Hugh McDiarmid Jr. lives in suburban Detroit, Michigan where he works in communications for a nonprofit foundation. He was a journalist with Michigan newspapers for 22 years including a decade at the Detroit Free Press before moving into nonprofit, government and foundation work -- primarily on behalf of natural resource protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation and social justice. Views solely his own.
I try to make Mitten State not about me. It doesn’t always work out that way. So here’s a link to a short story and lengthy (23 minute) podcast of my appearance on the Greening of the Great Lakes radio show that aired recently on WJR radio and other outlets in Michigan.
It’s a wide-ranging talk with host Kirk Heinze on a number of topics of interest to Michigan’s natural resources. Heinze and his crew do a good job of exploring environmental topics in more depth than most news outlets are able or willing to these days.
Listen, or don’t. But I thought it vitally important that you be given the opportunity to hear me talk. I'm sure you'll agree.
In other news, you'll notice on the right side here I've moved the "Blog List" up to the top of the page, and ordered them chronologically, with the most recent entries at the top...and cool little headlines of what the most recent posts are about. These bloggers are, unfortunately, not me. But they're interesting, in a not-Hugh kind of way. So you might check them out!
Environmentalists -- frequently criticized by foes for fearmongering -- have no corner on the market as aptly demonstrated this morning by conservative WJR (Detroit) talk show host John McCulloch's irresponsible comments on the cleanup of broken light bulbs. This kind of nonsense creates an atmosphere where criminals are empowered to rip off frightened people who swallow the urban legends that McCulloch peddled this morning. Here's my letter snail mailed today:
John McCulloch
News/Talk 760 WJR
3011 West Grand Blvd. Suite 800
Detroit, MI 48202
Hello John:
Caught part of your Friday, 12/23 segment on efforts to repeal the federal light bulb
While I support implementation of the new standards, I respect and understand the argument against them. That is not my reason for writing.
I write to ask you to please stop perpetuating the false claim that broken compact fluorescent light bulbs require professional Haz-Mat cleanups and that evacuating one’s home is an appropriate response to a broken bulb.
Unscrupulous contractors have preyed on frightened homeowners, fleecing them for thousands of dollars in scams involving CFL cleanups. This outrageous and probably illegal scheme is made possible when respected personalities like yourself perpetuate the myth that such cleanups are necessary. It is a scare tactic that poisons the policy debate with falsehoods and gives credence to the loathsome thieves who prey on the fears of people who figure it must be true because John McCulloch said it.
CFL bulbs do contain mercury and require care when broken. I’ve done it. It’s a pain the rear. But it’s neither a crisis nor a grave danger. Here are some sources for learning what’s required:
The fact-checking service snopes.com concludes that broken bulbs are neither a grave danger to a home’s inhabitants, nor do they require a professional cleanup: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp
The cleanups require neither the evacuation of one’s home, nor the employment of outside contractors.
I don’t seek or expect to change your position on the light bulb standards. But I do respectfully suggest that you provide listeners with accurate information.
Had another interesting email exchange with WJR radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh Lite, Frank Beckmann in which he maintained that my belief that manmade climate change is occurring is because I’ve been “…duped by people who have conned us out of billions of our hard earned dollars through grants and regulations.”
Anyway, Frank and other climate skeptics have seized on each anomaly, inconsistency and error in the IPCC’s climate change theory as proof positive of a global conspiracy. Of which, presumably, I am a part.
Anyway, it’s important to remember that the granddaddy of these issues was the East Anglia email revelations, and that the authors of the emails were exonerated of wrongdoing in four separate investigations.
Skeptics who joyously told us the East Anglia emails were the smoking guns that were going to unravel the whole climate plot are apoplectic that it didn’t turn out that way. No worries….just more proof of the conspiracy, right?
Nonetheless, an overhaul of the way the IPCC operates, as outlined by the journal Nature is probably a smart move. Done right, it will increase transparency and bolster public confidence that has been eroded by opinion leaders, like Beckmann, who have convinced us that thug climatologists are in cahoots with Pruis owners and weak-kneed liberals to take away our guns and sell our children. Or something like that.
You won’t hear that on Beckmann. Or Limbaugh. Or Hannity. Or Beck. Or FOX. Unless you hear only this excerpt: “Cooler-than-average regions included much of Australia, western Canada, parts of the northern United States, parts of western and central Europe, and central Russia.” Smells like a smoking gun to me.
Stephen Hawking enjoying the spoils of the climate conspiracy
Conservative radio talk show host and football announcer Frank Beckmann has penned another wild, flailing assault on climate change science in today’s Detroit News. He’s strung together unrelated threads of factually tortured conspiracy theory sandwiched around words like “bogus” “hoax” and “grant seeking environmental alarmists.”
Frank’s columns must be increasingly embarrassing for those at the News who still believe that even the most opinionated opinion columnists should be held to certain standards of intellectual honesty. But it may be par for the course for an editorial page that continues to promote as fact climate contentions that even the most celebrated climate change skeptic-climatologists have denounced.
It would take a huge word count to address each of Frank’s scattershot accusations and pseudo-facts that sail around untethered by accuracy or context. So I leave you with two links:
First, this link from NOAA where you can see lower on the page the “climate dashboard” that shows actual recorded observations for global temperatures, carbon dioxide, sun energy, Arctic sea ice and sea level.
Secondly, this video with Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan talking about the greenhouse effect.
Hawking says “…one of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming brought about by rising levels of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. The danger is that the temperature increase may become self-sustaining, if it hasn’t done so already.”
Hawking, of course, is a literal genius the world’s most celebrated cosmologist and physicist. But Beckmann might well categorize him as just another “environmental alarmist” who has “fouled the air with their fraud.”
I listened to Paul W. Smith’s show http://bit.ly/cDzJqJ on WJR Radio this morning. Smith (pictured) is a strong advocate for smaller government and less regulation. He has guest hosted for conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. This morning he spoke of Massey Energy, owner of the West Virginia coal mine where at least 25 miners died earlier this week after an explosion.
Curiously, he seemed in agreement with a guest who suggested it was a travesty that Massey was allowed to continue business as usual despite repeated fines and safety violations like those chronicled in this NY Times article: http://nyti.ms/dd8sor
But what would Smith’s reaction have been if environmental groups, unions or workplace safety advocates tried shutting the mine down earlier this month? My guess it would have been a theme of “fringe nutcases and government bureaucrats meddle in the free market, threaten the jobs of American workers and raise our energy prices.”
Sometimes the concept of more aggressive government regulation looks better in hindsight. In fact, Market Watch already suggests that the mine tragedy will result in tougher regulations nationwide: http://bit.ly/clsfea
There’s a balance to be struck between necessary regulation and the free market. Critical thinking on how to achieve that balance doesn’t play well as a knee-jerk response to a tragedy. Nor does it have a place in a political climate where nuance is punished, compromise is sin, and angry “all or nothing” philosophies are the order of the day.
Such is the case for many of Michigan’s elected officials. At the State Capitol, there is a reliable core of lawmakers whose loathing for environmental regulators – primarily the state’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment – is palpable. They are unwilling to do the work necessary to distinguish good laws from bad, or reasonable enforcement from unreasonable. For them, any environmental regulation is bad. And any enforcement action is heavy-handed.
Sometimes stronger rules or more zealous enforcement by government regulators are not necessary.
I try to make Mitten State not about me. It doesn’t always work out that way. So here’s a link to a short story and lengthy (23 minute) podcast of my appearance on the Greening of the Great Lakes radio show that aired recently on WJR radio and other outlets in Michigan.
