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Tag: climate change skepticism
West Coast States Plan To Fight Climate Change Without Trump

West Coast States Plan To Fight Climate Change Without Trump

CORONADO, Calif. (Reuters) – The governors of the three U.S. West Coast states on Tuesday vowed to step up their efforts to fight climate change in the face of the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has dismissed global warming as a hoax.

Democratic governors Jerry Brown of California, Jay Inslee of Washington and Katherine Brown of Oregon made stark warnings that climate change was already harming the Pacific Ocean along which their states lie.

“Our waters are at mortal risk,” said Inslee, speaking via video-conference at a meeting of the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification, in advance of the winter meeting of the Western Governors Association in Coronado near San Diego.

The three governors said they had joined the alliance, a group of U.S. states and countries including Chile and France dedicated to reducing rising acidity in the oceans, a phenomenon tied to climate change that threatens fish, coral reefs and other marine life.

Jerry Brown also said that he had sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, asking him to make permanent a recent five-year-ban on oil drilling off the coast of the most populous U.S. state.

The actions marked the latest in a series of moves by Democrats, led by California, to position themselves to fight efforts by Trump to undo progressive policies on the environment, immigration, healthcare and other issues.

The three coastal states are also among eight U.S. states and the District of Columbia to have recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana, actions that may also conflict with the agenda of the incoming Republican administration.

A conservative populist who campaigned against illegal immigration, expressed skepticism of the science behind climate change and vowed to repeal Obama’s signature healthcare law, Trump has said he wants Cabinet members with similar beliefs.

Earlier this month, the California governor nominated Xavier Becerra, a lawyer and longtime California congressman to be attorney general in a move widely viewed as preparation to defend state policies against a Trump Administration.

On Tuesday, Jerry Brown said that despite whatever obstruction the incoming Trump Administration poses to efforts to combat climate change, California would do everything possible to prevent catastrophic global warming and ocean acidification.

The oceans absorb 90 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, and supply much of the world’s food.

“Whatever problems we have today, they will pale to the stresses that we are going to have by rising sea levels, the threat of tropical diseases, and all manner of extreme weather events,” Jerry Brown said.

(Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Sandra Maler)

IMAGE: California Governor Jerry Brown speaks on the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. in this file photo dated July 27, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Weather Channel Meteorologist Calls Out Breitbart On Climate Change

Weather Channel Meteorologist Calls Out Breitbart On Climate Change

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters. 

The Weather Channel criticized Breitbart.com for falsely claiming that global warming temperatures have “plunged,” describing a Breitbart article as “a prime example of cherrying picking” data and pointing out that Breitbart denied the findings of “thousands of researchers and scientific societies.”

In a video accompanying a December 6 article, Weather Channel meteorologist Kait Parker explained to Breitbart, “Science doesn’t care about your opinion. Cherry-picking and twisting the facts will not change the future, nor the fact — not opinion — that the earth is warming. ”

The Weather Channel video and article roundly debunked the false and misleading claims in the November 30 Breitbart article by James Delingpole. In response to Delingpole’s claim that “[g]lobal land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year,” Parker pointed out that Delingpole had cherry-picked one set of data, adding in the video that “land temperatures aren’t an appropriate measure” and that the temperature decline disappears when you also account for sea surface temperatures. Delingpole also cited the science editor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, David Whitehouse, to claim that “without the El Niño (and the so-called ‘Pacific Blob’) 2014-2016 would not have been record warm years,” yet Parker noted in the video that even if you “take out the El Nino spike in temperatures, 2015 and 2016 still come in as the warmest years on record,” as Carbon Brief has shown. Finally, Parker debunked Delingpole’s claim that a likely drop in global temperatures in 2017 is evidence against global warming, writing: “There is nothing unusual about a drop in global surface temperatures when going from El Niño to La Nina. These ups and downs occur on top of the long-term warming trend that remains when the El Niño and La Niña signals are removed.”

Parker also lamented the U.S. House Science Committee’s endorsement of the Breitbart article on Twitter and concluded her video with a helpful suggestion for Breitbart and a rallying cry for fellow scientists: “So next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first, and to all my fellow scientists out there: Let’s make the facts louder than the opinions.”

Here is the video and full transcript of Parker’s comments (which are well worth watching):

KAIT PARKER: So last week, Breitbart.com published an article claiming that global warming was nothing but a scare and global temperatures were actually falling. Problem is, they used a completely unrelated video about La Nina, with my face in it, to attempt to back their point. What’s worse is that the U.S.Committee on Space, Science, & Technology actually tweeted it out. Here’s the thing: Science doesn’t care about your opinion. Cherry-picking and twisting the facts will not change the future, nor the fact — not opinion — that the earth is warming. So let’s break it down.

Their first claim is that “Global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year — the biggest and steepest fall on record.” Now, that was based on one satellite estimate of global land temperatures, not a consensus. And second of all, land temperatures aren’t an appropriate measure. The earth is 70 percent water, and water is where we store most of our heat energy, so when you look at sea surface temperatures, and you combine that with land temperatures, you actually get a record high for November of 2016.

Their second claim: “It can be argued that without the El Nino … 2014-2016 would not have been record warm years.” Now, if you’re taking a look at the Arctic sea ice melting here in this video from NASA — when you actually normalize the data, aka take out the El Nino spike in temperatures, 2015 and 2016 still come in as the warmest years on record.

So that brings me to claim number three: “Many think that 2017 will be cooler than previous years.” Now, it is typical, yes, for temperatures to drop in a post-El Nino environment, but certainly not to record lows. If that claim was correct, we would have had global record lows all over the last century, and we haven’t seen that since 1911. The last time we fell below the 20th century average was in 1976, and guess what? That was directly following the 1974-1975 strong El Nino. So next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first, and to all my fellow scientists out there: Let’s make the facts louder than the opinions.

Obama In Fresh Push On Climate Change

Obama In Fresh Push On Climate Change

Obama in fresh push on climate change

Washington (AFP) – U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Florida’s Everglades Wednesday hoping to reframe the debate on climate change ahead of a vital few months that will shape his environmental legacy.

On “Earth Day” Obama will swap Washington’s turbid political waters for gator-infested wetlands, in the hope of putting America’s cherished national parks — and their economic impact — front-and-center of a bitter partisan debate.

Early in Obama’s administration, environmental groups were dismayed that a candidate who had promised to upend George W. Bush’s climate-skeptical stance was forced to spend much of his first term tackling the economy before pivoting to health care reform.

But since then, the White House has notched a string of climate victories, including a landmark bilateral deal that committed China to emissions cuts and new vehicle efficiency standards.

The climate “has definitely emerged as a clear priority in the second term” said Ben Longstreth, a senior attorney at an environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Obama is about to embark on a final climate push, before the campaign to succeed him as president occupies all political bandwidth in Washington.

“This is an issue that’s bigger and longer-lasting than my presidency,” Obama said in his latest weekly address.

To win over critics, the White House is looking to augment tried-and-tested arguments about custodianship.

Drum beat to December

Earlier this month Obama stressed the health impact of climate change and in his weekly address he put it in a security context, saying “there’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”

In Florida, he is expected to put the focus on the economic benefits.

“He will be showing how tackling climate change means protecting our local businesses and economies,” said senior advisor Brian Deese.

The White House wants to illustrate that Obama’s environmental measures have done nothing to hamper a long period of jobs growth — an effort to undercut arguments that carbon cuts lead to job cuts.

Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio this week stated that scientists cannot definitively say how much efforts to curb emissions would slow climate change.

“But I can tell you with certainty, it would have a devastating impact on our economy,” Rubio said.

In Florida, Rubio’s home state, Obama is also hoping to enlist tourism-revenue-generating national parks to counter that point.

Next year marks centennial of the service that manages the National Parks, which writer Wallace Stegner famously called “the best idea we ever had.”

As if to underscore that point, Obama on Sunday went for a walk with his family to Great Falls Park just outside Washington and has declared this week National Park Week.

It is the beginning of a White House drumbeat that administration officials say will extend through a summer of environmental rulemaking to a major summit in Paris in December.

Obama’s speech in the Everglades comes as his Environmental Protection Agency prepares controversial rules limiting emissions for coal-fired power plants.

The measures, expected to be released in the US summer, face fierce opposition in the courts and Congress, not least from Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who represents the coal-rich state of Kentucky.

But McConnell is not Obama’s only political problem.

According to the Center for American Progress — a White House-allied think tank — 30 percent of roll calls in this Republican-dominated Congress’s first 100 days concerned energy or the environment.

During “74 percent of the energy and environmental votes … a majority of senators supported the anti-environment position,” the think tank asserted.

Environmentalists, and the White House, hope those positions are becoming increasingly untenable, but political opposition may be fierce.

“There are different stages to the denial,” said Longstreth, “going from saying that ‘climate change does not exist’ to saying ‘I’m not a scientist’ reflects the fact that the first position is not tenable anymore.”

The crescendo of White House policy announcements will peak in December when countries of the world will meet in Paris to thrash out a new global climate accord.

Countries are hoping to forge a binding agreement on how to start bringing down emissions and the Obama administration is keen to be seen to lead.

Obama’s success in persuading Americans that climate change is a serious problem may prove vital.

In Paris the White House will try to “use progress in the United States to leverage global action,” according to Pete Ogden, once the director of climate change on Obama’s National Security Council.

“Having a strong, credible domestic plan has been absolutely essential to the ability to help negotiate a really historic agreement with China,” he said.

“I think they have every intention of trying to build on that success and in Paris use their domestic accomplishments to really build that global solution to this challenge.”

Photo: ©afp.com / Joe Raedle