Month: March 2012

Heartland’s Bast – “Joe Camel is Innocent!”

The heartless head of the anti-science Heartland “think” tank, Joe Bast, has been a trusted and enthusiastic mouthpiece for one of the world’s most murderous industries for decades. Last week, I posted Bast’s Love Letter to Big Tobacco. That was only one small part of the loving attention lavished by Mr. Bast on his earliest and most fervent supporters. (recent documents show that big tobacco is still a big contributor to Heartland)

Long before he began his relentless promotion of climate denial misinformation, one of Bast’s most famous and despicable writings was his defense of the “Joe Camel” cigarette sales campaign – “Joe Camel is Innocent”.

For those that don’t remember, the campaign, featuring a friendly cartoon camel with a dangling cigarette, sprang from a series of RJ Reynolds internal memos, pointing out the importance of hooking young smokers early, during the years of critical brain development when they are most vulnerable to forming addictive behavior. In his recent deep-delving investigation into Heartland, and its relationship with big tobacco – Ace researcher John Mashey reveals what RJR wrote in the mid 80s –

“Younger adults are the only source of replacement smokers.

Repeated government studies have shown that:

• Less than one-third of smokers (31%) start after age 18.

• Only 5% of smokers start after age 24 .

Thus, today’s younger adult smoking behavior will largely determine the trend of Industry volume over the next several decades . If younger adults turn away from smoking, the Industry must decline, just as a population which does not give birth will eventually dwindle. In such an environment, a positive RJR sales trend would require disproportionate share gains and/or steep price increases (which could depress volume)

MARKET SHARE — THE “FIRST BRAND” ADVANTAGE …”

“… the average age at which smokers had started smoking had declined over the last decade until by 1985 it was around 16.

In 1987, RJR started the Joe Camel campaign. By 1991, they found that ” by age of six over ninety percent of American kids were able to recognize Joe Camel;… about the same name (and face) recognition as Mickey Mouse. …

The memos identified RJR’s targets as “young adults” – as young as 14.

Continue reading “Heartland’s Bast – “Joe Camel is Innocent!””

Rush Limbaugh. Misogynist, Racist, Bully, Blowhard, – and Climate Denier Number One

This weekend’s long overdue explosion of outrage against Rush Limbaugh should remind us of a couple things.

First of all, this is not new – this has been going on for decades.  Rush Limbaugh is the number one vector for right wing hatred, resentment, and ignorance in the United States. Even Fox News has a lot of work to do to catch up with the sheer volume of poison spewed by this sociopath.

And, important to remember, its not a coincidence that Rush is climate-denier number one in the American media – because racism, ignorance, hatred of women, and of the planet itself, go hand in fist with climate denial, and always have. We can see no clearer demonstration of that than the current GOP presidential campaign.

Actually, back in the mid-90s, I was fed-up enough with a Limbaugh tirade on global climate, that, when he challenged “any environmentalist who wants to defend this” to call the show, I called. And got through.

Continue reading “Rush Limbaugh. Misogynist, Racist, Bully, Blowhard, – and Climate Denier Number One”

Severe Weather Impacts Hike Insurance Rates

Boston Globe:

Consumers, already contending with the rising cost of gasoline, food, and other necessities, could now also face sharply higher home insurance premiums.

After several years of modest increases, insurance companies are raising rates to offset a big jump in claims related to damage caused by tornadoes, severe snowstorms, and Tropical Storm Irene last year, according to industry executives. The increases, which must be approved by the state, will likely affect most of the state’s nearly 2 million policy holders, and if approved, homeowners will see their rates go up when they renew or buy new policies this year.

“Homeowners rates are likely to go up a lot this year,’’ said Chris Olie, chairman of Bunker Hill Insurance. in Boston. “It was a wake-up call from Mother Nature.’’

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 ..insurance companies say they need larger increases now because they were hit so hard by wild weather, including a brutal winter a year ago that caused widespread damage from ice and snow; deadly tornadoes that swept through Western and Central Massachusetts in June; Tropical Storm Irene that caused flooding and wind damage in August; and an early snowstorm that downed trees and power lines across the state in October.

Andover Companies, for instance, said it lost $50 million on home insurance in the state last year – more than it earned on Massachusetts policies in the entire previous decade.

Continue reading “Severe Weather Impacts Hike Insurance Rates”

Graph of the Day: Public Acceptance of Climate Change on Rebound

Brookings Institution:

As 2012 begins, a growing number of Americans believe global warming is occurring. This is one of the key findings from the latest National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change (NSAPOCC).

  • More Americans than ever are pointing to experiences with warmer temperatures as the main reason they believe global warming is occurring.
  • For Americans who believe that climate change is occurring, factors beyond weather (such as: declining polar species) appear to be having the greatest effect on convincing an individual that the planet is warming.
  • Nearly 80% of Democrats believe in global warming, while Republicans are almost evenly split with 47% seeing evidence of increasing global temperatures.Download paper here

Virginia Supremes Throw out Deniers

For now, Virginians can keep their science, and their nipples. Attorney General Ken Cuchinelli, the Tea Party reformer famous for his initiative to remove the bare nipple from the Virginia State Seal, has lost another one.

Thomas Jefferson would, for this brief moment, be proud.

WSLS:

The Virginia Supreme Court today sided with the University of Virginia in its fight against the state attorney general’s investigation of former U.Va. climate scientist Michael Mann.

The court upheld the Albemarle Circuit Court ruling setting aside Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s civil investigative demands for documents related to grants Mann receive to study global warming.

Cuccinell sought the information under the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.

ClimateScienceWatch:

In a victory for university scholars, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled today that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli does not have the authority to demand the release of email and other documents related to the work of former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann. Cuccinelli’s global warming denial machine fishing expedition had been criticized even by climate ‘skeptics’ who are no friends of Prof. Mann.  It raised the chilling question of whether the university could protect researchers’ ability to privately and freely correspond with one another.

The Court’s 26-page ruling is here (PDF).

For Background, start here.

Weekend Wonk: An Oil Man’s Case for Climate Concern

HT to Andy Revkin for this interview, which I found on dot earth, where Andy expands on the discussion of  this week’s ocean acidification study in Science (see the post Oceans Acidifying at Faster Rate than in Past 300  Million Years) – and adds useful threads for further reading.

The paper grew out of a big 2010 workshop on “Paleo-ocean acidification and carbon cycle perturbation events” — junctures in earth history in the last several hundred million years when some great disturbance — such as spasms of volcanic activity — set off a big buildup of carbon in the atmosphere and oceans, driving climate change and pushing surface ocean waters toward the acid side of the pH scale. Click here for the agenda and presentations that built the foundation for the new paper.

There’s plenty of basic background on the new study in a news releases from Columbia University, available as a pdf here.

Watching the video set me to searching for a sediment core image I had posted some time ago – tracking the changes in benthic critters during the most oft-cited historical analog to our current predicament – the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.  I quoted paleo expert Lee Kump:

Continue reading “Weekend Wonk: An Oil Man’s Case for Climate Concern”

Ocean Acidifying at Faster Rate than in Past 300 Million Years

The single-celled organism Stensioeina beccariiformis survived the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago but went extinct 9 million years later, when the oceans acidified due to a massive CO2 release. It ranged across many depths, in all oceans. (Credit: Ellen Thomas)

Science Daily: 

The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.

“What we’re doing today really stands out,” said lead author Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out — new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about — coral reefs, oysters, salmon.”

The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air; the gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.

Reuters: 

Oceans get more acidic when more carbon gets into the atmosphere. In pre-industrial times, that occurred periodically in natural pulses of carbon that also pushed up global temperatures, the scientists wrote.

Human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, have increased the level of atmospheric carbon to 392 parts per million from about 280 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution. Carbon dioxide is one of several heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming.

To figure out what ocean acidification might have done in the prehistoric past, 21 researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain reviewed studies of the geological record going back 300 million years, looking for signs of climate disruption.

Those indications of climate change included mass extinction events, where substantial percentages of living things on Earth died off, such as the giant asteroid strike thought to have killed the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

The events that seemed similar to what is happening now included mass extinctions about 252 million and 201 million years ago, as well as the warming period 56 million years in the past.

The researchers reckoned the 5,000-year hot spell 56 million years ago, likely due to factors like massive volcanism, was the closest parallel to current conditions at any time in the 300 million years.

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During the warming period 56 million years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, and occurring about 9 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, acidification for each century was about .008 unit on the pH scale, Hoenisch said.

Back then, many corals went extinct, as did many types of single-celled organisms that lived on the sea floor, which suggests other plants and animals higher on the food chain died out too, researchers said.

By contrast, in the 20th century, oceans acidified by .1 unit of pH, and are projected to get more acidic at the rate of .2 or .3 pH by the year 2100, according to the study.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects world temperatures could rise by 3.2 to 7 degrees F (1.8 to 4 degrees C) this century.

“Given that the rate of change was an order of magnitude smaller (in the PETM) compared to what we’re doing today, and still there were these big ecosystem changes, that gives us concern for what is going to happen in the future,” Hoenisch said.

Alien vs Predator DC: This time it’s Personal

Get popcorn.

New Yorker:

The arch-conservative billionaire Koch Brothers have sued the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington—often mistakenly seen as merely a tentacle, if not mouthpiece, for the Kochtopus—for control of Cato. Slate’s Jacob Weisberg wryly tweeted: “Brothers sue to regain ownership of CATO. Like the Iran-Iraq War, but better.”

Washington Post:

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch filed a lawsuit Wednesday for control of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

The lawsuit exposes a power struggle for one of Washington’s premiere policy centers, which has been funded by millions in contributions from the Koch brothers’ foundations since its founding in 1974.

Cato was divided between four shareholders: the two Koch brothers, Cato president Ed Crane, and former Cato chairman William Niskanen, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in a court in Johnson County, Kansas.

At the heart of the dispute is the fate of the shares owned by Niskanen, who died in October at age 78 of complications from a stroke. The Koch brothers believe that they have the option to buy Niskanen’s shares, while Cato officials believe that the shares belong to Niskanen’s widow, Kathryn Washburn, according to the complaint.

Washburn, who is named in the suit along with Cato and Crane, referred questions to Cato.

Crane released this written statement:

“Charles G. Koch has filed a lawsuit as part of an effort to gain control of the Cato Institute, which he co-founded with me in 1977. While Mr. Koch and entities controlled by him have supported the Cato Institute financially since that time, Mr. Koch and his affiliates have exercised no significant influence over the direction or management of the Cato Institute, or the work done here.

“Mr. Koch’s actions in Kansas court yesterday represent an effort by him to transform Cato from an independent, nonpartisan research organization into a political entity that might better support his partisan agenda. We view Mr. Koch’s actions as an attempt at a hostile takeover, and intend to fight it vehemently in order to continue as an independent research organization, advocating for Individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace.”