This corner of Texas Progressives tackles Texas media on the new IPCC report and climate change

Both the Observer and the Monthly got stuff incomplete and pulled punches last week, on the issue of the IPCC's newest climate change report. Sad, but true. Not surprising with either one. Simply true on that with the Monthly, but another sad but true with the Observer.

With that, let's dig in.

Charlie Daniels' "it don't get hot in El Paso" was of course purely rhetorical.

The new IPCC report, as conservative as it is, means more problems for the El Paso area, as part of the Southwest (and "really," part of New Mexico, not Texas). The Texas Observer has more, but its story is incomplete by covering in detail only temperature, not the changes in rainfall that are part of actual full climate change and not "just" global warming.

The Observer also decided to fellate the Sunrise Movement. (Ms. Ahmed has kind of done this before.) They've been rebuked from my past blogging. (I know "carbon tax + carbon tariff" is by no means a single-measure solution. It IS, though, a useful paired set of tools. It' s also, to me, a benchmark. If you can't or won't support them, or if, like High Country News, you conflate a carbon tax with cap and trade, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.)

The Monthly doesn't do a lot better on the big picture, interviewing climate change neoliberal hopey-dopey Katharine Hayhoe. For my takes on her, go here, here, more here and especially here. Hayhoe knows the report is from the IPCC, which due to various constraints is always somewhat "behind the cycle" and is also too beholden to national governments. Yet, like Yale Climate, she stresses the hopey-dopey in the report.

 

The actual reality, as Jeff St. Clair notes, is that the IPCC report has PLENTY of new alarmism. One biggie? It says that the rate of temperature increase on global warming in the 2015-2040 period will DOUBLE that of 1970-2015. Ms. Hopey-Dopey didn't tell you and Texas Monthly that, did she now? (Sadly, St. Clair partially undermines himself by linking to Nordhaus-Shellenberger / Obamiac climate change reporter John Fleck. He is, very much.)

On renewables and energy in general? No, the boulder is NOT at the top of the hill. Not if we want to find enough renewables to power all the electric-only cars vehicle makers say they'll exclusively sell in no more than 15 years (if true).

She also fails to distinguish within Texas, between east and west, on likely rainfall pattern changes. (See above.) Not much worse than a nice, polite Canadian moved to Texas, eh? The actual IPCC report is here.

We're past naivete on the likes of her, and Michael Mann and others I've labeled "climate change Obamiacs." We're at the point of wishful thinking on their part. (That is, if we're not at the point, or getting close to it, of plain lying, albeit, like Saint Anthony of Fauci, surely Platonic Noble Lies from their point of view.)

I also know, from Twitter experience, that these climate change Obamiacs have one direct similarity to Dear Leader himself. They do NOT like to be pushed, pulled, kicked or challenged from the left. (Unlike Obama, they haven't ever done a rhetorical head fake of claiming to welcome that.)

That said, at least she's not a hypocrite, unlike David Sirota.

 

General sidebar to all of the above: Cap and trade is NOT THE ANSWER.