3-17-17
Some cannot, will not be confused with the truth. NPR reports:
"President Trump's head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a major cause of global warming. "I would not agree that [CO2] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," Scott Pruitt said Thursday in an interview with CNBC's Joe Kernen. "I believe that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact," Pruitt said. Those statements are at odds with an overwhelming body of scientific evidence showing that humans are causing the climate to warm by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. The view that CO2 is a major heat-trapping gas is supported by reams of data, included data collected by government agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
Interestingly, already planned on addressing the above in this edition when fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to engage in a lively debate with a good friend who has a scientific background and agrees with Pruitt.
"Pruitt's views are consistent with earlier comments he has made on the topic of climate change. As attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt often claimed that there was scientific uncertainty over whether humans are changing the climate."
-- Not according to multiple sources in the scientific community over quite a span of time, at least the last decade or so. I asked my friend what evidence he had for his claims. In response, only cited one scientific journal while still insisting there is no scientific consensus. Being the hopelessly skeptical son of a bitch I'm known to be and suspecting sophistry, especially in light of the fact our argument was going round and round in circles, I remarked it might be a matter of semantics. LOL. -- Remarkably, he agreed. LOL. ... Could he have been gas lighting? :)
"The New York Times reported earlier this week that Pruitt is bringing in similar-minded political appointees to help run the EPA. Many come from the office of Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and longtime climate change denier."
Has nothing to do with science. Rather, a determined effort to engorge the bottomless pockets of the corporate management suite, shareholders, and the rest of the top 1%.
"Pruitt's comments come just over two weeks after he took the helm of the EPA, the agency with the authority to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases as pollutants. In 2014, the EPA unveiled rules that would require substantial reductions to greenhouse gases from power plants as part of a broader effort to limit global warming. The rule was contested by industry and states, and is currently under review in the courts."
Have to wonder whether climate change deniers still believe the earth to be flat? That evolution does not exist? If not, why does the flu virus evolve so quickly a new vaccine is needed each season? -- Although evolution in higher life forms takes much, much longer.
CBS News reports:
"The physics of greenhouse gases:
"Carbon dioxide is no dark-horse candidate for the warming of the atmosphere. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (who would later win the first-ever Nobel Prize for Chemistry) published a paper in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science that laid out the basics of what’s now known as “the greenhouse effect.”
"The effect is a result of how energy interacts with the atmosphere. Sunlight enters the atmosphere as ultraviolet and visible light; some of this solar energy is then radiated back toward space as infrared energy, or heat. The atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen, which are both gases made up of molecules containing two atoms. These tightly bound pairs don’t absorb much heat.
"But the greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane, each have at least three atoms in their molecules. These loosely bound structures are efficient absorbers of the long-wave radiation (also known as heat) bouncing back from the planet’s surface. When the molecules in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases re-emit this long-wave radiation back toward Earth’s surface, the result is warming."
Consider the following:
"So, temperatures are rising, as are levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But are the two connected? Yes. The evidence is strong. In 2006, scientists presented a poster at the 18th Conference on Climate Variability and Change that even measured the effect directly. Using spectrometers (tools that measure spectra to identify particular wavelengths), the researchers analyzed the wavelengths of infrared radiation reaching the ground. Based on the varying wavelengths, the scientists determined that more radiation was occurring due to the contribution of specific greenhouse gases. Overall, they found that greenhouse gas radiation had increased by 3.5 watts per square meter compared with preindustrial times, a rise of just over 2 percent. Other researchers have noted “missing” infrared wavelengths in radiation into space, a phenomenon that happens because these missing wavelengths get stuck in the atmosphere. Scientists also know that the extra carbon in the atmosphere is the very same carbon that comes from burning fossil fuels. By analyzing molecular variations called isotopes, researchers can trace the origin of atmospheric carbon, Moore Powell said. “We know what the burning of fossil fuels looks like, in a scientific sense,” she said." [Katherine Moore Powell, a climate ecologist at the Field Museum in Chicago.]
This is indeed exceptionally complicated science. The results quoted above seem to be well-accepted in the scientific community. Have seen them repeated in publication after publication. Strongest opposition seems to be coming from bought and paid for Republicans who fully understand that reduction in fossil fuel consumption threatens their most-generous benefactors in Big Oil.
Here is the take of a scientist on NPR. Adam Frank comments:
"It was Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt who put climate change back on the front page when, during a CNBC interview, he was asked he about the scientific consensus that CO2 is the driver for global warming. He said: "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." As a scientist, it's very hard for me to understand how Pruitt could make this kind of statement. Does he really believe his own words? Pruitt only needs to read the reports from his own agency to see exactly where the science, and the scientist, stand."
Appears to be simply yet another example of people refusing to be confused by the truth. ... Or, have an agenda.
"The only place there is "tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact" of CO2 is among politicians politicizing the science. For the American scientists who actually work in the field, disagreement over the basics of climate change ended around the time Guns and Roses released Sweet Child of Mine (the late 80s). So Pruitt's contention that "we don't know that yet" has nothing to do with the reality the rest of us live in."
This seems to be the consensus with exceptionally rare exception.
"Adam Frank is a co-founder of the 13.7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a self-described "evangelist of science."
In another article, NPR reports:
"Sea ice in the Arctic has been melting at a record-breaking pace. Scientists blame a warming climate for most of that, but researchers have now teased out a natural cycle for how Arctic sea ice melts year-to-year. Based on that cycle, they conclude that 30 percent to 50 percent of the melting is due to natural causes, while human-caused warming is responsible for the rest."
Interesting, isn't it? Certainly, indicative of how complicated this science truly is:
"Climate scientists have always acknowledged a natural cause for shifts in the rate of Arctic melting. But nailing down just how much nature contributes compared with greenhouse gases rising into the atmosphere has been difficult. [The results] do not call into question whether human-induced warming has led to Arctic sea-ice decline — a wide range of evidence shows that it has. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and several other universities focused on shifts in atmospheric circulation above the Arctic over the past four decades. In particular, they studied circulation over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean during summers. They found a lot of long-term variation in temperature and humidity, which influences how much solar radiation reaches the surface."
Further evidence of the complexity:
"Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, the authors note that human-caused warming due to the rise in greenhouse gases still causes at least half of the increase in melting. In fact, surface temperatures in the Arctic have been rising at twice the rate as the rest of world at least. Neil Swart, a climate scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis who commented on the study, says the results "do not call into question whether human-induced warming has led to Arctic sea-ice decline — a wide range of evidence shows that it has." "Rather, the implication is that Arctic sea-ice is less sensitive to human-induced forcing than if one assumes that all loss observed to date is anthropogenically driven," he adds. But the authors also note that the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could influence this natural variation in circulation — thus making it something less than "natural."
More to come.
Tim Chorney, Publisher
Liberty In Peril
Tim Chorney, Publisher
Liberty In Peril
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