The Dead Polar Bear Award
The Dead Polar Bear Award is something similar to the Take the Red Pill Award I give out for extreme examples of religious fundamentalism. This award is also for refusal to see basic reality and live in delusion, but this is for those who just won't see the threat of global warming no matter how much evidence supports. Some of the earliest victims of global warming are polar bears, whose habitat is disappearing and whose population is plunging, so I've named this award Dead Polar Bear in hopes of waking up someone. I hope to reach those who refuse to believe because it contradicts a belief that business is always right, and anything that suggests a justification for government action, like the planet dying, must be wrong; or those who, like with evolution, refuse to believe because their faith or people they think share their faith say it isn't so. Therefore, here's my thanks to all of you helping change our climate in all sorts of destructive ways because you refuse to see what's become obvious.
This page will grow as new awards are given. The most recent will be at the top.
And the Dead Polar Bear Award goes to...
You assume when you hold a scientific conference that you invite experts in their field and see what their research came up with. According to some Republican state legislators in Alaska, you would be wrong. They propose a conference to highlight climate change deniers. Yes, before finding scientists, they've come up with the conclusion, and now they're looking for scientists to fit. House Speaker John Harris showed he doesn't quite get the idea when he said, "You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers." Apparently he comes from the Richard Viguerie school of conservatism, which holds that in journalism there's no such thing as fact, just opinion. Harris must think this applies to science too.
"This truly is the conference to nowhere," said University of Alaska researcher Rick Steiner. Steiner told the reporter that he has been trying to get the Palin administration to reveal this sound science they claim to have. Surprise surprise, they won't release it. If they have anything, they're holding onto it tightly. Likewise, they are free to hold tightly to their Dead Polar Bear Award.
I'm stretching the criteria of the Dead Polar Bear Award on this one. It's meant for global warming deniers (sorry, you need to be honest about the evidence to be called a "skeptic"). This time there's no global warming, but there are literal dead polar bears. This award goes to the Interior Department, where the Fish and Wildlife Service is doing everything it can to avoid listing polar bears as a threatened species, while the Minerals Management Service is rushing to open up polar bear habitat for oil and gas development. I guess global warming isn't fast enough, so the bushies want to add habitat destruction too. The lined article quotes Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity saying, "Short of sending Dick Cheney to Alaska to personally club baby polar bears to death, there's not too much that the administration can do that is worse for polar bears than oil and gas development in their habitat." So this award goes to the political appointees at Interior and yes guys, feel free to take it with you when you leave. It looks likely that your successors won't deserve it.
It's been a while since I gave out a Dead Polar Bear Award, which goes to someone who is denying the overwhelming evidence of climate change, or is helping bring it about. I've got a doozy though. This time it's a government agency. In fact, it's the agency that is supposed to deal with pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is run by a man who think environmental protection is not part of the agency. Essentially, the administrator, Stephen L. Johnson has denied California a waiver so it can have stricter rules than federal regulations require in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These waivers have been routinely granted for decades. This time, not only was it denied, but Johnson refuses to explain. The EPA staff unanimously advised Johnson to grant the waiver, and said California would sue and win if it was denied. California Attorney General Jerry Brown urged Senate Environmental Committee chair Barbara Boxer, who happens to be from California, to issue subpoenas if that what it takes to make Johnson hand over his documentation. Maybe he doesn't have any, but just followed orders from the White House. Brown told Boxer, "Subpoena these guys. Send the marshals out. Get them to tell us under oath. They are not going to get away with this. Sooner or later, we are going to uncover real corruption . . . that is dangerous to California and to the whole world." It's probably more ideology than outright bribery that got the White House to push Johnson this way, and he probably needed very little pushing. Essentially, global warming meets conservative government, where conservatives handled this the way they handle everything: with secrecy, incompetence, and cronyism.
The Dead Polar Bear Award is given to the conservative bloggers who are falling all over themselves to claim that revisions NASA has made in the analysis on annual average temperatures for the US show global warming isn't happening. You can find it on a bunch of blogs, two examples of which are Coyote Blog and Free Republic. The have long analyses, comb over all sorts of data, link to various climate change denier sites, and all miss one huge point: the data NASA revised is only for the US. Global warming is, well, global. Any one region of the world might be different from the average. If the arctic was taken alone, it would appear warming was much further along than expected. Some parts of the world might be cooler. What matters is the global average is going up. Amazingly, both linked blogs and others I saw completely missed it. They did link to this table of data from NASA, but going up a level in URL brought me to this page, where NASA is still showing global temperatures rising. Oh, and about the change for the US: it's dinky. Temperatures were revised .15 degrees centigrade. A denier blogger noticed a mathematical problem in NASA's data and correctly discovered the error. A good bit of math, but supposedly this debunks all global warming theory. It's classic conspiracy theory stuff that gives "conspiracy theory" a bad name: links to sites sharing the same opinion, excruciating examination of the data, an assumption all contradictory data is false, an utter lack of actual science, and requirement that the conspiracy include a huge number of people keeping quiet --- in this case almost every scientist on the planet --- while a few outsiders have worked it all out. Now they can work out where to keep their Dead Polar Bear Award.
The reason for this Dead Polar Bear Award is simple. ExxonMobil, which has been funding disinformation by global warming skeptics (scroll down or look for "Exxon"), said it would stop. It didn't.
This Dead Polar Bear Award goes to the makers of The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary attempting to show that global warming isn't man-made. At least even the deniers admit it's happening, but they're not yet ready to admit it's man-made. The fact they're defying the scientific consensus should have been a clue something wasn't right, and the same can be said of their web site, which includes this reassuring sentence on its home page: "According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it." That's in keeping with Durkin's history of documentaries stating that whatever big business wants to do to you is actually good for you. The complaint with his new documentary is consistent with his history, that he deliberately misleads his audience about the science.
Britain's Channel 4 gets spared a share of this award based on the film's web site. The home page and the arguments section are misleading, but the Ask Our Expert section actually debunks the film's arguments by the best possible method, directly answering the questions of skeptics who aren't the Richard Lindzen style professional deniers, but laymen suffering from an overexposure to conservative talking points.
The recipient of the Dead Polar Bear Award is William J. Broad, a reporter for the New York Times. He recently wrote an article critical of Al Gore for being alarmist on global warming. While most reporters just feel they have to get a quote from the deniers, a bit like thinking that an article on the Kennedy assassination has to include a quote from someone who thinks aliens did it, Broad devoted almost the entire article to the deniers while the real scientists had to settle for a few quotes. Broad didn't mention where the deniers get their funding, but just passed along their arguments as fact. I'm not going to debunk it point by point because that's been well done already, by Grist and RealClimate. I'll just point out one that gives the idea of how inaccurate the article is, and then I'll hope you follow the links. Broad says, "Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent." I just saw "An Inconvenient Truth" again today. Gore said that if the Greenland ice sheet completely melted, it could raise sea levels 20 feet. Of course he didn't cite a timeline. Not only does no one have a precise timeline, but the point is that whether it takes 20 year or 80, it's very very bad. Gore has taken a lot of criticism on this point, much like he did for claiming to invent the Internet, that is, for something he didn't say. I do say this however. Broad may not deserve a Pulitzer, but he does deserve a Dead Polar Bear Award. I hope that's some consolation.
The American Enterprise Institute has reacted to the IPCC report on climate change by offering $10,000 to any scientist who will write an essay casting doubt on the IPCC report. Notice they're not looking for scientific studies, just essays. They aren't thinking about something that can pass peer review, just something for the Wall Street Journal editorial page to print, which can then be picked up by the conservative propaganda machine to offer as science that refutes what is actually agreed upon by every scientist who isn't getting bribed by the likes of AEI and its major funders like Exxon. How handy the article comes with a photo of a polar bear, because AEI has earned a Dead Polar Bear Award.
The Dead Polar Bear Award is awarded to the Texas utility company TXU, which wants to build 18 new power plants, 17 coal and one petroleum/coke, using old technology. They claim these new plants will be cleaner in terms of mercury and sulfur pollution than their old plants, but will be no cleaner in terms of carbon dioxide. Last August, when the plan was for 11 new coal plants, the amount of CO2 emitted would double Texas' total emissions -- and this from a state with little regard for the environment and the second biggest population already. This much CO2 is like adding 14,000,000 more cars. The project has been fast tracked to avoid public comment by Gov. Rick Perry, who has received about $148,000 from TXU, including $2,000 the day he signed the order. Though TXU claims the reason for hurrying! to get these plants built is an urgent need for power, environmentalists suspect the real reason is to get the plants approved before CO2 gets regulated. That's right, CO2 emissions are still not regulated. The process might be as dirty as the emissions, but it looks to be perfectly legal for TXU to knowingly undo California's greenhouse gas reduction program by 2.6 times. Readers, you can do something about it.
This Dead Polar Bear Award will be shared among several right wing European think tanks trying to emulate their American cousins by downplaying the threat of global warming and, what do you know, getting a bunch of their funding from Exxon. The Independent's article names the Centre for the New Europe, the International Policy Network, and the European Enterprise Institute. My look at their web sites didn't demonstrate an American conservative level of delusion about global warming being a hoax, but what I saw was reasons for not doing anything about reducing carbon. The reason Exxon and corporate lobbyists fund these think tanks is to give a respectable intellectual panache to the anti-environmental side of environmental issues, just like the Tobacco Institute kept providing studies and expert witnesses to deny cigarettes do any harm. These scientists for hire, "biostitutes" as Robert Kennedy Jr. labeled them, confuse both members of the public and government officials who don't know the details of these issues for themselves, and so turning to experts, find reason to believe he experts are divided and so there is legitimate doubt --- even though there isn't. So in addition to their hefty paychecks, these neocon wannabe think tanks on the other side of the Atlantic get a Dead Polar Bear Award.
Simultaneously with her Take the Red Pill Award, let's give Bachmann another trophy to console her after polls show she's fallen behind Patty Wetterling, and give her this Dead Polar Bear Award too. At a candidate forum, she raised the conservative talking point about news media in the 1970's saying there might be another ice age (not the science media mind you, the news media, which still pretends there's a scientific debate on global warming) and then said, in all seriousness, "One thing we need to do is look at the science." For looking at the science only when it's found in the church bulletin, Bachmann gets a Dead Polar Bear Award.
It's time to give a Dead Polar Bear Award to Debra Saunders, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She may not treasure it much because she didn't have to work hard for it. In fact, it comes from an offhand reference in a column claiming the mainstream media are liberal and Fox News provides balance. You know, the usual conservative delusion. The offhand reference comes at the end of a paragraph saying all reporters think alike, therefore can't see their biases, and that's how global warming became a certainty. So the idea of certainty has nothing to do with the science being certain? Saunders' dead bear will need to come with this link to the Science metastudy showing that the scientific media have a consensus that global warming is real and man-made, while the news media keep giving the false impression that there's a doubt. Okay, that doesn't disprove her claim the news media are biased against conservative opinion, but it does show she picked a bad example, that the news media are actually promoting her point of view, and that like most conservatives, she's in denial about the biggest environmental threat.
The next winner of the Dead Polar Bear Award is Bruce Tinsley, the cartoonist behind Mallard Fillmore. It's an attempt to be satiric, to the degree conservatives can do satire which isn't much. He's a staunch disbeliever in global warming, holding the opinion expected of someone who thinks that the Washington Times and Townhall.com are objective sources for the nonsense he draws. What brings him the award is the strip published on July 4th where he portrays Al Gore manically yelling "We're all gonna die!" If Tinsley were actually to see Gore's film or read the book, he might catch the bit where Gore says we already have the technology to reduce CO2 emissions and avoid the worst of the problem. Gore has even repeated the point in his many interviews. That some disagree with Gore on that point isn't the point here. The point is Gore is saying nothing like what Tinsley says Gore is saying, so I must conclude Tinsley is doing the usual conservative thing of criticising things he knows nothing about when he's jumped to a different conclusion. Since he thinks he's figured out this issue he knows nothing about, he's the ideal winner of the Dead Polar Bear Award.
The Dead Polar Bear Award goes to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), or at least to anyone who believes their new commercials defending the victim of an environmentalist smear campaign, carbon dioxide. No, I'm not kidding. That's why I provided the link. If you believe this astroturf group (fake grassroots), global warming isn't real, but just an attempt to denigrate the reputation of that victim of a molecule. Carbon dioxide is our friend. Regardless of the quantity. So I guess go breathe deep of pure carbon CO2. What, that wouldn't be healthy? You mean you can have too much of a good thing? Yes, in excess man-made quantities, even a naturally occurring substance can be a pollutant. There might be a more scientific way to put that but common sense should suffice to make the point. For everyone who prefers to ignore almost every scientist on the planet because someone runs a commercial saying CO2 is life, here's your Dead Polar Bear Award. Put it on a high enough shelf that the water of melting ice caps can't reach it.
This Dead Polar Bear Award has multiple winners. Accepting the award on behalf of all the winners is Sarah Janacek, a Twin Cities talk radio host and pundit. During her show last week, she mentioned that global warming on Mars disproves global warming theory on Earth, and she said it could be googled. I thought from her tone she might not be serious, but then she said in all seriousness that the conservative blogs are more reliable than actual journalism in the mainstream media (what we on the left often call the "corporate media"). Whilst I was listening I did a search (not Google, but I somehow suspect that doesn't matter) and I found the real science articles on Mars' polar caps appearing to shrink, and multiple conservative blogs using this as proof global warming is not human caused. Funny how the science articles never mentioned this disproving that humans are causing warming on Earth. Every few months another blogger picks it up, thinking this is a new shocking revelation, not years-old news. Some say they think liberals will blame pollution on Earth for warming Mars. Others said, I'm not kidding, that since Mars and Earth have the same sun, that proves the sun is the cause of global warming. And here I would have thought Martian climate change was like a whole different planet. Oh right, it is. For all of you unable to grasp this simple concept, enjoy this Dead Polar Bear Award. You can't get one on Mars, even with the same sun.
The first recipient is the sometimes sensible -- but not in this case -- conservative columnist, John Tierney. In a recent column, he gave readers the impression that anyone who embraces an environmentalist position is a religious nut. Never mind those who listened to, or are, the climate scientists. He does concede that point slightly near the end, when he says, "Scientists agree that the planet seems to be warming, but their models are still so crude that they're unsure about how much it will heat up or how much damage will be done." I wonder if he declines to take out his household garbage because he doesn't know how long it will take to make him sick. The next sentence was what gets him the award: "There's a chance the warming could be mild enough to produce net benefits." According to who? Maybe there's a net benefit to him not taking out his garbage, like he'll figure out something brilliant in the time he would have spent going to and from the garbage. Want to bet the household's health on that? Here's something he can do with his extra time: look admiringly at his Dead Polar Bear Award.
