Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has expressed strong skepticism about anthropogenic climate change, suggesting human influence is a “minor effect”, and that there are other priorities which deserve more attention.
HIATT: Last one: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?
TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.
STROMBERG: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?
TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.
The other leading Republican Presidential Candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, has also expressed strong skepticism about anthropogenic climate change, and has made genuine efforts to hold climate scientists to account for their alarmist statements.
Nuclear weapons, particularly terrorist nukes, are, or should be, a growing concern. As WUWT detailed in a previous post, once a substantial amount of fissile material is in circulation, the threat it poses may hang over all of our heads for hundreds of years. Refining fissile material is incredibly difficult, but once produced, weapons grade fissiles are horribly easy to smuggle across international borders. When the material arrives at its intended target, assembling the fissile material into a nuclear bomb is something which could be performed in a normal suburban basement. Several rogue states with dubious links to terrorist organisations, appear to be doing everything in their power to produce fissile material which falls into this dangerous category.
Republican voters are in a fortunate position. While the leading presidential candidates are both strongly skeptical of the alleged dangers of anthropogenic climate change, Republicans had a real choice on this issue. There were other Republican candidates on offer, who expressed very different views about climate change – they had their opportunity to make their case.
Democrats have not been presented with a comparable set of options. Despite strong evidence that many Democrats are growing tired of their leadership putting climate corporate welfare ahead of jobs and the economy, as far as I can tell, the Democrat presidential candidate positions on climate change appear to be uniformly alarmist.
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The comedy duo of Seth and Simon should take their clown show on the road. They’d be a hit!
“They’d be a hit!”
They would be a success like the Air America radio network. Oh, wait…..
The funny thing is whether Climate change budgets are gutted or gets hundreds of billions of dollars, it will have next to zero if not zero impact on climate.
The only arena where climate change has an effect is in politics.
Why is The Donald paying any attention to the nuclear issue? He’s pandering to the Jewish vote. Benjamin Netanyahu has decried the deal with Iran. Trump does the same.
Trump wasn’t making idle speculation. His comments were part of a deliberate political strategy.
1 – Iran still has centrifuges and is making fissionable material.
2 – That fissionable material could fall into the hands of terrorists.
3 – Terrorists could plant a nuclear bomb in New York.
4 – Therefore it’s in America’s interest to support Israel.
“My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran,” Trump said …
” if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming….”
.
It’s good that Trump is a climate sceptic, but he really should get his facts right.
Almost half of the total global warming had occurred by around 1945, which clearly demonstrates natural warming. Then the temperatures started to fall.
The global cooling scare occurred during the 1970’s and certainly not during the 1920’s.
.
I hope Cruz will be the next US president. As well as being sceptical, he also knows what he’s talking about.
For the record, I hope Boris will be our next prime minister after our own Independence Day in June. Boris has made some sceptical remarks.
Chris
I agree. For climate realists, Ted Cruz offers the best chance of electing a President who, with the help of a Republican Congress, will dismantle the EPA and get the Climate Cultists out of the bureaucracy and out of Washington. He’ll stop the Green Gravy train of grants and stipends that have totally distorted the energy marketplace in America, and he’ll reopen the coal-burning power plants.
/Mr Lynn
Spot on! Actual (unadulterated) met station temperatures world-wide were high in the 20’s and 30’s, then cooled strongly to a deep trough in 1976 (1979 in USA), before abruptly shifting upward.
The obvious answer is yes. However it is the wrong question. For some reason journalists are getting better and better at asking the wrong questions.
There are many better questions, one is
Then the obvious answer is No, none that we can measure or prove.
Since there is none that can be measured or proven, then how do we know it exists? The obvious answer is, we don’t actually know. We can only speculate that there is some very small, and entirely unimportant manmade effect on our climate.
The only intelligent, thoughtful CAGW skeptic in the Presidential race is Ted Cruz. He actually held a hearing in the Senate, called “Data or Dogma,” and invited John Christy, Mark Steyn, and Judith Curry to testify. A vote for Cruz is a vote for rationality and science.
Donald Trump is a snake-oil salesman who will tell you whatever he thinks will make the sale—in this case, your vote.
/Mr Lynn
Seth and Simon are agents provocateurs, who are jumping on WUWT threads with the aim of disrupting any rational discussion and turning them into incessant argument. I hope the moderators will take a cold look at them.
/Mr Lynn
Eric Worrall writes:
This is not true. The creation of a nuclear warhead requires very sophisticated industrial and technical capabilities, which is why Iran is reported to have a whole factory(ies) devoted to the enterprise. Refined fissile material is just the beginning. An implosion-type device, for instance, requires very precise machining of the fissile components, and the building of a complex structure and shell incorporating conventional explosives.
It is possible for amateurs to build a ‘dirty bomb’, which is just a conventional bomb packed with radioactive material. But that’s not a ‘nuclear’ or ‘atomic’ bomb.
/Mr Lynn
Not for a Fat Man style atom bomb. It is a basic implosion style bomb and doesn’t require precise machining. Also remember terrorists won’t care if they get poisoned with the plutonium dust in the process.
Sorry, Matt, but you don’t have the faintest idea. It was not for nothing that the Manhattan Project enlisted Nobel-laureate-class physicists to figure out whether the implosion concept would work, and how to make it work. It was the Little Boy bomb that was a simple contrivance (but still required great skill to design it properly in accordance with the expected neutron multiplication of the chain reaction).
A terrorist doesn’t have to design it (HARD ) He just has to build it (easy ) The concept is proven, the rest is construction techniques and skill. Much easier now that computers can be used to help design the detonator pattern for a spherical explosion.
Dear Matt, try it and see. I have worked on munitions and am familiar with warheads using hydrodynamic implosion techniques, and they are tricky things. You really have to know what you are doing. It is not under-the-apple-tree auto mechanics. Fat Man requires an understanding of how detonation waves propagate through explosive materials…and the explosive materials must be precisely characterized and capable of being made according to close specifications. As a result, the explosive segments must be precisely shaped. So much for “doesn’t require precise machining.” You don’t know what you are talking about, because, if you did, you would be classified to a level that would prohibit you from saying anything.
We can agree to differ on this topic but I will add that inexpensive used C&C machines and a shit load of computing power make it not so hard to construct just not very small.
Basic gun style bomb made from HEU is very simple technology, not much more complex than a pipe bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon#Proliferation_and_terrorism
True, I neglected gun-style (‘Little Boy’) bombs. But they do require precise machining of the fissile components, not to mention the ‘gun’ itself. Maybe not beyond the capabilities of a skilled machinist/engineer with good equipment—without robots to handle the material?
Matt Bergin: Every article I’ve read says the ‘Fat Man’ implosion-type bomb (using plutonium) is a much more difficult engineering project.
/Mr Lynn
Am I correct in believing that a gun-type bomb cannot even be made using plutonium? And does anyone even think of basing nuclear weapons these days using uranium?
Ian M
For Ian (below): Yes. The implosion bomb was developed because the gun assembly would not work with plutonium. The plutonium chain reaction “goes” too fast for the gun process and a faster “assembly” process was needed. It also requires “weapon-grade” plutonium-239 (the other isotopes would take even faster assembly).
There’s huge investment streams pouring into green political and industrial schemes, most are following by some extreme tracking of individuals actions and taxability.
The bulk of “Social” Democrats adhere to their unknown notion that people are like trees and need to be “antisocially” cut down.
Alx March 22, 2016 at 5:37 am
That graph looks awfully symmetrical…
With Trump, I would follow his donations and investments to determine his stance. And until proven wrong, the null hypothesis rules: his stance is whatever it takes to line his pockets with money in his bank accounts (which are where?), power (over as many people as he can gather), and photo ops (preferably with just him in the photo). As for his beliefs? I couldn’t tell you. What day is it? Morning or afternoon? Then maybe the list is a current list.
You might be correct but at least he is standing for the right people at the right time. Not perfect but different enough that many are willing to risk him versus the same-ol-crap.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/227774/
BFL, what about tomorrow? What color will his spots be then? It amazes me that while so many rightly hold off on the CO2 fad due to inconsistencies in the theory, but have jumped on the Trump bandwagon even though they understand the man girds himself with changing views. If it lined his pockets, he would turn into the greenest watermelon on the planet.
As I said, you might be correct, but he is at least an unknown outsider with claims that are mostly consistent with what I like. Also hard to believe, though possible, that he would put himself through the verbal backlash (from all sectors), threats and potential physical harm that he knew he was going to be dealt without some good intentions for the country. Many of the very rich do turn to charitable and other well meaning endeavors (e.g. Gates/Buffet).
To me his biggest plus, assuming some honesty of course (which will not come from Hillary), is his claim that he can’t be bought because of his wealth and can therefore provide a counter balance to lobbyist control of DC. While how much of that he can get done with a mostly corporate controlled congress would remain to be seen, he at least should be given the chance. Also if congress became intransigent, he is the one persona that might be able to get the public interested in changing congress’s corrupt mentality.
Corporations through lobbyists (~12,000 in number spending ~3 billion a year/that’s a lot of congressional influence) control nearly all aspects of the economy. Think bulk purchases of drugs & medical supplies would reduce medicare expenditures, lobbyists got it nixed. How about open books on inflated hospital and doctor charges (secret charge master lists), nope.Think green energy/other projects should be done away with, guess who inspires them. Banks say they need fewer rules to promote more wall street gambling with depositor money (think 2008), you guessed it. There have even been plans to shift SS to the banks/wall street (now that would be the epitome of security) except so far public backlash has prevented it. And on and on.
Although not perfect, he seems like a no brainer compared to the others and those past.
Trump was bought and admits it. By the government. He willingly applied for every corporate gimme available to him. He is even proud of it. Before, during (godforebid) and after his presidency, he will continue to be bought and paid for by whoever is in governmental charge. And he will continue to give money in exchange for being bought. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and it alarms me how many people are blindly following him like some kind of neo-savior.
“Trump was bought and admits it. By the government.”
Hmmm…. me thinks that you have this a bit backwards. It’s not the gov. that buys corporate leaders but the other way round. And as a business man he was doing exactly that, and admits it, in order to promote his business interests. However he appears to not like this corrupt business association with congress and knowing how it works promises to do his best to change it. Since he is the one person NOT on the inside and therefore has received no promises from influence peddling corporate lobbyists (he had his own lobbyists working on congress, remember); so he would seem to be perfect for prompting change in this arena since he has never been under any lobbyists thumb. Don’t you know that this is one of the major sticking points with congress because if things are changed then huge numbers of them will not be able to retire AS lobbyists working for the very corporations that they have become bondservants of.
“Today, 50% of retiring Senators and 42% of retiring House members stay in DC and become lobbyists.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/07/29/half-of-retiring-senators-become-lobbyists-up-1500-in-40-years/
BFL, please reconsider. Governments have bought its voters since governments were first formed.
Agree completely…. but wait I’m a troll.
Nah. More of a droll.
No, more of a hole — with a capital A — Eugene WR Gallun
All irrelevant. I think he is a flaming anal orifice, but will vote for him should he be the gop candidate as the alternative is unthinkable. Four more years of socialism will destroy the country.
Seth is under the impression that scientist write the reports for the IPCC. Wrong. The basic report is roughed out by a group of people with a political agenda. Then the summary for policy makers report is written. Each paragraph is discussed and changed as necessary to support their agenda. Next the basic report is gone through also paragraph by paragraph and changed to support the policy report. No one knows the inner workings of the IPCC as well as Donna Laframboise. It may be time for many to spend some time on her site.
Ric Haldane
What a load of bollocks….
Why is it that anyone that posts an opinion contrary to the majority there they are called a troll?
There seems to be a strong correlation between approving of Trump and regular posters at WUWT. Trump said “I don’t know, all I know is what’s on the internet.” Perhaps we can see the connection.
Seaice1, it only takes one opposing datum to make your correlation suspect, which I have provided. A true skeptic paints with a well-defined narrow brush. Your observation would benefit from just such a brush.
One datum does not disprove a strong correlation, only a perfect one. Your contribution certainly weakens the correlation, but I think it is still a positive one. As a very rough count I make it 9 that support Trump, one that does not like him much but will vote for him anyway, and 4 that don’t like him. I think that is more support than you would find in a random selection of people, which supports a positive correlation.
“Seaice1, it only takes one opposing datum to make your correlation suspect, which I have provided. ”
No, that is incorrect. That simply means the correlation is less than 100%, which is the case for many well correlated things.
Chris, you are wrong. Data points that do not follow the trend can be outliers and not influential. Or they can be outliers and significantly influential. Example: If the trend is up, an outlier on the upside significantly above the trend is not influential. If the trend is up, an outlier significantly on the downside is highly influential. My opposition is of that kind, therefore is influential to the trend Seaice1 proposes. The correlation coefficient is not the same simply because of an outlier. Any outlier in opposition to the trend will significantly effect your coefficient to a far greater extent than an outlier equally distant from the trend but in the same direction.
https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat501/node/337
“There seems to be a strong correlation between approving of Trump and regular posters at WUWT. Trump said “I don’t know, all I know is what’s on the internet.” Perhaps we can see the connection.”
For the sake of clarity, are you inferring that the regular WUWT posters only repeat what they read on the internet? That they are not learned or are subject matter experts in climate related fields?
Speaking for myself, I am NOT one of these experts, but that is why I frequent this site – to learn from both the articles and comments that are posted. But I’ve always felt I am in the minority – that the majority were in fact extremely knowledgeable, with many holding doctorates.
It isn’t about “approving of Trump”. The Democrats, by virtue of their completely wrong-headed stance on climate and consequently energy have driven many of their own, as well as probably most Independents away. The issue goes to very foundations of a democratic society. We value democracy above all else.
I think the likely Republican president will change the climate by drying up the old gravy train.
So in other words they stop the research so there is no evidence. Mmmm there is a name for that.
Yes, the word for putting a stop to the climate gravy train is called sanity. Because the CAGW gravy train has nothing to do with science, research, or evidence, though it pretends with all its might to do those things.
Good comment thread on what is a political issue. While Cruz knows the details on the CAGW movement, Trump may be doing the proper sales job in opposing the even more ignorant, shallow support for CAGW offered by Clinton and Sanders.
I was in business foe over thiry years, and my worst tendency in sales was to get lost in the weeds–I know what the technical details are of what I was trying to sell, and tended to forget what the customer was looking for. Trump is superficial, coarse, rude, so shallow he damn near beads up. Unfortunately, he may be neccessary to overcome an even more contemptible sales job from CAGW devotees.
Whether it’s trouble with stringing coherent speech together or an intentional tactic of putting everything into 3rd grade level terms … I’m sorry … this dufus does nothing to help.
“Whether it’s trouble with stringing coherent speech together or an intentional tactic of putting everything into 3rd grade level terms …”
Well Bush had similar issues. Odd that it didn’t hurt him any, maybe because he used the same sweet political jargon used by most politicians.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm
Bush spoke like an erudite scholar compared to this clown.
Trump might more right than you think. In 1962 “Scientists” exploded an H-Bomb in the outer atmosphere, just to see what happens, some think this is what created the hole in the ozone.
This isn’t the only time they did this by the way.
coincidence that the PDO suddenly reversed start of its natural cycle ?
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Starfish.gif
Interesting. Reminds me of the effect of stratospheric volcanic eruptions.
Try this one, much more like a strat clobbering volc. Followed by Mt Agung , although not clear it put much into the strat (e.g. here).
But see this paper from 1976.
Oh, for Cripes sakes! A little learning would be helpful here. That was the Starfish Prime test event, which took place at 250 miles (400 km) altitude, far above the atmosphere. It had nothing to do with the ozone layer (and the “ozone hole” is over Antarctica, not the central Pacific Ocean), although it did jazz up the ionosphere for a while with beta electrons. (30 seconds with Wikipedia…)
What is this? Ready, fire, aim?
Do you think deodorant being sprayed on the earth’s surface has a greater effect on the ozone layer than an H-Bomb? Notice how it changed color as it fell to earth, plus the ozone hole has moved over the years used to be over the Arctic.
Just saying maybe its not a good idea to set off Nukes in the outer atmosphere just to see what happens.
Dear Elmer, I’m saying that when the subject event is 300 km away from the farthest fringes of the atmosphere, it has no effect on the atmosphere (in fact, it had no effect on the atmosphere). Moreover, there is no scientific reason to think it would have had an effect on the atmosphere.
The theory and understanding of nuclear detonations is pretty complete (see “Effects of Nuclear Weapons,” by Samuel Glasstone (ed.)). Bone up before you phone up.
The “ozone hole” has always been over the Antarctic, where it was first discovered. It is not actually a “hole,” but a depression in ozone density. It is seasonal. And it doesn’t matter a damn, because it produces no harm (a point that always goes unmentioned when the subject arises).
And here’s a freebie: space is a radiation environment (Van Allen belts, cosmic rays, solar wind). The atmosphere is our ARMOR against all this. The observers directly underneath Starfish Prime were completely safe from its effects.
Two guys meet in a bar. One, produces a little matchbox, says he trains fleas and in so doing has learned a lot about them. ‘..for example, watch this (removes a flea from the matchbox, places it on the bar beside the matchbox, taps his finger firmly on the bar), jump!’, he says. The flea jumps over the matchbox. ‘that’s nothing..now here’s what’s really interesting.. (picks up the flea and pulls its legs off, one-by-one, and puts it back on the bar), jump!’ he repeats. The flea doesn’t move. ‘See, if you pull their legs off they can’t hear a damn thing you say!!!’
Larry, I wish you knew skeptics better for your 350 articles on the subject. Most of us, including the world’s premier site on the subject, WUWT, are not funded by foundations, fossil fuels and other interest groups. You may point to, say, the Heartland Inst. putting up cash for their own endeavors, but theirs is chump change compared to the Billions (and trillions if you want to include green “mitigation” with windmills and solar panels, etc.). No, most of the skeptical community is actually out of pocket or contributing time. You are obviously a political scientist or some such evidenced by your view that there is some kind of political goal on both sides.
There is unquestionably a lefty/elitist cynical international agenda on the CO2 side. We skeptics aren’t an organized group, but rather a feisty disparate, bunch of thinkers of uncompromising integrity that are brought together by outrage at the worst scientific fraud and political sleight of hand in history. There is on both ‘sides’, of course, those who aren’t engaged by the science but are low information ideological supporters or dissenters of CAGW. On the skeptical side, we regret such mindless supporters because they make a nice target for the warmists to tar and feather all skeptics. On the lefty/elitist side, they value their hordes of useful idiots.
Now, your suggestion that we have an opportunity to ‘win’ with an election looming, etc., by supplying data and cogent arguments is a good thought. This is something I would hope such as the Heartland Inst. would take up and put forward into the debate. Managing skeptics (characterized as being like herding cats) into a potent political force ain’t gonna happen. However the data is all here and in like sites and in Heartland publications,etc. The IPCC documents are available to read. They should start with the difference between the “science” and the “summary for policy makers” and the elitist new world order types have generously provided thousands of quotes about where they are really going.
How is it that Roy Spencer closes down his blog comments and Watt expresses HIS frustration with moderating and suddenly there is an upsurge of clearly AGW partisan postings in Watts comment thread from erudite young fellows who clearly have a lot of time on their hands and that oh so snotty “clearly you don’t have the facts” attitude one is used to seeing on Yahoo from professional activists like “Crown of Creation”. It’s not conspiracy ideation to suggest that the Trolls think they smell blood in the water and are attempting to rob WUWT of its entertaining give and take by endlessly droning the litany of CAGW conclusions that have been thoroughly discussed and set aside in previous threads. WUWT Seth?
Smuggle? Who needs to smuggle?
Containers are searched in the port, not 20 miles out at sea.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
R
I’ll be happy with either Trump or Cruz. I do think Trump is going to win.
We certainly don’t want a moral degenerate like Hillary Clinton back in the White House, she will steal the White House furniture again, like she did the first time.
What if Trump does not have enough votes to have won when the convention is held and Kasich wins? He seems to be the most sensible of the five. (But being Canadian I don’t have a vote, so this is only speculation.)
Ian M
How about graphing out how many of us wouldn’t mind a few degrees warmer average temperatures. They make warming a bad thing. I think exactly opposite. Bring on the warming!
For those who buy into all the nonsense that Donald Trump is a megalomaniac, that he’s crazy, etc., I’d like to point out a few things:
• Trump is a populist. He listens to the concerns worry the people, and he proposes solutions. People like his proposals.
• If it were not for Trump, the out-of-control, accelerating illegal immigration crisis would still be on the back burner, with all the candidates talking ‘amnesty’. Trump will build a Wall. We need that.
• The military has been decimated by Obama. It is demoralized. So is a large part of the country. Trump wants to re-build our military. It isn’t a safe world out there.
I could go on. But Judge Pirro says it better. (This short six minute video that answers plenty of questions.)
Trump and Cruz are absolutely right about the mann made global warming farce . As Ryan above says
let’s hope for more warming because cooling would be far far worse for plants and animals who don’t get a vote .
All we have is a bunch of rent seeking parasites sucking on the government debt tit while it lasts .
Who funded the Chicago Climate Exchange before he took the big chair ? No conflict there oh no no .
I am glad Obama ‘s legacy will be tied to his biggest scary thing opinion , the over exaggerated scam global warming because it forever confirms what an idiot he and his flunkies actually have been .
Trump is right . If one nuclear bomb were to go off in anger scams like the earth has a fever would disappear overnight . I like Cruz and Trump for not being afraid or bought to sing the scary global warming tune.
Hillary claims she wants to shut down the fossil fuels . Which means the potential shut down of what remains of the USA steel industry and other manufacturing if she was successful .
In any event climate changes and humans are not about to turn a CO2 dial to control it . Besides
as long as it is warming less fossil fuels will be used , plants will be happier and humans will adapt .
Any global warming is good and should be celebrated instead of wetting your pants and lying to school kids .