If you happily buy a 48-oz "half-gallon" of ice cream, you may well be persuadable that global warming is some harebrained theory

Thanks to modern technological miracles of miniaturization, the half-gallon of ice cream, which had previously been shrunk to 1¾ quarts, as seen here (that's 56 instead of 64 ounces), has now been shrunk to a breathtaking 48 ounces, which is to say 1½ quarts. You can't stop the march of science. (Or can you?)

by Ken

One morning last week on NPR's Morning Edition I heard a promo for a piece coming up in half an hour about how fewer Americans believe in global warming now than believed in . . . well, I don't know how long ago. I realized later that I had managed to not hear the piece, and while I made a stab at finding it on the website, I didn't. (It occurred to me that I don't know whether it was a story from NPR or from the local WNYC news desk.) I know I should go searching for links to whatever study or poll was being reported here, but for the time being I'll settle for the basic information I got from that promo.

Does anyone have a hard time believing that it's so, that Americans -- awash in a relentless campaign of lies and obfuscation by the Far Right (for once in total sync with its corporate overseers) -- have strayed even farther from reality than they were back whenever? Of course we have to be careful about this "having a hard time believing," because it can sound like the process whereby those under the sway of Far Right "thinking" now process reality: It's whatever makes me feel best to believe. So let me b e clear: I'm not saying that the report is true because I can believe it's true. I'm just saying that, assuming it is true, I for one could hardly be less surprised. After all, as I keep pointing out, did anyone really imagine there would be no awkward consequences from allowing an entire political party and movement to lie absolutely at will?

I thought about this last night when I allowed myself to buy some ice cream. I normally don't, because the only concept of "portion control" I'm able to enforce personally is "Portion Size = 1 Container," which is not a beneficial approach when it comes to ice cream or cookies or whatever. The only counterstrategy I've developed is just not to have the stuff in the house. But for some combination of reasons which probably wouldn't be of interest to you, last night I proposed and ratified a one-night-only Ice Cream Purchase Exception.

I was already aware that the ice-cream makers, possibly in response to my "Serving Size = 1 Container" principle, have done their share, maybe more than their share, to assist me with my portion-control deficiency, by shrinking the containers. I knew that the old half-gallon of ice cream had shrunk from 64 to, like, 59 ounces. (Oh, they don't call it a "half-gallon" anymore. That would be fraudulent packaging. But to a lot of us older folk, the container we're talking about is "the one that used to be a half-gallon.") I did, however, do a double take when I noticed that the special I was eyeing in my supermarket flier, which I was judging reasonably enough priced to continue with this authorized ice cream purchase, was for a 48-ounce container. 48 ounces? That's a friggin' quart and a half!

This form of downsizing is hardly confined to ice cream, and is hardly new. Packaged-goods packagers have known this trick for, well, as long as there have been packaged goods. Only now it has become standard marketing practice. The half-gallon of orange juice, the pound of coffee, the 12-ounce package of chocolate chips -- all historical artifacts, by merchandisers who would rather shrink their packages than raise the per-package price, though I suspect that plenty of them are doing both.

I always wonder if the marketers really think consumers don't notice. Or is it just that as long as all the marketers do it, what are consumers gonna do about it?

Still, they seem to think they're fooling us. Whenever I've seen a marketing person asked about a product downsize, the answer has been a self-righteous, what-else-can-we-do declaration along the lines: "It's our only alternative to increasing the price." Suggesting that they really believe it won't occur to their customers that paying the same amount for less ice cream, OJ, or coffee is a price increase. And an increase for which we consumers actually have to pay, since we're the ones who have to pay the manufacturers' costs for producing resized packaging and retooling their production process to package the revised quantity.

My favorite creative approach to product downsizing was that of a cutting-edge orange-juice maker that was the first I noticed to shrink its erstwhile half-gallon from 64 ounces to (as I recall) 59, and in the process festooned the new carton with the bold declaration: "NEW EASIER-TO-HANDLE CARTON." And it was true, the carton was definitely a little easier to handle -- because it was smaller!!! Shrink it to a pint and you could hold it in the palm of your hand. Were customers fooled? A certain number of them were, I'll bet.

It's worth remembering that the modern approach to selling political candidates more or less like packaged goods was pioneered by the people who were on the cutting edge of marketing packaged goods, the kind of people who might actually think you could shrink a half-gallon of ice cream to a quart and a half and consumers wouldn't notice.

I'm guessing the people who bought the new OJ container and were pleased that it really was easier to handle are also the people who turn thumbs-up on the right-wing lies and obfuscations about climate change. Hey, if the globe is getting warmer, why am I shoveling so damn much snow?

Well, we'll need more research before drawing any conclusions. (That's a joke. Not necessarily a funny joke, but a joke.)

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There's A Connection Between Climate And Climate Change... Beyond Eric Cantor's Cynism

Billy Long (R-MO) don't need no freakin' makeup

Eric Cantor and the House GOP have made a cruel and political connection between global warming and the tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri, that state's most Republican heartland. Cantor flat-out refused to agree to emergency aid for the victims of the devastating storm unless he could ram through the House a bill that would, literally, increase global warming. Watch Missouri Congressman Russ Carnahan on MSNBC reacting to Cantor's moral turpitude:



Meanwhile, respected environmentalist Bill McKibben, drew a very different kind of connection between the disaster in Joplin and global warming-- and he did it on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Starting out with a sense of almost resigned irony, McKibben reminds his readers that the ruling elite-- i.e., Big Oil-- does not want, will not tolerate, any connections being made beyond the Cantor connections. "It is vitally important not to make connections," he writes. "When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing."

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas-- fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been-- the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.

If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest-- resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi-- could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods-- that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity-- that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.

Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?

Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.

Billy Long, the right-wing imbecile who represents Joplin voted to deny climate change. In fact, except for Dave Reichert who represents an aggressively pro-environmental suburban Seattle district, every single House Republican voted to deny climate change. And so did the 3 sleaziest conservative Democrats-- Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), and Nick Rahall (WV)-- each of whom regularly solicits bribes from the very corporations who would be most impacted by serious clean energy policies. If Americans want a future for their children and grandchildren-- here on earth-- they'll do whatever they can to defeat Boren, Peterson, Rahall and every single Republican. That simple.