The Senate voted to confirm Donald Trump’s pick for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency today over the objections of Democratic senators, hundreds of former EPA officials, and hundreds of current EPA employees. Although an Oklahoma judge had ruled on Thursday that Pruitt’s office had to release more than 2,500 emails he had exchanged with energy and gas companies and industry groups, Republicans crammed through his confirmation in a 52-46 vote (with Democrats Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp voting with the Republican majority) before anyone had a chance to review the emails exchanged with the companies he’s now in charge of regulating.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, while Republicans in Washington were holding the first of two votes to confirm an EPA chief who will roll back regulations on the oil and gas companies responsible for most global warming, hundreds of climate scientists gathered in Atlanta to talk about the way climate change is already sickening and killing people around the country and the world.
The Climate and Health Meeting, which was organized in January after the CDC cancelled a similar conference, was far from being a litany of the gloom and doom predictions and statistics that you might expect from the scientists studying increases in temperature, rising sea levels, and extreme weather. Those things were present, of course, summed up perhaps most frighteningly by former Vice President Al Gore, the meeting’s host, who noted that humans emit 110 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours — and that the heat energy trapped by this daily dump is the equivalent of “exploding 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs.” Or the graph that showed how the continued release of these greenhouse gases could lead to a 12-degree temperature rise by 2300, a change that would render large swaths of the earth uninhabitable.
Instead, the focus was on the extremes that have already happened — and, more importantly, their human consequences. Gore pointed out the parts of the world that are already on the outer limits of human habitability, a spot in Iran where the heat index hit 165 for the first time in 2015, for instance, or a town in India, where the temperature hit a record 123.8 degrees last year. He showed people in Pakistan digging mass graves in advance of killer heat waves because they now know what to expect and traced how warmer temperatures contributed to the spread of the virus that causes dengue fever in India, where there are now 37 million infections each year.
While poor countries are being hit the hardest, the U.S. is already seeing its fair share of human casualties. Air pollution, which is worsened by heat — and produced by the same fossil fuel combustion that warms the climate — already kills 200,000 Americans each year and costs the country almost 4 percent of GDP in 2010. Two-thirds of water-borne disease outbreaks in the U.S. are set off by extreme weather events. We saw pictures of refrigerator trucks for bodies that couldn’t fit into the morgue after a Chicago heat wave, elderly people felled by heat stress in the American Southwest, and children forced to carry around backpacks of emergency asthma supplies for their heat-exacerbated asthma.
In what was may have been the saddest presentation in a day of sad presentations, psychiatrist Lise Van Susteren described the mental health consequences of climate change on children, telling of kids suffering from clinical anxiety about the climate and the particular difficulty of reckoning with human-caused crises. “What happens from intentional negligence is harder to put behind us,” she explained. Van Susteren predicted that children, as they grow older, will experience their parents’ “destructive inaction on climate” as child abuse.
If the unsparing presentations about the mounting human toll of climate change begged for “bowls of Prozac and certificates for free vasectomies,” as one scientist joked, they also reflected the recognition that past efforts to convey the urgency of climate change to voters had failed — and were partly responsible for the fact that the climate experts were presenting their calamitous news essentially in exile.
With its focus on climate reality, the meeting paid less attention to the political reality that is the biggest obstacle to addressing it. Most presenters made just the barest nods to our anti-science president who derides climate change as a hoax. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, noted dryly that walls won’t keep out the malnutrition, diseases, and death that await us if we don’t reduce our burning fossil fuels.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who made the Carter Center available for the conference, was also restrained, referring only obliquely to “this last election.” At the same time that the victor of that last election was signing a bill that will reverse protections on waterways from coal mining ash, Carter, who has devoted his life to humanitarian causes, was talking about the impact of climate change on “the lives of the poorest people on earth.” Carter acknowledged his relative freedom to speak his mind on the subject, noting, “I have secret service protection the rest of my life.”
The few representatives of the CDC who attended the meeting were more constrained. Only about 12 staff members from the federal agency originally slated to host the conference were in attendance, according to CDC Spokesperson Bernadette Burden. And many of them were using personal or vacation time to be there, exercising “their right to attend as private citizens,” as Burden put it.
George Luber, a CDC epidemiologist who attended the meeting in an official capacity, gave a clear presentation showing the agency’s efforts to prepare cities and states for the health changes brought by climate change. The program helps project local disease burdens, draft response plans, and develop “the best science so we can make the best decisions,” Luber said.
What was less obvious was whether that government work will continue under the new administration. “No one knows what will happen,” said Julia Gold, who manages the Rhode Island’s climate change program, which is funded by a grant from the CDC.
Patrick Breysse, director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, of which the Climate and Health program is part, told me he’s confident the agency’s health-focused work will continue. While there may be disagreement over the root causes of climate change, Breysse said, “The good news is that people generally agree that there are increasing temperatures, more wildfires.” He even expressed hope that the agency would reschedule its climate meeting, but was unable to say when that might happen.
As government scientists find themselves less able to communicate about the environmental disaster to which they’ve devoted their professional lives, those free to speak are trying to figure out how to rectify the communications failures that have cast them politically powerless. Climate change used to be understood mostly as a problem of the planet and the endangered species on it. But this meeting made it clear that the emphasis will no longer be on shrinking habitats or abstract graphs with lines pointing off into the distant future. However poignant, the plight of the polar bear is out.
In its place, we’ll be seeing images of kids like Will, a 7-year-old in Texas, who is now forced to wear a cooling vest because of a medical condition that makes him particularly susceptible to heat and to stay inside on the increasing number of very hot days in his hometown in Texas.
The best strategy, according to Ed Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, is to keep the message simple — that climate change is real and — if we cut back on fossil-fuel use — reversible.
Maibach, who has divided the American public into six categories according to their beliefs about climate change, presented perhaps the most encouraging message of the event: that much of the country is open to learning about climate change. The good news, according to Maibach, is that only 9 percent of the country are “dismissers,” the most ideologically extreme end of the spectrum who are dead-set against recognizing the reality of climate change. The bad news is that that many of them are now leading our government.
Top photo: The Climate and Health Meeting is held at the Carter Center on Feb. 16, 2017, in Atlanta.
Climate junk science needs to end;
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/25/richard-lindzen-petition-to-president-trump-withdraw-from-the-un-convention-on-climate-change/
Scott Pruitt’s education was in Political Science and Law. He has no formal background in sciences such as ecology, biology, physical sciences or in any engineering field.
EWG INVESTIGATES: SCOTT PRUITT AND POULTRY POLLUTION
http://www.ewg.org/research/ewg-investigates-scott-pruitt-and-poultry-pollution
To Fight Clean Power Plan, Fossil Fuel Companies Paid for Private Meetings with Republican State Prosecutors
https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/07/fight-clean-power-plan-fossil-fuel-companies-paid-private-meetings-republican-state-prosecutors
Trump to name Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/07/trump-names-scott-pruitt-oklahoma-attorney-general-suing-epa-on-climate-change-to-head-the-epa/?utm_term=.36b8e8be5d80#comments.
MEET THE CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS DEFENDING TRUMP’S EPA PICK, SCOTT PRUITT
http://www.newsweek.com/climate-change-skeptics-defending-scott-pruitt-trump-epa-540657
Scott Pruitt is part of the group of millions of Americans who deny that any of the following has significance.
Climate change: How do we know
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
The Cook et al. (2013) 97% consensus result is robust
https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust.htm
Earth sets heat record in 2016 — for the third year in a row
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-hottest-year-2016-20170118-story.html
This Animation Lets You Watch Global Warming Heat Up Over 166 Years
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/05/09/climate_scientist_s_animation_helps_visualize_global_warming.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_tw_top
A Horrifying New Study Found that the Ocean is on its Way to Suffocating by 2030
http://www.theinertia.com/environment/a-horrifying-new-study-found-that-the-ocean-is-on-its-way-to-suffocating-by-2030/
America’s TV meteorologists: Symptoms of climate change are rampant, undeniable
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/11/18/americas-tv-meteorologists-symptoms-of-climate-change-are-rampant-undeniable/#comments
The Threat of Global Warming causing Near-Term Human Extinction
Temperature, carbon dioxide and methane
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/threat.html
Who told you it was a fraud? Why do you believe them, when all the people who actually study it tell you that it is real? Are you sure that you haven’t been had?
What states are the two Democrats from who voted for this stooge? They and other Democrats who voted for any Team Trump cabinet members should be held accountable – removed from office next election.
If Pruitt can drive a stake through the heart of this globalist, climate, anthropogenic, warming, change, settled FRAUD then he will be doing the entire planet a great service.
Carbon dioxide is not and never was the control knob for the climate of Earth. This whole non issue was put into motion by the UN through the use of the IPCC as a means of gaining centralized global power in order to extract wealth from industrialized nations and injecting it into the third world and into the pockets of those peddling this nonsense.
Thankfully, the jig is up and this wealth transfer scheme has run its course. Time to move on to the next. In the meantime, get ready for it to get colder. A lot colder, as we are about to enter into the next, quite predictable cooling phase on earth.
I believe Ed Maibach is a liar.
california is toast
the decades of drought from overpopulation which drained the reservoirs and depleted the water table caused the trees to die, standing erect, but dead. Then the rains came and the trees sitting in mud just fell over because their roots were but dust. Soon the massive mud slides will come. The hills will flatten and bury the wealthy mansions.
Now the overpopulated state has the gov issuing warnings that people need to be prepared to evacuate with 15 minutes notice – into traffic, yeah.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4240042/Flood-fears-renewed-storm-aims-California.html
Then there will be the refugee problem, from california to neighboring states unprepared for the population onslaught. Meanwhile the man at the helm, Scott Pruitt, is prepared with a statement, “Not like things like that didn’t happen 10,000 years BC. For instance, Noah’s flood. God does stuff like that.”
oh boy.
Climate change exacerbates California’s four seasons: Hot, Hot, Fire, Flood (credit; Scottish comedian, US citizen, and not-by-choice California resident, Craig Ferguson)
Atmospheric science test question:
Please state the ideal atmospheric CO2 level and describe how you arrived at that figure. Describe the methods necessary to maintain this level when natural (non-anthropogenic) forces manifest in deviations from this figure.
This is a great article. I am glad to hear some people in these circles are finally realizing that lying and spreading false predictions about impending climate disasters to try and scare people will not mobilize them to accept the actual and very real dangers. When you lie to your kids about drugs instead of giving factual and accurate information, does it make them healthier and happier or more likely to turn completely away from you (and also abuse drugs)?
(“While there may be disagreement over the root causes of climate change, Breysse said, “The good news is that people generally agree that there are increasing temperatures, more wildfires.” “) – This is what people in government scientific positions should be saying and this is hard to disagree with based on my own experience. Avoid making predictions about what will happen in 2300 because it’s a joke. People heard the same crap 15-20 years ago saying our world would be destroyed by now and it’s caused them to completely switch off from the message that there is a real and present-day impact of excessively burning fossil fuels and other industrialization. Lies and falsehoods from the supposedly pro-climate camp have directly fueled the support for people like Trump and others who deny that we have any impact on the climate. So has the Orwellian tricksterism of labeling it first “global warming” and then changing to an infinitely more expansive “climate change” when the data didn’t strictly support the label. There are effects that human industrialization has on the climate but they cannot be turned into a sound bite; it’s actual science that needs to be patiently read and understood by willing and educated people.
The climate change promoters are just as bad as the deniers. Politics from all sides has hurt the pursuit of knowledge. Science shouldn’t have presuppositions and any analysis should focus on what has actually happened to date, not wild horror stories and speculations. People are rightly angry at these so called saviors of our climate and they should be, because they represent more of a nanny state telling us what is good for us and trying just as hard as the deniers to gain political control than our government scientists WE are paying the salaries for pursuing actual research.
The word climate change has been used in the scientific community for decades.
Pray tell, what are the predictions on the effects of climate change made by scientists that have not come to pass? Care to point to some of the papers?
I find it pretty funny how uncomfortable the anti-state folks tend to be with climate change, because deep down they know, if it were true, that it would pretty much wreck their ideology. The time scales involved and the global reach of the issue preclude at least some global organization. Horror upon horrors.
“Science shouldn’t have presuppositions and any analysis should focus on what has actually happened to date, not wild horror stories and speculations.”
What a ridiculous notion. The entire purpose of science is to use data in order to develop models and theories that allow us to predict about the universe. Sure, those models and theories might not be perfect, but they don’t have to be perfect to provide useful predictions. And yes, some scientists are also prone to hyperbole. But to say they shouldn’t speculate about the impact of global warming is ridiculous.
Jake, you nailed it. Even if there is some truth in the climate change science, the deceptions have cast a long shadow. Al Gore hasn’t been a very good face for the community. Most non- supporters of this science believe that big Al’s carbon footprint would be enough to save several continents ( a little jest but you get the reference).
From the Miracle of Science Department:
_”A Push for Diesel Leaves London Gasping Amid Record Pollution“_
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/world/europe/london-smog-air-pollution.html
“this meeting made it clear that the emphasis will no longer be on . . graphs with lines pointing off into the distant future.”
Seems like a really bad move — such an easy case to make scientifically, and now they just want to throw up their hands and ‘spotlight’ 7 yr. old Will and his little cooling jacket. This will only invite derision.
Maybe they should stop trying to convince the ‘flat earth’ B.O.B.’s of the world and start being a little more thorough and honest with people — for example . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8V9WWCAC1M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTY9M_ZKk3M
Anyways, another excellent article. Thank you, and please keep going.
Do you think the hundreds of millions Gore has made on climate-xxxx influences his enthusiasm? After all the man has 10 homes, several in the 10,000 s.f. range. Travels in a limo entourage while on land and a 737 by air. They had to move his “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth into the comedy section years ago. This is your ambassador for climate science? Liberals are too easily sucketed by hucksters like Gore.
Inhabitability will occur far sooner then 2300. I suppose that time slot was picked to avoid too much focus on the real issue – food. http://survivalacres.com makes is pretty clear what the world is facing.
Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp are, as of now, *dead forever*, to all people of conscience;
[along, of course, with every party-line toeing Rethug & Trumpist]
not merely traitors to humanity, they are witting accomplices in the grossest-possibly-conceivable deliberate act of global genocide; environmental war crime; and multi-ecosystem, wholesale genetic extirpation.
this is a crime against millions of years of planetary evolution—the ultimate crime—the knowingly-malicious campaign to vastly expand and accelerate the Sixth Great Extinction Event in the 4.8 billion-year history of Life on Earth.
In reference to Joe Manchin, while watching one of the committee hearings, one of his suggestions for reducing emissions related to warming was to clean up the forests. No kidding. All the leaves and dead branches and trees lying on the forest floor rot thereby creating methane gas. His proposal is to dig millions of huge pits in which to hermetically seal all the forest debris, in effect to sequester all that potential methane release. I believe it was at the confirmation hearing for Secretary of Interior.
This Malthusian type fear mongering is unnecessary and counterproductive. Stop pretending like you know what the future holds for humanity. If you think back to the astroid that killed the dinosaurs 50 million years ago or so, you can see quite plainly that that astroid allowed mammals to gain a toehold onto this planet and voilà human beings! Similarly, the amount of greenery that now exists on planet earth compared to just a few decades ago has exponentially increased. This is a fact! Peer-reviewed studies now indicate that the increase in greenery since 1970 is equivalent to the size of the United States of America! Think of it in less than 50 years and entire contents worth of greenery! There are many benefits to a warmer earth. For example it warmer earth and deeper oceans would help the great barrier reef recover. Experts on the great barrier reef say that an increase of just a degree or two, and deeper oceans by a few feet, would resuscitate the great barrier reef two in on precedented extent . For those chicken Littles that say that our coastal cities would be submerged-I say so what? New York City and Los Angeles need a good cleaning! Who really cares if these urban ghetto hell holes disappear forever? Not only that, it’s a parent from examination of submerged cities off the coast of the continents that this has happened before and yet here we are. Respectfully Michael
You cannot predict an uncooperative and unpredictable behavior of man and animals, but for some strange and bizarre reason, you can predict future repercussions of present damages/dangers and you can determine what will happen if X does Y. Science and math have a strange way of clarifying our vision.
Warmer oceans don’t counter the acidification that is killing the coral.
And yet we are still here?
How is it that all the science/climate change deniers converged on this page?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.
Can you say hyperbole? This is typical of the spittle flecked hysterical rhetoric that has turned “climate science” into a politicized parody of itself. Scientists must remain dispassionately devoted to an unflinching pursuit of demonstrable truth. The hallmark of good science includes a dubious regard for all knowledge, particularly when it becomes dogma. The very foundation of the scientific method is grounded in doubt and repeated attempts to disprove any given hypothesis. This is how one progresses from hypothesis to theory. As with any claims of fact, the burden of proof is always on the claimant. Is the earth’s climate changing? Yes. Has it ever remained static? No. Life and evolution have inexorably progressed for over three billion years since the as yet unexplained transition from chemistry to biology. Life forms have come and gone. Our primate ancestors thrived for millions of years at atmospheric CO2 levels ten times that of today. The notion that we just happen to live at the precise moment in earth’s history when the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are optimum is utterly ludicrous. It is the height of human arrogance to make this claim. There is a actually a very compelling case to be made that higher atmospheric CO2 levels would actually be beneficial. However, as with all hypotheses that challenge religiously held dogma, this notion is regarded in the present zeitgeist as heresy and and perhaps even a thought crime. Certainty is the enemy of discovery. Anyone familiar with the history of scientific discovery would regard the oxymoronic phrase “settled science” with a great deal of embarrassment. People of “conscience” will do everything within their power to encourage spirited debate, open discourse, and promote free speech as the cornerstone of a truly free society.
Obama could have reformed the Department of Energy, cut all the support for fossil fuels, and directed a program for renewable energy research – no, instead he catered to fracking and “clean coal” and lifted restrictions on offshore oil.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-spill-the-scandal-and-the-president-20100608
Now we’re seeing the real face of Congress and the executive branch, no fig leaf over their true agenda. Obama was Warren Buffett’s little tool, and Warren Buffett is a major actor behind DAPL; sure Trump is on the same page. The government is corrupt as all hell, on both sides of the aisle, so let’s just admit it.
it’s worse than that.
who has the best coffee?
in war, the environment is the second casualty
Bingo!
All technical problems can be solved. For example, nuclear charges could be launched into the sun in order to blow it up. This would stop global warming in its tracks.
The pessimism of the climate scientists is merely a symptom of a lack of imagination.
An alternate idea would be to put Trump’s ego into orbit around the earth. I’m sure that’s big enough to block out all light from the sun.
Perhaps, but I’d be more worried about the gravitational forces collapsing our solar system into a super-massive black hole that consumes surrounding galaxies and ultimately reverses the Big Bang. Here on earth the apparent absence of mass in his little hands appears to cancel out the effect of his ego. Best we not tamper with nature.
I’ve supported complete nuclear detonation of the solar system for many moons. But, I think Super Man could just spin us backwards to 1952 and it would solve all of my problems. Or?
Why is the oil and the gas industry incorrectly villianized in the article when the agricultural industry (cows) emit way more global warming gases into the environment? The market is going to fix this industry. Economic growth has been diverging from oil consumed. The growth of cows and animal products grows unfettered. Meat eaters are a way bigger threat than oil.
NOAA government whistleblower admits they faked the science behind climate studies
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/05/noaa-scientists-manipulated-temperature-data-to-make-global-warming-seem-worse/#ixzz4XpJrZr8s
Totally debunked, troll: http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/
Bisco, thanks for your post and link.
In addition, all National Weather Service and NOAA employees are under a federal gag order.
http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/weather-service-employees-tethered-by-illegal-gag-orders.html
http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/government-implements-illegal-gag-order-on-national-weather-service-and-noaa-employees/144579
It’s always nice to hear from a follower of the obese one.
ok. Keep saying that. But just to be sure, attach some double wide inflatable pontoons to your trailer down by the river so that the next time it floods and settles you 10 miles down stream, at least you can say “Even if thars global warmin’ least wise it aint hurt me none.”
I’m glad government scientists are finding ways to continue to contribute, despite a hostile environment. This issue should not be partisan.
Unfortunately those govt scientists depend on alarmism to justify ever more govt spending. That’s how it became partisan…
I’m astonished that there is still a large contingent of climate/global warming resistance. Just because you all can’t see the ever increasing disaster in slow motion doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The new ‘chiefs’ resistance to global poisoning/warming has to be the biggest, most harmful event to the future of Earths viability. Earth is our only home; there is no other place for humans to destroy and if humans expect to exist in the future the time is now to change ALL our ways. Dismantle the military, stop eating meat, clamp down on population explosions, stop consumerism, etc. If people don’t want to change their ways the Earths inhabitants are doomed, simple as that. The global warming/poisoning disaster is best viewed as a hyperobject; it stretches far into the future, it’s temporal, it’s non-local, meaning even if it doesn’t affect you directly it is affecting things elsewhere. So until humans want to change their ways, starting with governments, the status of the planet will continue to deteriorate and threaten most of the higher lifeforms that exist today; including arrogant humans.
Agree with everything you stated, however, we all need to address the elephant in the room, geoengineering, which is already fully deployed and has been for decades.
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
Where, how, and by whom? Specifics, please.
I suggest that you read Earth in Human Hands, by David Grinspoon, astrobiologist and first Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology.
The problems with geoengineering are not knowing the long-term damages/consequences and not being able to control or contain them.
Great article Sharon Lerner. It’s so very depressing.
NASA is a military operation, so I would take anything they publish with a very large grain of salt.
Here is a recent paper by geophysicist J Marvin Herdon:
Human and Environmental Dangers Posed By Ongoing Global Tropospheric Aerosolized Particulates for Weather Modification
http://www.nuclearplanet.com/frontiers1.pdf
J. Marvin Herndon (born 1944) is an American interdisciplinary scientist, who earned his BA degree in physics in 1970 from the University of California, San Diego and his Ph.D. degree in nuclear chemistry in 1974 from Texas A&M University. For three years, J. Marvin Herndon was a post-doctoral assistant to Hans Suess and Harold C. Urey in geochemistry and cosmochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He is the President of Transdyne Corporation in San Diego, California. He has been profiled in Current Biography, and dubbed a “maverick geophysicist” by The Washington Post. He suggested that the composition of the inner core of Earth is nickel silicide; the conventional view is that it is iron–nickel alloy. More recently, he has suggested “georeactor” planetocentric nuclear fission reactors as energy sources for the gas giant outer planets as the energy source and production mechanism for the geomagnetic field and stellar ignition by nuclear fission.
The only geoengineering I personally know of is described here: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2012/05/ultra-low-sulfur-jet-fuel-radar
Basically we’ve been accepting 1000-4000 casualties a year in order to a) keep global warming delayed by about six months and b) make jet fuel 25% cheaper. Not necessarily in that order, but the geoengineering aspect clearly had a strong policy impact.
If that is the extent of what you are aware of, I would suggest you spend some more time researching. Geoengineering has been in deployment for many decades.
Did you read the article?
I think not.
Thank you, Joshua88. Yes, heartbreaking.
Indeed. The human race is in need of a global awakening. Like the alcoholic on a bender marrying the first girl he sees in Vegas, the cultural collective is in a chaotic place. I hope that once the crash happens and the hangover sets in people will take time to reflect and change their ways. Until then, we have to survive and ride out the storm.
I’m not sure logic or rational thought will work. The insane have their own version of reality.
From LOR:
Something struck me in this movie: you see the bad people slashing and burning trees for war, for metal and gears, but you don’t see the good people going through the evil effort. Curious huh. No industrial use of carbon by the good guys; how cute.
The lesson learned: the world will fix climate / environmental problems just as soon as it can find a dope smoking grey wizard to lead the way.
The USGS is looking for a longer lasting supply of manganese; do you know what for? Steel among many other uses.
Look where the US currently gets its manganese: Africa.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2014/3087/pdf/fs2014-3087.pdf
Republican plot exposed!
Secretly, the repubs know that climate change is real and devastating. Their plan is to win every federal election by eliminating 55 electoral votes by precipitating actions to wipe a state from the map.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4233496/Southern-California-faces-powerful-storm.html
America commits suicide. Scott Pruitt pulls the trigger.
Well put barabbas.
Looks like the 9% of dismissorsaurs is showing up here to present alternate facts. How about this? Trump and his cabinet don’t give anymore of a damn about poor children than polar bears; the world will have more room for them when the excess humans are killed off, so a little less habitat for billionaires won’t matter.
If I was one of these deluded materialists, I would pray to Moloch every day that I never return to the planet I helped ruin. If I were a Christian, I would pray for their endangered souls. I think Trump might spend his next lifetime as a slave girl to a warlord, or perhaps a pimp’s ‘bottom bitch’, as a needed lesson in humility.
[[[ Looks like the 9% of dismissorsaurs is showing up here to present alternate facts. ]]]
Liberals are so stupid.
Climate Change (aka Global Warming) is BS.
The “climate” is a direct result of solar radiation absorption by the oceans in a logarithmic equation of which DISTANCE FROM THE SUN is the main factor.
Al Gore and his Global Warming nonsense about CO2 is even dumber than he is.
WHY ARE THESE FACTS DISPOSTITIVE? (ANSWER: DISTANCE FROM SUN)
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/indepth
Atmosphere
Venus’ atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid droplets. The thick atmosphere traps the sun’s heat, resulting in surface temperatures higher than 880 degrees Fahrenheit (470 degrees Celsius). The atmosphere has many layers with different temperatures. At the level where the clouds are, about 30 miles up from the surface, it’s about the same temperature as on the surface of the Earth.
http://mars.nasa.gov/allaboutmars/facts/#?c=inspace&s=distance
MARS: 96% CO2 Atmosphere… Avg Temp -81 degrees F
You said, “solar radiation absorption by the oceans in a logarithmic equation ”
I see you note the complexity of mathematics used to describe laws of thermodynamics.
People don’t get logarithmic equations. If you understand logarithms then you’d see climate change is based on the huge distance change from the sun. We are so much closer these days.
Logarithms are the key.
If you are taking the average temp of the Earth’s atmosphere up to 30 miles, then we are all freezing our asses off. We therefore need to increase the temperature so that the endangered Sky People (You know about them, right? They call themselves Altfacternarions) don’t get too cold.
Either that, or we can just move to orbit around Venus.
The atmosphere of Mars is about 100 times thinner than the Earth’s. There is not enough carbon dioxide to absorb and retain much heat, even with a carbon dioxide concentration of 96%. Therefore, the distance of Mars from the Sun is the dominating factor in the temperature of Mars. This is the reason why it is so cold.
As for Venus, its atmosphere has 90 times the mass of Earth’s atmosphere. Like Mars, the atmosphere of Venus consists primarily of carbon dioxide. As a result, the atmosphere of Venus has a much greater capacity to retain heat from the Sun’s solar radiation than the atmosphere of Mars. Thus the temperature of Venus is more strongly influenced by its atmosphere than its distance from the sun – this is the reason why it is the hottest planet in the solar system, exceeding even the temperature of Mercury, even though the latter is much closer to the sun. If Venus had an atmosphere similar to Earth’s, it would be a much cooler place.
Conclusion: Your analysis is faulty because it is ignores the density of planetary atmosphere and its capacity to absorb and retain heat. Thus, global warming can be strongly influenced by increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, contrary to what you have claimed. As usual, the climate change deniers of the political right-wing use faulty science to justify their wrong opinions.
[[ your analysis is faulty …. ]]]
BECAUSE IT IGNORES KNOWN PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICAL TRUTHS]]]
ultra…. Do you know how to do math?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss
Knock yourself out.
PS…
What’s the density of water?
What’s the density of a gas?
Now, apply the free space path loss to your typical second year thermodynamics classwork.
Neither Mars nor Venus has WATER accounting for 70%+ of their surface areas and acting as a massive heat (and CO2) sink/source, regulating temperatures with a total energy capacity many orders of magnitude larger than that of CO2/Methane in the atmosphere. Also, neither planet has an active, and expanding, biosphere consuming CO2 as a raw ingredient to maintenance, growth and expansion.
These two critically important dynamic mechanisms make your static atmospheric model comparisons to Venus and Mars irrelevant in the larger context of Earth climate change. Likewise, your antagonistic and dogmatic attitude towards, “climate change deniers of the political right-wing faulty science,” merely undermines any valid information you might otherwise provide and offers insights into your true motivations.
While human activity does contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of CO2, the contributions are modest and the effects benign as the self-regulating mechanisms of the biosphere and hydrosphere can easily adapt. The decadal and centurial variations in Earth’s climate may seem significant now in the tiny window of our present history, but are largely irrelevant in the vastly more complex history of this planet. Furthermore, the limited contributions of human activities, dynamic capabilities of Earth’s systems, finite nature of fossil fuel reserves, and near exponential advancement of technology is a guarantee that humans will not achieve the most dire predictions of the catastrophic climate change illuminati.
PS… “cwradio”…
I’m a ham, too.
Did you ever understand your antenna theory when you took your test?
Or, are you a Novice? (I do CW at 35WPM by ear and notepad. I have a 4 Benchers, too. You?)
Sorry, it’s not a ham handle.
I CQ’d him a while ago. No response.
…. . .-.. .-.. — .– / .– — .-. .-.. -..
http://morsecode.scphillips.com/translator.html
What a ridiculous article. Start with the headline. “Exiled”? This is the same group of professional alarmists who, for the last 20 years, have had a choke-hold on the “peer-reviewed” professional journals and systematically refused to publish anything critical of their unsubstantiated theories. And who have falsified at least some of the published data. And who won’t release the details of the “predictive” models which haven’t actually predicted anything. And who still control all of academia, most non-profits and QUANGOs, and all international bodies. So they’re fallen slightly out of political favor? Boo-hoo; now you have an idea of what some of us have endured for years. None of you have actually lost your jobs, right?
And, like almost every article of this type, you implicitly conflate climate change with anthropogenic climate change, a correlation which has never been proven. No one disputes that the earth’s climate changes over time; it always has. We’re actually coming out of a relatively cool period and reverting to the mean. There were no humans at all, let along fossil fuel technology, when the earth was substantially warmer in the past, but your models can’t explain that. And human emissions are only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gasses naturally occurring in the atmosphere. But you pretend that just because it’s getting a little warmer, it’s necessarily and obviously our fault. So you would doom our descendants to penury and a substantially reduced standard of living as a sop to your unproven assumptions in a quixotic (and hubristic) attempt to reverse what is likely a natural phenomenon.
And by the way, all of this movement’s efforts are directed at the industrialized west, even though it would have only minimal effect because China and India (and the third world generally) produce far more greenhouse gas emissions and they aren’t about to stop. Nor should they: you whine about the effects of global warming on the poorest people on the planet, but those are precisely the people who will be most helped by technological advance. You’re not exactly doing them any favors by keeping a slightly cooler climate but dooming them to unending, grinding poverty. With a little more wealth, they could easily mitigate whatever ill effects a slightly warmer climate might present.
And of course, that brings up the final points: not only would the ill effects of global warming be decades in arriving, leaving plenty of time to deal with them in a careful, rational way, but you always focus solely on the supposed evils of warming but never on the benefits. And there would clearly be some benefits: plants do much better in a more carbon-rich atmosphere, growing seasons are extended, more of the planet becomes habitable, etc. Do a proper, honest cost-benefit analysis of the effects of global warming and I’ll be willing to consider it. But it’s never been done, and you don’t want it done because it probably will show that at worst the net effect is only slightly negative, and probably it will actually be a net positive. In any case, it’s not “catastrophic”, and that’s death to the cause out of which you and your ilk have made such a good living for decades.
The professional alarmists haven’t exactly helped their cause by routinely putting on a chicken little act with every pseudo-scientific study to come along. News flash: the sky isn’t falling, and never has, so why do you think we’ll believe you now? Why should we? You’ve long since squandered any credibility you might have had.
Excellent reasoning.
Superior vocabulary.
Adequate amounts of superciliousness and condescension.
This is an A+. Very good.
Thank goodness no one cares about your opinion.
It started warming up much more quickly at the beginning of the industrial age when the burning of fossil fuels started to increase. That is not reverting to the mean, that is a human driven rapid increase.
You are aware of that because it is the standard response to what you write, and you have no sensible counter argument. What you are doing is totally dishonest, and I bet you are not even paid enough to make a decent living. Probably those who pay you have as low an opinion of you as the rest of us.
accurate measurements have existed for approx 100 years, so BS on the idea that the rate of increase has been drastically increased since industrialization.
If there were no accurate measurements how can such a claim be made?
What are you comparing against?
Something less accurate?
Long-winded BS. Predictive models work. That’s how we know the warming is anthropogenic. It’s pretty simple: You can run the models assuming no human influence and see what happens.
Read the ALL CAPS response from the 00:58:46 clip:
JANUARY 19, 2017
Energy Secretary Confirmation Hearing
https://www.c-span.org/video/?421782-1/energy-secretary-nominee-rick-perry-testifies-confirmation-hearing&vod
Get back to us on the conscientious usage of the language ‘EXILED’.
Clearly you are in the 9% “dismisser” category so I don’t if you are unaware that every single claim you have made has been debunked https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php or that you know but you refuse to accept anything that does not conform to your biases.
Clever of you to attempt to cast doubt on the peer review process. I’m guessing that you commonly post denier comments on articles referring to the SCIENCE of climate change and are often told to support your claims with just ONE peer reviewed paper.
The cornerstone of science is peer review. Science goes where the evidence takes it and the science is clear that climate change is real and greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity is a large portion of the cause. There are 10 of thousands of peer reviewed papers supporting the theory. Feel free to post just one peer reviewed paper supporting your claims.
How would more of the planet become habitable with global warming? Low-lying areas are already getting washed away, desertification increasing, etc. Also your assumption that 3rd world people can only gain more wealth through the use of fossil fuel based technology just exposes you as a shill for carbon energy companies. YOU are the alarmist who thinks that any restrictions on emissions would doom us all to “penury”. Really? And yeah the climate scientists have definitely lived like fat cats in comparison to the oil execs, their monetary excesses are just disgusting in comparison to these noble scions of industry who only care about people’s comfort and happiness. You never had any credibility in the first place, just spouting the same greed game…
Thank you Milton for referencing acidification, methane (of which there is much issuing from some posters, but I digress) and mass extinction.
Ocean acidification is often ignored, overlooked or, classically, minimized by those causing it as “really, very unfair! and, totally, fake’ believe me”
….except for the annoying unprecedented destruction of coral (bleaching)
the 6th extinction is now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sixth_Extinction:_An_Unnatural_History
so, yeah, just those damn ‘libruls’
I stopped reading “The Sixth Extinction” after the 4degree C chapter, there was no reason to go on because the end was there even if it had taken another century.
The people of Kiribati are thrilled with your logic you supercilious idiot. While America pontificates about why climate scientists around the world are conspiring against it the people of Kiribati will become climate change refugees with no homeland because of rising see levels . The people of Kiribati are not so concerned about the additional few pennies you have to pay fuel efficient cars, clean energy and simple climate friendly adjustments to your lifestyle as they are in having to find a new homeland because of your indulgences.
It’s hard to read your post and think that I am conversing with a sentient being.
There is too much to counter.
Let’s leave it at “it’s NOT likely a natural phenomena.”
These climate change deniers are a laugh a minute.
Whatever the anthropogenic contribution is, and I believe we’d all believe there is some contribution right, does not matter one flying fuck either way. We will never cease using carbon because it is directly tied to national security.
Kill mining, kill coal, you kill yourself, because your weapons, your defense is dependent on this. Until the nations of the world really trust ea other and live in peace… your env. dreams will never be realized. Beating your sword into a plowshare takes on new meaning light of env. concerns — neat huh.
There are other “catch 22s” but this is prob the strongest.
We need a technological solution not a political/religious solution. The best solution we have is Thorium based Molten Salt reactors. We ought to roll out 20,000 or so in the next 20 years. That is where the political action and science ought to be directed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGhEdcwXxdE
THORIUM? is not that the fuel of UFO’s?
No. Depending on the UFO, that would be a stable isotope of ununpentium, aka Moscovium.
Sorry dude. While I agree 100%, that would cut into the FF business.
I remember reading a quote form Alaska Senator Don Young, and I’m reciting from memory, so may be more of a paraphrase:
“If you think oil is going to stay in the ground, you’re smoking dope.”
Liberals are so stupid.
Climate Change (aka Global Warming) is BS.
The “climate” is a direct result of solar radiation absorption by the oceans in a logarithmic equation of which DISTANCE FROM THE SUN is the main factor.
Al Gore and his Global Warming nonsense about CO2 is even dumber than he is.
No, planetary temperature is a function of distance from the sun, atmospheric density, atmospheric composition, and albedo. It’s more complicated than what you are claiming.
No, it’s actually very simple. Any second year student of themodynamics with knowledge of rf path loss should be able to figure it out, mathematically.
WATER covers our planetary surface and nitrogen is our primary atmospheric element –followed by oxygen.
Mars has no water and no oxygen. Venus has no water and no oxygen.
In fact, the Earth is the only planet in the known solar system with water and oxygen in its atmosphere.
CO2 has nothing to do with anything.
The earth’s orbit is not constant, either. So,… “climate change” == a 26,000 year wobbly obit.
Some people are zombies. Some are zombie hunters… like myself. :)
The link between temperature and CO2 has been basic fucking physics since the 19th century, and your moronic reference to Milankovitch cycles would sad if it weren’t so hilariously inaccurate.
According to our position on the cycle we should be mildly cooling at present, but we aren’t. This is actually one of the aspects of the climate system that is telling scientists that things are going out of whack.
No other forcing convincingly explains the warming trend. None. We now have decades of scientific research and debate and thousands of peer-reviewed papers going over the possible explanations and forces behind the warming trend. The overwhelming bulk of research points to CO2.
But I’m sure your safe space blogosphere doesn’t, right? Must be nice to privilege feelings over facts.
[[[ Milankovitch cycles ]]]
I never said any such thing. I think Milankovitch was WAAAAYYYYY off.
[[[ According to our position on the cycle we should be mildly cooling at present, but we aren’t. This is actually one of the aspects of the climate system that is telling scientists that things are going out of whack.]]]
No, it tells me that dumbasses haven’t been measuring the
1) The Earth’s distance from the Sun.
2) The Energy Emitted by the Sun.
However, these same morons DO put thermometers on concrete tarmacs (the hottest place on earth) to justify their BS.
Your kidding, right??
This statement below is utter nonsense and sensationalism. Completely not needed when discussing a serious topic. Makes me worry about the integrity of the entire article.
In what was may have been the saddest presentation in a day of sad presentations, psychiatrist Lise Van Susteren described the mental health consequences of climate change on children, telling of kids suffering from clinical anxiety about the climate and the particular difficulty of reckoning with human-caused crises. “What happens from intentional negligence is harder to put behind us,” she explained. Van Susteren predicted that children, as they grow older, will experience their parents’ “destructive inaction on climate” as child abuse.
Agreed. Though I’m not a denier, it always makes me wince when the best argument is “We have to do it for the children!” Very, very weak argument.
Only this time you do have to do it for the children, otherwise known as the innocent future of the human race.
thank you gride for this important angle. Often completely (deliberately) overlooked (suppressed).
IMO indifference or outright denial, hostility to the environment expressed in the home, experienced by children, (conditioning) may lead to the internalization (introject) and result in a kind of learned helplessness.
The corresponding inaction of youth may be seen to mirror those shaping their worldview.
Pessimism and futility can lead to nihilistic self destructive, and self fulfilling behavior.
Nov 28, 2016 Weather is NOT Climate!
No, weather is NOT climate…even when it’s warm outside. But in case there’s a climate cultist in your life that insists otherwise, here are some facts about global warming and vaguely-defined “extreme” weather that you can use to talk some sense into them.
https://youtu.be/sT4133vfTmk
Says “here are some facts” and then links to a YouTube video.
I honestly despair for our species.
The material world doesn’t owe your ideology any favours.
Weather is not climate, but extreme weather events can be more common when climate changes. It’s not very complicated.
Never Clinton voters must be very proud of their allies.
Pruitt, Trump, Putin, Sessions, de Vos, Perry,
Flynn, Pence, McConnell, Exxon Mobile, Blackwater, Mnuchin, Miller, Coats, Kelly, McMahon … it goes on.But you had your principles. Yessiree, you had your principles.
You should take your bows.
Oh, FUCK OFF, Milton.
I’ll count that as taking your bow.
I’m with you, Milton. Sadly, TI has numbers of commenters who devote much dissembly, whatabouttery, and false equivalency writing apologia for the Dumpster and seem to endorse his nihilistic vision for the US.
They got exactly what they wanted — never Clinton — and still they complain.
Makes you wonder if they were lying before or lying now.
Or if they’re really that stupid.
I don’t have to defend my vote, and because I live in CA, I could be secure in my conviction to do whatever I could to keep her out of office.
I have been consistent in my stand against both people.
The Dems were due for a serious awakening and even though THEY’RE sleeping this one out, many people in the rest of the country are up in arms. If things don’t change, and they wouldn’t have under HRC – and gotten worse – life will be that much worse in another four (or less) years. We wouldn’t see such a divided, hostile, and angry public if Clinton had won.
This was the change we needed – and we are going to suffer through these years, whether it was a Clinton presidency or is an Orange presidency.
We can’t sustain the nigh levels of anger, the rants & tweets, and the idiotic media, who have yet (if ever) to figure out how to cover this administration, but watch the spaces.
From tragedy comes opportunity – and any other cliche you want to stamp on these times.
I’m guessing you’re not in danger of arrest and deportation so I wouldn’t say “we” are going to suffer. More like the poorest and most vulnerable are going to suffer. Still, you display impressive hubris when you risk the lives of so many others.
What could possibly go wrong?
Personally I think a turtle would have been a better choice of a pet than a rabid dog. But that’s how voting works.
You are still not thinking rationally.
I am shaking my head from left to right so many times during the course of a day, I hope that it doesn’t become a permanent tic.
Me? Risk lives?
Listen up – mw – the Dems have been (small example here) destroying unions and hurting Blacks and other minorities for decades. When they decided to embrace neoliberal policies, they turned their backs on anybody without a foot already in the rung of the up ladder. By allowing Corporations to have so much power and normalizing corruption for another strategic “trade-off,” some Dems love war just as much as the Rs. By punishing the disenfranchised and letting the people who either commit murder on an unimaginable scale – through poisons or coups or torture/war – go free. By asset forteiture against the poor and a slap on the wrist fo bank-wide fraud. Welp…
This was the woman who told GS that she – due to her and her husband’s er, fortunes, was out of touch with “ordinary” people.
Why you would have found the status quo as acceptable to me is INTOLERABLE.
Tell the Dems to either make progress or get out of the way, because if they don’t, Americans will keep losing all of the things that you claim to hold so dear.
whatever change you needed isn’t the change that’s going to materially improve the lives of residents in the US…and menacingly, anywhere else, except Russia or China.
I’ve known people like you who, when something isn’t working, rather than fix it, would rather satisfy their infantile frustration by smashing the equipment.
I sure hope there are more folks inclined to attend to the challenges facing us.
Yes, the corporatists and warmongers appointed by the pro-TPP, pro-fossil fuel industry Hillary would’ve been so much better than the ones in Trump’s cabinet.
you think for a minute that HRC would try to eliminate the EPA?
can you say that with a straight face?
…or eliminate the FDA, or the FCC, or eliminate the Consumer Protection Agency…?
Do you and your friends actually believe there’s no difference? …and that the Dumpster is just fine, thank you?
Just unfuckingbelievable, Donald.
Hillary wouldn’t eliminate the EPA or any of these other agencies, and neither is Trump. They’d both just install cronies from their respective industries. Instead of regulating them, they’d give them carte blanche to pollute, cheat, and ignore the rules.
You’re deluded if you think she’d hold big business accountable. Look at her record.
feel free to read, hear or watch Trump say and enact efforts to do just that.
saying otherwise suggests you, like Trump, are a liar and willing to dissemble to achieve some illusory goal of ‘winning’ an argument…or to sway the uninformed
Do you actually believe straw man arguments are valid?
Let me translate from the original Rhetorical to Standard English. for the cognitively challenged among us,
“Do you actually believe invalid argument is valid?”
It doesn’t have the flair of “FUCK OFF, Milton” but the meaning is the same.
It’s another bow.
Your hypothetical crap sandwich doesn’t make the steaming pile actually in front of me more appetizing. Stay on topic, Donnie Boy!
I am on topic. Milton is the one who brought up Hillary; he regularly touts her as someone who’d be an outstanding president, completely ignoring that she’s every bit as much of a corporatist and war monger as Trump. Such laughable delusions can’t be aloud to sit without correction.
Obviously you haven’t read my posts. Clinton is a corporatist — I have often argued that myself. I don’t think she would have made a great president any more than I though Obama was a great president. (I voted for him in 2008 and for Jill Stein n 2012.)
Trump isn’t a corporatist. Trump is a fascist. He’s also insane. The lineup of kooks, crooks, clowns crackpots and quislings are far worse than anyone Clinton would have appointed. By far.
When you try to attribute words to me that I’ve never used and opinions that I don”t hold, you reveal nothing about me and all I need to know about you.
Take your bow.
What revolting dishonesty. I’ve seen your posts for a long time at The Guardian, and know that you’re a relentless apologist for the Democratic Party and a vocal advocate of the lesser-of-two-evils game.
The people Trump is appointing are exactly the kind with which Clinton would’ve surrounded herself, and aren’t very different than the corporate scoundrels Obama appointed.
Would Clinton have torpedoed TPP, the same trade plan she pushed as SoS? Would she put NAFTA on the chopping block, the same trade plan she lobbied for as first lady? Would she not have pushed for more conflict in Syria? These are just a few of the ways in which she’s actually worse than Trump.
Your cognitive dissonance is off the charts if you think Hillary’s core policies and actions would be substantially different.
With Trump in office you Democrats and the establishment media are livid over Trump, and are scrutinizing his every move and pushing back against many of his proposals. This is good. If Hillary were president, you cowards would be silent over acts of loyalty to Wall Street and to the war machine, just as there were no objections over Obama’s continuation and expansion of Bush policy.
It’s amazing how the Democrats were opposed to the wars and to corporatist domestic policy under Bush, but found them just peachy when Obama carried on with business as usual. Now these are once again bad things now that there’s another Republican in office.
I like it better when people are outraged and resist the overreach of the executive, rather than serving up endless apologias for the occupant of the Oval Office just because he belongs to the right party.
If you’ve actually read my posts at the Guardian — posts easily accessed — you either willfully misrepresent me or you didn’t read closely enough.
I have little affection for corporatist Democrats. Clinton (Bill) was only nominally a Democrat. In reality, I consider him what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican.
However, I despise the Republicans and all they stand for. When, in the late 60s Johnson tried to negotiate his way our of Vietnam, Nixon (and Kissinger) conspired to prevent a peace treaty. Nixon wanted to lock Johnson into the war. Since then, consider the wars Republican presidents have brought. Central America (Reagan’s secret war), Lebanon, Libya, and Grenada. Poppy Bush gave us Iraq I and the invasion of Panama and Somalia. Puppy Bush gave us Iraq II, Afghanistan, the Terror War, as well as policies like rendition and torture. Bill Clinton’s war, Bosnia, etc., wasn’t an invasion and occupation. The US and Europe intervened (as with Libya in 2011) to prevent civilian massacres.
Of the two parties, it’s a lie — a flat out, reeking lie — to suggest the Democrats bring war while the Republicans bring peace. Both seem in thrall to the Pentagon, but the Republicans are — by far — the ferocious and unrepentant advocates for war as the only solution to international disputes.
This is why I despise the Republican. Not only are they shameless warmongers, they lie about everyone else.
Of the two parties, the Democrats are bullied and the Republicans are the bullies. If the Democrats would simply defy the Republicans, credibly they would win every election. Instead they give Republicans the rope and count on them to hang themselves. It’s been a horrible — disastrous — plan.
Yes, Clinton (Hillary) deserves every bit of criticism she gets for using the country as a hostage to the Republicans. However, I remember her sitting in front of a Republican Congressional committee for eleven hours answering every single question they asked — to no purpose but to sink her political ambitions — and they got nothing. So good for her!
I wish she’d brought that same sort of defiance to the election, but since Trump was such a disaster, she — and her advisers — calculated that she should (again) let the Republicans hang themselves. It was a poor strategy as the election results show.
But let’s put blame where it belongs. The Republicans have lifted Trump to the presidency. And now, as he destroys the country to protect his insanity, the Republicans continue to protect and nurture him.
This is not the lesser of two evils as you state. The choice was between national suicide and another 4 years of accommodation.
Try to get it right next time. I’m anti-Republican party rather than pro-Democratic party.
If you don’t see the difference, then it’s no wonder you find Trump even slightly acceptable.
I doubt she would have appointed as EPA administrator someone from a state that is literally crumbling from earthquakes. I doubt she would have signed an EO directly energy companies to dump their toxins into the environment.
But what do I know?
I watched as Clinton prevented a war with Iran for which the Republicans and Israelis clamored. I guess we’ll get to finally see what war with Iran looks like now that best buddy Bibi calls the shots in the MidEast.
Why are you giving her credit for Obama’s Iran deal? Her own views toward Iran are considerably more hawkish. She would never have arranged such a deal as president.
Is Trump Netanyahu’s best buddy? The same Bibi to whom Hillary pledged undying loyalty in a piece she wrote called How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu? (She wrote an even more hawkish pro-Israel piece a month before this one.)
You bluster and blither because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You cannot demonstrate Clinton’s opposition to the Iran agreement because she supported it.
Indeed, your slimy new President’s own Pravda outlet Breitbart headlines this:
“OWNS” or “would never have arranged”?
Your choice. You don’t get both.
Let’s ask the Republican bigwig (now in the WH), Reince Priebus.
Does Clinton abandon Israel or support the brutality of Israel? Which?
Again, your choice.
Same with the sponsors of terror in the ME. Does she betray Saudi Arabia while lining her pockets with their money? They must be idiots. Or she’s superhumanly clever. Which?
Again, your choice.
This is why we have a fascist in the WH. Republicans smear their opponents with internally contradicting slanders. They don’t have to make sense, because their incendiary charges aren’t an appeal to logic or accuracy. (This is why, after all the “she’s a crook” and “crooked Hillary” accusations, Trump shrugs off prosecution. He’d have to use actual evidence to prosecute her. That was Comey’s problem too. Since he couldn’t prosecute her, he just slandered her.)
This is how Republicans win. The craft their slanders and rhetoric to win elections rather than to convey the truth.
You blame progressives … and even “progressive media outlets”? Fake news much?
No wonder Trump gets away with this bullshit.
I blame you and the rest of your belligerent, unthinking cohorts who complain about shadows rather than turning on the light.
Can’t seem to get out of the denial category, can you? Still refusing to accept the reality that Clinton was THE totally weakest candidate.
Well, you’re more to blame than those are Never Clinton voters. That’s because you actually endorsed the WEAKEST candidate against Trump. The ONLY candidate capable of losing to Trump.
So, how does that taste, big fella?
I voted for Clinton, therefore I’m responsible for electing Trump????
Are you insane?Never mind. If you say yes, you mean no and if you say no you mean no.
Clearly you live in upside down world where people sit on their heads and talk with their asses.
I’ll bet it’s a bitch to sneeze.
That by voting for Clinton I elected Trump?
It tastes like crazy with too much stupid.
And it smells like more steaming Trumpeteer leavings.