For those wondering why so little has appeared on this blog the last week, I got to spend most of last week in the Everglades chaperoning a class camping trip with my son. It was a great experience all around, but I wanted to share some political observations, and mirror those with the sad political reality we live in here in the Sunshine State.
Climate change is so very real. Any fool official who believes otherwise should spend a few days sleeping in the Everglades themselves. Perhaps it is easy to believe there are no problems with our water supply as long as the water still turns off in the Governor's mansion, but it was abundantly clear as we slogged through the slough of the Big Cypress National Preserve. The ranger who led us through our slog told us water levels had dropped about a foot in a week from the last time she was in the same part of the marsh. That's an astonishing rate.
Indeed, this is the driest year for the Everglades in the past 80 years. It is throwing the wildlife off terribly, with apple snails laying their eggs so far above the water marks the babies are unlikely to hatch (think about that pro-lifers). More water ought to be released by water districts into the Glades to help keep them wet, but that is only a short-term answer. Really, there needs to be a greater urgency placed on restoration projects to divert more natural waterflow back into the Glades. Since the marshes today are only between 10 and 20 percent the size they were a century ago, that really shouldn't be such a sacrifice for developed Florida to make.
Sadly, Florida has not been electing leaders of late who even believe mankind has had any effect on the environment. Gov. Rick Scott made it very clear early in the election cycle that he does not believe in climate change. Sen. Marco Rubio believes the same way. In fact, none of the Republicans elected to the US Senate last year believe in climate change.
It has become an ideological position to say "I don't believe in global warming." Politicians spout it as if proving they figured out Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy weren't real (spoiler alert!). It feeds into the stance that liberals are all liars who only secretly want to fund the multi-million industry that is promoting the global warming hoax. Not that the multi-billion industry that is destroying the environment has any reason to cook the numbers, but hey, they are good people, and the rangers leading school groups through the Everglades are obviously part of some left-wing conspiracy.
It astounds me how much traction denying global warming has found among people with no financial stake in denying global warming. But the term is admittedly bad branding. While not inaccurate (the earth has consistently risen in its global temperature year after year), it focuses attention on one narrow part of the problem and gives the deniers too great an opportunity to cling to their disbelief every time it gets cold enough to put on a coat.
But to deny mankind has had any effect on the environment? That is just dangerous, foolish and uneducated. I do not believe Rubio, Scott and their ilk are near as stupid as they would have me believe, so that leaves simply that they are sacrificing the well-being of Florida to satisfy big donors and score cheap political points with the knuckle-dragging crowd who try to disprove evolution by acting in ways so moronic it makes one wonder how the survival of the fittest could grant them immunity from harm.
Let me repeat, this is the driest season the Everglades has seen in 80 years. The water levels continue to drop year after year. There is no dispute - none - that this is a result of anything besides mankind's effect on the environment. And those who believe the environment is worth saving are ever to have any success at all in the political arena, something in messaging needs to change.
I do not know why every politician looking to nullify the Republican Party's successes isn't filming spots in the Everglades right now. I don't know why we don't see political advertisements quoting NASA astronauts explaining that water levels worldwide are going down at the same levels we see in Florida, and that they can see the change as the ride in the shuttles Republicans so badly want to keep in orbit. I don't know why campaign spots do not park rangers as frequently as they do law enforcement officers and television celebrities.
But for those living in Florida, the evidence of climate change is visible in every inch of the Everglades. And to let politicians who do not believe in it win the political discourse of today is evidence that we are all doomed.
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To be fair, not *all* of what's going on in the Everglades is a result of climate change. Part of it is diverting water that would have ended up there to support development. (THIS time, I'm being anti-development!)
ReplyDeleteIt does seem like it's been drier. I remember summer thunderstorms just about every day back in high school. Lately, I remember brush fires. Scientifically, you have to be careful tying things to climate change, and spending a few days in the Everglades is not the same as building models and making testable predictions about climate. But I recognize that reasoned arguments and unimpassioned data are not the things that motivate people, and I'm almost to the point where I think it's okay to scare people into change. The problem with that, as you pointed out, is that it's very easy to counter climate arguments incorrectly based on weather with climate arguments incorrectly based on different weather.
I would say diverting water supply to support development is clearly man-made climate change, but that goes back to the branding problem. If man changes the climate, that is climate change. But the reason the water is down in the Everglades isn't clearly global warming, which would suggest all the water just evaporated rather than being rerouted away from natural waterways and into metropolitan areas.
ReplyDeleteBut what I hate is that this has somehow become a big word game. A huge number of people will tell you they don't "believe" in global warming as if it is a question of faith, not science. Ask them if they "believe" in air pollution, or in toxic waste, or in the endangerment of animal habitats, and I suspect you will encounter far fewer skeptics.
The other issue is that even if you believe in global warming, which I do, the link between it and any activity of the human race is tenuous at best. The world has gone through both cooling and warming cycles in the past without human activity to blame. At worst, human activity has exacerbated the global warming cycle, not caused it
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the GOP generally is wrong on environmental issues. It's just a shame that the Democrats are wrong on most other issues (sigh)
I am not sure we need to care whether or not humanity caused these climate changes. What will the results be, and do we want to try to change them?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if the ice caps melt, the gulf stream turns before it reaches Europe and the oceans rise even 1 foot we may be leaving Florida too fast to worry about 'drying' swamps.
Poe, the reason it matters whether humanity is causing climate change is that it has a big effect on what we would need to do to stop/reverse it. If we know that climate change is caused entirely by us putting CO2 into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, then we can figure out what the result of continuing the behavior is, and we can decide whether we need to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere. But if it's caused entirely by increasing solar output or some other large scale effect, then we're tackling a much different problem.
ReplyDeleteJake, diverting water supply is not climate change, in any sense that I've heard the term. It's possible (even probable) that large-scale, man-made changes in the size and water content of the Everglades affects wind patterns, rainfall, temperatures, etc. That's all climate (in the long term). But the lower water levels you're talking about - to the extent that they're related to people diverting water flow - are environmental changes, not climate changes. They're still bad for the Everglades as we know them, but they're not the same thing.
Here's the thing about "belief" in global warming, or any other science. None of us here are climate scientists. I'm willing to bet that none of us have really taken the time to review the data that's been collected, compare it with the models that have been made, and see what the models say about the future. So none of us are in a position to say we "know" that man-made climate change is a real phenomenon or not. So we rely on some combination of our own anecdotal experience and scientific consensus to arrive at a *belief*. I'm fine with that. But it should be recognized (Bruno) that scientific consensus - particularly among the scientists who study climate - is overwhelmingly in favor of us having a significant effect on our climate. Read the intro here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
(Yes, I know Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but in my anecdotal experience, they tend to do a pretty good job for scientific topics.)
Incidentally, who is Poe and how did he/she, a while back, know I'm from Lake County?
I understand your point, Tom. I can't argue with what you are saying with climate change. I just hate that this comes down so often to semantics instead of science. Man is changing the environment. It is sticking one's head in the sand to believe otherwise. And that sand is not as cool and set as it used to be.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me is that it is increasingly a platform position for the GOP to deny mankind has any impact on the earth, and in turn, that any efforts to curb that negative effect are unnecessary. Whether all this falls perfectly into the categories of climate change or global warming, the people screaming that global warming is a hoax then go on to fight for offshore drilling, against cap and trade, and to defund restoration efforts. Every environmental improvement effort is fought based on the belief the earth is just fine. And that belief flies in the face of extraordinary evidence to the contrary.
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