The Trump administration disbanded a federal advisory panel on climate change.
One way to deal with climate change is to pretend it isn’t happening, and to refuse to listen to any scientists.
The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel.
This is in keeping with the administration’s hostility to science. Remember this when you hear Secretary DeVos urging students to study STEM courses. She doesn’t mean it. She wants them to study religion and learn science from the Bible.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I love the part where they are not going to take rising sea levels into account. Katrina and Sandy are two examples of disastrous flooding that quickly come to mind. I happen to live in a flood zone and I take the issue of rising sea levels quite seriously.
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The frightening part is, like everything else it is not Trump. It is the whole Republican party .
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And commenters on this site were wailing about a Hillary Clinton presidency…..Sheesh.
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I believe Devos DOES support student studies in STEM courses with a goal of creating a modernized, capable, efficient, tech-savvy generation of worker bees.
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I once read much of Diane Ravitch’s works on Education, but haven’t followed her for several years (recovering from family losses, etc.).
I am surprised to hear her putting out thoughts that mirror and parrot the Left’s talking points since the Dem Party lost the elections.
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There’s an easy solution to that: if you don’t like those posts, don’t read them.
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Can you even imagine THAT? Smile, shrug, give the bare minimum…. More hope that doesn’t change a thing.
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What is “left”…I mean what does it mean? The Dems have for some time abandoned the teaching profession and the working class people they once stood for. Despite crushing, demoralizing defeat that should have been a refreshing slap in the face (god, who loses to Donald Trump?) the party leadership is still reluctant to come back to their abandoned constituent base and only nudges that way in a cautious manner. It’s as if they are waiting for some donor overlord to give permission for some weak incremental promise that won’t even have to be followed through on.
I’d say Diane and this forum stand in contrast to the losing “D” philosophy that has, of late, come up empty on allegiance to the people and our obligations to them.
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Patrick,
I wish the Democratic Party would mirror my talking points. I don’t mirror theirs.
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I believe Devos DOES support student studies in STEM courses with a goal of creating a modernized, capable, efficient, tech-savvy generation of worker bees.
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Belief is really something.
So are existential threats.
May help to understand why we are here. So, this is an interesting take.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/08/kurt_andersen_on_fantasyland_the_60s_and_how_we_got_trump.html
But mainly, we have to resist this insanity (as if we were never resisting insanity before.)
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http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/20/media/trump-carl-bernstein-reliable-sources/index.html
And I mean literal insanity.
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Diane,
I listen to scientists – their COMPUTER MODELS and PREDICTIONS. Is man responsible – to a degree, and I take into account all the items and regulations, legislation etc that our country has in place to reduce CO2 and man’s impact. There have been more alarmists with prognostications of dire death for us and the planet which, after awhile causes disbelief and laughter.
Fear has become the new national anthem. There’s already a word for this: climate trauma.
I read an article by Fredrick Kunkle on Portland, Oregon that wants to place a 15-dollar tax upon on bicycles for road repairs. Jonathan Maus, who founded and edits the blog BikePortland.org, found it ironic. I thought bicycles were a way of saving the planet from bad vehical emissions and an ecological and healthy alternative. Where are the Greenies uproar on this?
That led to an article about the Pied Piper of global warming or climate changes – Al Gore, who told us that Arctic sea ice would be gone by now and that Antarctica ice would be greatly diminished, wrong, ships still cannot sail the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica ice is now covering a record amount since the measurements were first taken.
Absurdity surrounds those who believe that man is totally responsible for the impending death of the world. Failed predictions and overwrought, doomsday language from University of California Professor Kenneth Watt’s 1970 statement that the world will be “11 degrees colder by the year 2000” to Climate Research Unit scientist David Viner’s 2000 statement that snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” within just a few years are part of the history of this misbegotten movement.
Gore continues the minefield of absurdity with his Inconvenient Truth sequel making the claim that the battle for the Earth’s climate could easily be compared to some of the classic struggles for human rights. Wow, that should give one a picture of an individual off balance.
“The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and women’s rights, the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; the movement to stop the toxic phase of nuclear arms race and more recently the gay rights movement.” All of these, Gore said, preceded the climate change movement, putting his crusade firmly “in the tradition of all the great moral causes that have improved the circumstances of humanity throughout our history.”
I wonder if this new movie will be shoved down our students like the first one.
We do know the following: not one of the climate change models predicted the 16-year pause in rising temperatures and all of them overstated the rise in temperature, the rise in carbon dioxide has been beneficial to earth getting greener because carbon dioxide is plant fertilizer. The oceans have risen and fallen and will continue its normal ebb and flow.
The trillions spent on global warming mitigation schemes slowed real economic growth through higher energy prices and taxes worldwide, particularly in Europe and to a lesser extent in America, thus leaving millions more people in poverty, without jobs and economic opportunity. The beneficiaries of all this spending were the crony capitalists of the ruling class, including all of the researchers who have been funded to “prove” global warming is a massive immediate threat, caused by humans, and that humans have the tools at hand to stop it.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein declared a “climate state of emergency,” saying disasters such as the Louisiana floods and California wildfires “are going to become day-to-day occurrences.”
But the most disturbing issue to arise is the population control and the desire for government to administer regulations for parents!
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano comments: ‘U.S. environmentalists are taking a page from China’s mandatory one-child policy. If these wacky climate activists believed their own literature they would realize that ‘global warming’ may lead to less kids! (See: Climate Change Kills the Mood: Economists Warn of Less Sex on a Warmer Planet ) The warmists have now graduated from regulating our light bulbs, coal plants and SUVs to regulating our family size. NPR article: ‘The climate crisis is a reproductive crisis’ – Solution? ‘A carbon tax — on kids’ – Philosopher claims ‘Climate Change” is “affecting the morality of procreation.’ ‘Scientists warn that a catastrophic tipping point is possible in the next few decades’ Earth ‘Serially Doomed’: UN Issues New 15 Year Climate Tipping Point – But UN Issued Tipping Points in 1982 & Another 10-Year Tipping Point in 1989! ) ”Philosopher Travis Rieder asks how old they will be in 2036, and, if they are thinking of having kids, how old their kids will be. “Dangerous climate change is going to be happening by then,” he says.
a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them,” Rieder says. “I’m not ready to have children because I don’t know what the climate’s gonna be like in 50 years.’ Bringing down global fertility by just half a child per woman “could be the thing that saves us,” he says. Rieder proposes that richer nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child. Think of it like a carbon tax, on kids. Sierra Club: ‘Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license’
National Public Radio (NPR) featured an academic philosopher Thursday who says morality requires Americans to stop having kids, because they will only cause more global warming.
“Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them,” NPR Travis Rieder, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, told NPR. “The situation is bleak, it’s just dark … Population engineering, maybe it’s an extreme move. But it gives us a chance.”
Rieder said America produces a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person, and the world’s poorest nations will be most affected by global warming. He suggests rich nations should stop having children to remedy this. Reducing the current birth rate to 0.5 kids per woman could be the “thing that saves us,” he said.
He does, however, acknowledge that slowing population growth would only achieve 20 to 25 percent of the cuts necessary to meet President Barack Obama’s global warming goals.
“Richer nations [should] do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents,” reports NPR, summarizing Rieder’s arguent. “The penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child.”
Rieder even dashed his own wife’s dream for a large family by only having one child.
There are entire environmental groups dedicated to the view that humans should stop having kids due to global warming and environmental issues. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, for example, claims that “voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters” and believes that humanity should commit species suicide rather than continue damaging the environment.
NPR interviews the founders of a similar group, Conceivable Future, which believes that “the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis” and advocates for abortion, smaller families and ending conventional energy.
“Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing” David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club, stated in an interview.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who advised both Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, claims that the maximum number of people Earth can support is a mere 1 billion people. As of 2016, there are more than 7.3 billion humans on Earth, making the question of which 6.3 billion people are supposed to die a fairly important one.
Dire predictions of greens have consistently failed to materialize as the number of people living in poverty has significantly declinedand the amount of food per person has steadily increased, despite population growth. The quality of life of the average person has also immeasurably improved.
Members of the general public has become more skeptical of environmentalists who claim that ecological issues will doom humanity. A 2014 Gallup poll found that 42 percent of Americans say the seriousness of global warming is “generally exaggerated” by the media, compared to 33 percent who say it’s “generally underestimated.”
The percentage of Americans who are concerned about environmental threats is declining as the threats fail to materialize. Polling indicates that most Americans agree with the goals of the environmental movement, but don’t see environmental issues as urgent problems.’
Boston Globe, the United Nations has issued a new climate “tipping point” by which the world must act to avoid dangerous global warming.
The Boston Globe noted on April 16, 2014: “The world now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Once again, the world is being warned of an ecological or climate “tipping point” by the UN.
As early as 1982, the UN was issuing a two decade tipping point. UN official Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, the “world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now.” According to Tolba in 1982, lack of action would bring “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.”
They have to end up opposing economic growth because the way they’ve been taught, economic growth is what’s destroying the planet. Progress. The increasing use of fossil fuels. All of these things that lead to economic growth, they cannot support.
The devotion to extreme environmentalism requires you to believe in slow or nonexistent economic growth, because economic growth, an expanding economy, more people working, more economic activity is destroying the climate.
But there’s another way to help the climate. A recent study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the biggest way to reduce climate change is to have fewer children.
The study concludes that four high-impact ways to reduce CO2 gas emissions include having fewer children, living without a car, avoiding airplane travel and eating a vegetarian diet.
I still love the notes on California’s Jerry Brown and Oregon’s interest in measuring and regulating “cow farts.”
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Yes, predictions are silly, given the huge fluctuations over time, but I want scientists running the show, not magical thinkers in a circus of the absurd.
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To call Trump’s advisers “magical thinkers” is a compliment. They are in fact scientifically illiterate, ignorant, and informed by bias against science. If it isn’t in the Bible, it ain’t so.
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Yes, it was generous.
Magical thinkers in a circus of the absurd before a funhouse mirror under a rock under the sea in a popular children’s TV show about a sponge.
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I play this game where I go to ed reform sites and try to find a mention of a public school.
They are “public education advocates” who CONSISTENTLY exclude public schools from their advocacy, lobbying, meetings, funding and “debates”
This is the Center for Ed Reform. Try to find a public school:
It’s remarkable, really. In a country where 90% of kids attend public schools our entire debate is dominated and driven by people who never mention public schools.
THAT is capture. It’s almost the definition. The worst part is how they completely dominate statehouses. There are whole legislative sessions exclusively devoted to charters and private school vouchers.
I saw a piece the other day where a public school principal described it as public schools are the “generic” product at the supermarket and charters and vouchers are the name brand product. She has trouble getting lawmakers to listen to her to because the moment they find out she’s part of a public school they lump her into this category they have designated inferior and not worth their time. It’s both sad and true.
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Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning".
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I add another comment – I don’t believe it is hostility to science, but maybe hostility to absurdity and over the top issues surrounding global warming/climate change. Besides the population control/having babies don’t forget all you pet lovers that recent clamoring over kitties and puppies are now another reason to worry about!
For those close to the shore – what’s new? construct those sand dunes higher, raise the houses on stilts to 10 ft higher. Flooding has always occurred. In NJ they even had an entire town disappear – South Cape May – and this before climate change became in existence – 1909. And most recently a new island has been created – with those “rising seas” off the Carolina – Shelly Island: The new island off North Carolina’s Outer Banks …
https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/shelly-island-the-new-island-off-north-carolinas-outer-banks/
Thank Trump for removing us from Pais Agreement. It has not only been a waste of money and has done real harm. Some trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars have been spent to combat global warming over the last three decades. Has the expenditure of all of this money reduced global temperatures from where they would have otherwise been? No, at least not to a measurable degree. The major governments of the world have undertaken a public policy which to date has cost far more than any benefits. The rebuttal by the advocates of all of this government spending is to say it is nothing more than a down payment on what needs to be done and the benefits will accrue to future generations.
British scientist Valentina Zharkova and her team at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, using a new model, predicted that a coming periodic reduction in the sun’s radiation will soon lead to major global cooling. For many decades, it has been known that a decrease in sun spot activity is associated with lower temperatures. Ms. Zharkova argues that we will soon enter a new “Maunder Minimum,” which refers to the period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun’s surface ceased producing its heat-releasing magnetic storms. This period coincided with the Little Ice Age — a time of much cooler temperatures and crop failures.
A number of other respected scientists have also argued that changes in solar output are more important than changes in carbon dioxide in regulating the earth’s temperature.
The debate has been quite fierce between those who believe that solar changes trump carbon dioxide and vice versa.
Remember, “climate science” is not a unified field of study like quantum physics, but a combination of many different disciplines from the people who study tree rings, ice cores, atmospheric gases, cloud science or solar output.
One climate scientist, commenting on the debate, observed that mankind might luck out with the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide, offsetting the temperature decline coming from the expected solar minimum. It may be that the solar folks are right, or the carbon dioxide folks are right or that neither is right.
What do we know? We know that extreme global warming doomsayers, like Michael Mann (of “hockey stick” fame), were telling world leaders if they did not make massive changes in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2002 — that it would be too late. Despite the fact that it is now “too late,” Mr. Mann and others are still preaching the same old gospel — and I expect they will continue to do so until the government grants and other monies run out. We do know that those like Al Gore, who told us that Arctic sea ice would be gone by now and that Antarctica ice would be greatly diminished, were wrong (ships still cannot sail the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica ice is now covering a record amount since the measurements were first taken). We do know that not one of the climate change models predicted the 16-year pause in rising temperatures and all of them overstated the rise in temperature that did occur. We do know that rise in carbon dioxide to date has been largely beneficial, with the earth getting greener (carbon dioxide is plant fertilizer).
What we also know is the trillions spent on global warming mitigation schemes slowed real economic growth through higher energy prices and taxes worldwide, particularly in Europe and to a lesser extent in America, thus leaving millions more people in poverty, without jobs and economic opportunity. The beneficiaries of all this spending were the crony capitalists of the ruling class, including all of the researchers who have been funded to “prove” global warming is a massive immediate threat, caused by humans, and that humans have the tools at hand to stop it. If your research happens to show something else, you are immediately attacked, not in a calm, objective manner, but in a rather vicious manner, as Professor Zharkova has found in the last couple of weeks. The scientific and political establishment has a vested interest in silencing the sun output theorists, because if they are right, many others’ funding and pride are at risk.
What is clear is that much is still unknown — let alone how to stop the newly labeled “climate change.” From the end of the Little Ice Age, temperatures and sea levels have been gradually rising, and mankind has been dealing with it quite well through adaptation. Old structures and piers are replaced as they wear out with stronger and higher structures. Air conditioning is invented. And all of this happens almost automatically without anyone noticing.
The Germans and others are giving up their “renewables” and moving back to coal because of cost. They would have been better off doing nothing to “stop climate change.” Until mankind knows far more than now, the safest and best course of action is to do nothing — other than, as always, adapt.
• Richard W. Rahn is chairman of Improbable Success Productions.
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This is what it is REALLY about for Trump and Cronies. Cheap + Lucrative Development where it should be forbidden.
“Donald Trump’s 8/16/2017 Executive Order removes law protecting buildings from floods and sea-level rise.
‘It’s going to be quick. It’s going to be a very streamlined process. And by the way, if it doesn’t met environmental safeguards, we’re going to approve it – very simple.’ ”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-building-floods-sea-level-infrastructure-protect-law-us-president-a7896676.html
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Gee I was going to steer away from the STEM part of the debate . But I see that may be impossible . What STEM shortage ?!!!!! . No doubt we have some openings in STEM but what exactly do they mean . We have 5 million unfilled jobs in the economy but are they unfilled jobs or are they a reflection of what economists call churn . Every day employees leave their jobs for numerous reasons and it takes time to fill these positions . So what we see is that the 5 million number in comparison to employment and the size of the economy is not all that different than when we were using stone tools . That was Krugman’s line of thought except for the stone tool part .
But undoubtedly some of that 5 million is a real shortage but just how real. Well why don’t we ask the Petroleum Engineering grads who followed Tillerson’s advise and pursued the hot ticket to prosperity only to discover that those jobs had evaporated in an oil glut .
Or those bio and bio chem majors like the young man with a PHD in bio who did my home energy audit . I doubt that is what he was trained for. As his job moved overseas with the Pharma industry. So again Krugman (who since the election is not my favorite) ” What if we go to school and pursue the training that you say we need only to discover that we are deeply in debt for jobs that soon disappear ” “Sympathy For The Luddites ”
But lets stick to computer tech for a bit . After all who really needs Bio majors or petro engineers . 500,000 thousand is the number we keep hearing for years . That sounds like a lot of people so lets train all our children to be coders . But 500,000 is barely three months of job growth needed to keep pace with population growth, a sneeze in terms of the size of the labor force of 161,000,000 . And out of that 500,000 some of that must be job churn as well. But at the same time as our tech giants bemoan a shortage of trained tech majors they have announced lay offs in their existing Tech work force . Those workers obviously did not have the right skill sets and had to go . There may be some truth to that, as technology changes . But if you have a trained programmer or designer ,why if there was a labor shortage wouldn’t you retrain him for a new set of skills. Oh I get it, his salary has advanced to the point that you are looking for a cheaper young replacement . One who is pre packaged to meet your needs right out of school and at a lower cost . But you really do not have a shortage or you would raise wages to attract workers from other companies. You would retrain those you are laying off. You might even hire that unemployed Petroleum engineer and send him for what ever training he needs to become a software engineer . I would think he has adequate math skills and if you were absolutely desperate that PHD in Bio would be learning software engineering at your firm. .
The skills gap myth serves a great function . You get to ask for increased H1b visas to lower your cost vs an American trained employee who is deeply in debt and needs higher wages. You get school systems K-U to cater to your needs churning out possibly far more grads than there are jobs for lowering your employment cost. And you can have institutions tailor programs to meet the needs of your individual company in a desperate effort to show employment potential for their degrees.
But I must have missed the point , the real gap is in moderately skilled workers . Like the skilled construction trades . We need more apprenticeships . Among those calling for more state provided training is the ABC contractors association the Business Roundtable contrived organization who pioneered the open shop model of construction. They want the States to provide more training better qualified graduates with skills they can use . Either from technical HS or community college programs . They have a tremendous shortage of skilled construction journeyman willing to work at 11-30 dollars an hour . What they are not looking to do, is go to the Construction Trades Unions who have had apprentice programs since they were mid-evil guilds . They are not willing to pay the 50-120 an hour with benefits .
That is not a shortage of skilled workers . Again if their is a shortage of workers you either raise wages or you pay for the cost of training. You do not say please STATE provide me with a skilled worker .
“A shortage of diamonds is not being able to obtain diamonds . It is not , not being able to obtain diamonds at the price you would like to pay. ” Peter Cappelli director of Wharton’s
Center for Human Resources.
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Denial of catastrophic climate disaster by the Trump administration (and most Republicans) is tantamount to treason because it threatens the national security and welfare of the American people.
Even the awful Bush/Cheney regime recognized the threat of climate change and had the Pentagon plan for the inevitable civil disturbances which will occur in a few years due to the flooding, killing heat, droughts, other extreme weather, and food and water shortages all resulting from accelerating catastrophic climate disaster.
This is another reason to impeach Trump and Pence and all the other climate change deniers who put their anti-science/market-fundamentalist beliefs/ideology (and greed) above the future of all people and the planet.
What would have happened to FDR had he said, in 1940, that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan are not real threats and, therefore, the U.S. should take no steps to prepare to defend against them?
Catastrophic climate disaster is a worse threat than that Axis of Evil because it endangers every living thing on the planet as well as our future. Denying that real threat is not merely reckless, irresponsible, foolish, and dangerous; it is treasonous.
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Ed,
When one resorts to calling another a traitor, reckless, irresponsible, foolish and dangerous because of a difference of an “opinion” you lose the battle to influence or change another to your side.
If you read the above note to Diane and one that I sent you a while back – I admit it was a couple of days later, I basically pointed out the irrational items necessary to deal with climate change.
So I ask you for your raw data, or the data (the REAL, unmanipulated data) does it shows a downturn that is actually counter to your claims, which means Paris Agreement wants TRILLIONS to fix a problem that is in fact, already fixed, and is only waiting for carbon tax implementation to scream, ‘see, we fixed it!’. The Kryptonite for Climate Change is FULL RELEASE of all measured raw data. And no, I am not a “climate scientist” but I do laugh at all the inflammatory dire prognostication and still waiting for those that are 20, 30, 40 years old since the 70s to happen
I did ask you if you started to build your arc, but don’t put all the animals on it because of their flatulence – I guess you have to blame Noah for the problem today. Invest in lumber for all of the requests to construct those ships, hope your roof has solar panels, and you bought the latest electric vehicle or at least walk or ride a bike to work to do your part! You don’t want to be like Gore the Pied Piper of this idiocy. Did you at least follow the govt request to change lightbulbs? Nothing like govt telling you what to do = Are you mowing your lawn with a gas or electric mower – Don’t forget that you have to generate that electric – fossil fuels?
I found the following in the ATLANTIC on animals and extinction issue. Interestingly, one of the study’s authors is Stanford University biology professor Paul Ehrlich, who penned the 1968 book The Population Bomb. He has admitted in reference to the current research, “I am an alarmist. My colleagues are alarmists,” and this is true. What he’s not is generally honest.
As Walter E. Williams pointed out in 2008, Ehrlich “predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and [that] ‘in the 1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.’ Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million [it’s now 326 million]. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: ‘If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.’”
Today Ehrlich says about mass-extinction episodes, “We are now moving into another one of these events that could easily, easily ruin the lives of everybody on the planet.”
Smithsonian paleontologist and extinction-event expert Doug Erwin implies that we shouldn’t because we’re not — in a mass extinction. Quoting him, the Atlantic writes, “‘If it’s actually true we’re in a sixth mass extinction, then there’s no point in conservation biology.’ … This is because by the time a mass extinction starts, the world would already be over.”
It’s also true that 99 percent of the Earth species that ever existed no longer do; as with individuals and civilizations, species eventually die. But upon reading people’s conceptions of the causes (in comments sections, for example) — mainly, overpopulation, consumption, and climate change — it’s clear our cures may be errant because our diagnoses are.
Man-caused “climate change” threatens species. While naturally occurring climatic changes (i.e., ice ages) have caused past extinctions, we don’t know of one species meeting its end because of so-called anthropogenic global warming. The man-caused problems threatening wildlife are habitat loss and, to a lesser extent, pollution.
The problem is that the Third World wants to live like us, when in reality consumption must be curtailed. Most of the habitat loss and threatened species are in Third World countries. In contrast, the United States has more forested area now than 100 years ago, with the forest volume being 380 percent greater than in 1920. Consequently, animals such as bears, cougars (a friend saw one in upstate New York), and moose are returning to old northeastern habitats.
Final comment, again = The first step in preserving the environment is to stop polluting the environmental debate with lies.
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Don’t you think it is a good idea to listen to scientists?
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Diane,
I agree that we should listen and hear them but then decide for ourselves whether some of their predictions are backed by rational information – not manipulated data to meet an objective.
Should I listen to the Stanford professor Ehlich?
Should I listen to the “Science Guy” on TV who calls for the demise of old people sooner than later? He is 61 – I thought he was talking about himself!
Should I listen to the science people worried about flatulence of pets, cows etc?
What dire prediction, called by what scientist, has been found to come true? And what raw data supports severe storms are caused by man.
Should I listen to any scientist that doesn’t take into consideration the sun’s effects?
How about the Smithsonian paleontologist and extinction-event expert Doug Erwin, mentioned above – he I could listen to, just to name one. I don’t discount the many sciences that are involved with climate and global warming – but it doesn’t take to much of a challenge to laugh at the wacko issues that surround it.
One can Google climate change and global warming and be flooded with info supporting both sides – one has to wade through and make a decision – whose predictions support their computer models? Or do we adjust to our climate changes as we have in the past and at the same time try to take care of the vehicle we live on.?
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I don’t think there is much disagreement among scientists. The consensus about climate change is overwhelming.
Of course, if you don’t trust that consensus, you probably smoke and you don’t wear a seat belt.
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Diane,
I do not smoke, but I do wear the seat belt – I don’t see the link to trusting a “consensus” in science. I guess the consensus of scientists believed the world was flat – that was a consensus
Some reasons IMHO:
Do you remember the concerns about Hillary Clinton’s health were ‘serious — could be disqualifying for the position of President of the U.S.,’ say nearly 71% of 250 physicians responding to an informal internet survey by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). The AAPS sent out an informal survey to their membership, 250 doctors. Seventy-one percent of them responded that Hillary Clinton’s health concerns could be disqualifying for the president of the United States. Twenty percent said that the concerns for her health are likely overblown but they should be addressed by a full release of her medical records. Only 2.7% responded that they were just a political attack.
So it’s settled. A consensus of scientists has suggested Hillary was not qualified.
Remember when Perry was running and his comment – “Since when did the field of science become the sole purview of left wing politicians? I don’t know about you, but I heard Al Gore talk about manmade global warming so much, I’m starting to think that his mouth may be the leading source of all this supposedly deadly carbon dioxide! When politics hijacks science, it quells true scientific debate and you can have dire consequences for the future.
Climate change exists in predictions based on computer modeling alone. There is no data, there is no evidence. It used to be freezing. Then it was global warming. Now it’s “climate change” so that any apparently abnormal weather event can be attributed to climate change. Be it a tornado, be it a two-inch rainstorm, even a hailstorm that damages a jetliner can be blamed on climate change. Yes!
Another problem popped up with the following story:
“Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets.” This is also the New York Times.
“Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, is backing a new ‘science-based’ solution to the obesity crisis: To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories.” All of a sudden scientists aren’t so good, because the New York Times has found a bunch of scientists that Coca-Cola ostensibly is paying to say that sugary drinks have nothing to do with obesity.
If Coca-Cola can find scientists and get an opinion that they want from by paying them, do you think the same thing could happen to climate change scientists and a “consensus” of them? Do you think somebody could come along and offer those scientists enough money?
Also, Diane, consider that climate change has become an industry It is a $1.5 trillion industry. This is from an insurance website. They know this because all of these various industries have to buy insurance policies and the value of these policies is $1.5 trillion. “Interest in climate change is becoming an increasingly powerful economic driver, so much so that some see it as an industry in itself whose growth is driven in large part by policymaking. The $1.5 trillion global ‘climate change industry’ grew at between 17 and 24% annually from 2005-2008,”
One of the areas of climate change that’s got the most money circulating in it is consultancy, people that consult businesses and others on how to be compliant, on how to escape any kind of sanction or what have you.
Because there is a huge consultancy aspect in climate change, it means that most of it is related to policy making. What that means is the whole thing is a trumped-up mechanism by which people can store dollars. It has nothing to do with actual science. It has nothing to do with what is actually happening. It is a trumped-up, money-making scheme disguised as an environmental crisis. And there is big money to be had from the government if a business signs on and “goes green.”
There are grants, there are waivers from tax policy, there are all kinds of favorable things that can happen to you if you get on board the whole idea of man-made global warming. In other words, government mandates and policies are what drive the entire climate change industry.
All this talk about rising sea levels and all this talk about the dead polar bears, and all of this talk about violent extreme weather is all just fodder to facilitate public support by which policy making is implemented and money can be allocated to it in the federal budget. But it’s an even more intricately woven web of deceit than even that.
. It has its own cronyism, corporate-government cronyism.
Increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from 0.03 per cent to 0.04 per cent has not caused and is not causing catastrophic runaway global warming.
Dishonest references to “97 per cent of scientists” equate a mild warming influence, which most scientists agree with and more importantly can demonstrate, with a catastrophic warming influence – which most don’t agree with and none can demonstrate.
Climate change, contains every element of extreme liberalism and socialism that needs to be understood and opposed. Climate change is close to health care in terms ofto totally controlling the way people live their lives.
You have succeeded in restricting people’s liberty and freedom in perhaps the greatest way you can. That’s why climate change or global warming
It has the expansion of government, it has decisions and mandates of what kind of car you can and can’t drive, what kind of food you can and can’t eat, what you can do with your own private property.
But take a look at why I said earlier that the data was manipulated: fake data came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, the people that give you your weather forecast. The scientists you seemingly want me to believe – the 97% who are in consensus on this issue –
It was exposed by a whistleblower in the organization who had seen enough, a scientist named Dr. Bates, and he had had his fill of the lies and the distortions. The Daily Mail on in the U.K. revealed a landmark paper exaggerated global warming. It was rushed through in time to influence the Paris Agreement. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules.
The first substantive indication we had that this issue is all faked was a hack of an email server at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. in which the whistleblower there was somebody within the climate change movement, the so-called scientific community.
By the way, there’s another reason that there is no consensus in science. Science is not a democratic thing. A consensus of scientists thinking the earth is flat, for example, it doesn’t make the earth flat. In this issue, it means that they found all the scientists who are being paid via the grant process to produce research that the sponsors want.
Bates told the U.K. Daily Mail “that [NOAA] breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and [U.K. Prime Minster] David Cameron at the U.N. climate conference in Paris in 2015,” which, by the way, Trump says we’re out of the agreement
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I don’t think that “scientists” believed the world was flat for several hundreds of years, and those who believed that were not scientists
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Diane,
Are you ready to leave Earth? A well known scientist says Trump, by leaving Paris Agreement, will subject us to acid rain and 250 degree celsius.
One most notable scientist blames Donald Trump risks ‘turning Earth into Venus’ with 250 degree temperature.
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord said it could lead to a “tipping point” that “turns Earth into Venus”.
“We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible.
“Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.”
“By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children.”
Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect causing it to reach such a high temperature that lead would melt on its surface.
He told the BBC: “I fear evolution has inbuilt greed and aggression to the human genome. There is no sign of conflict lessening, and the development of militarised technology and weapons of mass destruction could make that disastrous.
“The best hope for the survival of the human race might be independent colonies in space.”
Who is this scientist that predicts doom and gloom acid rain etc?
Stephen Hawking! – I guess i’ll continue to challenge this “science”
at Lady Mitchell Hall in Cambridge
CREDIT: PA
Nick Allen, washington
2 JULY 2017 • 8:22PM
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If you believe in Trump, we live in different worlds. Those of us who live in NYC have thought him a loudmouth womanizer and publicity seeker for many years.
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Diane,
I live in the same country – USA, but do not live in the world of DeBlasio’s NYC!
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Diane,
I found the following an interesting observation on the climate change. Making a wager on models of predictions that alarmists have seems to silence some of the scientists – not only from the UN but the EPA as well.
Dr. South, an award-winning emeritus professor of forestry at Auburn University, is well-known for his expertise in the area of wildfires. In fact, in 2014, he testified before the U.S. Senate, blasting those who blame human emissions of CO2 for forest fires. But even he admits he does not know what, exactly, will happen in terms of acreage burned in the years ahead. He is also very suspicious of the man-made global-warming alarmists and their predictions — and for good reason.
For years, Professor South has been making, or at least offering to make, $1,000 bets with people who pretend to know what they are talking about. His thinking is that people who truly believe what they are saying should be happy to put their money where their mouths are, so to speak. During his Senate testimony, for example, South offered senators a wager on whether sea levels would truly rise at the rate predicted by man-made global-warming theorists. There were no takers. He also made headlines when he offered a $1,000 bet on sea levels to globalist billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a climate alarmist better known for his fanatical advocacy on behalf of civilian disarmament, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and three-term mayor of New York City. His offer to bet Bloomberg was about sea levels in New York City.
Now, South is challenging the mighty EPA to put its money where its mouth is. In an open letter addressed to U.S. EPA Director of Strategy at Remedy Plan Allison Crimmins, South asked if she was willing to bet $1,000 on the EPA’s predictions about the extent of wildfires in the contiguous United States by the year 2020. No takers in EPA
Professor South is not the first to use bets in this way. In 1980, for example, the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager between Professor Julian Simon and population-control zealot Paul Ehrlich was made. Ehrlich (along with fellow extremists such as Obama’s “science” czar John “forced abortions” Holdren) had been making ludicrous “predictions” about supposed “overpopulation” leading to future resource scarcity. Holdren predicted that a billion people would die in “carbon-dioxide induced famines” as part of a new “Ice Age” by the year 2020.
So, Simon, a business professor with an understanding of economics, made Ehrlich a bet that, no matter what resources Ehrlich chose to track, the inflation-adjusted price would go down over the next decade. Ehrlich chose five metals, And he lost on every single one, big time, sending Simon a check in 1990.
Man-made global-warming (and -cooling) theorists have been making ludicrous predictions for decades that consistently prove to be false. Claims about increasing fires have been a regular talking point, with even then-President Barack Obama claiming in 2012 that people can deny “the overwhelming judgment of science,” but “none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and powerful storms.” Ironically, all three of the examples he provided of what he called the “threat of climate change” actually discredited his argument.
As Forbes magazine pointed out the year after Obama’s prediction, the number of wildfires has plummeted 15 percent since 1950, and according to the National Academy of Sciences, that trend is likely to continue for decades. On “droughts,” a 2012 study published in the alarmist journal Nature noted that there had been “little change in global drought over the past 60 years.” The UN’s own climate alarmists were even forced to conclude that in many regions of the world, “droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter.” And on storms, the predictions could not have been more wrong, with hurricanes and tornadoes striking in record-setting low numbers in recent years.
Climate alarmists have been wrong about virtually everything, stretching back to the 1970s when some of today’s man-made warming theorists were man-made cooling zealots literally calling on governments to melt the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot.
73 models are used for computer prediction. 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.”
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Are you a scientist? I assume you read the climate change denial websites for your information.
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