Scott Pruitt, the new director of the Environmental Protection Agency, challenged the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change.
WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Thursday that carbon dioxide was not a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with the global scientific consensus on climate change.
Speaking of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas produced by burning fossil fuels, Mr. Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
“But we don’t know that yet,” he added. “We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
Mr. Pruitt’s statement is not consistent with scientific research on climate change, including decades of research by federal agencies. His remarks may also put him in conflict with laws and regulations his agency is charged with enforcing.
A report in 2013 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of about 2,000 international scientists that reviews and summarizes climate science, found it to be “extremely likely” that more than half the global warming that occurred from 1951 to 2010 was a consequence of human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
A January report by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded, “The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.”
Benjamin D. Santer, a climate researcher at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said, “Mr. Pruitt has claimed that carbon dioxide caused by human activity is not ‘the primary contributor to the global warming that we see.’ Mr. Pruitt is wrong.”
Dr. Santer added, “The scientific community has studied this issue for decades. The consensus message from many national and international assessments of the science is pretty simple: Natural factors can’t explain the size or patterns of observed warming. A large human influence on global climate is the best explanation for the warming we’ve measured and monitored.”
Pruitt is preparing the way for a rollback of environmental regulations that limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Scott Pruit’s remarks, and the fact of his appointment to the EPA, is yet another example of the Bannon/Trump agenda of “deconstructing the administrative state.” Any concern for the fate of planet earth can be postponed indefinately because “precise” measures are not in place. That is the cover story. The aim is to make public assets private and availble for exploitation.
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Creationists say that the issue of evolution is not yet resolved.
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As graduate with a degree in Anthropology, let me assure you it is resolved.
If we were looking for the missing link in evolution we have found a colony of neanderthals that has survived 40,000 years undetected and now resides in the White House . Living proof as to why theirs was not a viable evolutionary model.
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Yeah, I wonder what forces “create” then the various mutants of flu viruses from one day to the next, or the various breeds of dogs in a matter of few decades. Or did Noel have an H1N1 or a Moscow Toy Terrier with him on board?
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“. . . can be postponed indefinately because “precise” measures are not in place.”
Certainly hasn’t stopped edudeformers from going full throttle on supposedly “measuring student achievement” and by false extension a teacher’s performance.
At least what scientists use are actual measurements and not some pop pseudo-pschological mumbo jumbo that are the psychometrics of today.
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OMG! Guess Pruitt “believes” in ALTERNATIVE FACTS!
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Mr. Pruitt governs his Department with the same intellectual rigor and open-mindedness as his “boss,” The Donald. Twin peaks of mental honesty and curiosity. JVK
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“The Global Warming Debate”
Debating CO2
Is really hard to do
Cuz molecules
Obey the rules
Of chem (and physics too)
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nice
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Our life is fossil-fueled
By coal and oil we’re ruled
We might well toot
That carbon’s moot
But Nature can’t be fooled
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As someone who has been studying extinctions for decades. I am going to go way out on a limb here and say, ” he has a point”. CO2 is but one of the factors. Others are far worse. Before this thread blows up with baseless accusations about my intelligence, education, or what profession my mother had, I simply ask you NOT to repeat what others themselves parrot. Instead do the research yourself and pull back. Look at climate data from the last few million years. Now focus on the last 500,000 years. Examine the climate shifts at the end of the ice age. Spend months looking at melt water pulse 1A and 1B. Closely examine climate (CO2, methane, ice coverage, temp. planetary albedo…etc) for the last five ice ages. Then you have a good start, but only a start on understanding how CO2 is put one piece in the puzzle.Man is indeed a contributer, but do not underestimate the power of mother nature in climate shifts. A few good volcanic eruptions would dwarf anything man has done. I do not even have the time or space to explain the catastrophic planet-wide devastation that a cometery fragment would cause, nor how frequently they may be happening.
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Fortunately I do not have to do the research . Climate scientists have .Now perhaps when you show me a peer reviewed paper you have submitted to a journal in the field of Geology or Climatology I will take your assurances under consideration
Till then I will be making a donation tomorrow to this organization. They are going to need it.
http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/science-and-impacts/global-warming-science
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I read a recent study which concluded that man made pollutants contribute to about 25% – 30% of global warming. Methane from livestock was cited as a surprising main contributor.
This is at odds with other studies…but even if it’s true, why wouldn’t we want to do whatever we can to combat the effects of global warming by targeting the areas over which we have control?
Climate change has serious potential consequences and a 25% contribution is no small potatoes.
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How different the world would be if genuine elitists had to personally experience the consequences from their actions that they condemn everyone else to endure…
If only the Lord would bless the swamp people, including Trump, his Cabinet, lawmakers and deregulators, as well as their progeny, with only filthy water to drink, polluted air to breathe, land to live on that’s been deforested and robbed of all other resources for revenue. They should also be given the right to work where they cannot unite with others and bargain collectively, so they will only earn a measly minimum wage or less (and live on minimal Social Security income in retirement as a result), struggle to pay for basic necessities such as food, shelter and health care all their lives, have the choice of sending their kids to highly segregated no excuses bootcamp charters or private schools that are anti-science, and try to survive living in a world that’s anti-arts and hostile to virtually all living creatures (so they end up co-existing with just rats and roaches.)
People with power would never let that happen to themselves, so we should try to remember that “Despair is Not a Strategy: 15 principles of hope”
View at Medium.com
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From Louis the XVI to Nicolas, to any of the deposed depots and oligarchs who have met similar ends . Over reach tends to not end well for them. Whether it ends well for the masses is yet another story.
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despots = edit
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Very well stated!
I wonder how politicians can stand themselves when their decisions put people in conditions that are so demeaning. Do they live in a tunnel and don’t see the destruction or do they actually believe the Ayn Rand view that those who have nothing deserve it?
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He didn’t, by any chance, offer his bona fides as a climate scientist or meteorologist, did he? I’d like to see his curriculum vitae: where did he earn his doctorate? What was his area of research? Who was on his dissertation committee? Was he granted a postdoc? If so, where? If not, why not? What are his publications? Where did he place them? Who peer-reviewed them?
If he can’t produce this documentation, then he probably shouldn’t pronounce on topics related to meteorology or climate science.
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Scott Pruitt – J.D., University of Tulsa, 1993, Bachelors Degrees in Political Sci. and Communications from Georgetown College,1990
No evidence of any academic science background whatsoever. Too busy sleeping with the oil barons of Oklahoma and schmoozing with the sports entertainment industry.
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No evidence indeed. One question I left off my screed: if he is a climate scientist, who is funding his research?
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Exxon-Mobil
Any other questions?
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Thanks for the image of all the naked, squishy, oily bodies during an Exxon sleepover for oil barons.
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We’re back to the ’70s except that now we know better.
Back then, the warnings about climate change and holes in the ozone layer were largely dismissed as “Chicken Little” talking. There “wasn’t enough research”…so things just kept going the way they were.
Things became more obvious as time went on, though. Carter set new regulations to clean things up but then Reagan came along and appointed James Watt to head the Dept of the Interior, who rolled back the regulations set by the previous administration.
What’s interesting about that is that earth core samples taken in Antarctica after Watt’s and Reagan’s tenure showed significantly less pollution during the Carter years than before and after. This got the attention of the scientific community and politicians, worldwide. Despite efforts by some administrations in the USA, we have, for the most part, shown growing concern about the problem and have acted in accordance (though I still can’t understand why scrubbers on the smokestacks is deemed such a hardship by big business. They do have the money). Even the Bush Jr. administration conceded to the reality of our carbon footprint and it’s negative impact.
I get a laugh out of the theory that global warning is a Chinese plot to undermine our economy. China was the number one polluter in the world with their dirty coal emissions for decades. They were just too poor to compete, globally, otherwise. They completely denied our requests and demands to limit their emissions, saying we were trying to hold them back. It’s no coincidence that, as a much wealthier nation now, they’re phasing out fossil fuels and are in the forefront of developing and using alternate renewable energy sources.
Pruitt is James Watt warmed over. The difference is that his and our administration’s viewpoint is hopelessly out of date and in the minority. Hopefully the world community will be able to put enough pressure on Shrump to keep him somewhat in check on this one.
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Not coincidentally, Pruitt’s arguments are essentially the same ones that Exxon-Mobil has been giving for the past two decades: we don’t know enough to decide and hence need more research before doing anything.
Of course, we now know that Exxon’s own scientists were privately warning Exxon officials about the warming effects of Co2 almost 40 years ago
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
It’s more than interesting that the former head of Exxon-Mobil is now Secretary of State.
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“It’s more than interesting that the former head of Exxon-Mobil is now Secretary of State”
Whoa…! Now hold on just a minute!
Are you implying that Mr. Tillerson’s interests might be slanted towards those that are in the fossil fuel industry!?
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Thom Hartmann’s blog
Pruitt Doesn’t Know Carbon Dioxide Causes Climate Change!
Scott Pruitt is turning the EPA into a propaganda arm of the fossil fuel industry.
He’s already staffed the agency with climate change deniers – and now he’s started repeating Big Oil’s lies live on television.
Yesterday, for example, he told CNBC that he doesn’t believe that carbon dioxide causes climate change.
“Human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
This is exactly what Henry Wallace was talking about in 1944 when he wrote an editorial in the New York Times about American Fascists. He described these American fascists as people who are “… spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest… [whose] final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
Isn’t that exactly what we’re seeing here with the Trump administration, in particular the EPA?
-Thom
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I have little to no knowledge in science so it is confusing to hear that there is a “consensus” of scientists – 98% of them – I can’t find any source for the origination of that fact – anybody in this austere group know where this is found?
I did find a number of articles that indicate that a lot of predictions from that body of scientists who predict dire outcomes regarding man, co2 etc have not come true – anybody want to explain that to the common man…I cut and pasted from the article below.
The article, 1975 Newsweek article entitled “The Cooling World,” which claimed Earth’s temperature had been plunging for decades due to humanity’s activities quotes dire statistics from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin Madison to indicate how dire the global cooling was, and would be.
Experts suggested grandiose schemes to alleviate the problems, including “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers,” Newsweek reported. It added, “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.” Sound familiar — except that the “climate change” alarmists were warning against global cooling?
…For decades, climate alarmists have been warning that, without a United Nations-run global “climate” regime to control human activity, alleged man-made “climate change” will bring the wrath of “Mother Earth” down upon humanity.
They did it again from November 30 to December 11, 2015 at the Paris Summit on Climate Change, and warned, yet again, that it is the “last chance” to save humanity from itself. But climate alarmists have a long history of forecasting disaster — and of being wrong about everything.
In fact, stretching back decades, virtually every alarmist prediction that was testable has been proven embarrassingly wrong. What follows is just a tiny sampling of those discredited claims.
A new ice age and worldwide starvation: In the 1960s and ’70s, top mainstream media outlets, such as Newsweek above, hyped the imminent global-cooling apocalypse. Even as late as the early 1980s, prominent voices still warned of potential doomsday scenarios owing to man-made cooling, ranging from mass starvation caused by cooling-induced crop failures to another “Ice Age” that would kill most of mankind.
Among the top global-cooling theorists were Obama’s current “science czar” John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, the author of Population Bomb, which predicted mass starvation worldwide. In the 1971 textbook Global Ecology, the duo warned that overpopulation and pollution would produce a new ice age, claiming that human activities are “said to be responsible for the present world cooling trend.” The pair fingered “jet exhausts” and “man-made changes in the reflectivity of the earth’s surface through urbanization, deforestation, and the enlargement of deserts” as potential triggers for his new ice age. They worried that the man-made cooling might produce an “outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap” and “generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.”
Holdren predicted that a billion people would die in “carbon-dioxide induced famines” as part of a new “Ice Age” by the year 2020.
Ehrlich, a professor at Stanford University, similarly claimed in a 1971 speech at the British Institute for Biology, “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.” He added, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 and give ten to one that the life of the average Briton would be of distinctly lower quality than it is today.”
To stave off the allegedly impending ecological disasters, the two alarmists demanded the implementation of “solutions.” In the book Ecoscience, the duo pushed a “planetary regime” to control resources, as well as forced abortions and sterilization to stop overpopulation, including drugging water and food supplies with sterilizing agents.
Countless other scientists have offered similar cooling warnings. Fortunately, the alarmists were dead wrong, and none of their “solutions” was implemented. Not only did “billions” of people not die from cooling-linked crop failures, but the globe appears to have warmed slightly since then, probably naturally, and agricultural productivity is higher than it ever has been. Now, though, the boogeyman is anthropogenic global warming, or AGW.
Global warming — temperature predictions: Perhaps nowhere has the stunning failure of climate predictions been better illustrated than in the “climate models” used by the UN. The UN climate bureaucracy, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), produces periodic reports on “climate science” — often dubbed the “Bible” of climatology. In its latest iteration, the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the UN featured 73 computer models and their predictions. All of them “predicted” varying degrees of increased warming as atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased.
The problem is that every single model was wrong — by a lot. Not only did temperatures not rise by as much as the models predicted, they have failed to rise at all since around 1996, according to data collected by five official temperature datasets. Based just on the laws of probability, a monkey rolling the dice would have done far better at predicting future temperatures than the UN’s models. That suggests deliberate fraud is likely at work.
Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), analyzed all 73 UN computer models. “I compared the models with observations in the key area — the tropics — where the climate models showed a real impact of greenhouse gases,” Christy told CNSNews. “I wanted to compare the real world temperatures with the models in a place where the impact would be very clear.”
Using datasets of temperatures from NASA, the U.K. Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the University of East Anglia, NOAA, satellites measuring atmospheric and deep oceanic temperatures, and a remote sensor system in California, he found, “All show a lack of warming over the past 17 years.” In other words, global warming has been on “pause” for almost two decades — a fact that has been acknowledged even by many of the most zealous UN climate alarmists. “All 73 models’ predictions were on average three to four times what occurred in the real world.”
No explanation for what happened to the warming — such as “the oceans ate my global warming” — has withstood scrutiny.
Almost laughably, in its latest report, the UN IPCC increased its alleged “confidence” in its theory, an action experts such as Christy could not rationalize. “I am baffled that the confidence increases when the performance of your models is conclusively failing,” he said. “I cannot understand that methodology…. It’s a very embarrassing result for the climate models used in the IPCC report.” “When 73 out of 73 [climate models] miss the point and predict temperatures that are significantly above the real world, they cannot be used as scientific tools, and definitely not for public policy decision-making,” he added.
Other warming predictions have also fallen flat. For instance, for almost two decades now, climate alarmists have been claiming that snow would soon become a thing of the past.
The end of snow: The IPCC has also hyped snowless winters. In its 2001 report, it claimed “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms.” Again, though, the climate refused to cooperate. The latest data from Rutgers’ Global Snow Lab showed an all-time new record high in autumn snow cover across the northern hemisphere in 2014, when more than 22 million square kilometers were covered.
And according to data from the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center cited by meteorologist Mike Mogil, “U.S. snow cover on the morning of Dec. 1, 2015 is the highest on record for this day of the year.” In all, 38.7 percent of the United States was covered in snow, surpassing the previous record — 36.5 percent — set in 2006. Worldwide, similar trends have been observed. Global Snow Lab data also shows Eurasian autumn snow cover has grown by 50 percent since records began in 1979.
After their predictions were proven wrong, alarmists claimed global warming was actually to blame for the record cold and snow across America and beyond. Seriously. Among the “experts” making that argument was former cooling zealot Holdren, Obama’s science czar: “A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern we can expect to see with increasing frequency, as global warming continues.”
When asked for the “growing body of evidence” behind his assertions, Holdren’s office refused to provide it, claiming the ramblings were just his “opinion” and therefore not subject to transparency and accuracy laws. Still, Holdren’s claim directly contradicts the IPCC, which in 2001 predicted “warmer winters and fewer cold spells.”
The melting ice caps: Another area where the warmists’ predictions have proven incorrect concerns the amount of ice at the Earth’s poles. They predicted a complete melting of the Arctic ice cap in summers that should have already happened, and even claimed that Antarctic ice was melting rapidly.
As far as the Antarctic is concerned, in 2007, the UN IPCC claimed the ice sheets of Antarctica “are very likely shrinking,” with Antarctica “contributing 0.2 ± 0.35 mm yr – 1 to sea level rise over the period 1993 to 2003.” The UN also claimed there was “evidence” of “accelerated loss through 2005.” In 2013, the UN doubled down on its false claim, claiming even greater sea-level rises attributed to the melting in Antarctica: “The contribution of … Antarctic ice sheets has increased since the early 1990s, partly from increased outflow induced by warming of the immediately adjacent ocean.” It also claimed Antarctica’s “contribution to sea level rise likely increased from 0.08 [ – 0.10 to 0.27] mm yr – 1 for 1992 – 2001 to .40 [0.20 to 0.61] mm yr – 1 for 2002 – 2011.” The reality was exactly the opposite.
In a statement released in October, NASA dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on the UN’s climate-alarmism machine, noting that ice across Antarctica has been growing rapidly for decades.
NASA said only that its new study on Antarctic ice “challenges” the conclusions of the IPCC. In fact, the UN could not have been more wrong. Rather than melting ice in the southern hemisphere contributing to sea-level rise, as claimed by the UN, ice in Antarctica is expanding, and the growing ice is responsible for reducing sea levels by about 0.23 millimeters annually. According to the NASA study, published in the Journal of Glaciology, satellite data shows the Antarctic ice sheet featured a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001 — more than a trillion tons of ice in less than a decade. Between 2003 and 2008, Antarctica gained some 82 billion tons of ice annually.
The UN’s inaccurate Antarctic claims were illustrated most comically, perhaps, when a ship full of alarmists seeking to study “global warming” was trapped in record Antarctic sea ice in the summer of 2013 and had to be rescued by ships burning massive amounts of fossil fuels.
In the northern hemisphere, alarmists have fared no better. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, Al Gore, a man who has made a fortune pushing warmist ideology, publicly warned that the North Pole would be “ice-free” in the summer by around 2013 due to AGW. “The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,” Gore said in 2007. “It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.” Speaking to an audience in Germany six years ago, Gore alleged that “the entire North Polarized [sic] cap will disappear in five years.” “Five years,” Gore emphasized, is “the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear.”
Contrary to Gore’s predictions, satellite data showed that Arctic ice volume in summer of 2013 had actually expanded more than 50 percent over 2012 levels. In fact, during October 2013, sea-ice levels grew at the fastest pace since records began in 1979. In 2014, the Arctic ice cap, apparently oblivious to Gore’s hot air, continued its phenomenal rebound, leaving alarmists struggling for explanations.
Data from the taxpayer-funded National Snow and Ice Data Center’s “Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent” (MASIE) also show Arctic ice steadily growing over the last decade, with a few minor fluctuations in the trend. Despite alarmist claims, polar bear populations are thriving there, too.
Gore, though, was hardly alone. Citing “climate experts,” the tax-funded BBC also ran an article on December 12, 2007, under the headline “Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013.’” That piece, which was still online as of December 2015, highlighted alleged “modeling studies” that supposedly “indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.” Some of the “experts” even claimed it could happen before then, citing calculations performed by “super computers” that the BBC noted have “become a standard part of climate science in recent years.”
Increased storms, drought, and sea-level rise: The ice sheets have not cooperated with warmists, and neither have other weather-related phenomena, such as mass migrations owing to sea-level rise.
On June 30, 1989, the Associated Press ran an article headlined: “UN Official Predicts Disaster, Says Greenhouse Effect Could Wipe Some Nations Off Map.” In the piece, the director of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) New York office was quoted as claiming that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.” He also predicted “coastal flooding and crop failures” that “would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.” Of course, 2000 came and went, and none of those things actually happened. But that didn’t stop the warnings.
In 2005, the UNEP warned that imminent sea-level rises, increased hurricanes, and desertification caused by AGW would lead to massive population disruptions. In a handy map, the organization highlighted areas that were supposed to be producing the most “climate refugees.” Especially at risk were regions such as the Caribbean and low-lying Pacific islands, along with coastal areas. The 2005 UNEP predictions claimed that, by 2010, some 50 million “climate refugees” would be fleeing those areas. However, not only did the areas in question fail to produce a single “climate refugee,” by 2010, population levels for those regions were still soaring. In many cases, the areas that were supposed to be producing waves of “climate refugees” and becoming uninhabitable turned out to be some of the fastest-growing places on Earth.
Even the low-lying Pacific islands scare appears to have flopped. Supposedly on the “front lines” of AGW-caused sea-level rise, the Pacific atoll island nations don’t face imminent submersion and have experienced the opposite of what was predicted. Consider a paper published in March of 2015 in the journal Geology. According to the study, the Funafuti Atoll has experienced among “the highest rates of sea-level rise” in the world over the past six decades. Yet, rather than sinking under the waves, the islands are growing. “No islands have been lost, the majority have enlarged, and there has been a 7.3% increase in net island area over the past century,” the paper says.
Then there are the claims about drought. Some UN alarmists have even predicted that Americans would become “climate refugees,” using imagery that may be familiar to those who suffered through the infamous (and natural) “Dust Bowl” drought of the 1930s. Prominent Princeton professor and lead UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer, for instance, made some dramatic predictions in 1990. By 1995, he said, the “greenhouse effect” would be “desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots.” By 1996, he added, the Platte River of Nebraska “would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers.” The situation would get so bad that “Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
When confronted on his predictions, Oppenheimer, who also served as Gore’s advisor, refused to apologize. “On the whole I would stand by these predictions — not predictions, sorry, scenarios — as having at least in a general way actually come true,” he claimed. “There’s been extensive drought, devastating drought, in significant parts of the world. The fraction of the world that’s in drought has increased over that period.”
Unfortunately for Oppenheimer, even his fellow alarmists debunked that claim in a 2012 study for Nature, pointing out that there has been “little change in global drought over the past 60 years.”
Countless other claims of AGW doom affecting humans have also been debunked. Wildfires produced by AGW, for instance, were supposed to be raging around the world. Yet, as Forbes magazine pointed out recently, the number of wildfires has plummeted 15 percent since 1950, and according the National Academy of Sciences, that trend is likely to continue for decades. On hurricanes and tornadoes, which alarmists assured were going to get more extreme and more frequent, it probably would have been hard for “experts” to be more wrong. “When the 2014 hurricane season starts it will have been 3,142 days since the last Category 3+ storm made landfall in the U.S., shattering the record for the longest stretch between U.S. intense hurricanes since 1900,” noted professor of environmental studies Roger Pielke, Jr. at the University of Colorado. On January 8, 2015, meanwhile, the Weather Channel reported: “In the last three years, there have never been fewer tornadoes in the United States since record-keeping began in 1950.”
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We saw hodge podges similar to this put together and promulgated by those promoting the wonders of tobacco, too, including by industry spokesmen for cigarette companies who blatantly lied to Congress. It also looks a lot like what’s touted by right-wingers pushing conspiracy theories such as Agenda 21.
Where did all this come from? Please cite studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, not the popular press, like Newsweek etc., since they don’t include reference lists, so we can’t easily track down and double check their sources.
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Duh A brillant observation on your part
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References in the paragraphs I started with numerous prognostications of doom and gloom and then googled to find out if they ever happened
Couldnt find any scientist peer reviewed articles which found them to be wrong
Maybe you , as a scientist, can enlighten with your peer reviews
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References in the paragraphs I started with numerous prognostications of doom and gloom and then googled to find out if they ever happened
Couldnt find any scientist peer reviewed articles which found them to be wrong
Maybe you , as a scientist, can enlighten with your peer reviews
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For the layman, I would recommend reading “Scientific Opinion on Climate Change” in Wikipedia, which should answer your question about the origins of the figure(s) on the consensus of scientists, and also provides an extensive list of accessible References for their sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
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The list contains scientists works
What evidence do you proffer from peer reviewed journals? r they reviewed by the same 98 percent group of like minds? Did you read any of the sources sent or just write them off because you are a scientist ?
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Thanks for the reference
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You admitted that you “have little to no knowledge in science”.
It shows.
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Duh A brilliant observation It was a good thing i warned you
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You “warned” us
… and then proceeded to express uninformed doubts about climate science.
Answer me this: how can you weigh in on an inherently scientific subject if, as you say, “you have little to no knowledge in science”?
How can you judge that climate scientists are unjustifiably “alarmist” in the case of CO2 if you have little to no knowledge about the science?
If you have a genuine interest in learning why so much of what you say above is simply nonsense, you will make an effort to remedy your lack of knowledge.
The following site will correct many of your misconceptions, though be forewarned: many of the posts require a basic understanding of graphs and other high school level maths (and some go well beyond)
https://tamino.wordpress.com/
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-pause-in-global-warming/
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Gitapik, and Poet, and et al,
I thank you for the leads – and I did stipulate that I cut and pasted from the article I noted thus not intending to allude that any of it was mine.
The Wikipedia site referenced helped a lot – still more to read – it is a shame one couldn’t get these references at the outset rather than have to be maligned for asking questions – would have saved a lot of time and wasted comments. I guess it makes these educators feel good about themselves….
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“…Laughter is the best medicine some say and the dems and liberal need some major humor! Especially after your loss!
Ill take lobster and steak with a good scotch if you are feeding!”
That one got my hackles up and I guess it came through in the tone of my replies. I’m normally more understated. I guess the blade cuts both ways.
There’s not a llot of humor to be derived from the current situation in DC, in my view. And I’m not coming from the place of being a dyed in the wool liberal.
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“What evidence do you proffer from peer reviewed journals? r they reviewed by the same 98 percent group of like minds?”
Who should then review scientific publications? The general public? Are they qualified? Is the CEO of Exxon qualified?
You seem to imply, jscheidell, that scientists have an incentive to lie. In fact, nothing is worse for a scientist than to falsify data, or make things up. Once they do that, their reputation is ruined for life.
Scientists live a very different life from businessmen or politicians. For scientists, telling the truth is not optional, but mandatory, since in science nothing is open for interpretation, nothing is gray. When a theory fails, it fails not because of other scientists made it fail, but because the theory didn’t explain nature well. If a theory is successful, it’s not because other scientists endorsed it, but because the theory explained nature well.
Einstein, Watson (DNA), Curie (radioactivity) were successful not because people liked them or voted for them or endorsed their theories, but because these scientists explained nature well.
Scientists spend years—often even decades—in trying to test if an idea they have in biology, geography or physics correspond to reality or not. Once they are convinced, they give talks and write a paper on the idea, all with the purpose of having other scientists also check if the data and theory are sound.
This process works: the stuff we use in everyday life like cars, ovens, chemicals, boats, washing machines, gps, iphone, gas, oil pumps, thermometers, sunscreens, drugs, guns are all based on science researchers uncovered. And the science that make these things work is not open for interpretation. It’s not like if enough money had been poured into different scientific theories, we’d now have a different science, like not DNA but something more wholesome would explain the similarity of twins.
It is scientific theories which tell you if something will blow up or will just run your car. It’s science which tell you where to put a satellite and how to communicate with it so that your card at the gas station or Walmart is correctly charged.
Outsiders have no business in supporting or denying a scientific claim. They have no business in denying that tobacco causes cancer, because there is scientific proof that it does cause cancer. They have no business in claiming that evolution is incorrect, because with that claim, they’d also have to claim that Einstein’s and Curie’s physics are incorrect. For the same reason, they have no business in claiming that fracking doesn’t cause earthquakes or that global warming doesn’t exist.
If you doubt a scientific theory, chances are, you end up arguing against basic scientific principles that take your car from home to work or keep the airplane in the air.
The sciences are built on top of each other, so if you doubt a scientific claim, like evolution, you better be prepared to argue against Einstein’s or Newton’s theories as well.
What is true is that businessmen and politicians and religious leaders try to bring their ideological, market and other shaky values and ideas into science, and they try to assert, science is open for interpretation. It’s not.
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This comes from Pub Med, the reports which come from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. NIH is the largest research facility in the United States.
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Microbiol Spectr. 2015 Jun;3(3). doi: 10.1128/microbiolspec.VE-0004-2014.
Effects of Global Warming on Vibrio Ecology.
Vezzulli L, Pezzati E, Brettar I, Höfle M, Pruzzo C.
Abstract
Vibrio-related infections are increasing worldwide both in humans and aquatic animals. Rise in global sea surface temperature (SST), which is approximately 1 °C higher now than 140 years ago and is one of the primary physical impacts of global warming, has been linked to such increases. In this chapter, major known effects of increasing SST on the biology and ecology of vibrios are described. They include the effects on bacterial growth rate, both in the field and in laboratory, culturability, expression of pathogenicity traits, and interactions with aquatic organisms and abiotic surfaces. Special emphasis is given to the effect of ocean warming on Vibrio interactions with zooplankters, which represent one of the most important aquatic reservoirs for these bacteria. The reported findings highlight the biocomplexity of the interactions between vibrios and their natural environment in a climate change scenario, posing the need for interdisciplinary studies to properly understand the connection between ocean warming and persistence and spread of vibrios in sea waters and the epidemiology of the diseases they cause.
PMID: 26185070 DOI: 10.1128/microbiolspec.VE-0004-2014
[Indexed for MEDLINE]
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Carol,
Thanks for the abstract and reference – appreciate it when one can question and offer an opposing view and get a response and references to support the consensus without the name calling, derisive put downs, and name calling…
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Reasons To Vote For Democrats
By Knowles on Amazon
Number 1 on the list
Great bibliography! And a quick lead of 266 pages
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No doubt this and any other book like it, which is completely comprised of blank pages, make up your so-called president’s entire reading list.
Just another Rethuglican/TeaParty/tRumpster, guys, who loves conspiracy theories and hates experts who don’t support his right-wingbat ideologies.
Time to stop feeding the trolls..
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Laughter is the best medicine some say and the dems and liberal need some major humor! Especially after your loss!
Ill take lobster and steak with a good scotch if you are feeding!
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Jscheidell,
Some people enjoy the fact that a sociopath is running the country. Some celebrate the death of democracy. I am not one of them.
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Damn Poet,
“uninformed doubts” thats why I ask questions –
I ask questions – and I don’t always accept what is claimed to be a consensus – I wont consider myself a denier,I do believe man has attributed to the changes in climate change but not all….but if one doesn’t question and accepts what others say on face value then I would assume a lot of sailors fell off the globe because way back the globe was “flat” and there was a consensus of that fact = If a student
in your class question you regarding an issue – assuming you are or were a teacher – do you call them names and belittle them?I weigh in to find out – this is an educational blog, no?
then please produce your peer reviewed sources or in the words of marktexts above – “offer your bona fides as a climate scientist or meteorologist, .. I’d like to see your curriculum vitae: where did you earn your doctorate? What was his area of research? Who was on his dissertation committee? Was he granted a postdoc? If so, where? If not, why not? What are your publications? Where did you place them? Who peer-reviewed them?
At least on my end I’m honest to say I can’t do the above but read – so send me your stuff…
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As I said, if you are interested you will educate yourself. There are lots of sites where you can find good information. I gave you one of them.
If you don’t!Ike it, there are others. (But’ here’ s my warning: “Watts up with That?” is not among them)
Until then, — until you actually know more than little to nothing about the science — i suggest you quit spreading doubt — because that is precisely what you are doing, whether you know it or not.
PS I certainly did not call you any names above and as far as characterizing what you are doing as “expressing uninformed doubts”, that is precisely what you are doing if, as you yourself said, you have little to no knowledge in science.
When I taught science, I encouraged my students to ask questions, but there is a difference between asking questions and expressing un- informed doubts. You can’t express doubts without knowing something first, at least not legitimately.
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“but there is a difference between asking questions and expressing un- informed doubts.”
Correct. What is hard to accept for many people is the fact that there is no silver bullet in becoming an expert scientist. The mountain of scientific literature is there not because the scientists want to intimidate the rest of the population but because it’s really that complicated to describe the world around us.
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Why should the poet show any qualifications? He simply quotes expert opinions, because that is the right thing to do: accept science’s findings.
For you the bad news is that no matter how much reading you’ll do in the next few months, you still won’t have any credibility in arguing about the validity of scientific theories simply because you need a decade of education before you can do it.
Just because Trump and friends try to make their fans believe that science can be debated outside science with non-scientific arguments doesn’t mean, their opinion is more valuable than horse manure.
You of course have the right to believe what the CEO of Exxon claims on scientific matters, but do that with the conviction that he shows the same criminal stupidity as the Inquisition did when they went against Galileo’s outrageous claim that the Earth moved.
What’s important to keep in mind is that science is not a matter of belief, and it has nothing to do with what you can gather with search engines or from the Bible.
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Sorry for the lines above…
in your class question you regarding an issue – assuming you are or were a teacher – do you call them names and belittle them?
I weigh in to find out – this is an educational blog, no?
then please produce your peer reviewed sources or in the words of marktexts above – “offer your bona fides as a climate scientist or meteorologist, .. I’d like to see your curriculum vitae: where did you earn your doctorate? What was his area of research? Who was on his dissertation committee? Was he granted a postdoc? If so, where? If not, why not? What are your publications? Where did you place them? Who peer-reviewed them?
At least on my end I’m honest to say I can’t do the above but read – so send me your stuff…
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Diane, I posted an article on global warming put out by the National Institutes of Health. It still hasn’t come through.
carolmalaysia
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 11, 2017 at 7:06 am
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It is there now
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It’s important that we all keep our minds open and not blindly follow the popular trend, which is why articles such as that one in Newsweek are important to note. Keep in mind that this one was at the very beginning of scientific research into climate change. The computer models being used were rudimentary and this was actually something the scientific community admitted at the time.
The science has improved quite abbot since then. Both through the use of technology and collaboration of more and more scientists, worldwide. Four plus decades of work has produced evidence of different sources of pollution and contributors towards the global warming trends and our use of fossil fuels has been pointed to as a major contributor.
I just listened to an interview with a scientist who’s concerned about the Trump administration’s decision to make scientific data much more difficult to access for analysis and subsequent publication. Why would they do this? Why would they want to hide decades worth of collected data? My personal take is that the Trump administration is following an all too familiar line of bending or deleting the “facts” so that they will match their political and business agenda as opposed to creating policy that deals with the facts at hand.
We’re being asked to produce our sources in this thread. I am no scientist, either, but I’ve been following this issue since the beginning. I’ve read articles from both sides and the middle. I’ve spoken with scientists, both friends and casual acquaintances. The one thing that’s agreed upon is that there is a trend towards global warming. And less rainfall. And the majority of those who have researched this science believe that it’s in our power to change this by reducing man made pollution. The meetings between nations and unilateral pledges to meet this issue head on, together as a world community, is no fluke. These are not stupid people.
Nobody WANTS climate change to be a reality. If you’re looking for sources, you have the internet at your disposal. Do searches and read articles from ALL sides with an emphasis on scientific journals. I don’t have a bibliography at my disposal and I’m not going to try to convince someone who’s antagonistic towards what I see as truth through decades worth of readings and discussions. Debates of this sort never really go anywhere. Both sides just end up trying to be “right”. If you really want to find the truth, then do some digging and see what you come up with.
But please think about why Trump wants to bury this data. A red flag always gets raises when someone tries to hide something
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What I have found on this issue is that the people who express “doubts” are likely to cherry pick the things that they believe support their case and ignore the things that don’t. In other words, they have made up their mind ahead of time, often without knowing anything about it and then go looking for “facts” that support their case.
These people focus largely on the short term ups and downs (eg, the alleged “pause” in warming, which was due to el nino and la Nina) and totally ignore the long term (decades long) upward trends in surface temperature, sea level, and atmospheric water vapor content and long term downward trend in Arctic sea ice and glacial ice.
The other thing they cherry pick is specific regions of the globe while ignoring the overall picture.
There are two types: those who are genuinely interested in learning and those who are simply interested in Manufacturing doubt, as Exxon-Mobil has done. The former will make an effort to educate themselves, but of course, the latter never will. That’s actually the key to telling them apart.
Finally, with all due respect to to Diane and the smart folks who comment here, this is not really the best place to learn about and “debate” climate science. It should go without saying, but that is best done on sites run and requested by actual scientists (I linked to one above and Real Climate is another)
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Totally agreed on all points, Poet. Last paragraph, too…though I, for one, like the way this blog has expanded since Trump began to become a political farce…I mean, “force”.
I agree, though, that we should be careful to keep the prime focus on education.
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The focus is always education but it is not possible to ignore Trump and DeVos. They hold public schools in contempt.They want to defund them and give public money to religious schools and businesses.
Then there is the larger context: Trump is determined to “deconstruct the administrative state.” That’s what Bannon said. This is a fancy way to say they want to roll back every government reform since 1932.
We may be experiencing a direct attack on our democracy. I can’t ignore that.
As an aside, I personally think Trump is a pathological liar and a sociopath. He makes Nixon look like a statesman by contrast. I still don’t believe his election was legitimate because that would mean that 60 million Americans share his racism, xenophobia, and misogyny.
So, yes, I have a Trump problem. He seems to me to be ignorant of history and the Constitution. He is an incipient fascist.
How can I separate the condition of education from the condition of our society?
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Yeah…Trump and (possibly even more so) Bannon seem hell bent on destroying our democratic process. And I, too, question the legitimacy of his election.
Your house, Diane. I’ll always respect your rules and any additions or renovations you choose to make. Happy you are here and to be a part of the discussions. It’s just hard to see these climate change deniers coming back out of the woodwork and spreading their disinformation, again. I’d love to see how they’d fare in a blog made up exclusively of scientists.
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Please don’t assume the poster actually read the Newsweek article. I referred to his post as “hodge podges” because a cursory search revealed that much of it was copied and pasted from climate change denier and right-wing websites like the following, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the John Birch Society:
https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/22289-climate-alarmists-have-been-wrong-about-virtually-everything
(He didn’t provide quotation marks for everything, maybe to make it look like he did the legwork himself.)
Additionally, IMHO, someone claiming to be a former school board member and retired school counselor (click on the poster’s name) who thinks peer-reviews in scholarly journals are given by people who all have the same view points, and who is also unable to read the References on Wikipedia to identify the peer-reviewed articles, is most likely seriously ignorant, or cognitively impaired, and/or is just playing wit us and doesn’t really want to know about the science around climate change.
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Activists Fear EPA Cuts ‘Will Be Borne by Lungs’
By Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
11 March 17
Trump administration’s zeal for deregulation seen by environmentalists as a recipe for fossil fuel cronyism, runaway climate change and toxic water crises
…In 2009 the EPA determined that greenhouse gas emissions “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations”, opening the door to regulation. Donald Trump’s crusade against government strictures could target this finding, effectively making it official US policy that burning fossil fuels poses no threat to Americans, despite a mountain of scientific literature to the contrary.
“I suspect the president and his team are doing due diligence in this area and I’m hopeful they will request that the administrator reviews the endangerment finding,” said Tom Pyle, who served on Trump’s EPA transition team…
“The president has worked diligently to fulfill his promises and I am confident he will do so,” Pyle said. “The Clean Air Act was abused by the previous administration to fit their agenda. It’s up to Congress to make a decision on CO2.”
… it’s clear that America’s environmental laws are undergoing the most radical shakeup since the 1970s. Rules around climate change, water pollution and vehicle fuel standards are all in the process of being redrawn. Coal, oil and gas companies are being ushered onto public land and waters. Areas of scientific research are set to be sidelined…
Trump has already signed measures that allow miners to dump waste into streams, and that facilitate the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. The Clean Water Act, which Obama used to expand protections for the drinking water of 117 million Americans, is also being reviewed to “evaluate whether it is stifling economic growth or job creation”.
The administration is now expected to turn its attention to unravelling the Clean Power Plan, reportedly without a replacement. The plan, a centerpiece Obama-era climate policy, sets emissions limits on coal-fired power plants and is currently being challenged in court by over a dozen Republican-controlled states. The Trump administration may drop the legal defense of the plan….
The White House, following Trump’s lead that the EPA should be reduced to “tidbits”, wants to slash the regulator’s budget by 25%, laying off one in five staff. While the final budget is likely to be less severe, critics have noted that the proposed cuts land heaviest on minority and low-income communities. The cuts would effectively dismantle the office of environmental justice, help for Alaskan villages, and programs for support for minority-owned small businesses and climate adaptation.
“These cuts would have a devastating impact upon the health of tens of millions of people across the country,” said Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.
“The brunt of these cuts will be borne by people’s hearts and lungs and disproportionately effect those in the major metropolitan areas and those who are poor and can’t fend for themselves. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t see this budget changing that much.”…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/11/trump-scott-pruitt-epa-environmental-deregulation?CMP=share_btn_link
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Explain to me how a $54 billion increase in “defense” spending—when we are not at war—is “draining the swamp”?
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This Tiny Program Keeps Our Coasts Safe. Trump’s Gutting It, of Course.
By Emma Foehringer Merchant, Grist
12 March 17
…The Trump administration reportedly plans to slash the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and gut federal funding for NOAA’s Sea Grant program….
Though hardly a household name, Sea Grant funds important work, supporting over 3,000 scientists and paying for coastal research through 33 university programs. Sea Grant projects shed light on sea-level rise, ocean acidification, the effect of melting glaciers on kelp beds, and much, much else.
Congress created the Sea Grant program in 1966 in part to improve scientific understanding for the fishing industry. Since then, it has helped pay for projects that encourage commercial fishers to adopt sustainable practices off the coast of Ventura, California. It has backed efforts to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and to forecast the loss of wetlands from hurricanes hitting Louisiana.
Sea Grant directors get federal money and hustle to match it with private and state investment for research. Sometimes they manage to double what the government gives them. But without a federal commitment, the program would be finished, says MaryAnn Wagner, a spokesperson for Washington Sea Grant…
The Trump administration reportedly wants to use the cuts to NOAA and its $73 million Sea Grant program to help pay for a $54 billion boost in military spending….
A NOAA analysis shows the program helped support $575 million in economic development and more than 20,000 jobs in 2015. ..
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NY Post had an article saying that the Great Barrier Reef is dead. While fact checking reveals this as an exaggeration, the truth is that it’s in big trouble as are all the coral reefs.
Maybe Trump reads the Post? Get something going here, Donald? Regardless of the causes, is this really the right time to be cutting that departments’ budget and keeping decades worth of research data in a vault?
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