How Bad is Global Warming Denial?

[KUAN]

^^^ And is that rock thingy ancient or modern?

[Iamwhomiam]

It's ancient. See p.103 Ancient Stone Sites of New England and the Debate over Early European Exploration

http://tinyurl.com/hlkos3m

Geologists world wide claim dolmens were created by retreating glaciers. Some dolmens and some balancing rocks (there's one in North Salem, too) surely were, but I'm just as sure glacial depositing is not responsible for a great many of these oddities.

There are tons of other images of this dolmen. I chose this one with the children for perspective.

Thank goodness they haven't yet claimed glaciers were responsible for the pyramids!

[PufPuf93]

The Poulnabrone Dolmen in the Burren

County Clare, Ireland

[seemslikeadream]

this is a great thread

Indonesia: StoneHenge, with singing rocks
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36909

[KUAN]

Thank goodness they haven't yet claimed glaciers were responsible for the pyramids!

well something was

keep posting seemslikeadream, getting closer

[KUAN]

and everyone else! X

[Iamwhomiam]

Why not help out the uninitiated with a clue as to what "X" might be?

[seemslikeadream]

Published on
Monday, December 12, 2016
byCommon Dreams
An 'Undeniable Success': Divestment From Fossil Fuels Passes $5 Trillion
The value of funds making the commitment has doubled in size since September 2015
byAndrea Germanos, staff writer


The Paris climate agreement reached last year "bolstered the economic arguments underpinning divestment," the new report says. (Photo: Joe Brusky/flickr/cc)
Marking the divestment movement's "undeniable success," a new report shows the value of funds controlled by individuals and institutions who have vowed to dump their fossil fuels assets now surpasses $5 trillion.

350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said the "news is mammoth."

The report (pdf) by Arabella Advisors for the Divest-Invest Network shows that the value of global funds making the commitment—now at about $5.2 trillion—has doubled in size since September 2015, and comes from 688 institutions and over 58,000 individuals spanning 76 countries.

It comes exactly one year after the adoption of the landmark Paris climate accord, and that agreement, the report says, "bolstered the economic arguments underpinning divestment, validating it as a key tool for achieving the agreements goals."

Pointing to the election of climate science-denier Donald Trump, the report adds: "Any setback to official U.S. climate policy elevates the importance of divestment as an organizing and financial tool to speed the clean energy transition. Absent effective federal policy to curb emissions, advocates and investors can use their assets and their voice to continue pushing the energy sector beyond fossil fuels."

Outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the findings, stating that "it's clear the transition to a clean energy future is inevitable, beneficial, and well underway, and that investors have a key role to play."

May Boeve, 350.org executive director, declared: "In the face of intensifying climate impacts, and regressive and anti-climate governments like the Trump administration, it's more critical than ever that our institutions—especially at the local level—step up to break free from fossil fuel companies."


The growing calls to divest, already underscored by the threats of a "carbon bubble," come as what may likely be the hottest year on record draws to a close.

The new report also comes as the American Museum of Natural History in New York City tells (pdf) climate campaigners it too has joined other science and natural history museums in cutting ties with the polluting industry. "We hope we can achieve our collective goal of global sustainability while maximizing the resources each of our institutions brings to bear on this vital issue," Daniel Stoddard, the museum's chief investment officer, wrote.

Beka Economopoulos of The Natural History Museum, a mobile and pop-up museum calling for climate action, said she hopes the development "encourages other science museums to stand up for science and cut ties to fossil fuels.”
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/1 ... 5-trillion

[seemslikeadream]

Trump's Election Leaves Scientists In A Climate Of Uncertainty

December 13, 20165:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Christopher Joyce 2010
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE
Twitter

The U.S. government is a major contributor to climate research. It funds missions like NASA's 2010 ICESCAPE expedition to study the decline of Arctic sea ice.
Kathryn Hansen/NASA
Thousands of Earth scientists are in San Francisco this week to talk about climate change, volcanoes and earthquakes.

And another tectonic topic: President-elect Donald Trump.

As president, Trump will oversee a huge government scientific enterprise. Agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA have satellites collecting valuable data on the climate. Other agencies employ scientists studying that data, or modelling future climate shifts.

Scientists attending the American Geophysical Union's Fall meeting are worried Trump could have a profound effect on the effort to understand climate, and not in what they consider a good way. Peter de Menocal, dean of science at Columbia University says he's heard colleagues express "feelings of rage, anger, confusion, fear — they're all negative emotions."

"People are worried about — in extreme cases — their jobs," adds Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist at Stanford University. But, he says: "They're more worried about not being able to do their job the best way that is needed."

Trump has sent contradictory signals about how he regards climate science. He tweeted that climate change is a hoax. Many of his advisers and cabinet picks, including his pick for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, doubt that climate change is a serious problem.

On the other hand, Trump met with former Vice President Al Gore to talk about climate, and he's said he's open to the Paris climate agreement.

Margaret Leinen, the president of the American Geophysical Union, says that leaves many scientists confused about what Trump will mean for their work. "President-elect Trump didn't have a big science agenda. That left a vacuum of uncertainty," she says.

Recent signals from the Trump transition team are not reassuring. Last week, it emerged they had sent a questionnaire to Department of Energy staff looking for people who've worked on climate science. Some fear agency scientists and officials might be targeted.

And a Trump campaign adviser wrote that NASA should spend less on its armada of satellites that observe the Earth — and more on exploring outer space.

Former NASA climate scientist Drew Shindell says that would be a mistake.

"A shift away from focusing on data for this planet could really leave us in the dark on how to respond to climate change," he says.

Moreover, Earth observations contribute to public safety and the economy, he says. "The same satellites that look down and tell us about ... climate, are the ones that tell us about storms and agriculture."

Shindell's a professor at Duke University now. He says researchers everywhere depend on scientists inside the government who gather data.

And those scientists are vulnerable.

Ecologist Jim Estes worked at the United States Geological Survey during George W. Bush's presidency. He says in 2005, USGS suddenly decided that its scientists should submit their research to political overseers before sending them out to scientific journals.

"It just smacked to me of scientific censorship," Estes says. "It provided a vehicle by which the agency could control scientists. No one liked it but none of them would stand up and resist."

Federal agencies have now adopted rules to protect their scientists. But Estes says under the Obama administration, government scientists haven't always been encouraged to speak publicly.

Estes says he's especially worried about Trump, though.

"This guy is such a chameleon you have no idea what the hell is going to happen," he says.

That's what people at the AGU meeting are trying to figure out. AGU's Leinen, who runs the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC, San Diego, says it's worth noting that previous presidents have changed their minds. She was a senior official at the National Science Foundation when George W. Bush moved into the White House.

"There were several things that he said on the campaign trail regarding the environment and climate which eventually ... were moderated," she says.

Thanks in part to knowledgeable advisers, President Bush eventually acknowledged that humans are changing the climate.

Leinen has added last-minute session here to talk about Trump. But she'd also like the opportunity to talk to Trump face-to-face about climate.

Others here at the meeting have decided not to wait. They've organized something you don't often see from scientists: a public demonstration later today to tell Trump not to interfere with climate science.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... ncertainty

[seemslikeadream]

Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 2c50ca24a2

Trump's New Website Promises to Devastate Planet Earth

2016.13.12 BF Wockner


Article reprinted with permission from EcoWatch

If anyone has any questions left about what Donald Trump's energy plans will do to the climate, just read his brand new website GreatAgain.gov for clarity.

Click on "Energy Independence," sit back and start reading. It's short, succinct and devastatingly to the point:

"The Trump Administration will make America energy independent. Our energy policies will make full use of our domestic energy sources, including traditional and renewable energy sources. America will unleash an energy revolution that will transform us into a net energy exporter, leading to the creation of millions of new jobs, while protecting the country's most valuable resources -- our clean air, clean water, and natural habitats. America is sitting on a treasure trove of untapped energy. In fact, America possesses more combined coal, oil, and natural gas resources than any other nation on Earth. These resources represent trillions of dollars in economic output and countless American jobs, particularly for the poorest Americans.

"Rather than continuing the current path to undermine and block America's fossil fuel producers, the Trump Administration will encourage the production of these resources by opening onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands and waters. We will streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama, and rescind the job-destroying executive actions under his Administration. We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration. We will eliminate the highly invasive "Waters of the US" rule, and scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan and prevent these unilateral plans from increasing monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable effect on Earth's climate. Energy is the lifeblood of modern society.

"It is the industry that fuels all other industries. We will lift the restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities. It's all upside: more jobs, more revenues, more wealth, higher wages, and lower energy prices.

"The Trump Administration is firmly committed to conserving our wonderful natural resources and beautiful natural habitats. America's environmental agenda will be guided by true specialists in conservation, not those with radical political agendas. We will refocus the EPA on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans. It will be a future of conservation, of prosperity, and of great success."
With his climate denying cabinet -- including Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, Rick Perry the likely candidate for Secretary of Energy, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers or U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-MT, in the running for Secretary of Interior -- and a fossil-fuel friendly U.S. House and Senate, it is no understatement to say the Trump is preparing a fossil fuel takeover of the U.S. economy. But the economy won't be the only thing that's taken over. Our public lands, clean air and clean water will face a withering assault.

This type of "Energy Independence" will be the final nail in the coffin assuming the scientific consensus of 97 percent of the world's leading climate scientists are correct, when they said:

"Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver."
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/comm ... anet-earth

[norton ash]

[Blue]

Inside the largest Earth science event: 'The time has never been more urgent'

They argued about moon-plasma interactions, joked about polar bears, and waxed nostalgic for sturdy sea ice.

But few of the 20,000 Earth and climate scientists meeting in San Francisco this week had much to say about the president-elect, Donald Trump – though his incoming administration loomed over much of the conference.

For some, the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) – the largest Earth and space science gathering in the world – was a call to action. California’s governor, Jerry Brown, addressed the scientists on Wednesday morning, telling them, “the time has never been more urgent or your work ever more important. The danger is definitely rising.”

Citing financial inequality, the risks of nuclear arms and the mounting effects of climate change, Brown said, “we’re facing far more than one or two or even thousands of politicians.

“We’re facing big oil, we’re facing big financial structures that are at odds with the survivability of our world. It’s up to you as truth tellers, truth seekers, to mobilize all your efforts to fight back.”

“This is not a battle of one day or one election,” he added, calling scientists “foot soldiers” for truth. The governor promised to help lead the campaign, daring Trump to shut down climate science satellites and mocking Rick Perry, his pick for secretary of energy.

“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch it’s own damn satellites,” Brown said. “Rick, I’ve got some news for you: California’s growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas. And we’ve got more sun than you’ve got oil.”

Not far away, a team of lawyers with the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund met with scientists to discuss the threats ahead. The group helps defend scientists from harassment and suits over climate change research, most prominently a case brought by a climate change-denying organization to obtain emails and research of scientist Michael Mann.

At the AGU table, attorneys handed out guides to “handling political harassment and legal intimidation”.

Some scientists are taking action on their own, including Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist who has started one of several “guerrilla archiving” efforts to preserve public climate data on non-government servers. Holthaus and others fear that a Trump administration could take down the data, as former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper tried to silence scientists.

More at link.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Orwellian’: Scott Walker admin. quietly scrubs mentions of ‘climate’ from ‘Climate Change’ website
David Edwards
26 Dec 2016 at 14:41 ET

Scott Walker speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention

Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s administration has removed the word “climate” from a Department of Natural Resources website dedicated to climate change.

Throughout his time as governor of Wisconsin, Walker has taken a series of actions to “reduce the role of science in environmental policymaking and to silence discussion of controversial subjects, including climate change, by state employees,” according to the Scientific American.

Political writer James Rowen reported on Monday that the Walker administration had advanced their war on science by scrubbing information about climate change from a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website that was dedicated to explaining how the agency would deal with a warming planet.

The DNR page titled “climatechange.html” originally acknowledged that “[h]uman activities that increase heat–trapping (‘green house’) gases are the main cause [of global warming.] Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998.”

In all, 13 mentions of “climate” where stripped from the page along with all references to global warming. The word “climate” now appears only in the title of a footnote link at the bottom of the page.

“In short, the guts of this page are now gone, or sanitized,” Rowan observed. “This is Orwellian and propagandistic.”

Read the full accounting of what was deleted from DNR’s climate change website below via Urban Milwaukee.

[Luther Blissett]

From an EPA staffer:
"So I work at the EPA and yeah it's as bad as you are hearing:
The entire agency is under lockdown, the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can't be updated. All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released. No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.
Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which is also silenced and will give no response.
All grants and contracts are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad school students working on their thesis.
We are still doing our work, writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now.
We have been told the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration's policy."

[stillrobertpaulsen]

How Bad is Global Warming Denial? I'd say it's never been worse.

Carbon dioxide is not "a primary contributor to the global warming that we see."

— Scott Pruitt on Thursday, March 9th, 2017 in an interview on CNBC



EPA head Scott Pruitt says carbon dioxide is not 'primary contributor' to global warming

By Lauren Carroll on Friday, March 10th, 2017 at 11:10 a.m.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, says he is not convinced carbon dioxide from human activity is the main driver of climate change. (Reuters/Jillian Kitchener)

The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt says carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming.

"Do you believe that it’s been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate?" CNBC anchor Joe Kernen asked Pruitt in a March 9 interview.

"No, 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," Pruitt responded. "So no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see."

Scientists around the globe generally conclude that human activity is the leading cause of climate change because humans have exacerbated the Earth’s greenhouse effect, mainly by producing carbon dioxide.

Compare Pruitt’s statement with one on his agency’s website, for example: "It is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming," and then, "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change."

Environmental activists opposed Pruitt’s nomination, in part because in his former role as attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times over air and water pollution regulations.

However, Pruitt has said he believes in climate change and that human activity is contributing to that change, though he is unconvinced of the extent of human-caused factors.

"The climate is changing, and human activity impacts that," he said in his Senate confirmation hearing.

When we reached the EPA for comment, they did not provide us with information to back up Pruitt’s claim.

The normal environment of the earth is that several types of gas stick in the atmosphere and trap excess heat, including carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane and nitrous oxide, making a natural "greenhouse." Since the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s, humans have changed the composition of the greenhouse — leading to climate change — by releasing significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the air primarily through burning fossil fuels.

"Pruitt is incorrect. CO2 is a primary contributor to global warming. That fact is not in dispute among climate scientists," said Anne Slinn, executive director for research of the Center for Global Change Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that even though the earth has experienced fluctuations in carbon dioxide levels throughout its history, there’s more carbon dioxide now than there has been in at least 400,000 years.



The previous peak carbon dioxide concentration was about 300 parts per million, 300,000 years ago. Today, the count is more than 400 parts per million.

By the end of the 1970s, before global warming was readily apparent, scientists had already formed a consensus that human-produced carbon dioxide would cause the climate to change. And by the mid-1990s, scientists understood that global warming had already occurred over the past 100 years, and carbon dioxide was a substantial cause, said Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 Center at the University of California, San Diego.

"Administrator Pruitt’s statement means that he does not accept the overwhelming scientific consensus," said Stephen Pacala, co-director of Princeton University’s Carbon Migration Initiative, pointing to a 2013 report out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We reached numerous climate experts, all of whom reiterated the view that Pruitt’s claim is contrary to the prevailing scientific thought. For a perspective outside the norm, we also reached out to Roger Pielke Sr., an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, who has argued that carbon dioxide is one of many human-caused factors contributing to long-term changes in the climate, but it’s not the dominant one. For example, the release of black carbon (soot) or land use changes might have a larger effect on the climate relative to carbon dioxide than is currently believed.

In Pielke’s view, a more accurate version of Pruitt’s statement would be: "I would not agree that CO2 is the only contributor to changes and longterm variations in climate."

Our ruling

Pruitt said carbon dioxide is not "a primary contributor to the global warming that we see."

The prevailing scientific consensus is that human production of carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution is a leading cause of climate change. Some scientists may quibble over how much of the change can be attributed specifically to carbon dioxide, but there is no doubt that it plays an important role.

We rate Pruitt’s claim False.