Category: Climate

The Protein Predicament: Livestock’s Impact on Human and Environmental Health (and What to Do About It)

Report says red meat OK for human health

By now you have likely heard of a report recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that concludes “there’s no need to reduce red or processed meat consumption for good health,” as summarized in the Washington Post.

Beef: good (for protein), bad (for the environment, and probably for health), and kinda ugly (for aesthetics, if that matters)

Kaboom! Went the plunge of this report into the midst of what had been a gathering consensus about the many ill effects of a meat-heavy diet.

RECOMMENDATION: before you read the full Washington Post piece, first read its last two paragraphs (beginning with “Willettt says the panel’s conclusions and recommendations do not reflect the study’s findings . . .”  – emphasis mine).  They indicate that the editorial board of the Annals etc. have spun the data in favor of the red and processed meat industry. In the editorial itself, the writers bury concerns about the environmental impacts of meat consumption in the final paragraph.

If you read the complete piece in the Post, you will see that the conventional nutritional wisdom, that it’s healthier to eat less meat, still has solid  support among almost all nutritionists. Walter Willett pointed out that the study itself associates moderate reduction in meat production with a 13 percent lower mortality, and said,  “if a drug brought down the number of deaths to that degree . . .  it would be heralded as a success.” Certainly such a drug would be heralded as a success by a multi-billion dollar drug company.  There is no multi-billion dollar profit-making enterprise to curb the consumption of red meat.

Once the media, always on the hunt for controversy, had taken up the  report it went mainstream (as in the Washington Post, the New York Times etc.) accompanied by a glut of social media chatter. And then came a firestorm of backlash such as you can read of in a litany of objections from nutritionists, doctors, and researchers found on this page of WebMd.

The study is tainted by past ties of one of the research’s co-leaders to an industry trade group, the “International Life Sciences Institute” (ILSI)—a connection he did not disclose because technically the connection did not fall within the past-3-year reporting requirement for publication. While the earlier study—which incidentally was an attempt to allay health concerns about sugar additives—was published in December 2016 (less than 3 years ago), researcher Bradley Johnston said he was paid for the research in 2015 (more than 3 years ago).  Ergo he was not obliged to disclose the connection because the payment fell outside the 3-year window. . . .  Did he really think this was not going to come out? Did he really think that no one would suspect he might be eyeing future funding by the ILSI, having insinuated himself further into their good graces with the red meat study?  Maybe in the context of runaway mendacity and moral obtuseness in the twenty-teens he saw no reason to observe the spirit of disclosure rules.

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Americans Serious about Climate Change? Tell Me Another Whopper

[WARNING: many readers may find the following a downer—but if you care about facts, you must be willing to look at all kinds of Inconvenient Truths.] 

U.S. public on climate change: a crisis in name only

The September 20th Global Climate Strike has been inspiring—for those seriously concerned about global warming and climate change.

It’s less inspiring to read of how not-serious most of the American public is. A week before the Climate Strike, the release of a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll headlined “Americans increasingly see climate change as a crisis” appeared to portend a sea change (pun partially intended) in attitudes toward climate change.

Read on for what underlies appearances.

The takeaway from the poll is that the public says, big problem—let somebody else take care of it. Consider that 38% describe climate change as “a crisis,” and another 38% describe it as “a major problem but not a crisis.” However, to combat climate change only 37% say major sacrifices will be required, 48% say minor sacrifices, 14% “not requiring much sacrifice,” with 1% having no opinion.

Next we read that “nearly half of adults say they would be willing to pay a $2 monthly tax on electricity to help combat climate change.” If that sounds promising,  the report says just 27% would pay $10 extra a month. Meaning that at best 27/38 (71%) is the fraction of those saying the threat is “a crisis” would also pay $10 extra a month. $120 a year. Hmmm . . .  33¢/day = a bit more than 1/6th the price of a “tall” cup of Starbucks coffee.  Now that’s what I call a major sacrifice!

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The Victimization of Carbon Dioxide: William Happer’s Crusade to Rescue a Molecule’s Good Name

Claim: climate “alarmism” is a hoax, carbon dioxide is good—and the victim of a conspiracy

The climate change denier on President Trump’s Security Council who possesses the most conspicuously solid scientific credentials is one William Happer, who received a PhD in physics at Princeton in 1964, and attained high standing in the physics community for his work on optics and atomic physics—not, however, climate. His contrarian stance on climate change has some fellow physicists scratching their heads, muttering “who got to this guy?”

In fairness, one should note that Happer does not exactly dispute the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. What he disputes is that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the resultant climate change will be as severe as “alarmists” claim . . .  and to the slight extent that CO2 does modify climate, it’s a good thing.  And that good thing, in his view, is under malicious assault. He is prone to such provocative catchphrases as “the demonization of CO2,” “we are in a CO2 famine,” and “if plants could vote, they’d vote for coal.”

Yes! Plants would vote for coal! Or not. Plants were thriving in the Carboniferous Period, which is when they were also dying en masse, piling up in peat which was eventually compressed into what we call fossil fuels today: coal, petroleum, and natural gas. It was also a time of heavy competition between plant species in what we might call the Survival of the Vegetative Fittest—so that for any individual plant or species, the Carboniferous might not have looked quite like Paradise on Earth. It might have seemed, to some light-starved, struggling seedling on the forest floor enshrouded in the gloom shed by a dense canopy of enormous trees, more like a dungeon.

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A Cooler Look at Global Warming: Bjorn Lomborg Runs the Numbers

Skewed Priorities? Another AGW Perspective

Bjorn Lomborg is a thorn in the side of many a climate change warrior. As a self-described environmentalist (onetime Greenpeace member), he’s been accused of global warming heresy, largely  on account of his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (1998, English editon 2001).  In that book, Lomborg accused climate alarmists of making mountains out of climate molehills, forecasting doom when we had much more urgent needs to address. Fast forward to 2011, and he was taking a more modest tack, admitting that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) had progressed further, and its impacts were likely to be more severe, than he had previously forecast. Nevertheless, he maintained the future progression, and potential harm, were far less urgent than claimed by climate hawks, when compared with other threats.

Fast forward to 2019, and he has come to admit that climate change is a problem of daunting dimensions. Where he parts ways with most environmentalists and climate scientists is how he ranks climate change against other threats to the well-being of most people and natural systems: e.g. malnutrition, disease, air and water pollution, war, subsistence agriculture, habitat destruction, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and failing infrastructure. The last is most glaring in the Third World, where the state of roads, bridges, power delivery systems, flood containment, and the resistance of buildings to earthquakes, high winds, flood, and fire, are all woefully inadequate by the standards of the developed world. He disagrees with climate warriors who overwhelmingly prioritize the elimination of fossil fuel use as soon as possible, regardless of the consequences to other economic activities.*

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Statistical Case for Global Warming Approaches Certainty

Five Sigma threshold crossed for Global Warming
What the heck is “Five Sigma?” 

The online publication Earther recently reported the strengthening of the statistical case for global warming based on satellite data.  If you find Earther’s Evidence for Global Warming Passes Physics’ Gold Standard Threshold readily comprehensible, then you need not read most of this post. (The “Gold Standard” is five sigma.)

If you have been pretty satisfied with the Earther article, I invite you to skip way down to the section “Three further notes of clarification [etc.]“

If Earther’s piece is not easily comprehensible, that’s probably because writer Daniel Kahn did not explain just what “five sigma” means statistically.  My hunch is that 30% of my readers will understand and remember it, another 45% understood it in the past but have forgotten a lot of it, and the remaining 25% may never have had it presented to them.  If you belong to the latter group, don’t blame yourself—blame the scattershot American education system.

Simply said, “five sigma” comes down to we have zillions of measurements and 99.99994% of them confirm that global warming is real. There is an item of faith here: you have to trust that NASA has amassed enough data over a long enough period of time to meet the requirements of a statistical analysis. My “zillions of measurements” encapsulates that faith to my satisfaction. Very scientifically of course. (Well . . . The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines zillion as “a very large but indefinite number.”)

Does understanding “five sigma” matter?

It matters if you’d like to have a scientifically bulletproof case for the existence of global warming. Don’t you want bulletproofness?

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Geoengineering: Not If, But When

 Reality: We  are losing the fight against climate change

It’s time to stop kidding ourselves.  Global carbon emissions are going up, not down. No surprise there.  Even if they stayed flat, we’d be in a world of hurt. Even if they were halted immediately, with CO2 at 405 parts per million, planetary greenhouse warming will continue for many decades, perhaps hundreds of years.

Well, you already know that. 

Of course if fossil fuel burning were stopped immediately, we’d have a world-wide depression that would make the recent Great Recession look like a garden party.

The climate change conference in early December in Katowice, Poland, accomplished the usual: not much.  Politico carried a succinct summary of a largely disappointing affair, written by Kalna Oroschakoff and Paola Tamma: Climate disappointments in Katowice

The leading solution is geoengineering. Like it or not.  

Is geoengineering inevitable?  Just do a web search on “geoengineering inevitable” and you’ll find all sorts of smart people, realistic smart people, coming to the conclusion that without geoengineering, we’re sunk (as many coastal cities will literally become).

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Whose Hoax? The Carbon Cycle & Climate Change Denial

If anyone is perpetrating a climate “hoax,” it’s the Deniers. For why, read on.
Countering one of the deniers’ favorite trick questions.

It’s not necessarily a “trick” question in all cases.   Maybe sometimes it’s an “honest” error, if being honest entails burying one’s head in the sand. But in case of willful tricksters, it’s another one of those niggling questions with which they like to trip up the unsuspecting.  Another piece of their hoax to confuse us.

Here’s how the question goes: A carbon dioxide molecule stays in the atmosphere for only five years. So what’s all this doom and gloom forecasting that CO2 will hang around for hundreds of years in the air even if we stop fossil fuel burning?

Yes it’s doom and gloom. But it’s based on facts (the inconvenient kind).

For an explanation, we have the carbon cycle to thank.

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Uncertainty Part One: Climate and Loaded Dice

Here’s a little different slant on the old subjects of climate change and coronal mass ejections.
Climate: the Known Unknowns

Will the Earth be hotter in 2050 than today?  What does the science say?

The simplest answer is, probably.  A more complicated answer is, we don’t know.

We do know it is almost certain, that absent a 50% drop in carbon emissions within the next ten years, and a still steeper drop afterwards, Earth’s temperature will continue to rise dangerously fast on account of the enormous quantities of carbon dioxide we have already pumped into the atmosphere. But a 50% drop in ten years would be ruinous to the global economy and is, if not technically impossible, then politically so—even more the case now that the leaders of the world’s second worst carbon polluter have turned their backs on mitigation, and even adaptation. Furthermore, even a 50% drop leaves 50% still going, with the promise of (net) zero emissions still decades away.

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The Denialist Penitentiary

Republicans Who Know Climate Truth Are in Lockdown.

A convert to climate activism describes the dilemma of ambivalent Republicans as being in a “denialist penitentiary”—whose unforgiving  jailers are the Tea Party.

An interview of onetime denier Jerry Taylor by Sharon Lerner in The Intercept explains the path by which he became converted. As a conservative, he frames his case to “conservative elites” in terms of gambling.  In the face of dangerous uncertainty, the smart money hedges its bets. “We don’t know exactly what will happen. Given that fact, shouldn’t we hedge?” He emphasizes speaking in a “dispassionate” way to get his points across, and eschews talk about needing fundamental economic change—”to most conservatives, that’s just nails on a chalkboard.”

For interview of Taylor see How Jerry Taylor reversed course on climate

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Get the Cold Shoulder: Speak Out Against Climate Change Denial

Cautionary Advice on Opposing Climate Change Denial

Confronting climate change denial carries a social cost. That’s the finding of a study done by University of Exeter, as reported by Adam Corner in The Guardian:  Social Cost of Speaking Out

Just think of the social cost in the 19th Century for speaking out against slavery, or against denying women the vote. Or, in 1938 Germany, speaking out against oppression of Jews?  From the findings of this survey, you can be pretty sure the cost was high.  Adam Corner speaks of the importance of “potential collateral damage caused by challenging climate denial. . . ” He warns against losing the climate opinion war by engaging in battles that may degrade your social acceptability and thus your influence. “Being right,” he maintains, “is not the same thing as being persuasive.”

At What Cost Speaking Your Mind?

I’m not sure whether Adam Corner’s mindset reflects a British bias toward politeness, or a pragmatism that could prove useful in changing public opinion. If the latter, then just how his prescription for “emphasizing positive social norms” could be carried out is pretty vague. You also have to take into account Corner’s using the outworn metaphor, “collateral damage,” to refer to a psychological condition.  If “positive social norms” sounds jargony, and the use of “collateral damage” sounds tone-deaf, then you have to wonder about Corner’s analytic edge.

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