When the Ringwraiths arrived on any scene, they always brought their most powerful weapon. It wasn’t their swords, nor the fell flying beasts they rode. It was despair. Wherever the Nazgul went, hope fled.

Here, late in the Fourth Age, the Nazgul have returned, no longer only nine in number. You can recognize them by a clear signature: Their insistence that nothing can be done.

At last our country appears to be gaining some awareness of the climate crisis that has already arrived, and will worsen in the years to come. Since it’s getting tougher for the deniers to deny the facts that are singing outside our windows, now we are seeing a big wave of stirring calls to inaction: It’s going to happen no matter what, so there’s no reason to even try to do anything.

The arrival of swarms of Nazgul is actually great news, because it means that deniers are running out of other options. Outright denial has allowed them to delay effective climate action for years, but it won't work any more. If their main remaining argument is "There's nothing you can do", then this creates the perfect opportunity for us to showcase the many positive climate solutions that are already happening, and new ones that are arriving on the wings of the eagles every day.

Of course, it’s always been in the denier playbook to create a feeling of futility. Take for instance the so-called Jevons Paradox, which states that increased efficiency will result in increased usage, undoing any gains from the efficiency. The purveyors of despair often reach for this one, because it purports to show that energy efficiency standards, or mileage standards, are futile.

Woo hoo! My mileage is so good, I think I’ll go drive another hundred miles today! I don’t think so. If you really need the hard core debunking, it's at the Climate Progress link above. This one should be called the Jarnevon Paradox, after the planet on which this theory might have originated.

To see why this matters, it’s worth looking at the layers of climate denial. Similar to the Four Dogs defense used by tobacco lawyers and other polluters, climate deniers wear layers to ward off the weather of the facts. When a layer gets peeled away by the truth, they move back to the next one. “It’s not happening.” Oops, it’s happening! Ok, “It’s not caused by humans.” Hmm. Let’s move back to “But it’s not a bad thing.”
Then came Sandy.

For a denier, if you’re down to “There’s nothing you can do,” it means that you’re running out of layers. In fact, the only layer behind this one is "Squirrel!" That very last layer, also known as “Al Gore sold out to Al Jazeera!”, is time tested and should not be underestimated, but is much less effective when it’s all they have left.

So when the Nazgul are swirling around saying “There’s Nothing You Can Do,” it means they have been recalled to defend Barad Dur. This unleashes all of us to answer that last desperate attack: we can show all of the great things that we can do, and are doing.

Defeating the Ringwraiths of Despair

We can apply tough emission standards to existing coal burning power plants, and then use the EPA Endangerment Finding to reduce emissions from the most egregious other GHG sources. We can set a carbon tax and put some of the proceeds toward clean energy. Leading public figures can keep climate change in the center of national conversation, as President Obama has begun in his inaugural address and State of the Union.

As individuals and communities, the sky is the limit. We can reduce the energy and materials that we use, recycle the materials that come our way at a very high percentage, and use recycled materials. We can turn away from factory food. We can support great local and regional organizations that devote every working day to creating climate-friendly solutions. We can push our communities to expand transit, recycling, and other services that preserve our climate. We can live like hobbits, cherishing the simple things that make life special.

Each of us can spread the word on climate change and positive solutions, in person, in lights, online, or even on a first date. We can share information about the beauty and importance of places that must be protected. We can help get out the vote for real climate hawks. We must be willing to change, and to help others not to fear change.

Our Future - Worth Saving

When the Ringwraiths arrived on any scene, they always brought their most powerful weapon. It wasn’t their swords, nor the fell flying beasts they rode. It was despair. Wherever the Nazgul went, hope fled.

Here, late in the Fourth Age, the Nazgul have returned, no longer only nine in number. You can recognize them by a clear signature: Their insistence that nothing can be done.

At last our country appears to be gaining some awareness of the climate crisis that has already arrived, and will worsen in the years to come. Since it’s getting tougher for the deniers to deny the facts that are singing outside our windows, now we are seeing a big wave of stirring calls to inaction: It’s going to happen no matter what, so there’s no reason to even try to do anything.

The arrival of swarms of Nazgul is actually great news, because it means that deniers are running out of other options. Outright denial has allowed them to delay effective climate action for years, but it won't work any more. If their main remaining argument is "There's nothing you can do", then this creates the perfect opportunity for us to showcase the many positive climate solutions that are already happening, and new ones that are arriving on the wings of the eagles every day.

Of course, it’s always been in the denier playbook to create a feeling of futility. Take for instance the so-called Jevons Paradox, which states that increased efficiency will result in increased usage, undoing any gains from the efficiency. The purveyors of despair often reach for this one, because it purports to show that energy efficiency standards, or mileage standards, are futile.

Woo hoo! My mileage is so good, I think I’ll go drive another hundred miles today! I don’t think so. If you really need the hard core debunking, it's at the Climate Progress link above. This one should be called the Jarnevon Paradox, after the planet on which this theory might have originated.

To see why this matters, it’s worth looking at the layers of climate denial. Similar to the Four Dogs defense used by tobacco lawyers and other polluters, climate deniers wear layers to ward off the weather of the facts. When a layer gets peeled away by the truth, they move back to the next one. “It’s not happening.” Oops, it’s happening! Ok, “It’s not caused by humans.” Hmm. Let’s move back to “But it’s not a bad thing.”
Then came Sandy.

For a denier, if you’re down to “There’s nothing you can do,” it means that you’re running out of layers. In fact, the only layer behind this one is "Squirrel!" That very last layer, also known as “Al Gore sold out to Al Jazeera!”, is time tested and should not be underestimated, but is much less effective when it’s all they have left.

So when the Nazgul are swirling around saying “There’s Nothing You Can Do,” it means they have been recalled to defend Barad Dur. This unleashes all of us to answer that last desperate attack: we can show all of the great things that we can do, and are doing.

Defeating the Ringwraiths of Despair

We can apply tough emission standards to existing coal burning power plants, and then use the EPA Endangerment Finding to reduce emissions from the most egregious other GHG sources. We can set a carbon tax and put some of the proceeds toward clean energy. Leading public figures can keep climate change in the center of national conversation, as President Obama has begun in his inaugural address and State of the Union.

As individuals and communities, the sky is the limit. We can reduce the energy and materials that we use, recycle the materials that come our way at a very high percentage, and use recycled materials. We can turn away from factory food. We can support great local and regional organizations that devote every working day to creating climate-friendly solutions. We can push our communities to expand transit, recycling, and other services that preserve our climate. We can live like hobbits, cherishing the simple things that make life special.

Each of us can spread the word on climate change and positive solutions, in person, in lights, online, or even on a first date. We can share information about the beauty and importance of places that must be protected. We can help get out the vote for real climate hawks. We must be willing to change, and to help others not to fear change.

Our Future - Worth Saving

The massacre of children at Sandy Hook shocked the whole country. Dr. Cara Barker is leading a project to send love to the brothers and sisters of children who perished in that tragedy. She's organizing an effort to deliver lap throw sized quilts to them on the first anniversary of the shooting. I am posting this here in the hope that some of the quilters on Daily Kos will want to join in this project of empathy and love. My sister and I are both participating. Dr. Barker writes:

Artistic creations help us heal, and feel remembered. No one benefits more from this than the vulnerable little child. Their losses leave invisible scars. if not attended by compassion, made visible, this critical hurt affects further development. When children grieve, they need messages of reassurance that uplift and heal, reminders that they are not alone. For, when a family loses a child, (ask me how I know), the sibling encounters multiple levels of loss: the death of their brother/sister; a well as the temporary loss of parent, forced to navigate through their own impossible heartbreak.

A Closer Look at Moderating Views of Climate Sensitivity
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

“Worse than we thought” has been one of the most durable phrases lately among those pushing for urgent action to stem the buildup of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

But on one critically important metric — how hot the planet will get from a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of greenhouse gases, a k a “climate sensitivity” — some climate researchers with substantial publication records are shifting toward the lower end of the warming spectrum.

There’s still plenty of global warming and centuries of coastal retreats in the pipeline, so this is hardly a “benign” situation, as some have cast it.

But while plenty of other climate scientists hold firm to the idea that the full range of possible outcomes, including a disruptively dangerous warming of more than 4.5 degrees C. (8 degrees F.), remain in play, it’s getting harder to see why the high-end projections are given much weight.

This is also not a “single-study syndrome” situation, where one outlier research paper is used to cast doubt on a bigger body of work — as Skeptical Science asserted over the weekend. That post focused on the as-yet-unpublished paper finding lower sensitivity that was inadvisedly promoted recently by the Research Council of Norway.

In fact, there is an accumulating body of reviewed, published research shaving away the high end of the range of possible warming estimates from doubled carbon dioxide levels. Chief among climate scientists critical of the high-sensitivity holdouts is James Annan, an experienced climate modeler based in Japan who contributed to the 2007 science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.....