Scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency were scheduled to speak at a conference about the condition and future of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
At the last minute, the agency told them they were not allowed to speak, presumably because the conference and their testimony involved climate change.
EPA administrator believes there is no such thing as climate change. Apparently there is also no such thing as science. “Science” is what he and industry lobbyists say it is.
EPA should be called the Environmental (Non)Protection Administration so long as Pruitt and his ilk are in charge.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Environmental Destruction Agency.
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Good one. Another: Environmental Dysfunction Agency. I could have fun with this one.
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Unbelievable. Good GAWD…JUNK SCIENCE. Too bad that Dump was told to put on the solar glasses just before totality (solar eclipse). Don’t save that dump.
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Global warming is turning out to be more of a problem than they thought it was going to be. It is getting to the point where the deniers are going to have to be held accountable for the damage they are promoting.
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Firing squads would be in order . Although negligent homicide may not rise to that level . What level does negligent mass murder rise to . We can argue that events that are happening now have not been caused by their denialism the horse being out of the barn long ago . It will be difficult to argue that in the future.
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Hold the deniers accountable, but only with facts, not prognostications of the future based on erroneous computer models – that even NASA claims that were fudged. So we will all be gone by the time you believe something will happen- some deniers have been waiting for any of the alarms to come true after decades.
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Right, let’s let our grandchildren deal with the mess we made.
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A report from German scientists that flying insect populations have dropped by 75 percent since 1989. Yes. 75 percent in 8 years. That’s ecosystem collapse.
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https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-19/germany-flying-insects-are-disappearing-rapid-rate
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The previous one, a news story. Here, the actual report:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809
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Why is this not the cover story for every major news outlet in the world? Because those outlets are owned by the leaders of the New Feudal Order and because our political leaders are idiots. This is the real news, the news that matters.
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Our political leadership are not idiots . They are willing accomplices. That is both parties.A perception the Republicans have been trying to accomplish for years . So deficits do not matter as Darth Cheney once said . But what is also true is that trickle down tax cuts have not including Reagan stimulated the economy. So why do we have Charles Schumer seeking corporate cuts last October before the election . Hold it I have to run for the bathroom again my breakfast is coming up..
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I sent this letter to Senator Todd Young (R) of Indiana. The quote comes from an official email that he sent out to Hoosiers. It’s and out and out lie.
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Quote: “Todd Young: The President made a convincing case that this tax reform package will boost the economy and increase the take-home pay of every Hoosier. For the first time in 30 years, the prospects for a simpler tax code that lowers taxes for the working class and provides relief for small business owners looks good.”
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How about telling the facts of what would happen? The Trump tax plan will give tiny little cuts to most Americans. If you earn $40,000 to $50,000 The institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates you’ll get a tax savings of about $8 a week. However, if you have an income of $10 million, you’re going to save about a million-and-a-half dollars a year. As much as two-third of the tax cuts will go to the 1 percent.
President Trump’s proposed tax overhaul would shower billions of dollars in tax cuts upon the wealthiest Americans—including President Trump’s family and members of his administration. An analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows President Trump’s family and Trump’s Cabinet members would, combined, reap a $3.5 billion windfall from the proposed repeal of the estate tax alone. Trump’s plan would cap the tax rate on “pass-through income” at 25 percent—a move that would also shower millions in savings upon millionaires and billionaires.
And this fits with a fundamental principle the Republicans have been pursuing for a long time. It boils down to: The rich aren’t investing and creating jobs, because they don’t have nearly enough money, and so we need to get them money. And the way the Republicans want to get it to them is tax cuts first, and then, when there’s no money because of the tax cuts, to take away help for children, the disabled, the elderly and the poor.
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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Mr. President, this is not a bad budget bill. It is an horrific budget bill, an extremely cruel bill and the most unfair budget ever presented in the modern history of our country. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, this budget provides $1.9 trillion in tax breaks for the top 1 percent. At a time when millions of working families are struggling to keep their heads above water, this budget cuts Medicaid by a trillion dollars. Fifteen million Americans could lose their health insurance.
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Interesting. I was in Germany for a couple of weeks this summer and noticed that the number of dead bugs on the windshield of my rental car seemed considerably lower than it normally was. Not scientific, but I hadn’t thought about it again until I read your post.
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A few years back, I was visiting friends in North Carolina in the summer. They took me to a swamp at dusk. We stood there on the bank, and there were no sounds of frogs. When I was a boy, that sound would have been deafening. In Florida where I live now, in the past, there would have been, in the summer, this astonishing nightly cacophony of the insects–the hissing of summer lawns. Now, almost silent. This is not just interesting. It is deeply disturbing.
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Changes sometimes happen so slowly that few people notice.
Jeremy Jackson is an ecologist who has documented the profound impacts that humans have had on the oceans in recent decades.
See “How we wrecked the oceans”
Things just keep getting worse and we go along with business as usual as if nothing has changed.
Personally, I don’t think we are wise enough to save ourselves.
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It reminds me of the tale about the frog in boiling water. Why continue to do damage to the environment when we all live here. No, we can’t fool mother nature.
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The boiling frog is a parable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of threats that arise gradually.
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The frog in slowly heated water tale is actually a myth.
People have done the experiment and it actually turns out that frogs jump out before the water is hot enough to kill them.
They are smarter than humans in that regard.😀
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Ol Ma Nature always wins in the end. And, like David Coleman’s thought, she doesn’t really give a shit about homo supposedly sapiens.
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Ma Nature will keep sending us hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other memos until we wake up and defend her
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I don’t see it as much as defending Mother Nature as the Earth and universe is far greater than the puny homo supposedly sapiens. What we need, and perhaps it can be viewed as defending the earth, is an ethos in which all view the earth as a very limited resource and in order for humans to continue to survive as we do now we will need some major adjustments in how some view the earth and its resources-in other words to learn to live sustainably rather than exploitatively. And that goes for very basic human interactions also.
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Indeed, Duane, nature always bats last.
And I have to agree with Bob: this research is probably the most frightening bit of climate/ecosystem news I’ve ever heard, because it clearly implies a systems collapse.
When the base of the food chain is being destroyed, then look out below…
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“The War on Nature”
“Man versus Nature”
What we choose
Man is in danger
Bound to lose
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It’s this kind of thinking that makes the job that much tougher. Big business must love having God on their side:
http://time.com/4800000/tim-walberg-god-climate-change/
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My brother believes that God controls the weather. I don’t have political discussions with my brother.
He also believes Pope Francis is controlled by satan. Obama had FEMA camps to kill everyone.
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Carol,
I have siblings like that. We talk about other things. When my sister visited, I made her watch MSNBC with me. Cruel.
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Well, once the food chain collapses we can always turn to Soylent Green for our nutritional needs, right?
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I had a past life in South America in a canabalistic tribe. Didn’t live very long. I must have been really tasty.
If people get desperate enough, anything can happen. The military has been preparing its bases for climate change. I find that interesting because they prepare but next to nothing is being done in the US.
Miami is rebuilding its roads higher since lower level roads have flooded. That approach is expensive and won’t solve future problems of increased flooding.
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How unfortunate that tRump has come into power. Neither he nor his administration has any concern for our health or the environment. I wonder, are they stupid? Surely even the wealthy have to breath air and drink water.
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Report: Pollution Kills 3 Times More than AIDS, TB And Malaria Combined…NPR
SUSAN BRINK
Exposure to polluted air, water and soil caused nine million premature deaths in 2015, according to a report published Thursday in The Lancet.
The causes of death vary — cancer, lung disease, heart disease. The report links them to pollution, drawing upon previous studies that show how pollution is tied to a wider range of diseases than previously thought.
Those studies observed populations exposed to pollutants and compared them to people not exposed. The studies have shown that pollution can be an important cause of diseases — many of them potentially fatal — including asthma, cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders, birth defects in children, heart disease, stroke and lung disease.
The nine million figure adds up to 16 percent of all deaths worldwide, killing three times more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Pollution is responsible for 15 times more deaths than wars and all other forms of violence.
“No country is unaffected,” the report notes. But 92 percent of those deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries.
“Pollution in rapidly developing countries is just getting worse and worse and worse. And it isn’t getting the attention it deserves. It needed to be rigorously studied,” says Dr. Philip Landrigan, pediatrician and professor of environmental medicine and global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is the lead author of the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health along with Richard Fuller, president of Pure Earth, which works to clean up pollution in poor countries….
China is doing a very good job in controlling their pollution. They still have a long way to go but they have a national plan for attacking air, water and soil pollution and they’re becoming a world leader in the adoption of renewable energy — wind and solar.
Susan Brink is a freelance writer who covers health and medicine. She is the author of The Fourth Trimester, and co-author of A Change of Heart.
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I found this report about pollution on a different site. Here is the full article:
http://www.tinyurl.com/y9uata2l
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2018 off-year elections are crucial, critical even, to begin to protect and to preserve what we have left to give our young. 25th amendment, anyone?
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Don’t count on the 25th Amendment. Trump’s sycophantic cabinet won’t impeach him
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The lack of education of these people in power, appalling. Very, very dangerous.
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And then we have tRump who believes he is incredibly smart and has good genes. He has fantastic intuition so he doesn’t have to study or learn anything. This is a malignant narcissist in action. What is unfortunate is the number of people who believe this nonsense. How much damage is this looney and his ignorant appointees going to do?
What will it take to make the Republicans in Congress begin to speak out? Are they all that indebted to their wealthy campaign contributors? They are determined to get a huge tax break for the wealthy and then cut needed social services such as Medicare, Medicaid and privatize Social Security. Pence would be much more to their liking.
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Donald Trump: Eugenics?
Fascist Archives
Published on Sep 28, 2016
Trump gives us clues that he is an eugenist.
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What I find just as — if not even more — frightening are the dumb things (supposedly) “educated” people do.
It is often the case that many people at the very top were educated at what are supposed to be our best schools (Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Wharton, Cornell, Chicago, etc) but nonetheless do some exceedingly dumb things year after year after year. Worst of all, they never seem to learn from the “mistakes” their predecessors have made.
Of course, some of the things are not “mistakes” at all and are done to advance corporate business interests but many of things they do are just plain dumb.
No Camel Left Behind and Test to the Top are just two examples on a list that is waaaay too long to fit in this comment box.
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“Science is way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each other. Have scientists known sin? Of course. We have misused science, just we have every other tool at our disposal. And that’s why we can’t afford to leave it in the hands of a powerful few. The more science belongs to all of us, the less likely it is to be misused.”
–Neil deGrasse Tyson, COSMOS: A Space-time Odyssey, Episode “Unafraid of the Dark”
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Have they known sin. My God. The hubris that comes of figuring out how to build electric can openers, as if everything–the universe, other people–were an electric can opener.
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Scientists are human. Just like everyone else, they suffer from biases and the tendency to fool themselves and others.
The ONLY thing that keeps them honest is Nature.
Because, as physicist Richard Feynman pointed out, Nature can not be fooled.
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As Diane said in another thread, Pruitt is protecting pollution. So, he’s really in charge of the Environmental Pollution Administration.
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Well, if it hasn’t hit you yet that we are well on the way to a fascist state, I don’t know what can convince you. The only difference now is that there seems to be no desire to hide it or obfuscate. The Trump administration is literally saying it outright and giving us all the finger.
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Harry Belafonte agrees with you (as do I): https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-belafonte-warning_us_59ed49dfe4b0a484d0640117
For those of you who aren’t aware, Belafonte pretty much bankrolled Martin Luther King, Jr.’s activism in the 1960s. He’s a substantive voice on public issues whose opinions should be heeded.
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I find some of the alarmists a joke:
You know, there’s also some arrogance-in this how long has the earth been around? Some of you think 10,000 years. Some think millions. Whatever the number — doesn’t matter — who is to say that the climate as it exists during our lifetimes is the norm? cooling. Isn’t it magic that the norm just happens to be when we are alive? Why wasn’t the norm in the preindustrial age? Why wasn’t the norm during one of the glacial ages? Why wasn’t the norm during one of the heat periods? Why is it now? Because it’s convenient, and it makes all of their bogus science seem to work.
In a NY Times article – They began to incorporate weather extremes as evidence of climate change. “Among the more significant of the study’s findings is that it is possible to attribute some extreme weather to climate change. The field known as ‘attribution science’ has advanced rapidly in response to increasing risks from climate change.”
Attribution science!
This whole climate change thing is everybody’s a victim –
victims of things that they can’t control but they – Gore and his flock – can help you control it. If they give you in government all the power, you can help them; you can stop these horrible things. Every sales pitch victimizes whoever is going to be hurt by whatever. And naturally, Republicans want people to get sick and they want them to have dirty water and dirty air and all this ’cause they’re victims.
Algore is back. He’s got a sequel to his first book and movie, An Inconvenient “Lie.” chock-full of literal lies. straight deception. The climate debate going on in scientific and political circles for the last forty years knows that those who truly believe that man is responsible for the impending death of the world are prone to some fairly ridiculous statements. 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 statement (in the year 2000) that snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” within just a few years, the history of this misbegotten movement has been written in failed predictions and overwrought, doomsday language.
Even in this minefield of absurdity, however, Al Gore can manage to chart new ground. Perhaps desperate to get some attention for his forthcoming Inconvenient Truth sequel, Gore made the tasteless and outrageous claim last week that the battle for the Earth’s climate could easily be compared to some of the classic struggles for human rights.
“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.”
By now with all the “PREDICTIONS” derived from computer models – we should have been fried, drowned, cities under water and yet we have to deal with our globe blowing up
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Whom to believe: Trump and Pruitt or the GAO:
GAO: Climate Change Already Costing US Billions in Losses
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/10/24/us/politics/ap-us-climate-change-costs.html
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jscheidell,
I have a very close friend who’s extremely accomplished in the area of landscape architecture. He does large scale projects for some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Just completed a 3 year project, sculpting an island for a multi-billionaire‘s pleasure. MANY of his projects are built overlooking oceans and seas, all over the world.
He attended a symposium last weekend specific to the ways in which climate change will effect the planet, both on our coasts and the banks of our larger lakes/rivers, in terms of rising sea levels and, in some areas, sinking ground levels. He, and many of the other audience members were there in order to be informed on how best to advise, plan, and build large scale projects for the interests that they represent.
The speakers were from all over the world and they are not shills or plants. They are experts in their fields.
It all might sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo to the layman, but people with influence and money are listening, as are governments from around the world who want to safeguard their populations. This is no small matter.
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JScheidell,
I think you are right. No need to worry about climate change until we have a hurricane once a week, and the sea level has risen about three feet, swallowing up a lot of islands. Why plan ahead? Let our children worry about it when it is too late to take preventive steps.
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This just came out on NPR. It looks like the only GOP members who have the guts to speak out against tRump are the ones who will not be running again. How sad that the rest of them keep quiet. We hear that they realize tRump is unstable but do nothing.
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Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said in an interview with the Arizona Republic on Tuesday that he will not seek re-election in 2018. He said to the paper, “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.”
Flake decried the current coarse tone of American politics in a speech on the Senate floor.
“We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve,” Flake said.
Flake has been a frequent critic of President Trump since the 2016 campaign and, as a target of right-wing frustration himself, has been seen as vulnerable to a GOP primary challenge in 2018.
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Hey, we now have three Senators who are telling the truth about tRump. All three are dropping out and are free to tell the truth.
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‘An Utterly Untruthful President’…The Atlantic
Trump and Senator Bob Corker are at it again, as the Tennessee Republican says the commander in chief is not a role model for the nation’s children and vows not to support him for reelection.
In a trio of television interviews, the increasingly outspoken Tennessee senator repeated his dim assessment of Trump’s performance and went further than he—or any elected Republican—has gone in questioning the president’s fitness for office. Calling Trump “an utterly untruthful president,” Corker said he was not a role model for the nation’s children and declared unequivocally that he would not support him for reelection in 2020. “He’s obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president,” Corker said on CNN. He accused Trump of “constant non-truth telling” and said he would be remembered for “the debasing of our nation.”
Read More:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/corker-trump-feud/543801/?utm_source=eb
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Climate Change Will Bring Major Flooding to New York Every 5 Years
And that’s only counting the floods caused by hurricanes and tropical storms.
New York is a city on the water. For hundreds of years, its rivers and harbor have worked to its advantage, bringing it speedy transportation and pleasant temperatures.
The next couple hundred years may not be as smooth sailing. Global warming, caused by the release of carbon-dioxide pollution into the atmosphere, will cause the seas to rise and the storms to intensify around the city. A new study from an all-star list of climate scientists attempts to estimate how a few of climate change’s symptoms—higher seas, large storm surge, and more intense hurricanes—will intersect in New York over the next 300 years.
It isn’t pretty. Sea-level rise will make every tropical cyclone that hits New York more likely to release damaging floods. For instance, storm floods of nearly seven-and-a-half feet once occurred only a couple times per millennium. In today’s somewhat warmed climate, 7.5-foot floods are projected to happen every 25 years. By 2030, these floods will occur every five years.
Read More:
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/climate-change-nyc-floods/543708/?utm_source=eb
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Algore on the Today show questioned by Willie Geist said, “Okay. You got your inconvenient sequel, Truth to Power, coming up on August 4th.
Every prediction Gore made has proven wrong. He should be shamed off the public stage, every prediction. Manhattan was to be underwater by now –
Let me give you some of the predictions he made ten years ago. Manhattan was going to be underwater because of Greenland ice melt. Mount Kilimanjaro was going to be snow free.We would be battling rapidly rising temperatures; stronger, more frequent storms.
He blames climate change for the breakoff of an iceberg in Antarctica,
Even the climate scientists say, “No, no, no, no, this was not part of climate change. This was a natural calving.” Even wacko climate change people are disagreeing with Gore on that, and even Gore admitted that the Paris accords would do nothing about climate change, that the Paris accords will not mean anything.
What the Paris accords were for was to “show a sense of purpose. So he said on CBS Sunday, “If we don’t act now, our children will inherit a world of stronger storms, worsening floods, deeper droughts, mega fires, tropical diseases spreading throughout vulnerable populations in all parts of the earth, melting ice caps flooding coastal cities, unsurvivable heat extremes, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees.”
How can we stop a stronger storm?
And they want us to believe that altering carbon emissions is going to do this? Furthermore, “deeper droughts.” How do we stop them now?
If there is a drought that we’ve caused, we can end the drought by what? Making it rain!
Why can’t we make it rain wherever we want to, then? “Mega fires”? Well, mega fires happen every year and have happened every year, and they’re part of nature. Even the California fires were partially started by n illegal alien who was twice deported, but in Sonoma county – a safe haven – sanctuary county – – big price to pay
“Tropical diseases spreading through vulnerable populations, melting ice caps…”
Coastal cities are not being flooded.
“Unsurvivable heat extremes.”
More people die from cold than heat? More people freeze to death every year in the world than die from heat. So global warming would actually be good, if there were any of it.
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Miami is already having to work to repair flooding.
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New Study Shows Increased Flooding, Accelerated Sea-Level Rise in Miami Over Last Decade
Researchers suggest using local sea-level rise projections to better protect community from coastal floods
April 04, 2016
MIAMI—A new University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led study found that Miami Beach flood events have significantly increased over the last decade due to an acceleration of sea-level rise in South Florida. The researchers suggest that regional sea-level projections should be used in place of global projections to better prepare for future flood hazards in the region.
To quantify the flood hazard in Miami Beach, the UM Rosenstiel School researchers analyzed tide and rain-gauge records, media reports, insurance claims, and photos of flooding events on Miami Beach and in Miami since 2006. The insurance claims and media reports helped the researchers pinpoint the date and type of flood events.
“Our results show that the effect of sea-level rise is real and affecting the daily life of people living in low-lying coastal communities, such as Miami Beach,” said Shimon Wdowinski, UM Rosenstiel School research professor of marine geosciences, and lead author of the study.
The results showed that the flooding frequency in Miami Beach has significantly increased after 2006 mainly due to increasing number of high-tide flooding events. The increased flooding frequency coincides with acceleration in the rate of sea level rise in South Florida. The average rate of sea-level rise increased by 6 millimeters per year over the last decade – from 3 millimeters per year before 2006 to 9 millimeters per year after 2006.
The study also provides new evidence that connects the weakening of the Gulf Stream with sea-level rise along the US Atlantic coast.
Florida is one of the most vulnerable areas to sea-level rise due to its low elevation, large population concentrations, and economic importance. Accelerated rates of sea-level rise have caused a significant increase in flooding frequency in several coastal communities in Florida.
The study, titled “Increasing flooding hazard in coastal communities due to rising sea level: Case study of Miami Beach, Florida,” was published in the June 2016 issue, Vol. 126 of the journal Ocean and Coastal Management. The study’s authors include: Shimon Wdowinski, Ronald Bray and Ben P. Kirtman from the UM Rosenstiel School; and Zhaohua Wu from Florida State University. The study was supported by a grant for NASA.
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About the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School
The University of Miami is one of the largest private research institutions in the southeastern United States. The University’s mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940’s, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world’s premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, visit: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu.
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Climate Change..The National Institutes of Health is preparing for climate change. Researchers are studying the effects of various diseases on human life in a world that has changed.
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Climate is the average weather in a place over a period of time. Climate change is major change in temperature, rainfall, snow, or wind patterns lasting for many years. It can be caused by natural factors or by human activities. Today climate changes are occurring at an increasingly rapid rate.
Climate change can affect our health. It can lead to
More heat-related illness and deaths
More pollen, mold, and air pollution. This can cause an increase in allergies, asthma, and breathing problems.
Mosquitoes and other insects that carry diseases spreading to areas that used to be too cold for them.
More floods and rising sea levels. This can cause an increase in contamination of food and water.
More extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and wildfires. These can cause death, injuries, stress, and mental health problems.
Researchers are studying the best ways to lessen climate change and reduce its impact on our health.
NIH: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Latest News
Climate Change May Trigger 60,000 More Premature Deaths by 2030 (07/31/2017, HealthDay)
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More projections – hope someone is around to see it – we were told this planet would fry us before then!
Want to earn some dollars on your info? , Professor David South, if their predictions for even one year turn out to be accurate or exceeded, South will send the EPA scientists a check for $1,000. So far, though, not a single EPA scientist or official has even responded to the offer, much less put their own money on the line in support of their forecasts.
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.
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,
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.
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. “Dear Director Crimmins,” South wrote. “I enjoy making $1,000 bets with folks who think they can predict the future. For example, I made a bet with Dr. Julian Simon on the future price of sawlogs and he sent me a $1,000 check. I won a similar bet with Dr. Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi on the price of oil (and he sent me a check for $1,242).”
His offer to bet Bloomberg was about sea levels in New York City.
In particular, South pointed to an EPA report entitled “Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action.” In the 2015 report, which explores the purported “significant benefits to the U.S. of global action on climate change,” EPA officials predict wildfires would be worse without a global “climate” regime. According to the report, without reducing emissions of greenhouse gases — CO2 released by humans makes up a fraction of one percent of all such gases in the atmosphere — so-called “climate change” is “projected to dramatically increase the area burned by wildfires across most of the contiguous U.S.”
And don’t pay attention to claims of 500 year flood events, which most hydrologists dislike because we don’t have enough measurements over time to determine such things, especially when they also depend on our altering of the landscape over time.
Bill Read, a former director of the National Hurricane Center was asked by a CNN news anchor whether he thought that Harvey was made worse because of global warming. Read’s response was basically, No.
“Unprecedented” doesn’t necessarily mean it represents a new normal. It can just be a rare combination of events. In 2005 the U.S. was struck by many strong hurricanes, and the NHC even ran out of names to give all of the tropical storms. Then we went almost 12 years without a major (Cat 3 or stronger) hurricane strike.
Even with the system stalling, the greatest multi-day rainfall total as of 9 a.m. Monday morning is just over 39.7 inches, with many locations recording over 20 inches. We should recall that Tropical Storm Claudette in 1979 (a much smaller and weaker system than Harvey) produced a 43 inch rainfall total in only 24 hours in Houston.
There is coastal lake sediment evidence of catastrophic hurricanes which struck the Florida panhandle over 1,000 years ago, events which became less frequent in the most recent 1,000 years.
Weather disasters happen, with or without the help of humans.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in its most recent scientific assessment that “[n]o robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes … have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin,” and that there are “no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency.”
Further, “confidence in large-scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones [such as ‘Superstorm’ Sandy] since 1900 is low.”
For instance, Vox wrote that man-made global warming did not actually cause Harvey, but simply exacerbated the natural disaster by creating heavier rainfalls.
But this claim is discredited by University of Washington climatologist Cliff Mass, who after examining precipitation levels in the Gulf found that “[t]here is no evidence that global warming is influencing Texas coastal precipitation in the long term and little evidence that warmer than normal temperatures had any real impact on the precipitation intensity from this storm.”
Mass went on to explicitly refute those who attribute Hurricane Harvey to climate change:
Instead of blaming man-made greenhouse gas emissions, climate catastrophists should see natural disasters for what they really are: natural.
If you want to take a page out of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “never let a crisis go to waste” playbook,
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Global warming or climate change – whatever – is not important as the Uranium One Scandal – the one where our former administration sold 20% of our uranium to Putin – our number one dangerous nuclear competitor. Diane should begin going back to some of her former comments about Putin and Trump- her belief in collusion – but the collusion seemingly doesn’t involve Trump –
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Read what NIH has to say on how climate change is going to affect diseases. The National Institutes of health is the largest research facility in the US and is located in Bethesda, Maryland.
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I read recently that China is the world’s leader in green energy. [This article, written in 2014, is not an up-to-date assessment.] China is a top polluter but they recognize that green energy is the way to go. What is the US doing with tRump and Pruitt? The rest of the world is worried. They should be.
………………………….
China Leads In Renewable Investment — Again! – Forbes
Jack Perkowski , CONTRIBUTOR
…According to The Global Status Report, which was released earlier this month by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, China once again led the rest of the world in renewable energy investment in 2013, spending a total of $56.3 billion on wind, solar and other renewable projects. The report stated that China accounted for 61 percent of the total investment in renewables by developing countries, and that China invested more in renewable energy than all of Europe last year.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2014/06/17/china-leads-in-renewable-investment-again/#79b62ddceb0a
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Until they had the money to afford clean energy, China was a leading climate change denier. They claimed that the USA was trying to stifle their growth as an emerging industrial nation and, so, refused to join in with any climate change related accord.
Does that have a familiar ring to it?
Now that they’re a wealthy nation, China has changed it’s tune to the key of leading the world in renewable energy investment.
Go figure…
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OCTOBER 24, 2017
ICYMI: Extreme Weather, Climate Change Costing Taxpayers Billions
American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah released the following statement after a GAO report revealed climate change is costing American taxpayers billions of dollars:
“Climate Change is already costing Americans billions of dollars every year and the Trump administration is making things even worse. The White House’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, end the Clean Power Plan, censor scientists they disagree with, and potentially even back the EPA away from regulating CO2, will cost Americans even more in the future. The country is going to be paying the price for Trump’s recklessness for generations.”…
http://bp21.co/78
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Carol,
It appears that estimates of climate change are understated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/10/26/new-science-suggests-the-ocean-could-rise-more-and-faster-than-we-thought/?undefined=&utm_term=.c42b4bba3ed4&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
It is worse than thought.
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