to examine the interaction between the media and the uninformed American public here on this blog.  And as I wrap up this endeavor, I am also putting the finishing touches on an honors thesis investigating bias in the print coverage of climate change.  To that end, I conducted a media analysis examining news stories (omitting editorial content) that mentioned global warming and how they portrayed the state of climate science.

I focused on measuring the “bias of balance,” which occurs when reporters artificially equalize two unequally supported, competing viewpoints (like climate scientists versus skeptics); essentially overzealous attempts at objectivity.  But the most interesting results appeared when I separated my data by source.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post are among the nation’s leading newspapers.  And because writers for all three ostensibly strive for the same impartiality and cover the same set of climate-related events, one would think that their climate news coverage should be quite similar.

In my data sample, coverage in the NYT and WP was nearly identical in tone. The WSJ was a whole different story.

And in the New York Times and Washington Post, it is.  In the Wall Street Journal, however, articles are fully twice as likely to emphasize caution and voluntary programs to address climate change (rather than immediate, mandatory regulation).  They’re also five times as likely to present with doubt the concretely established existence of anthropogenic (human-caused) warming.  That’s just in news stories, not opinion columns or letters.  This suggests that editorial voices can infiltrate into supposedly objective news articles to significantly influence coverage.

But even the most accurate climate coverage may be lost on many people.  A recent Gallup survey showed that a record high 41% of Americans now think that news stories exaggerate the seriousness of climate change (3x more Republicans than Democrats).  Yet the lessons of my thesis apply to threats that people actually comprehend and respect too.

According to Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach, distinguished journalists now leading the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, “the primary purpose of the media is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.”  And if that is true, today’s media are largely failing.

With pundits driving coverage and politicians’ sound-bites replacing expert analysis, real journalism is getting drowned out; we should be hearing from Joe the Economist, not Joe the Plumber.  And the fact that you can turn on different “news” stations and see completely different views of the world is a shameful indictment of our overly politicized country.

He may be thinking hard, but whatever comes out of his mouth will not better our country in any way.

The media have collectively settled on a misguided notion of balance and “fairness” as their single-minded priority for journalism.  But what this country really needs right now is an emphasis on accuracy; viewers should not get to decide what facts are real.  There is far too much at stake for such foolishness.

Opinion journalism has its place, and that’s not on the cover or under a breaking news headline.  It’s at the back of the paper behind even the comics, opposite the editorial page where commentaries belong.

A version of this post ran in the Chronicle at Duke University.

Imagine 11 million gallons of oil coating beaches from Massachusetts all the way down here to North Carolina.  As the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Kate Slusark points out, this is what the Exxon Valdez oil spill would have looked like had it occurred on the East Coast instead of Alaska’s Prince William Sound.  Last Tuesday marked the 20^th anniversary of the country’s largest oil spill. Exxon Mobil, despite it close association with the poster child of environmental disasters, has not learned from its mistakes.

Oil pours into Prince William Sound

I cannot speak to whether Exxon still hires drunks to captain its supertankers, but the company has balked at a simple precaution to reduce the likelihood of another oil catastrophe.  In 1989, 100 percent of the oil supertanker fleet was single-hulled, including the Exxon Valdez.  Since then, the percentage has dropped to just 21% as that old design is phased out in favor of much safer double-hulled ships.

And that percentage will continue to decline.  Singe-hulled tankers will be banned from the United States in 2015, and a similar ban by the U.N. International Maritime Organization will go into effect next year.  France and Spain haven’t even allow single-hulled tankers within 200 miles of their shores since their own major spills in 1999 and 2002 respectively.  As a result, most Western oil companies have abandoned risky single-hulled tankers even ahead of the upcoming bans.  But Exxon has brazenly defied this logical trend.

The nation’s largest oil company remains the biggest Western user of single-hulled tankers.  And this is not just a function of its size: In 2008, Exxon hired more single-hulled tankers than the next nine largest companies combined.  Why?  The only apparent benefit is that the older, more accident-prone tankers cost about 20 percent less to rent.

Bloomberg estimates that choosing single-hulled tankers saved Exxon less than one cent per share in 2008.  Granted, that scales to a savings of about $18 million, but compared to the company’s record $45.2 billion in profit last year, that’s not even a drop in the barrel.   And if you consider the $3.8 billion cost for Valdez cleanup and damages to date, any cost-benefit analysis becomes even more absurd.

Such flagrant disregard for environmental safety reinforces the negative feelings many still harbor towards Exxon.  But they don’t seem to care.  The Exxon Valdez (repaired, renamed and sold) is banned from returning to the Prince William Sound.  But Exxon still operates the Valdez’s single-hulled sister ship, the SeaRiver Long Beach, and regularly sails it right through the scene of the crime.

All that the Valdez experience has taught Exxon is that the courts are their friends.  In repeated legal battles after the spill, Exxon was able to reduce its punitive fines by almost 90% and delay that restitution for literally decades.  After its Supreme Court victory in 2008, Exxon owed the equivalent of just four days’ profit in damages.  That’s not a deterrent, it’s barely a slap on the wrist.

In 1989, Exxon’s CEO predicted that the Prince William Sound would be completely restored in just a few years.  And earlier this month, the company claimed that the area has recovered with “no long-term damage.” This is patently untrue; oil can still found be on or under many of the sound’s beaches.

How can Exxon claim there is no long-term damage while oil still lies on miles and miles of beaches?

The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council recently found that 17 of the 27 monitored species have not recovered, especially the larger predators that suffer from the bioaccumulation of toxins.  For example, researchers say one of the two Orca pods in the sound is doomed with “no hope of recovery.”

And for those less sympathetic towards cetaceans, there are the missing schools of Pacific herring that used to support a profitable fishing industry.  Their absence impacts the families of local fishermen who used to rely on that fishery for half of their income.  The Exxon Valdez spill has undoubtedly caused long-term damage.

Obligatory.

Although shipping spills have decreased with the post-Valdez regulatory improvements, its risks are intrinsic and will never be completely averted.  And offshore drilling poses similar threats with a whole host of new ones – especially during severe weather events.  Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone caused 125 spills that dumped about 685,000 gallons of petroleum into our oceans.  Oil spills will inevitably continue as long to rely on this dirty, climate-altering fuel (as if we needed another reason to pursue alternative energy).

The transition from oil is a long-term goal, but it won’t become reality without short-term action.  And we can start down that road by removing the Bush II administration’s contributions: For example, in 2007, Bush opened the previously protected Bristol Bay to offshore drilling.  Such shortsighted policy must be overturned and prevented.  Even from a purely economic standpoint, this move jeopardizes $2.2 billion in annual fishing revenue for less than $8 billion in oil – over the next 20 to 40 years.  That’s just silly and a great place to start.

In the meantime, though, we need to hold companies like Exxon fully accountable for mistakes of such egregious magnitude.  We cannot afford to let them repeat their history, even if they refuse to learn from it.

A version of this post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.

*UPDATE*

Thrust, parry.  Instead of reposting, I will just redirect you once again to my good friends at NextGenGOP.

A bored google image search just led me to this gem. Just thought I'd share.

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Original Post:

A fellow Duke student posted a comment on my column today.  While I cannot engage her criticisms about my column (and was happy to see that other people basically said what I would have anyways), I did decide to check out her blog, NextGenGOP.  She also posted today, on the topic of youth liberalism.  

After reading her piece, I decided that I ought to return the favor and leave her a similarly helpful albeit longer comment.  Below, I have reposted her piece “Kids These Days,” followed by my response.  Alternatively, you may read her post (and my response) on her blog (here), which I actually recommend – it is very nicely designed.   Enjoy:

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Kids These Days – Abby Alger

The question I am asked most often is why I am a Republican. It’s a query accompanied with a smirk by liberals, particularly Baby Boomers. (They hope my answer will contain overtly racist, sexist, classist, ageist, heterosupremacist, insertcategoryhereist opinions or—better yet!—upbringing of the same type so that I can be made to recognize my sins, repent, and achieve salvation/redemption/eternal life on the government dole.) And it’s a query increasingly accompanied with a bit of anxiety, edge, even desperation when it comes from Republicans mainly—conservatives, less so.

I’m in the generation that’s the least Republican since Pew started tracking such things. Depressing, not dire as a statistic, but indicative of a broad force at work. It’s something in the cultural water that turns the kids these days into knee-jerk Democrats of the leftist stripe. And it’s got to be in the water—and not just in being liberal at 20 because you have a heart etc.—because it’s a sort of blind, stupid activism that delights in conformity to the (now-confirmed) left-wing echo chamber, rather than overthrowing The Man to bring in a new era of enlightenment, happiness, peace, and drug legalization.

So what is it about Generation Me/Generation Next/Millennials that makes us so blindly leftist? Below are my initial thoughts. I invite fellow writers here to join in the chorus.

I think the answer, at that abstract, 30,000-foot view, is simple and explainable by characteristics of the era. The story goes something like this: being a limited-government, fiscally conservative Republican is, well, kind of boring. You let people do what they want to do. You provide for the common defense, the national infrastructure, some social goods (e.g. education), and enforce laws that keep people from stealing, killing, and the like. It is remote, even impersonal. The government does not care who you are or what you do. It just gets out of your damn way.

But I’m in the generation that believes it is amazingly interesting. The internet, which brought to us delights like LOLcats, rickrolling, and Rathergate, also brought us navel-gazing on a scale unseen before now. As Matt Labash put it in this week’s Weekly Standard, “The very fact that they are on Facebook has convinced people that every facet of their life is inherently interesting enough to alert everyone to its importance.” In other words, me me me now now now pay attention pay attention pay attention to me me me.

Unsurprisingly, this also affects political discourse. What I feel is infinitely more important than what I know or what you can prove with logic or numbers. “That offends me [or aggrieved groups X, Y, and Z]” is a sufficient answer to settle any intellectual debate. Take away your cold facts; my intuition and desires are enough to settle complex debates. Sound familiar yet?

And I’m in the generation that believes it depends on what the meaning of is…is. However young we were during Bill and Monica, we got the lesson. There are no moral absolutes, no unimpeachable standards of right and wrong. There is only legal and illegal. What the law prescribes is allowed; what it does not discuss is a black hole. (Here there be anarchy, so we never go there.) But then, even that is flexible. A tax cheat collects our taxes, a corrupt crook stayed governor of Illinois for weeks, and a perjurer held the highest office in the land.

This whole process makes us curiously dependent on the government and our legislators to decide what is good, what is bad, and what the penalties are for transgressing those boundaries. We dwell, quite literally, in the nanny state. Even worse, we enjoy it. We press for its growth and slow encroachment on each part of our lives.

As Republicans and conservatives, how do we communicate to this generation? We tell them to grow up or we wait until they do (i.e. when they get their first paychecks). The only upshot of Obama’s budget is that he may hasten that process nicely…

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Dear Abby – My Response

As much as I hate to add a discordant voice to your one-woman “chorus,” I accept your invitation. 

Do you honestly believe that young people lean left just because we seek conformity?  Or because fiscally responsible governance is “boring?”  Wake up.

Liberalism is not in the water (that apparently only young people drink).  It is a product of an open mind that cares about the world it lives in.  The free market and <6 year election cycle are ill-suited to addressing long-term challenges.  Yet somehow I still care about my long-term future.  I’d like the world to be a clean, safe place both for myself now and my kids later.   And sadly, that makes me a Democrat.

We’re liberals because we think everyone deserves a chance.  And we’re liberals because we think everyone deserves a choice.  For a party that prides itself on government “getting out of your damn way,” you certainly enjoy legislating your values.  But if you really want to know why our generation is so “blindly” Democratic, I’ll tell you the answer, but you’re not going to like it:

We are Democrats because of Republicans.  Our generation awoke politically to the travesties of the Bush administration and its Congressional accomplices.  I don’t have to list the deeds of that gang, you know them well.  And we’re still paying for them today in money and blood. 

Growing up in that climate, how could we become anything but Democrats?  Even if we DIDN’T support the liberal policy agenda or happen to care about the environment, in a 2-party system we really had little choice BUT lean left.  Our generation wasn’t born Democratic, we were pushed there, away from the Republicans abusing our government and hijacking our country. 

And do you really want to talk about criminal politicians?  People in glass houses, for god’s sake.  Our guy got a blow job.  Your guy deceived us into an unending war et plenty of al..  You do NOT want to go here.  If our country were as interested in transparency as you claim to be (in your profile) and our current president wasn’t trying to turn a new leaf and leave the past where it is, we WOULD have to legalize drugs – to make room for Republicans in our prisons (perhaps not for quantity, just quality). 

Also, it’s cute that you scoff at Democrats for wanting peace.  You’re right, it IS confusing why more young people aren’t Republicans.

Unrelated point but worth mentioning: it’s a little hypocritical to disparage our generation because it “believes it is amazingly interesting” and draws undue attention to itself…on a blog that you started so the whole world can access your personal insights.   Yes, I know I have a blog too.  But my life and opinions are amazingly interesting.

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I lamented during the election about my inability to find active young Republicans.  It is nice to have finally found them.

Chris Rock can predict the future.  During Spring Break, I listened to a recording of his stand-up in which he identified the need for a charismatic black leader who could make people believe in themselves.  That 1999 routine was just meant to generate laughs, but a decade later it is eerily prophetic.

After years of mismanagement, the Democratic Party finally has a capable, charismatic leader.  The Republican Party does not.

With the political tides so thoroughly turned, parallels can be drawn between early Bush II Democrats (especially in 2003-2004) and the current Republicans in how they’ve handled their full minority status.  It is early to judge the Republican response, but recent events and polling statistics can still offer insight.

During the last administration, Democrats faced an America that had [at least once] elected a “man of the people;” no Bush-bashing is necessary to establish that Republicans were benefiting from a simple, straightforward message and a president capable of little more.  Oops.

Throughout that ordeal, though, the Democratic Party stuck to its goals instead of hopelessly recreating the contemporary success of their opponents.  People liked Bush because it seemed like you could have a beer with him.  Anybody could envision that a similar experience with John Kerry would be tedious, but Democrats rallied behind him to champion their message anyways.

Today, in a roughly comparable position, Republicans have adopted a different strategy.  Ignoring the possibility that voters support President Obama’s policies and not merely his physical qualities, the Republican Party has been trying to emulate just the facade of the recent Democratic success.

During the campaign, the media and public were enthralled by Obama’s youthful vigor and followed each of his daily visits to the gym.  The Republican response?  Elevate young conservative rising star, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.  Only they appear to have picked this fruit a little early.

Despite Jindal’s relative youth, the unpolished, childish simplicity with which he talked down to the nation in his rebuttal to Obama’s speech to Congress was unfortunately familiar.  That speech showed that Jindal’s age will have little impact on his party’s preference for the failed policies we voted against in November.  And he clearly wasn’t ready for the national stage.

Sidenote: Jindal was so…underwhelming that immediately after his speech people around the country decided that he sounded exactly like Kenneth the Page, the dim country boy character from NBC’s 30Rock.  Apparently he thought so too, and actor Jack McBrayer recorded a response to Jindal in character (video).

Similarly, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s performance to date casts doubt on the argument that he was selected simply because he was the most qualified candidate.  It is perhaps fortunate, then, that neither of these men are really viewed as the party’s current leader.

According to many pundits, Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.  And while Limbaugh does have influence, he also has a penchant for saying things respectable people don’t.  Steele briefly condemned his remarks as “incendiary” and “ugly,” only to grovel a day later when King Limbaugh got mad.  That hierarchy seems clear, but the country is remarkably divided about Limbaugh.

A Rasmussen poll recently found that 44 percent of Democrats but just 11 percent of Republicans view Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party.  How did that happen?  Well, we appear to be witnessing the return an ancient phenomenon: Democrats controlling a media narrative.

Last October, Democratic strategists discovered that only one in ten voters under age 40 views the talk show host favorably.  Since then, many Democrats and now even White House officials have engaged Limbaugh directly, propagating this unflattering caricature of conservative America.  But while happy to bask in the spotlight, Limbaugh rejects any leadership responsibility.

This guy's been divorced three times and addicted to pain killers, but what the hell. Why shouldn't he be a figurehead for the party of "values"?

So while there is confusion about exactly who is leading the party, a January Rasmussen poll shed some light on the type of leader Republicans want; 43 percent of respondents thought that their party had become too moderate, and 55 percent said that Sarah Palin should be the model for the future.  A scant 24 percent thought Sen. John McCain was the correct model.

And that’s fine with me.  Not because I could tolerate a President Palin (that hurts just to type), but because the harder she pushes, the harder we push back.  As David Plouffe explained, “[Palin] was our best fundraiser and organizer in the fall.”   Extreme conservatives certainly mobilize their base, but it is clear that when these figures act on the national stage, they galvanize Democrats by alienating moderate, young, and minority voters.   And this could explain why the Republicans have responded so differently.

The current Republican retreat to the right could yield wonderful results (for me).  With many minorities and especially young voters heavily favoring Democrats, the Republican future is grim.  At this rate, the current Republican recession will long outlast the financial one they bequeathed to us.

Recent Republican bumbling reveals an admission that something must change if the party is to have a future.  But it must go more than skin deep.  If conservatives aren’t prepared for this makeover, they will remain powerless.  At least until a Democratic president trashes the country.

A version of the post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.

On the cover of its November 2004 issue, National Geographic posed the question “Was Darwin wrong?”  But when you flipped to the article inside, the answer was printed in big, bold font: NO.  Even the main evolution page on Wikipedia doesn’t mention any controversy, and for all of the free encyclopedia’s faults, that’s saying something.  Yet just in time for Darwin’s 200^th birthday, Gallup released a new poll showing that a scant 39 percent of Americans “believe in the theory of evolution.”

That’s appalling.  This shouldn’t need explaining, but there is no substantive controversy about evolution.  There are still questions to be answered about some of its mechanisms and intricacies, but within the volumes of predictive, verifiable data we have gathered, there is not a single piece of evidence that refutes the theory.  And for clarification, that’s scientific theory, rigorously tested and tantamount to fact, like the theories of gravity and plate tectonics.  This differs from the colloquial “theory” you might use to guess how you made it home from the bar without remembering.  To paraphrase physicist Murray Peshkin, saying evolution is “only a theory” is like saying it’s “only science.”

Yet just last month, Dr. Don McLeroy (a dentist) led conservatives on the Texas Board of Education in a renewed crusade to wedge religion into the classroom at the expense of basic education.  This review of the state’s science standards will face a final vote next month, but similar battles have already been fought in at least ten states over the past decade, often buoyed by alarming levels of public support.  In Kansas, the most infamous case, teaching evolution was actually banned for two years.  Thank goodness we aren’t trying to pass any evolution legislation.

We are, however, expecting legislation on important science-based issues like climate change, and the outlook there is just as bleak.  In my first column this semester, I wrote about a May 2008 poll showing a partisan divide among Americans who understand that humans contribute to climate change.  A similar Rasmussen poll recently found that this rift has widened: now just 21 percent of Republicans acknowledge anthropogenic climate change, compared to 59 percent of Democrats.  As Stephen Colbert once said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias” (video in this previous post).  So it is understandable that Republicans have not exactly championed our nation’s academic pursuits.  But an anti-scientific sentiment can have dangerous consequences, especially if it goes unchecked.

Watching the major congressional battles since this summer (especially on offshore drilling and climate change) I have noticed a trend: the national media, particularly on TV, have largely abandoned their watchdog role and have been covering these debates without substantive fact-checking as “he said/she said” stories.  Facts and fabrications have been placed on equal footing to avoid “taking a side.” The election was covered the same way.  But this is a terrible journalistic paradigm.

Balance is nice, but isn’t accuracy a more important journalistic value?  Calling out a politician for lying is not partisan, it’s the media’s responsibility.  Obviously it would be best if people just told the truth, but that’s not happening.  And the stimulus coverage was more of the same.

Media Matters analyzed twelve cable news programs’ coverage of the stimulus debate. Of the 460 guests interviewed, only 25 of them – that’s 5 percent – were actually economists.  No wonder the potential impacts of the bill were so vulnerable to political spin.  And  Think Progress found that savvy Republicans were only too happy to exploit this opportunity, appearing on cable news programs twice as frequently as their Democratic counterparts.  But one network took coverage to a new low.

The following may shock you, so brace yourself: Fox News has a Republican bias.  And last week, they were as tactful as a skirted starlet stepping from a limo.  On Feb. 10^th, anchor Jon Scott put up a graphic showing the costs of the stimulus package that was copied verbatim from a press release by the Senate Republicans Communication Center, same damning typo and all.  “Fair and balanced” my Democratic donkey.  Kudos again to Media Matters for “exposing” such a blatant attempt to disseminate partisan propaganda as reporting.  But at least Fox had the courage to apologize – for just the typo (video thanks to Howard Kurtz).

Um, yeah...not so much.

Our country is being steered by a misinformed public and polarized politicians unrestrained by accountability.  Science itself is under attack.  These are complex problems with varied causes.  Yet they have one thing in common: objective media coverage could combat them all.

But that’s not going to happen.  Believe it or not, journalism is evolving.  With the expansion to the internet and growing popularity of blogs, niche news is on the rise. People seem to want their news told from their perspective, and media outlets will provide what consumers demand; Fox News, the Huffington Post, even Jon Stewart are thriving.  And with newspapers experiencing serious financial difficulties, the days of the objective reporter could actually be numbered.  If you think bipartisanship is a myth today, try to imagine it at the bottom of this slippery slope (a logical fallacy, I know, but the point stands).

I wish I could end this column with a solution, but I honestly don’t see one.  It would be comforting to believe that some omnipotent, not explicitly Christian deity was guiding this media transformation, but judging from its current trajectory, this looks like anything but an Intelligent Design.

A version of the post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.

For at least the next two years, the impotent Republican minority in the House of Representatives will produce nothing but drama and headlines.  And the theme of this show will be partisanship.  President Obama promised us a new era of bipartisanship, so whenever he supports a Democratic policy, Republicans are crying foul.  Disregarding the fact that liberals got “partisan-ed” pretty hard during Bush II years, let’s examine what bipartisanship really means today.

First, “partisan” does not deserve such a negative connotation; it describes how our legislature functions.  Two parties with widely differing ideologies will obviously support the solutions they believe will work, as they have for centuries.

When Obama won, the phrase ‘mandate for change’ surfaced – the sense that a clear majority of Americans trusted that this Democratic president had a better platform to fix our country.  For Obama to now embrace Republican plans for a stimulus package (mainly tax breaks) would violate the trust of every person who voted for him.  Americans elected Democrats into the White House and clear majorities in the House and the Senate.  This is not a product of random chance.

2008 election results with states scaled by population. See all the blue?

Worthy or not, Republicans successfully cast themselves as the party of “tax breaks.”  And if that is your single, shortsighted priority for our government, it seems clear you should vote Republican.  But in November, America did not.  So last month, when Obama was asked why there weren’t more Republican ideas in his stimulus plan and he replied “I won,” his response was not only delightfully honest but informative.

Bipartisanship means understanding, respecting, and listening to the opposition.  Obama is doing that.  Sometimes it means making compromises too, but not on everything.  I’m no economist, so let’s try this from a civics perspective: in a democratic republic, citizens vote for the people they think will choose what is best for their country.  Because Republican policies and leadership failed us so spectacularly during the last eight years, we voted them out of power.  We already tried pure tax breaks – they didn’t work. And there’s a reason Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  So maybe this time our government should actually govern?

But no, Republicans want to give tax breaks another whirl.  All 188 of them in the House voted against the stimulus bill (which still passed easily).  But they are quite proud of their completely ineffective yet unanimous opposition.  They even view it as a victory because Obama spent time meeting with them.  Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) explained, “if he comes and meets with us like that and it doesn’t have an impact, it begins to hurt his credibility.”  …Or alternatively, one could interpret that to mean that Republicans are equally unwilling to compromise on their core beliefs and voted with their party.  What’s that called again?  Oh yeah, “partisan.”  Bipartisanship is a two-way street, not the unilateral acquiescence of a ruling majority.

While Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) proposes a $3.1 trillion tax break “stimulus” alternative, his fellow Republicans oppose the current $838 billion plan as wastefully large.  Highlighting minor expenditures (like the efficiency measures I last wrote about), they’ve framed the bill as a giant helping of congressional pork.  But this label doesn’t quite fit.

Legislative “pork” is normally funding for projects that benefit only a small constituency, frequently within a single congressperson’s district.  Most of the “controversial” stimulus expenditures fund broader objectives, such as anti-smoking campaigns.  These seem more like “riders,” unrelated and often contentious provisions attached to a larger, important bill that is likely to pass.  But this comparison doesn’t work either, because these expenditures themselves are the bill.  That would make the stimulus package some kind of conglomeration of self-propelling riders, or maybe “meta-pork,” but that’s a little confusing.

Given the difficulty of classifying this project and our penchant for labeling legislation as meat, I propose that this bill is most like spam: nobody really knows quite what it is, it’s probably a lot of different things mashed together, and whatever it is, it’s going to be around for a while.  It’s not your first choice, but you’d certainly eat it if you were starving.

...yum.

This stimulus spam is not perfect, but our economy is famished.  Barring a government-wide “kumbaya” moment, continued debate will accomplish little.  I concede that some of the proposed expenditures would not provide short-term economic stimulus and perhaps should be removed, but the Democratic agenda has long been stifled and a crisis is indeed a terrible thing to waste.  And it’s worth mentioning that many of the “jobless” investments, like the anti-smoking campaign or computerizing medical records, would surely save money in the long run.

Regardless, the performance of our economy during this administration will be attributed to, or blamed on, Democrats; if we’re shouldering all the risk, we might as well do this our way (if we can get the votes in the Senate).  Claims of partisanship are the crutch of an intellectually bankrupt Republican party that has nothing new to offer.

Last week, Sen. John McCain sent an email to his supporters with an anti-stimulus petition.  He wrote, “With so much at stake, the last thing we need is partisanship driving our attempts to turn the economy around.”  But is partisanship really worse than a prolonged, deeper recession?  I don’t think so.

A version of this post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.

A week ago, I was chatting online with a conservative friend during the inauguration.  Although she was “mourning g dubs,” she told me she was going to be a “good American” and support the president rather than complain as my fellow Democrats and I have for the last eight years.  I told her that it’s her right to object if and when President Obama screws up, but she rejected this idea because apparently silently accepting injustices is “what patriots do.”

President Obama will make mistakes.  Many say he already has.  But the notion that it is un-American or whiney to disagree with a president is disturbing, even when voiced by a classmate rather than Bill O’Reilly.  Theodore Roosevelt put it best: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”  Dissent is a crucial and protected part of the democratic process.  And isn’t being able to complain one of the stated (albeit secondary) reasons to vote?

I am a zealous Obama supporter and worked for the campaign for a full year and a half.  I am also not subtle about my political preference and have my apartment/car/room so shamelessly adorned that my friends across the hall hung a giant Chairman Mao “Change We Can Believe In” poster and named their wireless network “HopeAndChange” (because it too is intangible and frequently lets them down) to mock me.  But even I do not agree with everything President Obama has done.

Very funny, guys.

The House of Representatives is currently mulling over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the pending “stimulus package.”  While it is wonderful to see money going towards renewable energy and needed infrastructure, the plan revealed last week already saw relevant funding cuts from the earlier proposal outlined by James Oberstar (D-MN), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  The money allocated to roads remains untouched, but the overall transportation investment fell 25%, with rail in particular cut 78%.  That money will instead fund a tax cut.  It is unclear who made the revision, but if the Obama administration truly prioritized mass transportation and energy independence, they could have prevented this edit.

California has its own plans for a high-speed rail system, but the rest of us will still just have (underfunded) Amtrak.

Overall, there is a lot of good funding in the initiative, especially after the Bush years.   But not everyone thinks so. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) recently went on PBS’s Newshour and was “shocked” by what he saw in the bill.  He singled out one particularly egregious item as an example of the “same kind of wasteful spending we have seen in the past”: $6.2 billion for communities to weatherize low-income housing.

First of all, a government-funded community weatherization program does not sound like any past I can remember (although apparently there was a similar program in the mid-1990s, which the GOP opposed then as well).  As Climate Progress reports, this opposition is all the more ridiculous because such programs not only create jobs, they decrease the deficit!  Exactly what disgusts Boehner about lowering people’s electricity bills, generating work in low-income areas, and even reducing America’s energy needs is beyond me – or would be if he wasn’t such an overt ally of the energy industry.

It is unfortunate that efficiency measures aren’t as “sexy” as building a new, state-of-the-art power plant, because they can provide the same benefit, pollution-free, for less.  Earlier this month, the coalition Wise Energy for Wise County released a major study demonstrating why a new coal-fired power plant is not the energy solution for Wise County Virginia (or America).  As Theo Spencer at NRDC explains, their study determined that investing in energy efficiency instead of a new plant could meet the same electricity demand, yield hundreds of millions of dollars for the state each year, and create at least 2,600 more jobs than the power plant.  And if the federal government does implement a carbon tax or cap and trade system, the comparative benefits of efficiency become even greater.

What’s true for Wise County is largely true for our entire country.  There are incredible opportunities to improve energy efficiency today using technology we already have: insulating buildings, improving mass transit, driving higher MPG, hybrid, and even zero-emission electric vehicles, buying EnergyStar appliances, utilizing natural lighting and compact fluorescent light bulbs…the list goes on.  Even for power production, cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power (CHP), enables us to tap waste heat at power plants to provide industrial or domestic heating and hot water nearby.  Yet all of these cost money before they save it.

I think it is in our government’s interest to heavily incentivize and provide funding for many of these measures, but it is clear that some policymakers have different priorities.  So I will continue to “complain” by writing congresspersons, raising awareness about these issues, and hopefully, by being hired to work somewhere that I can help effect the changes I’d like to see.  And if you disagree with the government, even if we do have an articulate, intelligent president, it is your right and even civic duty to do the same.

A version of this post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.

This post is in response to an extended comment posted by the moderator of ThePeregrin.com.  In order to fully understand this post, I suggest reading my post “A Chilling Experience” (below), and his comment to it.  He also posted my post and his comment on his site under the title “Climate Change: One Blog Gets It Wrong,” so I thought I should return the favor.  The following is also posted as a response on ThePeregrin, but I just wanted to have the chance for a little rebuttal here.  Enjoy.

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“Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on my blog, as well as for your layout compliments.  I would like to address a few of your points, though. 

First, you mention the “hockey stick” controversy.  As I understand it, the argument is about the source data of one study reconstructing North American surface temperatures over the last millennium.  It boils down to whether a certain tree species’ ring data should be used.  And according to RealClimate, despite the controversy, the main point that the last decade has likely been the warmest in at least 1000 years still stands.

But it’s silly to get bogged down by a single group of tree rings when we know from many other sources (other species of tree rings, but also thermometers, ice cores from both the Arctic and Antarctic, sediment cores, corals et al.) that we are currently experience a period of rapid, sustained warmth, and that this warmth is highly correlated with human industrialization.  

Now I know that correlation does not prove causation, but if you understand the basics of the greenhouse effect, we can easily demonstrate how this warming occurs.  It is not controversial that greenhouse gasses (carbon dioxide, methane, even water vapor) trap infrared solar radiation close to the earth as heat.  We owe the habitability of our planet to this concretely established phenomenon.  It is also verifiably proven that the combustion of fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide.  This too is beyond argument.  So when temperatures rise in conjunction with a massive increase in atmospheric CO₂ levels, and we know that we’re releasing gigatons of CO₂ into that same atmosphere via fossil fuels and deforestation, I feel quite comfortable saying 1+1=2.  It’s not faith in science, it’s just that simply apparent.  But I set out to address your points specifically, not the larger matter in general.

You mention physicist Richard A. Muller of the University of Berkeley.  I followed the link you provided in your comment but was unable to find the specific lecture to which you referred.  I would be grateful if you could send me a more direct link, but it doesn’t really matter.  Muller may disagree with MBH98 (the “hockey stick” report) and he may even be correct.  But he maintains that anthropogenic warming is occurring.  A simple search of climate change terms on that site quickly led me to a paper he authored in which he explains, in no uncertain terms, that global warming is occurring and anthropogenic (caused by humans) via fossil fuels and deforestation (6^th paragraph).  You say Muller said that Al Gore lied about the conclusions of MBH98, but Muller would also say that you were lying about his conclusions about Gore’s use of MBH98 if you try to use them to refute the existence of global warming (as you did in your post). 

By all means, do your own research, and, when possible, take advantage of opportunities to learn directly from knowledgeable sources.  But one quote doesn’t disprove a report and one scientist isn’t widespread dissent.  There is remarkable scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.  I’d urge you to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” for more on that point but I don’t think you’d appreciate it.  Instead, I will suggest you read the reports by Naomi Oreskes at the University of California San Diego (which Gore was citing).

Now, for your second point.  Your “recent report” is a piece by Michael Asher that appeared in the prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journal Daily Tech (for clarification, Daily Tech is none of those things: it is on online magazine that provides, according to its “About Us” section, “hard-hitting and up to the minute CE, PC, IT and information technology news.”  It’s not terribly heavy in environmental science credentials.  And then there’s Michael Asher.  With no apparent background or training in science, Asher has, as Mitchell Anderson at DeSmogBlog put it, “a monotonous habit of slagging climate science.”  He, like many other climate-denying bloggers, simple tries to poke holes in legitimate work and contributes nothing to the actual body of knowledge.  And he, like you appear to have done with Prof. Muller, has just cherry-picked a single data point that happens to coincide with his preconceived notions despite the fact that the organization from which it is taken harbors no uncertainty about climate change.  But let’s examine his claims.

Asher wrote, “Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago…” It is true that “sea ice levels” are roughly equal to those in 1979, the first year in which sea ice mass came under satellite observation.  But what Asher doesn’t realize or more likely ignores, is that the situation isn’t that simple.  According to NASA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, 2008 saw the second lowest summer medium since the observations began, continuing a negative trend.  Some researchers predict we will see the first ice-free arctic summer within the next 20 years.  And while I would enjoy continuing this play-by-play on how Asher lied in his “report,” I find that the work has already been done in wonderful, cited detail by the blog greenfyre’s.  So in the interest of time and on the off chance that anyone is still reading this, I will urge you and other to check out that post to see explicitly how Asher is deceitfully wrong.  And he is.

In conclusion, you are correct in that pollution is not a good thing.  Smog does suck.  But please allow me to correct your lemming metaphor: in today’s world, the cliff is rushing towards the hapless rodents (all of us).  And not only are we doing nothing to avoid the approaching danger, we are in fact accelerating its approach.  And if anyone is leading us to our demise, it’s climate skeptics.  As for your populist claim that Americans are generally well informed, I submit to you every public policy class I’ve ever taken explaining rational ignorance, a heap of public polling statistics I no longer have the drive to track down, and a sarcastic “yeah, right.”

I too apologize for the length of my reply; this nerve is worn out as well.

Sincerely,

Jamie Friedland”

My family does not take normal vacations.  Many people head home for the holidays, go skiing or perhaps seek warmer weather on a beach somewhere.  I spent much of my winter break aboard a small ship called the National Geographic Endeavour exploring Antarctica.  Yes, it was cold, but at the time it was actually warmer there than at home thanks to the Southern hemisphere summer and an impressive winter storm here in the U.S.  Apparently if you’re from Chicago, flying south for the winter works no matter how far you go.

Christmas Day found us returning to Argentina via the Drake Passage, home of some of the world’s most violent nautical conditions.  We had relatively mild crossings-strong but favorable winds and mere 20-foot seas, but even these were sufficient to put most people in bed (or the bathroom) with a seasickness that trumped preventative medication.  And we were lucky.

Storms in the Drake are frequent and powerful, capable of generating sustained swells of 60 feet and rogue waves much larger.  In 2001, the Endeavour herself was struck by a wave over 100 feet tall and had to be escorted back into port by the Chilean navy.  The two-day trip through the Drake each way is the supplemental price to visit the White Continent.

The Drake can be rough, but Antarctica is beautiful.

As one might expect, the group of people who opt for such adventures is largely self-selecting: suffice it to say that politics were a safe topic for conversation.  Although I did befriend a future petroleum engineer from the University of Texas who was quite cavalier with his indifference towards climate change, even he voted for Obama.  And he was certainly an outlier.

The passengers on board were generally well educated and environmentally aware.  The extreme to this side of spectrum was the president of a major conservation organization, traveling with his family.  His wife founded and directs a separate group of conservation photographers who use images to raise awareness about underreported environmental crises.  Once we’d entered the calmer waters past Cape Horn, she showed one of their presentations about climate change.

After the video, another woman approached her and asked a question to the effect of, “Are people really causing global warming?  I’ve heard that it’s natural.”  Apparently disbelief was visible on my face, because I found myself sharing a silent moment of frustration with an MIT professor who had also overheard the query.

Statistically, this misinformed woman is not unusual.  While a majority of Americans now accept that climate change is occurring, a May 2008 Pew poll found that only 47% of Americans correctly attribute some of this warming to human causes.  Responses were highly correlated with political party affiliation: broken down, that 47% included 58% of Democrats and just 27% of Republicans polled.  It should not be surprising to hear, then, that the domestic political debate on climate change is in a word disgraceful and pollutes discussion about every facet of the issue.

The concept of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change via fossil fuel emissions was first theorized as early as 1896 by the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius.  It has been recognized as a major problem for decades.  The question of whether it is happening should be (and really is) long settled, but  America stubbornly rejects this reality. And despite some obstructive political postures abroad, no other country can claim to foment such indefensible, inertial denial as ours.  At least the international conversation has advanced some during the last 113 years.

Last month, representatives from about 190 countries convened at the United Nations climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland, to discuss climate change.  Brazil and Mexico chose this forum to announce concrete plans to reduce their national emissions.  South Africa and South Korea released their own plans just this summer, joining the larger standing commitment of the European Union.  Despite some shortcomings, the Poznan convention set the stage for a meeting next December in Copenhagen, at which the group hopes to formulate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Yet for all the climate progress around the world, enthusiasm is often short-lived.  Personally, interactions like that I overheard aboard the Endeavour always temper what optimism I may have had.  America will not act on global warming if its citizens (and politicians) don’t understand the basic facts about fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect; people will not tolerate emissions reductions if they don’t think greenhouse gases cause climate change or that it’s not a problem.  And even on a holiday cruise in the Southern Ocean, which ought to be a hotbed of-to borrow an ultraconservative term-”enviro-facism,” I discovered a woman who does not understand that people are causing global warming.

In the coming months, I plan to examine the causes and consequences of a misinformed American public, as they will certainly continue to frame political and environmental events both in the US and around the world. Only with broad public support can we enact policy strong enough to avert whatever future climate effects may otherwise manifest themselves.  I hope to be wrong, but I don’t think America today is ready to embrace the changes we really need.

So we have some work to do.  And one week from today, we will finally have a president who understands this.

A version of this post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.

Last month I was fortunate enough to drive through – and not stop in – the lovely state of West Virginia.  It was dark, but between the mountain passes I did get to do some sightseeing.  I was impressed by the neoclassical grandeur of the state capitol building, but I was also treated to pollution-belching industrial complexes beautifully backlit by gas flares.   The scene was reminiscent of, but did not smell quite as bad as, Gary, Indiana – a real gem in a state that prides itself on being “The Crossroads of America” (read: between places worth visiting).  But I digress.

Drifting somewhere between “the zone” and highway hypnosis, I was jarred awake by a billboard just past Charleston.  It said, “YES COAL. Clean, carbon neutral coal. ” I slammed on the brakes so hard I was nearly rear-ended as I slowed to make sure I’d read correctly.  ‘Clean’ is already a sleazy misnomer for coal, but ‘carbon-neutral’? That sign’s not just wrong, it’s probably illegal: There are laws protecting the public from false advertising.

An ad like the one I saw. Maybe your head didn't just explode, but this is ridiculous.

There is no way to burn coal without releasing its carbon.  That’s just how combustion works.  The only way that billboard is not a blatant mistruth is as a deceitful allusion to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) a process that theoretically would allow us to catch carbon dioxide as it’s emitted.  But CCS is expensive and has yet to be practically implemented, so coal remains our most carbon-intensive (and dirtiest) energy source.

Walker Machinery, the mining equipment supplier responsible for this and other misleading coal ads, even admits on its Web site that its statements refer to the [ideal] future of coal, not the present.  And that dirty present has gotten some attention lately.

One of Walker Machinery’s major customers is Massey Energy, the nation’s fourth-largest coal company.  Massey has received a lot of negative press.  In 2006, notorious CEO Don Blankenship was sued with Massey when his unrelenting emphasis on coal production over safety led to two deaths in a mine fire.  Last year, Massey was sued for committing up to $2.4 billion worth of violations of the Clean Water Act.  And this year, two West Virginia Supreme Court Justices had to recuse themselves from a case against Massey after photos surfaced of one vacationing with Blankenship on the French Riviera.  The court, led by a third justice on whose campaign Blankenship spent $3.5 million but who has still ruled on numerous cases about Massey, voted to overturn a previous $77 million verdict against the company (see video below).

ABC’s Nightline reports on Don Blankenship.  Check this out.

How has Massey responded to its criticism? Blankenship unloaded on coal critics last week at the Tug Valley Mining Institute, calling them “communists,” “atheists” and “greeniacs.” He then compared environmentalists to Osama bin Laden.   But my favorite quote was, “Most people wouldn’t believe that coal is the most important thing to the environment. ” I’ll provide some context lest that sound silly: the environment to which he was referring was the “total environment,” which is composed not just of “trees and all that” but also of the ability to send our children to school.

Oh, that environment…wait, what?

Blankenship’s rant went on to sympathize with like-minded people who don’t believe in climate change but are “afraid to say that because it is a political reality.” Without exploring the remarkable similarities between his “political reality” and our “actual world,” I’d just like to say I hope that in this new political era we can set aside pesky realities and embrace fanatical utopias where ignoring something hard enough makes it magically disappear.  Viva la status quo!

But coal executives like Blankenship have reason to be cranky these days.  Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that utilities must apply the best available control technology for carbon dioxide emissions at new coal-fired power plants.  This really just updates EPA policy to start treating CO_­2­ like other pollutants, but it has serious implications for the future expansion of coal power – unless they can show us some clean, carbon-neutral coal plants.

Yet the Bush bonanza is not quite over.  The EPA ruled against utilities, but coal mining continues as usual.  And according to a blog post by Rob Perks at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the EPA is soon expected to weaken environmental regulations on toxic mining waste.  The governors of Tennessee and Kentucky have opposed this assault on their states’ water quality; West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has not, tacitly upholding his state’s submission to the coal industry at the expense of environmental and public health.

Just last week Massey Energy received approval to flatten another West Virginia mountain in search of coal.  Local citizens are pleading with the governor to rescind the permit, claiming that the mountain has enough wind potential to cleanly power up to 150,000 homes.  Would it be so terrible for West Virginia to invest in some renewable energy and preserve the mountains that drive its valuable tourism?  That would certainly be a step in a new direction.

This used to be a mountain before coal mining. For a sense of scale, those are 6 cars just left of center in front of that road across the middle.

Governor Manchin, when it gets so bad that passing college kids feel comfortable casually deriding your entire state, maybe it’s time for a change. America already has a Gary, Ind.  Why don’t you help keep West Virginia “Wild and Wonderful” by leaving a few of its mountains intact?

A version of this post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.