Tag Archives: climate change deniers

environmental news

‘Climate change’ needs to take center stage

There can be no doubt in my own mind — none at all — that climate change must become the pre-eminent issue of the 2020 presidential campaign.

The incumbent president calls the issue a “hoax.” Donald Trump says it’s a figment of some plot concocted by China to undermine the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

The president is as wrong about this as he is about damn near everything. Except his error bodes grim for the country and the planet.

Most of the Democrats running for their party’s nomination have spoken with varying degrees of eloquence and detail about how they intend to tackle climate change if they are elected in 2020.

I am waiting to hear some more detail about what they intend to do and how they propose to pay for it.

I simply know this: Earth’s climate is changing and it is imperative that the world’s most powerful industrial power and the nation that is chiefly responsible for humankind’s role in changing the climate to do something about it … now!

Climate change deniers endanger the nation. Do you remember that idiotic stunt U.S. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican, pulled on the Senate floor some years back? It was cold in Washington one winter, so Sen. Inhofe brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to prove, by golly, that Earth’s climate isn’t getting warmer. Of course, Inhofe conflated weather with climate, ignoring the science that separates the two phenomena.

The scientific community is speaking with increasing sameness on this the gravity of this issue. Climatologists tell us that it well might be too late for humanity to change the trend that already is developing. My response? OK, but that doesn’t mean we do nothing!

The Trump administration is backing away from air-quality emission standards. It has been silent on the issue of deforestation. The president nominated and the Senate confirmed an Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, who himself is a climate change denier; Pruitt forgot during his time at EPA that the agency’s mission is to “protect the environment,” not destroy it.

Climate change is real. It is endangering the planet we call home. It’s the only planet we have. Or, as someone noted just recently, there is “no planet B.”

The president takes an oath to protect Americans. The current president is far falling short of fulfilling that oath. The next one needs to step up.

environmental news

Man it’s cold out there . . . but Earth is still getting hotter!

I love the ignorant statements from climate-change deniers who insist the record winter deep freeze means the planet’s climate isn’t changing, that it isn’t getting warmer.

One of those bizarre declarations came from none other than Donald J. “Stable Genius” Trump, the nation’s president. Why, he just cannot understand why if the planet is warming that people are coping with record low temperatures in the Midwest.

Sigh . . .

Scientists say cold doesn’t debunk warming fear

We need to look at the big picture, the longer term. Ice caps are melting. Median Earth temps are climbing. Sea levels are rising.

It’s happening. Scientists say it is and I believe them. I disbelieve the notion that snow, ice and bitterly cold wind means that climate change is a “hoax” or that it is a conspiracy cooked up by lefty tree-huggers who are bent on destroying our industrial infrastructure.

Yet we keep hearing this nonsense from political leaders — such as POTUS. Donald Trump doesn’t have a scientific background. He quite likely hasn’t studied the works of those who do have such expertise. He instead appears to rely on the word of fossil fuel industry lobbyists, radio talk show hosts who agree with his “hoax” allegation and politicians from states that produce fossil fuels and spew tens of thousands of tons of emissions into the atmosphere.

I stand with the scientific community. They know more than I do about these things. They also know more about them than the president of the United States. Therefore, the president is wrong and he should be ashamed over his profound ignorance.

Except that he knows no shame.

national news

Look at global picture, Sen. Inhofe

It was just a matter of time before someone would do this.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., brought a snowball to the Senate floor Thursday to prove, by golly, that climate change is a hoax.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/234026-sen-inhofe-throws-snowball-to-disprove-climate-change

Inhofe chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and he also is one of the Senate’s leading deniers on climate change/global warming. He just will not tolerate the notion that climate change might be caused by carbon emissions thrown into the air by manmade sources — you know, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, deforestation, motor vehicle exhaust … those kinds of things.

So he pulled a snowball out of a bag and noted how “unseasonable” the temperature is outside the Senate chamber, meaning it’s really cold out there.

I just want to remind the senator that conditions outdoors at any particular time doesn’t prove a single thing about this issue. He knows that, of course, but he refuses to look at the big picture when it might go against whatever point he seeks to make.

My friends on the right keep insisting that climate change is a concoction brewed by leftist influences out to destroy American industry. Scientific data, though, suggest that the planet’s climate is changing. It’s getting warmer. The only debating point left is over whether it’s manmade or part of some ecological cycle that Earth experiences every few million years.

Whatever, Chairman Inhofe should cease playing silly snowball games.

Yes, it’s cold in the Texas Tundra, too, Sen. Inhofe. It’s snowing as I write these words. The temperature is in the low teens.

Is it prudent to use current weather conditions to pass judgment on what science has been tracking over many years? It’s wiser to look at the really big picture.