Climate Denial Crock of the Week

This news item tells us what we already knew: The Paris agreement of last year is a good start, but inadequate by itself to solve the larger climate problem.

What is different now is that, in the interim, global temperatures have taken a breathtaking jump that is greater even than the large spike we might have expected with the El Nino of last winter.  We are closer to the edge than we thought.
To be real – the idea that there is a 2 degree threshold below which we are “safe” is nonsense – the number is arbitrary. We are already in territory that will melt catastrophic portions of the polar ice sheets, and create havoc with weather extremes, agriculture, and infrastructure around the world in coming decades.

Washington Post:

Here, in the wake of the first presidential debate, the media skewered Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for denying his prior Twitter claim that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese”  — even as Trump’s surrogates continued to bluntly advance positions contrary to modern scientific understanding on the subject. His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, for instance, asserted on CNN that Trump believes the current climate swing is “naturally occurring,” contradicting the view of mainstream climate researchers that it is mainly human-caused.

On Thursday, a group of seven distinguished climate scientists led by Robert Watson, a former chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,  asserted that the chance of holding warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels “has almost certainly already been missed.”  And we could very soon be on an irrevocable path to 2 degrees of warming, they continue, unless countries dramatically up their pledges to cut emissions under the Paris climate agreement — an agreement Trump has said he would “cancel.”

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In 1995, I co-founded The Weather Underground, where I continue to serve as Director of Meteorology.

As a scientist myself, I strongly believe in the power of scientific research.  Scientific discoveries uncover truths that improve our understanding of the world – and, at times, also threaten corporate profits.  When that happens, all too often, the companies involved (and the politicians these corporations fund) react by attacking the scientists, with the goal of shutting down and/or discrediting their work.

CSLDF provides critical protections for climate scientists, who often lack financial resources or legal knowledge to fight back on their own.  It is the only organization to provide a legal defense team to researchers under attack.  I’m proud to be a founding board member of CSLDF, and hope you will join me in support of this worthy cause.

A generous donor is matching all donations up to $50K made before the end of TODAY, September 30.  When you donate today, your contribution will make 2X the impact.  Will you make a gift to CSLDF today?

Donate to Climate Science Legal Defense Fund here.

Associated Press:

Donald Trump’s running mate is breaking with the Republican nominee’s claim that climate change is not the result of human activity.

Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said Tuesday “there’s no question” that human activity affects both the climate and the environment.

At Monday’s presidential debate, Democrat Hillary Clinton challenged Trump’s views, saying: “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.” Trump interrupted with “I did not, I do not say that.”

But in 2012, Trump tweeted that the “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He later claimed he was kidding, but he’s also repeated the assertion that climate change is a hoax benefiting China. And in 2014, Trump tweeted: “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, tried to move discussion away from those comments Tuesday, saying on CNN that Trump believes “that climate change is naturally occurring” but the causes are not man-made.

The world’s scientific organizations say the Earth’s climate is changing because of the buildup of heat-trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Pence, appearing separately on CNN, said, “let’s follow the science,” but he warned against rushing into environmental restrictions that drive jobs out of the country and put Americans out of work.

Below, more astounding examples of serious cognitive break in the republican establishment. Is this the real “neurological disorder” we should be concerned about? Read the rest of this entry »

Good time to review my interview of a year ago with Uber Climate Denier Marc Morano. If you’re talking to Morano, who is unapologetically frank about his agenda – you are hearing the voice of fossil fuel Megalith.

Some readers still buy the “pox on both their houses” idea about this election, –
the fossil fuel industry knows that is definitely not so, and would very much like you Johnson/Stein folks to stay strong and express your inner child. Have no doubt that some of the “green” attacks on Hillary Clinton come, in fact, from a very black place.

Horse’s mouth. “politically we’re in bad shape if the next President is a Democrat,…we’re in VERY bad shape..”.

“It all comes down to the next President.”

They know what the stakes are – and they are swinging for the fences with Donald Trump – they want it all, and will take it all if we let them.

Impossible to write climate stories these days with out using the words “surprising” and “not expecting”.

One of the key differences between Greenland in the north, and Antarctica in the south, has been that Greenland, because of its geography and smaller size, has been more subject to warming enough on the surface to create significant meltwater, that collects in lakes, visible in broad areas during the summer.  This surface melt has a number of significant effects on ice dynamics, as Jason Box spells out in this 2014 video.

Up until now, this kind of surface dynamic has not been documented on the gigantic, and not-so-long-ago-thought-invulnerable East Antarctic ice sheet.   Projections of Antarctic melt focused mainly on the dynamic of ocean waters eating away and undermining the ice edges.
The fact that we are seeing these is an unscheduled wake up call.

New button: Preparation H.

Debate wrap.

Still work to do, but I slept pretty well last night.
If anyone still needs proof of how stupid Donald Trump thinks his climate denying audience is, it’s here.

More reaction below from a good source, Bill Maher. Read the rest of this entry »

“They both do it.”

No. They don’t.

While “journalists” play the “expectation game”.

Washington Post:

THE BIG IDEA: Many reporters have set the bar unfairly low for Donald Trump ahead of tonight’s presidential debate, raising the specter that pundits will declare him “the winner” even if he makes a series of factually inaccurate statements and struggles to show depth on the issues.

WHAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS SAYING:

— Reviewing the coverage ahead of Trump’s 9 p.m. showdown with Hillary Clinton at Hofstra University makes it sound like all the GOP nominee really needs to do is not talk about how well-endowed he is…

“A lot of people are going to look at Donald Trump and think, ‘Hey, if he can even get out a good sentence and show off his experience, then he’s doing well,’” New York Times correspondent Yamiche Alcindor said on “Morning Joe” last week, addressing the Clinton campaign’s complaints that she’s being subjected to a double standard.

“Clinton has the much tougher task tonight,” NPR declares in its curtain-raiser this morning. “She has the burden of high expectations. The former senator and secretary of state, who’s now been through two presidential campaigns, is an experienced debater who knows policy inside and out. But her job is very hard — Clinton has to convince voters who don’t want to vote for Trump but haven’t warmed up to her that she is likeable, honest and trustworthy. And she has to press her case that Trump is unqualified to be president without being overly aggressive or ‘harsh.’”

“I do think that the stakes are much higher in this debate and all the debates for Hillary Clinton,” CNN’s Dana Bash said on the air recently. “Because she is a seasoned politician. She is a seasoned debater. Yes, we saw Donald Trump in the primaries debate for the first time, but he is a first-time politician. So for lots of reasons—maybe it’s not fair, but it’s the way it is—the onus is on her.”

Who are these people? What planet to they think they live on?

One of the most odious, rabid, brainworm-infected rotting zombie skunk-weasels in a nest full of diseased, vermin-encrusted  rabid, brainworm-infected rotting zombie skunk-weasels is Myron Ebell.

He now will head Donald Trump’s EPA “transition” team.

For those of you that think voting for a third party is a cute way to express your inner child, shake it off and get real. We are in the fight of our lives. These people want it all and will take it.

Story behind paywall for now. Will update.

UPDATE – Scientific American:

Ebell appears to relish criticism from the left.

In a biography submitted when he testified before Congress, he listed among his recognitions that he had been featured in a Greenpeace “Field Guide to Climate Criminals,” dubbed a “misleader” on global warming by Rolling Stone and was the subject of a motion to censure in the British House of Commons after Ebell criticized the United Kingdom’s chief scientific adviser for his views on global warming.

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