Why Aren't Chefs Up in Arms About Global Warming?

Climate change is a bigger threat to oysters and clams than first thought, according to a new study. We already knew global warming is hurting shrimp, beef, chocolate, coffee, beer - the list goes on.

Why don't you hear more celebrity chefs speaking out about global warming? More concerned about ratings for their Food Network project than protecting the next generation of foodies?

Local Officials Ignoring Climate Change Worsening Winter Storms

Are local officials taking climate-fueled extreme weather into account in future storm planning? It doesn't sound like it according to this report by Mike Lawrence in my local New Bedford Standard-Times:

Delays in plowing narrow residential streets across the city drew a storm of complaints from residents following the blizzard. Staffing enough permanent crews to handle a blizzard of that magnitude, though, wouldn’t be realistic, Labelle said.

“We’ve characterized this last time as a 100-year snowstorm — it would be irresponsible for any community to gear up for that level of storm event,” he said. “Even with contractor services, you’re never going to get city streets open the next day the way people want to see it.

We can argue about whether it's worth it to spend the extra money to clear streets faster. But with worsening winter storms rewriting our record books, the 2015 blizzard is exactly what we should be getting ready to face.

It's a similar story in neighboring communities, where austerity takes precedence over preparing for climate-fueled flooding.

In DC, Corrupt Values of Polluter Lobbyists Taken For Granted

E&E TV today interviews Peter Glaser, a lawyer for Troutman Sanders, who argues states should simply ignore federal limits on climate-disrupting carbon pollution. I understand that not every interview can be a deep dive into the morality of changing the climate, but do polluter lobbyists always have to get such a free pass for profiting from the damage they're doing to our children's future?

The host never even mentions who Glaser represents, but his website tells us he works for "electric utility, mining and other energy industry companies and associations." More specifically, OpenSecrets.org shows Southern Company, a huge coal-fired power company and currently ranked as America's 3rd-biggest polluter, has been Troutman Sanders' number one lobbying client for the last two years and has given them millions in business over the last 15 years.

I understand the show is focused on inside-the-Beltway maneuvers & mechanics, and "aren't you history's greatest monster?" could be a little out of place. But shouldn't Glaser have to say something about whether cashing in by selling a slogan of "just say no to cutting carbon pollution" might be just a tad morally irresponsible?

@coleenjose for @everydayclimatechange | Children played in a suffocating fog of mosquito repellent in the outskirts of Tacloban City, Philippines. Volunteers sprayed the repellent along rows of bunkhouses in a shelter site, a break from the monotony inside the camp where hundreds of people displaced by Typhoon Haiyan lived in temporary shelters. Thousands of Filipinos are still displaced because of Haiyan and typhoons in 2014. The Global Climate Risk Index of 2015 ranked the Philippines as the country most affected by weather-related disasters including intensifying storms, floods and heatwaves. #everydayclimatechange #everydayeverywhere #philippines #typhoonhaiyan #globalwarming #displacement #cop21 #reportage #coleenjose #aftermath

A photo posted by Everyday Climate Change (@everydayclimatechange) on Jan 30, 2015 at 5:36am PST

The Blizzard of 2015: No More Buying Time

With warmer ocean temperatures fueling the storm, the Blizzard of 2015 bears the fingerprints of climate change.

Centrist politicians and pundits like to say, hey, I'm no climate science denier, and we should cut carbon pollution, but can't we just build this one more pipeline?

Nope. The wolves of climate change are at our doorstep. Good luck bargaining with them.

The State of the Union at 3am is Sweaty

I'm not saying you should keep your house at 45 degrees, but how do most Americans sleep at night with their house so warm at 68 degrees? I thought we all looked forward to cool summer nights - why do we keep our homes set at a warm summer night in the wintertime?

My wife and I bought a very warm comforter (only a few dollars more than a light comforter) and were saving big on our gas bill by letting our home cool off to around 60 at night. We raised it back to 68 after having our baby, but quickly tired of the sweat-drenched nights. Once she hit 8 months old, we bumped it back down to 65, about as high as we can tolerate.

But it's hard to blame people with programmable thermostats being so complicated to use (the model in my bedroom has 18 button)s. Next-generation thermostats like Nest lower the technological bar, but they're really expensive. Maybe we should subsidize those instead of shoveling taxpayer money at new climate-disrupting, water-polluting fracked gas pipelines that won't solve our energy problems?

2015 State of the Union Highlights Obama's Climate Transformation

Just 30 months ago, President Obama was silent on climate change in his re-election campaign. But as the Washington Post's Chris Mooney reports, in his 7th State of the Union, Obama is not only staking his legacy on climate action, he's using climate science to make his political opponents look ignorant - and polls show it's working.

Are These the Faces of Climate Conspiracy?

Quick, look at this photo of NOAA National Climatic Data Center employees honored for developing a new standard to produce & preserve climate data records:

How would you best describe them?

• Nerds happy to labor in obscurity
• GLORY BOY MONEYGRUBBER CONSPIRACY MONGERS

Climate science deniers are weird people.

Nitpicking MA's New Governor On His First Day

I didn't want to be a pain in Gov. Charlie Baker (R-MA) on his very first day in office, but then in his inaugural address, Baker claimed energy prices are rising in Massachusetts but falling everywhere else. That's false.

If Massachusetts wants to stop getting gouged by spiking fracked gas prices, the answer isn't to grow more dependent on fracked gas by building more fracked gas pipelines, it's to invest in wind and solar, which are the same price year-round.

2014's Most Popular Posts: Wind Wins, Pedestrians Lose

The top posts of 2014 by page views here at The Green Miles:

1. It's OK To Hit Pedestrians As Long As You're Not Paying Attention
2. ABC Wind "Victims" Rebuked as Wind's Winning Streak Rolls On
3. Meet the Newest Polluter Front Group: The Coalition to Lower Energy Costs

Posts dropped off precipitously in 2014 with the arrival of my daughter Olivia. But if you feel like 2014 looks a little thin, try looking at it upside down while hanging out of a backpack - I hear it's way more fun that way.

Because riding upside down is way more fun 😍

A photo posted by Bethanie Grant (@bethaniegrant) on Nov 11, 2014 at 4:59pm PST

Apparently Crosswalks Aren't Legally Binding

Twice in recent weeks, people crossing the street in crosswalks have been hit by cars with no repercussion for the drivers:

• Man in crosswalk seriously injured after being hit by driver in Warwick, RI at twilight without headlights on; driver not charged.
• A 71-year-old New Bedford woman was injured November 24 when she was struck by a car in the crosswalk while she was walking across County Street at Union Street, reported The New Bedford Standard-Times. No citation was issued to the driver, Capt. Dennis Hebert said. (No link available.)

What's the point of crosswalks if drivers can run over people using them and not get charged with anything?

Massachusetts Democrats' Fishing Failure

Massachusetts Democrats try to appeal to fishing cities by parroting Republican attacks on science. Why not just support science and attack inequality instead?

NPR Calls Jim Inhofe What He Is: A Climate Science Denier

Thanks to a great catch by Mark Boslough at Huffington Post, we learn that National Public Radio has correctly switched from calling Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) a climate "skeptic" to calling him what he is: A climate science denier.

Maybe other reporters will finally do the same?

Pro-Keystone XL "Centrism" Won't Stop Global Warming

Refusing to make hard choices on dirty energy and wishing Republicans weren't crazy won't save us from climate destruction.

When Climate Ignorance Makes News Boring: The Washington Post, Mars & Chocolate

Which is a more interesting story:

• Industry threatened, for some reason, and hopefully they'll figure that whole thing out
• Industry threatened, identifies problem that menaces all of us, and decides to becomes leader in fighting it, political consequences be damned

Today's Washington Post article on Mars, Inc. facing a looming chocolate shortage never once mentions global warming, even though the climate threats to chocolate production are clear and Mars is a leader on confronting climate change and its threats to the chocolate industry.

Hot Water Again Halts Maine Shrimp Season & Again No One Will Say Global Warming

From moose to puffins to lobsters, global warming is devastating Maine's wildlife, seafood and economy. Why is it so hard for media to say so?

The latest bad news is hitting Maine's shrimp fishermen:

Federal regulators shut down the commercial fishing season for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine for a second straight year on Wednesday, citing concerns about the declining population and warmer ocean temperatures.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Northern Shrimp Section voted to cancel the upcoming season, a year after the section closed this year's season for the first time in more than 30 years. A technical committee that advises the section recommended extending the moratorium for another year.

The "depleted condition of the resource and poor prospects for the near future" warrant another closure, the committee reported, adding that "long term trends in environmental conditions" for the little pink shrimp are unfavorable. The amount of the shrimp's population that can be fished is at an all-time low, regulators said.

The Associated Press blames "warmer ocean temperatures" but never directly references global warming, never mind connecting the dots to carbon pollution. It did the same thing last year. The Portland Press Herald repeatedly ignored the climate connection in its news coverage, but did editorialize on it.

The connection to climate change is crystal clear. September ocean surface temperatures were 1.2 degrees F above the 20th century average, "the highest on record for September and also the highest on record for any month," according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

Associated Press reporter Patrick Whittle clearly understands the connection between carbon pollution and warmer Gulf of Maine water because he's reported on it before. But global warming is most often treated as its own, separate story and not mentioned in news coverage of climate impacts. Also, I notice that the URL for that story hints his title once called the Gulf of Maine a poster child for global warming. That's since been softened to "Warming Gulf of Maine imperils lobster, fish catch" and the climate connection isn't made explicit until the story's 6th paragraph.

So why didn't the latest coverage of the shrimp shutdown mention global warming? The press release from the 15-state Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission didn't make any mention of climate change, and the AP didn't make the bridge for its readers. A similar story played out last year when the Massachusetts Port Authority issued a report on sea level rise - Massport wouldn't say climate change and reporters wouldn't connect the dots.

What that means is it's not just about the science. Media outlets are requiring a multi-phase scientific and political approval process:

• The scientific evidence must be iron-clad
• Scientists must be willing to face threats from Tea Partiers
• Regulators must be willing to put their jobs on the line in the face of politically-motivated attacks 

Then MAYBE reporters will connect the dots. And that's if media owners will let journalists report on global warming at all. Hubbard Broadcasting directly funds climate science denial. In Maine, two news anchors at WVII and WFVX in Bangor quit on-air, saying climate science-denying station management kept inserting politics into news coverage.

The next time you see a poll on how many Americans accept climate science, imagine what the numbers would look like if the media actually connected the dots to climate change in every story like this.

Interstellar: Climate Chaos May Not Mean Scientific Enlightenment

Interstellar spoiler alert: Ignoring climate change fails to make it go away.

My wife and I saw Interstellar in Imax 70mm last night and you should too. It's flat-out the best theater experience ever, a 2001 for the digital effects era.

Interstellar is cli fi (climate fiction), seeing a not-too-distant future - maybe late in this century - in which the climate crisis has spiraled out of control. Humanity is reduced to subsistence farming, eating mostly corn, the last thing left that will grow in the heat, drought and extreme storms. The fate of people in coastal areas and big cities is left unsaid, with only passing references to crumbling militaries and failed governments. Crops fail and soil blows away in super-sized Dust Bowl storms, making air pollution a daily, lethal threat. Our choice is life in the stars or life underground.

Climate activists often express hope that increasing evidence of climate impacts, such as superstorm Sandy, will awaken the apathetic and the deniers to the need for action. But the movie hints that dealing with a climate crisis wouldn't necessarily translate to instant, universal scientific acceptance.

To keep Americans focused on the desperate fight to grow food, students are told the Apollo missions were faked. Director Christopher Nolan hints the move isn't strictly practical, but also a political adaptation to the chaos, tinging the scene with Tea Party fervor:


"We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars," laments Matthew McConaughey's Coop. "Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt."

It's a fantastic film, but I'd rather count on solar panels and wind turbines to save us from industrial carbon pollution now than wait for the wormhole to appear.

Our New Ice Age

Funny how TV news is warning of the impending return of the glaciers when I just killed a wasp because it's 57 on November 11 and we haven't had a hard freeze yet.

I don't doubt that "cold somewhere" is interesting, but "warm everywhere" is the much, much bigger story that TV news continues to completely ignore.

In Defense of Straight-Ticket Voting

I often hear people say they don't vote because they don't know who to vote for. Don't be afraid of voting straight-ticket. People talk about it like it's a brain-dead way to vote, but that's completely wrong - it's sensible! Political parties are more ideologically aligned than ever.

So if you want government to do more on helping the working class, fixing roads & bridges, and climate action, vote Democratic. If you want lower taxes, fewer rules for businesses & more rules for who you're allowed to marry, vote Republican. If you think both parties are irredeemably broken, vote for all the 3rd party candidates you can.

Fall River Herald News Lets Polluter Front Group Deny Climate Science

Extreme floods in Fall River, March 2010

Last week the Fall River Herald News and sister paper the Taunton Gazette published an op-ed column denying manmade carbon pollution causes global warming. I submitted the following letter to the editor in response:

Tom Harris and Bob Carter may claim to speak for Canada and Australia ("Kerry and Patrick off base connecting climate and energy," Oct. 21), but they're really speaking for two climate science denier front groups funded by big polluters. In fact, both groups have even taken money from the Heartland Institute, the dirtiest of them all. Heartland lost most of its allies two years ago after putting up a truly disgraceful billboard comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber.

NASA data shows the last six months have been Earth's hottest ever recorded. Massachusetts, led by Deval Patrick, John Kerry, Ed Markey, and other courageous elected officials, has shown the way in shuttering dirty coal-fired power plants, investing in clean energy, and saving money by making our homes and businesses more efficient. We need to do much more to cut industrial carbon pollution, like building Cape Wind and other offshore wind farms. But we won't get there by letting polluters deliberately cloud the debate.

The New Bedford Standard-Times editorial board recently announced that while it would continue welcoming debate on what to do about global warming, it would no longer accept opinion pieces that deny the established scientific consensus on manmade climate change. I urge you to do the same.

The Providence Journal ran the same op-ed and has just published a blistering response from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

NextGenClimate.org Ad: The Truth is Undeniable

Great new ad from Tom Steyer's NextGen Climate Action Committee, directed by Darren Aronofsky and voiced by Woody Harrelson: