Guest post by David Middleton
Mr. Trump, if you read this post, please ignore these “scientists”…
To President-elect Trump
We, the undersigned, urge you to take immediate and sustained action against human-caused climate change. We write as concerned individuals, united in recognizing that the science is unequivocal and America must respond.
Climate change threatens… [blah, blah, blah]
[…]
1. Make America a clean energy leader. The vast majority of Americans – whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent – support renewable energy research and deployment5. Embrace the enormous economic opportunities of transitioning to an energy-efficient, low-carbon society6,7. Use part of your $1 trillion commitment to infrastructure development to expand democratized clean energy…
What the frack is “democratized” energy?
2. Reduce carbon pollution and America’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Apart from black soot, there’s no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, etc. are carbon compounds. Just in case anyone is unclear on the concept…
A compound is a substance made from two or more elements
that have reacted chemically with each other.
Remember this definition as you might need it in the exam!
A compound is a completely new material that will often have
totally different properties from the elements that made it.
For example
The element sodium is a highly reactive metal.
The element chlorine is a yellow-green poisonous gas (non-metal).
When the two react together they
form a compound called sodium chloride.
Sodium chloride is common salt, which you eat with food.
You would not want to eat the elements!
[…]
M’kay?
The EPA, despite its bogus endangerment finding, doesn’t classify carbon or carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
3. Enhance America’s climate preparedness and resilience. In the past 5 years alone, storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires caused over $250 billion in damages10. As climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of these extreme events…
Enhancing “climate preparedness and resilience” is always a good idea… However, there is no evidence, none whatsoever, that climate change has, is or will “increase the frequency and severity of these extreme events.” Models aren’t evidence. Models with a 95% failure rate are, at best, a failed hypothesis.
4. Publicly acknowledge that climate change is a real, human-caused, and urgent threat. If not, you will become the only government leader in the world to deny climate science11. Your position will be at odds with virtually all climate scientists, most economists, military experts, fossil fuel companies and other business leaders, and the two-thirds of Americans worried about this issue1,2,12-15.
Note to “scientists”… We didn’t vote for Donald Trump because he was a lemming.
Climate change is real, always has been, always will be. Mankind’s activities do play an un-determinable role in it and there is no evidence that it is an “urgent threat.” There’s scant evidence that climate change poses a net threat to humanity… much less the planet.
5. Protect scientific integrity in policymaking. During your campaign, you said that your “administration will ensure that there will be [scientific] transparency and accountability without political bias16.”
[…]
Which he’s already doing… EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Cathy McMorris-Rogers, etc.
6. Uphold America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. Reneging from this treaty…
“America” did not make a “commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement” and it’s not a treaty. The soon-to-be-ex-President made a commitment and then refused to submit his personal commitment to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.
Now that we have addressed their six points, let’s take a look at some selected signatories of this open letter, to better understand their point of view…
Susan Joy Hassol, Director, Climate *Communication*
Good for her!
Richard Heede, Co-Founder & Director, *Climate Accountability* Institute
Richard Heede is the Principal of Climate Mitigation Services, a consultancy focused on climate stewardship from emissions inventories to profitable action. Climate Mitigation Services conducts greenhouse gas inventories, develops protocols, defines emissions boundaries, and identifies technologies and strategies to profitably reduce emissions. Client sectors include municipalities, colleges and universities, corporations, international NGOs, architects, and homeowners.
Very sciency!!!
Dr. Edward Maibach, MPH, PhD, Professor, Department of Communication; Director, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
Dr. Maibach holds a BA in social psychology from University of California at San Diego (1980), an MPH in health promotion from San Diego State University (1983), and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University (1990).
The author if the 52% consensus, if I remember correctly.
Dr. Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Well, there’s at least one real scientist among the signatories… (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). To anyone who missed the sarcasm… There are a lot of real scientists among the signatories.
It appears that about 333 of the 800 “scientists” are students…
Hannah M. Teicher, M.Arch., PhD Student, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jennifer Thomas, PhD Student, Physical Oceanography, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University
Annelise Thompson, PhD Student (artificial photosynthesis), Department of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology
Daniel Traficonte, PhD Student, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Galen Treuer, PhD Student, Environmental Science and Policy, University of Miami
Rebecca Trinh, PhD Student, Biological Oceanography, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Anna Trugman, PhD Student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University
Cascade Tuholske, PhD Student, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brendan D. Turley, PhD Student, School of the Earth, Ocean, & Environment, University of South Carolina
Alexander J. Turner, PhD Student in Atmospheric Chemistry, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
John J. Turner V, PhD Student in Renewable Energy, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of New Hampshire
Samantha Tushaus, Assistant Researcher, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ashlee Tziganuk, PhD Student in Urban Planning, Arizona State University
Natalie Umling, PhD Student in Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina
Sital Uprety, PhD Student in Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Sarah Vitale, PhD Student in Geological Sciences, University of Connecticut
Dr. Britta Voss, PhD in Aquatic Geochemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Charlotte Wagner, PhD student, Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Nicholas Waldo, PhD Student in Environmental Engineering, University of Washington
Rich Walker, PhD Student, Program in Ecology and Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Wyoming
Jessica Wang, PhD student, Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Jonathan Wang, PhD Student, Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University
Daniel Watkins, PhD Student, Atmospheric Science, Oregon State University
Lance Watkins, PhD Student and Center Lead, NASA DEVELOP National Program, School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, Arizona State University
Katelyn Watson, PhD Student in Geoscience, Boise State University
Caroline Hagan Webb, PhD Student in Hydrology and Geophysics, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Davis
Nick Weber, PhD Student, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington
Jennifer Wei, PhD Student, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University
Thomas Weiss, PhD Student in Paleoclimatology, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Ethan Welty, PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program and Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder
Meagan E. Wengrove, PhD Student in Coastal Processes, Department of Ocean Engineering, University of New Hampshire
Katherine Wentz, PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder
Scott Wieman, PhD Student, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
Catherine Wilka, PhD Student in Climate Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Elise B. Wilkes, PhD Student, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
Emily Williams, MA/PhD Student in Geography, University of California Santa Barbara
Andrew A. Wong, PhD Student, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Anna Wuttig, PhD Student in Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lilia Xie, PhD Student in Inorganic Chemistry (materials for energy conversion), Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert M. Yantosca, Senior Software Engineer, Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group, Harvard University
Walter Yerk, PhD Student, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University
Suzanne Young, PhD Student, Department of Integrative Biology, University of South Florida
Karen Yu, PhD Student in Atmospheric Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Emily Zakem, PhD Student, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
José I. Zenteno, PhD Student of Environmental Science and Management, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara
Xuemei Zhai, PhD Student in Biological Oceanography, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Natalie Zielinski, PhD Student in Oceanography, Texas A&M University
Marika Ziesack, PhD Student, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University
Katelyn Zigner, PhD Student, Department of Geography, University of California Santa Barbara
If anyone is counting, I didn’t list all of them. A word count of “student” returned 333 samples.
Featured Image Borrowed From Here
Pathetic manipulation of students continues in the climate sciences and related pseudosciences
Recently Scientific American equated opposition to catastrophic climate change with people who deny we landed on the moon and people who believe in Alien abductions.
We should expect no more from an “American” magazine owned by Europeans. Sorry, but we threw off the European yoke centuries ago.
Manipulation of students for sure, but they appear to be willing students. Merely looking at the listed majors indicates the careers they hope to pursue. They are the minions who are being lead by those who have developed a vested interest in promoting an alarmist agenda.
As with any opportunistic business they are promoting an agenda based upon economic self-interest.
They are using the basest of motivation methods: Fear sells better than sex.
It appears not everyone worries about getting in bed with the propaganda folks. Selling your soul is much more popular today, it seems.
and profitable
Well, it can make the difference between a mere pass, and a distinction.
AKA: sucking up.
Unfortunately the bed is wet…
Universities now sell the illusion of being educated, rather than the actual experience of being educated. Consequently we now have illusory scientists rather than actual scientists.
Great observation.
Jason, thinking exactly the same thing, just think of the tens of thousands of dollars wasted on useless “degrees” ( pun somewhat intended)
The letter can be distilled into one simple sentence: “Please send money”.
You’re absolutely right!
… or else…
To be more precise, the letter says:
“Please Mr Trump, don’t let our beautiful, comfortable gravy train crash and burn; we don’t want to flip burgers for the rest of our lives, as no real field of science would ever employ a ‘climate scientist’.”
“We, the undersigned, urge you to take immediate and sustained action against human-caused climate change”
Based on the wording of the first sentence, the human-caused climate change portion is all they are concerned about.
That’s going to take up hardly any of Trump’s time,so he should be able to sort all these “scientists'” concerns in half an hour / 45 minutes tops!
That gives him lots of time to focus on the man(n) made-up climate change stuff – a much more time-consuming and hopefully entertaining challenge.
The challenge has already been thrown down, accepted, met – and destroyed. Now it’s time to be done with this farce and move on to something else – someone named it “making America great again.”
“What the frack is “democratized” energy?” you ask.
That is the position that we should use whatever energy the most people like without regard to whether it is appropriate, practical or economical.
I kind of figured that was the answer…
I thought it was the energy sources preferred by Democrats
DOE Global Energy Storage Database
‘eCAMION Toronto Hydro CES Project’
Commissioned Feb.1, 2013
Lithium Polymer Battery
kW 500
Duration at Rated Power: 30 min.
http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/414
CES/Community Energy Storage
DOE Global Energy Storage Database
Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage Project, California
Commissioned July 1, 2014
Lithium-ion Battery
8,000 kW
Duration at Rated Power: 4 hrs.
Cost ~ $50 million
DOE funding ~ $25 million
http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/8
Yes, people get to vote on ideologies and who they want to lead them and make decisions. They don’t get to vote on science and in particular they don’t get to vote on engineering.
Votes on engineering frequently go badly for those in the path of failed engineering… 😉
I thought it had something to do with private/community owned energy generation. In case very small natural gas co-generations were financially viable, it would make sense to produce electricity, while also heating your home. Unlike the silly wind and PVs, heating tends to correlate well with human activities, and energy produced this way would not go to waste.
Trouble is that prices are quite high, and so far this works well only if you are subsidised. And we know subsidies are going to dry out together with the swamp.
It’s a meme like “democratized” Climate Science.
You mean “politicized” Climate Science, surely.
No, I mean exactly what I wrote, in “”
Democratized means that it is controlled by the government.
It’s a far left idea. Very close to “decentralized” energy. It means local (democratic) communities are in control of their own energy and are not dependent on capitalists. It’s one reason the far left oppose nuclear power which they see it as an inherently centralized, or non-democratic form of energy.
Oooh! Can I have my own democrazed nuclear reactor cum range cooker and genset and water heater?
“Democratized” ultimately boils down to “less for everyone”.
I was a lifetime subscriber to SciAm until they started beating the AGW drum. Actually, I was a supporter of the AGW movement until I heard the fateful words “the science is settled.” At that point I suspected the “movement” was selling snake oil. This open letter is just more of the same from them. Pity that they lured so many young budding scientists into the scam.
I believe it was the 1986 Belle Glades mosquitoes with HTLV-III that was the straw that broke that camel’s hump for me.
I am impressed they could get 800 “scientists” to sign it. But I have only one simple request for Trump – restore integrity to science.
And he has already started.
Exactly how is Trump restoring integrity to science?
>>Exactly how is Trump restoring integrity to science?
Holding the DoE to account. That has sent a broadside across all science departments, that they must be accountable for their research and their actions.
I bet that over the last two days government scientists across the US have stopped work, and are concentrating on deleting emails.
R
“Being accountable for their work” – is an extremely vague, fluffy statement that means little. It’s interesting that WUWT over the years has decried (and rightly so) researchers being criticized for skeptical positions. But now that a skeptic is in the White House, it’s OK for the reverse to be occurring.
Nice goal posts, how far have you moved them today?
Nobody has ever complained about skeptics being criticized. That’s part of science.
It’s the punished part that has gotten people upset.
But now that a skeptic is in the White House, it’s OK for the reverse to be occurring.
===================
you missed the point. the public has a right to see the science they have paid for, to know that the results have been verified by someone that is actively trying to disproved them, and to expect that science will NOT BE USED to set policy UNTIL IT IS VERIFIED.
Little to none of this has happened in Climate Science.
1. Climate scientists have actively worked to hide their work, their data and have colluded with other scientists to hide data, hide contrary results and to mislead the public. At least one of the signatories to the above open letter was revealed to be engaged in such practices via the Climategate emails.
2. Skeptical climate scientists that could have provided verification have been dismissed from their jobs in favor of consensus climate scientists. As such, any attempt at verification of consensus climate science results is questionable due to the problem with groupthink. Verification is only valid if the person providing the verification is actually skeptical of the result.
3. Policy prescriptions based on unverified results are a recipe for disaster. Money that could have been spent productively may actually be making the problem worse.
“I bet that over the last two days government scientists across the US have stopped work, and are concentrating on deleting emails.”
Some might be storing and protecting information for the time when they decide to become a whistleblower on the climate data manipulators.
None of the posts here have shown how Trump is restoring integrity to science. He has asked for a list of all scientists who have participated in meetings relating to climate accords or who have done work on AGW related research. If he was restoring integrity, he would be talking about new review policies for publication of papers, etc. Not asking for lists of people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/09/trump-transition-team-for-energy-department-seeks-names-of-employees-involved-in-climate-meetings/?utm_term=.866363348f7c
Trump is not “doing” anything yet. He is still 5 weeks from having any power. Perhaps you would like to rephrase your question?
philjourdan says: “Trump is not “doing” anything yet.”
..
Do you consider mucking up the diplomatic relationship with China not doing anything?
He is doing nothing with the diplomatic relations. Their perception of what MAY be is. Obama is still in charge of diplomatic relations, or have you not heard who won the presidency 4 years ago?
A phony argument (although I’m intrigued that a warmist is suddenly concerned about the reviewing process – whatever argument is useful for the attack, I suppose). Why on earth would Trump want to interfere with the reviewing process? That’s the kind of thing Joseph Stalin was known for, and that didn’t work out too well.
“…impressed they could get 800 “scientists” to sign it”
They didn’t. Many of them are students (almost half ?), marketers and activists.
Always a catch! Yea, I read those comments after mine.
I know how many years ago I gave up on the despicable unScientific American after reading every issue every page for thirty years. What a POS!
We need an alternatively right scientific media that we can trust in addition to the burgeoning alt-right mass media. TRUMP u dingy snowflakes!
++++++++++
The first part contains another logical fallacy:
“…recognizing that the science is unequivocal and America must respond.”
Even if the first part is true (can somebody direct me to the unequivocal papers?), the second part is absolutely not. What problems there may be and how we should best deal with any problems has never been properly set outin any way whatsoever.
Moreover, how we deal with any possible problems is a “political” decision, not a scientific one. By that I mean it is decision we the people should take, not a decision the “experts” should take for us. And people’s views depend on how they think about future innovation, the discount rates (implicit or explicit) they use for future events. and many other things.
If these scientists were being honest, they might say that America must discuss how we should respond.
It is quite obvious that if the science is unequivocal, then CO2 output needs to be reduced and that there are a number of proven renewable energy technologies to achieve that…
can you please do something about your breath?
>> if …
Way to waste a few more million electrons Griff. Since it is far from unequivocal, your sentence is worthless. And then there’s “proven” renewables, the same ones that put SA in the dark, *increased* Germany’s CO2 per Kw/h and are about to leave the poor and elderly freezing to death in their homes in the UK this winter.
Keep telling yourself those lies, and some day even you might start to believe it.
The only real science out there shows that CO2 is highly beneficial to all life on Earth , and that there is absolutely no reason we should ever try to curtail its production, rather we should be aiming to increase the atmospheric CO2 level from its current dangerously low state.
It’s not..so it doesn’t…and they won’t be needed.
then CO2 output needs to be reduced
=======================
nope. that is simply one option. and the option is not practical in many, many places as compared to the alternatives. thus the question of what to do is not a question for science, it is a question of money and priorities, which makes it an economic and political question.
” And then there’s “proven” renewables, the same ones that put SA in the dark, *increased* Germany’s CO2 per Kw/h and are about to leave the poor and elderly freezing to death in their homes in the UK this winter.”
Good way to put it, Pete.
All these “proven renewables” have proven is they are a very bad choice, and we should move on to something else, like nuclear power.
The Greens have no good reason to reject nuclear power, and nuclear power will accomplish one of their major goals which is to reduce CO2 production, and can replace the bird-killing windmills, which *should* be one of their major goals, too.
This past Friday I made the following a Drudge link to a rather hysterical article regarding how radiation from Fukushima had been detected off of LA (I thought that had been done three years ago?). The posters to that site were bemoaning the fact that the Pacific Ocean was about to become a wasteland in which nothing lived and declaring that they would never ever eat sea food again, in order to preserve their health.
The Greens will continue to reject nuclear power because to a man, they are idiots.
Err, “I made the mistake — of following — a Drudge Link”
JUST IN…….BREAKING NEWS!!!!……….Scottish innovation triumphs once again. We gave you the TV, antibiotics, tarmacadam, pneumatic tyres, the telephone, adhesive postage stamps, the bicycle and the U.S. Navy.
Now we announce, for the sake of humanity, the solution to Climate Change! (But you have to visit the dark side where they are jealously withholding this momentous event from you!).
http://www.accuweather.com/en/videos/trending-now/santa-rides-unicycle-plays-flaming-bagpipes-during-first-winter-storm-in-portland/5244475688001
And just for you Griff.
We Scot’s, including Trump, always triumph!
Wha’s Like Us – Damn Few And They’re A’ Deid (Who’s like us – Damn few and they’re all dead).
The average Englishman, in the home he calls his castle, slips into his national costume, a shabby raincoat, patented by chemist Charles Macintosh from Glasgow, Scotland. En route to his office he strides along the English lane, surfaced by John Macadam of Ayr, Scotland.
He drives an English car fitted with tyres invented by John Boyd Dunlop of Dreghorn, Scotland, arrives at the station and boards a train, the forerunner of which was a steam engine, invented by James Watt of Greenock, Scotland. He then pours himself a cup of coffee from a thermos flask, the latter invented by Dewar, a Scotsman from Kincardine-on-Forth.
At the office, he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by James Chalmers of Dundee, Scotland.
During the day he uses the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
At home in the evening, his daughter pedals her bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, blacksmith of Dumfries, Scotland.
He watches the news on his television, an invention of John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland, and hears an item about the U.S. Navy, founded by John Paul Jones of Kirkbean, Scotland.
He has by now been reminded too much of Scotland and in desperation, he picks up the Bible only to find that the first man mentioned in the good book is a Scot, King James VI, who authorised its translation.
Nowhere can an Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots.
He could take to drink, but the Scots make the best in the world.
He could take a rifle and end it all but the breech-loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick of Pitfours, Scotland.
If he escapes death, he might then find himself on an operating table injected with penicillin, which was discovered by Alexander Fleming of Darvel, Scotland, and given an anaesthetic, which was discovered by Sir James Young Simpson of Bathgate, Scotland.
Out of the anaesthetic, he would find no comfort in learning he was as safe as the Bank of England founded by William Paterson of Dumfries, Scotland.
Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion of guid (good) Scottish blood which would entitle him to ask “Wha’s Like Us”.
Even Santa’s a Scotsman!
Merry Christmas WUWT!
There’s lies, damn lies, and Griff lies.
Here is the lukewarmer edition of the settled science. Compare the 2nd column (ppm CO2 in the atmosphere to the 4th (predicted rise in average temperature). Notice how 1120 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere indicates only 2C warming. At that level humanity benefits. We get 1) far higher crop yields, 2) less severe winters kill fewer people, 3) the poles largely keep their ice. I like the settled science. [ PS: this is just my own back of envelope calculation ]. No emergency measures need be taken against CO2 because there will be no tipping points due to water or methane. So far we’ve only added an extra 120ppm CO2 to the atmosphere. No need to panic as you seem to want us to.
Griff – You forgot the beeeep at the end of your mechanical message. Mimes we don’t need. GK
More importantly, it is obvious that the “scientists” are equivocators.
Nonsense. If CO2 is a problem simply go nuclear. The French are pretty close to it. Problem is that the same guys who are anti-CO2 are also anti-nuclear and are pushing for the idiotic solar and wind that can never fully replace fossil fuels. The idea of nuclear has been banished from the press and from briefings for politicians. And don’t forget Hansen who told us that if we keep burning fossil fuels it will get so hot that the oceans will boil away and whose idea is still forcing them to curtail fossil fuels.
Lets call it Griff’s corner – what a following of lil’ griffie’s shadows you have. I’m amazed at how stating the obvious hits such a nerve here, WUWT?
If I were a uncared and lonesome man, I would write some half-baked issue on WUWT, being sure to get some attention from his many friends here…
Otherwise, I’m not sure if Griff isn’t a runnnig gag invented from Anthony to make his blog more interesting…
Marika Ziesack, PhD Student
There sure are a lot of fancy titles.
A chemistry prof. explained it to me once. All you need to start an “institute” is an office door to hang a sign on, then go to the local office supply store and have some stationary and business cards printed up. As soon as anyone knows, you are in business, a real live Institution.
The Universities love it, all so sciency and formal and professional.
And prestigious, we must not forget the prestige.
This one is the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired ….
Endowed by a big time Clinton contributor, accused girlfriend abuser (settled for 1.5 million), accused of negligent homocide (“they didn’t indict me … they do not have enough on me. They don’t have enough emails on me,”), but got off although four of his executives went to jail for using approved materials in surgeries (three dead).
Mr Wyss has endowed an Institute that is real, but he (of Soros ilk) is a dirt-bag.
So let me understand. When Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine conducts a survey, it’s fine that some of the respondents are medical doctors (who know nothing about climatology). As well as computer science majors (who know nothing about climatology). It’s fine that thousands of the respondents only have a bachelor’s degree in engineering or physics. But it’s not ok for PhD students in the hard sciences to sign this petition – when clearly they already have more education than the vast majority of the signatories of the OISM petition.
And a applicant for the President of the USA was asked on television
“what do you think of Aleppo ” Reply; who’s Aleppo ? Another educated idiot.
@george Tetley
“And a applicant”
And AN applicant.
Tea bag
Are you kidding?
Computer science people are well aware that models of immensely complex (possibly chaotic), dynamic, non-linear systems employing indeterminate coefficients and incorporating dubious assumptions ain’t worth “a bucket of warm spit.”
They aren’t “science” and they aren’t “evidence.”
John Garrett, right, that’s why Wall Street employs thousands of computer science PhDs to predict future prices on stocks, bonds and commodities – even though those equations have an equal number if not more assumptions.
Indeed Chris.
And look where all those whiz-kid economists with their maths PhDs landed us in 2008…
Not the best of similes.
I’m guessing that Chris either doesn’t know the difference between some, and most.
Secondly, one is a survey, the second is a letter that is attempting to use the “prestige” of the signers to influence the president-elect.
If the signers don’t have an “prestige” to begin with, it’s a big so what.
Actually, Mark, I do. The OISM list also includes many thousands of folks with a bachelor of science. I’ve checked out that curriculum – zero courses on atmospheric sciences across the major disciplines of Chemical, Civil, Electrical and Mechanical. I’m sure you’re reply is “but they are really smart people who understand complex equations!” Right, so let’s start having civil engineers and mechanical engineers do all our analysis of new drug trials instead of someone with a PhD in Biochemistry. You know, because this science stuff is all the same.
Chris, Those PhD candidates signed because they see their careers going up, well in smoke. Never underestimate the power of self-interest.
Steven, you can use that same logic across any degree and any discipline. So basically every doctor, programmer, civil engineer, etc cannot be trusted because they will act so much out of self interest that they will sacrifice their integrity.
Who said it “it’s not OK for PhD students… to sign this petition”? It’s not just OK, it’s fracking hilarious.
“But it’s not ok for PhD students in the hard sciences to sign this petition – when clearly they already have more education than the vast majority of the signatories of the OISM petition.”
Why, those PhD’s should be free to sign whatever they like.
I want to see the list of PhD’s who don’t sign off on CAGW. You think we could find 333 of those somewhere?
Here’s a list of 30,000 folks, including 9,000 PhDs, mostly scientists and engineers that have signed a petition that actually can be read on the home page:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Dan, that’s exactly the survey I spoke about. Medical doctors? Give me a break. Oh, and I have a bachelors and masters degree in electrical engineering. My physics courseload had zero (0) content on atmospheric sciences.
And yet, here you are, Chris, commenting on climate science. No, wait… you’re speaking about the opinions held by others, regarding climate science. They aren’t qualified to speak of such things, but you are?
——————–
Merry Christmas
Alan, the difference is I don’t claim to be an expert on AGW, I don’t claim that my opinion should be relied upon to make policy decisions. This is a blog, not a scientific journal or conference. The OISM petition is held up as evidence that AGW is not cause for concern, as counter evidence to the hundreds of published papers on AGW. See the difference?
Chris,
That petition is held up as evidence that the “scientific consensus” is not consensus.
I haven’t seen that petition held up as evidence that AGW is not cause for concern; it’s a statement of 31.000 like minded people.
Nobody on that signed that petition was trying to alleviate your concern. Be concerned about whatever you want, you’re allowed.
(What part of that petition statement do you disagree with?)
Dan M, by your logic there is no scientific consensus on evolution. I can certainly find 31,000 folks with technical degrees who don’t believe in it. You seem to think that consensus is 100% agreement of everyone, even those with zero – and I mean zero – relevant backgrounds to the topic. We should look to medical doctors to decide of AGW is real? That’s just ridiculous. Consensus on scientific matters is not a vote whereby 100% support for an issue must be achieved.
(What part of that petition statement do you disagree with?)
The IPCC also has number of people are not quite top notch scientists either, so I hope Chris doesn’t go around quoting them.
Whenever I see the words “carbon pollution”, I know the topic is not science and one can ignore the rest, as it will be pure BS.
‘Climate change” does it for me…
And Pavlov’s dog was trained to salivate.
Here is the ‘decoded’ version of the letter:
“We, the undersigned, urge you to take immediate and sustained action to keep the “Gravy Train” full and rolling in our direction.”
…
Oh, you thought there was more? No, that’s it.
The CAGW Gravy Train is being directed into a siding, off the main track. It’s slowing down, waiting for the switch to be aligned, right now, before heading in and stopping when it clears the mainline.
Conductor Trump will give the signal when it is time to stop.
The list of students appears to be many rent seekers who realize that there career choices were made based on the assumption that the “Climate Change” money spigot would remain wide open forever. Now that they realize that the flow of taxpayer funding will be greatly diminished, they are scrambling to the defense of the Obama status quo.
It’s humorous that one of their arguments is that Trump will be an outlier in not continuing to bulldoze money into the pit of climate change. Trump ran for president as an outlier. We elected him because he was an outlier. Why do the signatories of this letter believe that the president elect will suddenly change his mind and want to be part of a consensus? These signatories seem to be out of touch with reality.
Thanks for highlighting some of the members of this list. That this bunch consider MPH/communications and urban studies grads “scientists” to be listened to betrays their true motive, which is to assert unaccountable control over governments and individuals. Really just leftism repackaged as a scientific argument
This is what “climate resilience” looks like:
http://www.dannypol.nl/upload/1364998386-achter-de-dijken.jpg
It is nothing new, either. How often do you read about the North Sea or the Atlantic flooding cities in Europe these days? It’s not for want of storms; it is just that the coasts have been properly fortified. I’ve always found it puzzling that cities like New York or Miami have been left unprotected.
you might have read this…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25253080
Yes, the Thames Barrier and post 1953 measures stopped cities and housing being flooded, but it did tremendous damage along UK’s east coast
Griff ?????
No indication in your reference that damage was caused by, or made worse by the coastal defenses.
And:
On the contrary, it sounds like a big win for all in the danger areas.
It is likely then that Griff was part of the enviro-movement that prevented the US Army Corps of Engineers from repairing the levees in the years leading up to Katrina,….
Proactively saving lives does tremendous damage along UK’s east coast. I suppose you could look at it like that. It’s why you have no influence here.
Griff, have a look at wiki’s list of historical North Sea storm tides and their casualties. Then tell me again with a straight face that the net effect of coastal fortifications is adequately described as “enormous damage.”
That’s the common theme with you believers — old or young, educated or not, you all lack common sense.
I keep reading that in the case of Florida, porous limestone bedrock will allow the ocean to just leak under any sea wall that they might build. That’s assuming I’m being told the truth.
However, I also know that we are being lied to when we’re told sea level is going to rise by a meter or more by 2100 which is the usual claim.
When it comes to “Climate Change” we are being lied to on nearly all aspects of the issue.
So maybe you’re correct to be puzzled (-:
Steve, just building a wall is rarely the best option. Modern sea dikes have a shallow profile and additional protection on the seaward side to prevent erosion of the seabed. The Dutch have dike construction down to an art; I’m sure they could come up with a viable solution for Florida. It could be paid for with the money now being squandered on CAGW “science” and “democratized clean energy”.
Most of the situations in Florida are on barrier islands. They are sand and these sands move, erode, replenish.
Where do you get that meter rise? The rise will be 10 inches as Chao, Yu, and Li determined. See their article in April 11th Science in 2008.
https://thinkprogress.org/scientist-miami-as-we-know-it-today-is-doomed-its-not-a-question-of-if-it-s-a-question-of-when-3b3212be388d#.met3khepq
“Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily — it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas.”
take the word of a Dutchman on it!
See also:
http://seagrant.noaa.gov/Portals/0/Documents/what_we_do/climate/Florida%20Report%20on%20Climate%20Change%20and%20SLR.pdf
Griff: Arcadis doesn’t “specialize in rising seas” but is a general purpose engineering firm, and Daoust is Canadian, not Dutch. He is billed as Arcadis’ south Florida leader in climate adaptation and resilience.
It may be true that the geology of the Florida coast poses special challenges, but generally speaking, the impression prevails that coastal protection in the U.S. has received comparatively little investment and attention. In European countries, these things are in the purview of the national governments, and the results speak for themselves.
What climate change?
Forgive me for sounding slightly contrarian. I agree with most of the rebuttal to the S.A. open letter, however, there’s one component of it that I find vexing, and I apologize if I’m being thick: why can’t CO2 be a pollutant? Just because it’s a natural component of the atmosphere, if humans put a lot of it there, doesn’t it become a pollutant. Oil, for example, is a natural component of the earth’s crust, and it often leaks, on its own. That’s not considered a pollutant unless people pump it up and spill it all over sea birds and the like.
It seems to me the slight increase in CO2 levels attributable to humans is probably beneficial for the most part. And doesn’t yet exceed the highest known natural levels over the last 200 million years. But at what point would we consider the human-contributed part a pollutant? 1% of the atmosphere? 10%? When it exceeds the highest ever naturally occurring? When it starts causing obvious and significant problems? Never?
It doesn’t seem to me that just because it’s a naturally-occurring compound doesn’t mean it’s not also a pollutant. Could someone explain to me where I’m incorrect in this conclusion? Thanks!
@psion — Good question. So you have to ask: 1) Is it chemically identical to naturally produced CO2; if so, 2) What level of excessive emission is demonstrably harmful to the environment; 3) How is excess CO2 emission any different from excess emission of water vapor (a much more powerful greenhouse gas).
The answers, to the best of current knowledge: 1) Yes. 2) After many years of data taken, there is still no clear answer. We know the dangers of excessively low CO2 (plant life goes dormant, temperatures drop, and lots of people die). The historical record shows what low values might represent a threat, but there is little help in the historical record of what represents excessively high levels, since the paleo data for high levels generally correspond to thriving plant and animal life. 3) The main difference between CO2 emission and water vapor is how long it stays in the atmosphere, but this also is a fairly controversial subject since it is tied to questions of feedback, the response of the biosphere to changes, etc.
Summary: There is very little empirical data to justify CO2 as a pollutant. All we know is that we are well within the range that can be accommodated in a healthy biosphere.
psion: an interesting question. This is a case where AGW proponents have pulled the Orwellian trick of re-defining the language. In common use, a “pollutant” is a substance which when introduced into another substance makes it unsuitable for its normal purpose (or significantly less suitable). Pollutants need not be toxic although many are. CO2 does not become a pollutant in normal air until concentrations well above 1% (10,000 PPM), when it begins to impact human respiration [some references claim higher values].
Within the meaning of the original Clean Air and Clean Water acts, “pollution” was something which negatively impacted plant, animal or human health. The US Supreme Court (very unwisely IMHO), basically gave the EPA unlimited authority to classify anything as a “pollutant” if they “reasonably believed” it could harm human health. What they should have ruled was the EPA attempt to so classify CO2 was regulatory overreach, and required new authorizing legislation.
Due to constant repetition in the press and the aforementioned court decision, we are stuck with the phrase “carbon pollution”, but it’s really just a marketing slogan.
Ok I’ll play. CO2 should be reassessed for pollutant status when it exceeds the maximum levels observed in the geological record during which life was abundant and fecund and nothing catastrophic happened to the climate which may be attributable to that level of CO2. That level is conservatively 5,000 ppm which is an impossible level for humans to achieve through fossil fuel burning. Therefore it is forever impossible that CO2 emitted as a consequence of human activity may ever be correctly described a a pollutant simply because of the level compared with the geological record.
On the other hand if evidence should come to light that current or projected levels of atmospheric human CO2 are indeed causing an overall negative impact on life on Earth and/or evidently destabilising the climate system then that should be sufficient cause for reassessing the pollutant status of CO2. The key word here is ‘evidence’ and by evidence I don’t mean unvalidated model output.
I will take a stab at this.
Pollutant is a political term as much as a scientific term, therefor any definition is bound to be a bit fuzzy. That said, your suggestion that when it starts causing problems, is as good as any.
When does it start causing problems? Nuclear submarines typically operate with ~4000 ppm, about 10x atmospheric, and can go much higher, to 20x or even 30x if they must. Can we get that high? In a word, no. there is not enough fossil fuels on the planet to get close.
If you really want to increase the carbon dioxide component of the atmosphere, you are really talking about digging up all the limestone, marble, and all other carbonaceous rock you can find and cooking them.
This, by the way, is an industrial policy I have long advocated. In particular, I have suggested mining out the White Cliffs of Dover, following the marl deposits through northern France, and mining out the limestone, marble, and dolomite of Italy. For some reason, my suggestions have received a somewhat cool response, particularly from people who live in England, France, and Italy. I do not know why.
Further to TonyL’s points:
h/t Dan Pangburn
Tony – wonderful! The closing of your comment gave me the best laugh I’ve had all day, but your WHOLE comment – ten thumbs up. Excellent stuff. 🙂
Ron – excellent graph! Thank you for posting this. I’ve save it to file.
We Brits attempted that with the Channel Tunnel (Euro thing). After many screw ups and more money we got through to Calais. We found a lot of Afro and other illegal people demanding to use it to grab favourable benefits in UK. As such we now own the port of Calais and some surrounding walls and fences. Please send more money as we need to own the rest of Europe! It was a thing we were often quite good at…land/resource grab.
@psion
By your argument, oxygen may then be considered to be a pollutant to what extent; since it makes up two thirds of the CO2. And since it the by-product of plant photosynthesis, and therefor put in the atmosphere by plant life….
“It doesn’t seem to me that just because it’s a naturally-occurring compound doesn’t mean it’s not also a pollutant.”
And, of course, the well known oxygen-dihydrogen as a pollutant.
@ psion (@psion) – December 12, 2016 at 7:43 am
Sand is a naturally occurring compound of which there is boo-koo tons of it and is enjoyed by millions of beach goes and concrete pourers ….. but it is a dastardly pollutant iffen when someone puts a couple cup-fulls of that sand in your corn meal, your cake flour or your vehicle’s engine oil.
And CO2 is highly dangerous to your health ….. iffen your hospital nurse attaches your oxygen supply line to a cylinder of CO2 instead of a cylinder of O2.
Thanks for the responses!
thomasbrown32000: Agreed on all points, although I believe there is a slight difference in the C13/C12 carbon isotope ratios of human-generated CO2. Not that this should have ANY effect that differentiates it from natural sources.
cephus0: Agreed, although 5000ppm feels high. But I haven’t the math or degrees to refute you.
TonyL: I take issue with the submarine example because that’s discussing young, healthy humans in an artificial environment and doesn’t take into account the effects on other species. 12,000ppm might be fine if you’re in good health, but I’d like to see the effects on plants, fish, insects, etc. And then I suppose it’s also possible the altered density of CO2 might mess with corrosion somehow or the way concrete sets (yeah, I’m guessing now). I just don’t think I’d want to see it go that high in the general atmosphere until I see replicated research.
Michael Burns and Samuel C Cogar: Perhaps I should clarify the point you quoted to read instead, “It doesn’t seem to me that just because it’s a naturally-occurring compound, doesn’t mean the human-generated component is not also a pollutant.” In fact, it could be argued that for the initial, primordial atmosphere of the earth, the production of oxygen by early algea was a pollutant that significantly altered the atmosphere. Just because we now think of lots of oxygen as a good thing, doesn’t mean we should let algea off the hook! Talk about ruining the primordial world for your grandkids!
Alan Watt: Yep, this has become a politicized word, to go along with the politicized and agenda-driven science. But, as it stands right now, the ‘warmists’ fully believe that the CO2 we’re adding to the atmosphere is causing harm. Killing polar bears (it’s not), raising sea levels an immeasurable rate more than was natural before it, making Katrina happen every year, causing the production of sequels to boring and bad documentaries about the climate, etc. It’s been the mainstay of environmentalists that all effects of global warming are bad to help drive home the constant drumbeat that “it’s worse than we thought.”
But in that light, conceding that warmists think human-contributed CO2 is causing all this, CO2 is a pollutant to them. And no one will sway them from this thinking until someone demonstrates that CO2 doesn’t cause the anticipated harm even if it is demonstrably good for the planet in many other ways. And until that happens, they’ll continue to argue that human-made CO2 is a pollutant, right or wrong. I’m not convinced it isn’t a pollutant yet, although I feel more confident in the belief that it’s not until it causes obvious harm.
Here is a list of obligate anaerobes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obligate_anaerobe#Examples
They are bacteria that cannot grow on a normal atmospheric concentration of oxygen. O2 can be considered pollution for them. Gas gangrene caused by Clostridium perfringens is treated by placing the patient inside a hyperbaric oxygen rich chamber. Too much O2 will kill the bacteria (or at least it will prevent the bacteria from growing) but not the patient.
As far as I know, there are no examples of living beings that are killed by normal atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Some bacteria require higher than atmospheric CO2 concentrations to grow. (Neisseria gonorrhoeae and N. meningitidis for instance) but to my knowledge, there is no living organism that is killed by normal or relatively higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2, (Now if you are talking about 100 % CO2 then yes, many. But that is too extreme. By these terms, you will also die if you are trapped in a room filled with 100% H2O. or 100% N2, or basically 100% of anything besides O2 )
I guess you will have to ask the ones who support the idea that CO2 is pollution why they think so.Try sending a letter to Scientific American and see how many of the scientists who signed the letter to Trump. can provide with examples that support their claim. My impresion is that they call CO2 pollution because it causes CAGW.
urederra: you will also die if you are trapped in a room filled with …. basically 100% of anything besides O2
Actually, 100% O2 at atmospheric pressure will likely to kill your as well. It’s called oxygen poisoning, and most people will die at prolonged exposure to a pure oxygen.
@ psion (@psion) – December 12, 2016 at 9:29 am
psion (@psion), in the case of myself, ….. clarification of your comment was entirely unnecessary simply because I’m too damn old to be treated like a High School adolescent by the “fence-straddling” likes of you who fancies yourself as some sort of “all knowing” arbitrator of worldly discussions even though you have freely admitted that you “DON’T HAVE A CLUE” as to what is actually happening in the natural world around you.
Anyway, psion (@psion), back to your initial statement @ December 12, 2016 at 7:43 am
psion (@psion), iffen you are a citizen of the US of A ….. then CO2 can be a pollutant iffen you want to claim it is a pollutant. Hells bells, you can claim that “blue skies” and ”sweaty sex” are both pollutants iffen you want too ….. because you have a Constitutional right of “free speech”, regardless of how stupid, asinine or silly the contents/context of your “free speech” is or was.
psion (@psion), I have an important question to ask you, which is:
psion, exactly why did you decide to …. side or agree with all of the “junk science” rhetoric being touted by lefty liberal “greenie” wackos and/or the avid proponents of CAGW climate change ……….. rather than those persons who are highly educated in the actual factual science of the natural world?
Was it because of a family member(s), your close friend(s), your peer group or you work associates?
A pollutant is something harmful. CO2 is a benefit. It increases plant growth, giving better crop yields. It will also benefit plants in low rainfall regions because they will respire less to get the same amount of CO2 so will better conserve water. Expect: a larger area of earth occupied by plants and faster growing plants. From a lukewarmer point of view: 1100 ppm CO2 should raise average temperature by 2C. Anything above that may be a problem. It seems to me 1100 ppm CO2 is at least a century away; because oceans are a considerable CO2 sink, or buffer if you like.
It will be clear to all at what point CO2 ceases to be a benefit because polar ice will melt causing accelerated sea level rise. That is, basically, the only possible problem I can see ahead. We’ll know there’s a problem when there’s a problem. Trying to second guess what might go wrong puts lunatics in charge, or elevates them to influential positions. Because there will always be a lunatic somewhere with a more horrid catastrophe scenario, trumping the previous dystopia with more extreme projections. There is no end to the number of hypothetical, dystopian, worlds one can imagine, or project. Please stick with the science, with verified evidence.
Team Trump has asked the Department of Energy for the list of employees who have been active in propagating the climate change panic. We will see how much time the department will need to produce the list.
Scientific American should be applauded for producing a list of 800 pseudoscientists who are supposed to do Earth sciences but instead they work on this superstitious left-wing propaganda. These 800 people need to be fired.
I wonder, are you proposing 800 people get sacked for doing their job, just because of a change in the US political leadership?
I seem to recall a lot of outcry about people being sacked for contrary climate views in these pages…
They should be fired because they did not state the counter argument.
The only major country to produce significantly less CO2 (back to 1990s levels) is the USA and it did so because of fracking.
But if the “800” had said something nice about fracking they would be shunned in the academic “Community”
Its a cult.
wut jobs? aha ha ha ha
It’s impossible to sack government employees. Getting the names of attendees at certain conferences, etc. means the they can be interrogated about their doings there–which is policy-relevant.
He’s pretty clearly suggesting they be sacked for not doing their jobs.
Eight years later, the same principle holds true.
@ Griff – December 12, 2016 at 8:19 am
Griff, the aforenoted 800 “troughfeeding” Academics, ….. and/or another 10,000 to 30,000 similar “troughfeeding” Academics …… don’t hafta be sacked or fired by either Trump or his designee.
The only action that Trump or his designee has to perform is to “Cancel all Federal Grants” and those “troughfeeding” Academics will hafta quit or resign and look for another source of income.
And another good thing about it, ……. they can’t collect/draw Unemployment iffen they quit or resign.
Griff
“I wonder, are you proposing 800 people get sacked for doing their job, just because of a change in the US political leadership?”
Yep and not replaced along with several million more!
“I seem to recall a lot of outcry about people being sacked for contrary climate views in these pages…”
Yes Grifter, what goes around, comes around.
Just put it all down to Karma.
These people (note that I didn’t say scientists) shouldn’t be sacked for believing in global warming. It is clearly a religion, and the US constitution protects people’s rights to practice their own religions:
1. It is a systematized set of beliefs (eg that the 5% of CO2 emitted by humans will cause uncontrollable global warming, but the 95% that is naturally emitted doesn’t)
2. Those beliefs are either not based in fact, or at least not verifiable (eg none of the computer models used by the IPCC have ever produced verifiable predictions)
3. There is a hierarchy of practitioners (think of Al Gore as the equivalent of the Pope)
4. There is a system to punish people that wander from the one true path (eg excommunication of heretics)
They should be sacked for practicing religion instead of doing science, which is what they were paid for.
People would not get sacked for doing their job. They might, perhaps, get sacked if they can’t adjust to the new job conditions. Scientists and engineers are not working for nothing. They get paid. And they get paid to do particular jobs. When the job they are working on goes away, for whatever reason, they are expected to take on the new job offered to them. They do not get to choose what they will work on, because they do not control the money. The people paying the money get to choose what the job is.
Therefore, a list of people who are currently working on CAGW projects will probably be offered a chance to work on a different project. It is completely up to them whether they take the new job offer.
Lubos Mot – at 7:54 am
Team Trump has asked the Department of Energy for the list … Scientific American should be applauded for producing a list …
Oooh that was good (-:
“What the frack is “democratized” energy?”
Sophistry, mostly. It is another example of constant invention/redefinition of terms so that onlookers/targets have no idea what the actual meaning or scope is. And of course, the term can be re-redefined or appended at any time by the originators so as to keep onlookers/targets confused as to what’s really being discussed.
Merriam Webster has this to say:
Let’s hope they mean the second, not the first; after all, we all know the outcome of recent administrations’ efforts to “democratize” the Middle East.
I think sophistry is the polite term. I suspect the real definition is tied to ‘public’ ownership of the energy source. Sounds a lot like public ownership of the means of production, and that worked really well in the Soviet Union.
Democratized anything, means that the government controls it.
re “3. Enhance America’s climate preparedness and resilience. In the past 5 years alone, storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires caused over $250 billion in damages10.”
perhaps because mankind keeps building stuff in areas that are prone to storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires.
800 people who’s lively-hood depend on massive public grant money demand more massive public grant money.
Eureka
If you take away all the signers who are government-funded, either directly or indirectly, how many are left? I think the taxpayer funded “scientists” should recuse themselves on the basis of conflict of interest.
By your logic, everyone who has a job has a conflict of interest.
“By your logic, everyone who has a job has a conflict of interest.”
Oh dear Chris, what an idiotic thing to say.
You really don’t get it, do you?
How old are you, as a matter of interest.
It seems we have the most highly educated dopes on the planet. 🙂
To poison. I believe this question was answered once before. We exhale about 20,000 parts per million. I think the navy permits 5000 as a safe level in submarines. Green houses use 2000 parts to enhance plant growth. We are a long way from any of them.
Sorry I meant psion. Spell checking is bad. Changed my text but I did’ notice. Sorry
Learn to dig ditches or serve coffee. Take your pick.
All little off-topic, but the Trump team appears to have chosen ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for their Secretary of State nominee according to Fox News. Some appear to be concerned with Tillerson’s ties to Russian President Putin. Outside of that though, Bill McKibben and the #ExxonKnew fanatics must be going into emotional convulsions right know given that they believe the oil giant hid what it “knew” about climate change years ago.
This should get veeeery interesting……
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/12/trump-to-nominate-exxonmobil-ceo-tillerson-secretary-state-transition-sources-say.html.
And to think that in the 90s I loved SciAm. But then they became a far-left ideological soap box and I cancelled my signature.
Sad!
That and National Geographic
Just like the weather channel. I as operational meteorologist encourage all my friends and relatives to avoid the channel like the plague.
31,487 Scientists signed the Global Warming Petition
See a summary of the peer reviewed research on which these scientists base their signatures
The list includes 2,000 medical doctors – yeah, they know a lot about AGW.
Chris Actually medical doctors know far more about the health and longevity consequences of ALL types of climate change. i.e. they are expert in understanding that COLD KILLS far more than heat. See: “An inconvenient truth from medical research: cold is far worse than global warming at killing people”
Furthermore medical doctors are trained in thorough examination of the evidence and are far better at understanding climate trends, causes and consequences than most politicians and government bureaucrats. I recommend you do some homework before making such superficial pronouncements.
David, knowledge about the roles of cold and heat as it relates to sickness and mortality has nothing to do with atmospheric sciences. Absolutely nothing.
“Furthermore medical doctors are trained in thorough examination of the evidence and are far better at understanding climate trends, causes and consequences than most politicians and government bureaucrats. I recommend you do some homework before making such superficial pronouncements.”
No, they are not. That’s like saying doctors, because they can examine evidence (I guess of disease – you watch way too much House) can apply that logic to any other field. Heck, let’s use doctors when analyzing bridge collapses – that makes more sense than using civil engineers. And let’s use doctors to assess space rocket failures – much better than those corrupted scientists.
Chris, has anyone ever told you you’re an idiot?
The Global Warming Petition Project (GWPP), the 2008 petition mentioned above that supposedly has 31,000+ signatures of “scientists,” is bunk. Most of the signers are engineers or scientists in fields that have no relationship to climate science – metallurgy, veterinary medicine, surgery, nuclear engineering, and the like. A science teacher with a BS in geology who has never worked as a geologist or a computer programmer who has never read a single peer-reviewed climate study is considered equal in expertise to climate scientists with PhDs who have worked in as climate scientists for decades. That’s absurd.
Put another way, would you expect an electrical engineer to know how to remove a cat’s bladder stone, or a whale biologist to have an informed opinion on what steel alloy was the best for building an oil rig? Of course not. So you shouldn’t expect all these non-experts to have expert opinions on climate science either.
Even if you accept the GWPP’s warped criteria for a scientist/climate expert, the GWPP’s signers represent 0.25% of the people who could have signed the petition (as compared to graduation data collected by the US Department of Education since 1970). That’s a tiny minority. If you compare the number of signatures to the number of people working in the GWPP’s chosen occupations, the signers represent 0.44%, still a tiny minority (as compared to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2013). And the minorities are still small when you compare the signatures by category to the US membership of professional organizations for people in those categories, like the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (source: http://scholarsandrogues.com/tag/gwpp-bls-doed2015/)
However you look at it, the claim that the Global Warming Petition Project somehow disproves the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming is false.
Brian, much of your comment is a repeat of the credentialism argument, that unless one has the imprimatur from the priesthood of climate science, that person is not qualified to comment on climate science. The field involves various computer models, but persons experienced with computer modeling are not really qualified to judge this computer model, because it is one of the sacred mysteries. . .. The field involves the use of historic data, but ordinary historians are not qualified to comment either, as it is climate science . . .
Brian, I stopped buying that sort of argument in Catholic confirmation class when I was 12. The instructor noted that I lacked faith, and I conclude that the sort of argument you are making is one of faith, not science.
Tom, my argument is twofold. Your response only addresses the first part of my argument, that only people with informed opinions should be considered in any question of whether there is a consensus or not. There is no evidence that the 31,487 signatures represent people who have taken the time to develop an informed opinion. The GWPP petition response card (here: http://petitionproject.org/gw_images/GW_Petition_Only_90dpi.png) requires no evidence of having an informed opinion as part of signing the petition. As an EE myself, I’m perfectly fine with engineers and other non-climate scientists having opinions on the subject of climate disruption – so long as their opinions have been informed by study, and not just by reading blogs or news articles. There’s no way to verify that any of the signers (besides the ones who have advanced degrees in the subject) have met that prerequisite.
The second part of my argument, which you didn’t address at all, is that even if we accept that everyone who signed the petition has taken the time to inform themselves, the number of signatures represent a vanishingly small minority when compared to the total population of potential signers – 0.25% of people with degrees in the GWPP’s own selected fields, 0.44% of people working in those fields (whether they have a science degree or not), and small minorities of the professional memberships of various professional organizations.
So even if you disagree with the first part of my argument, there’s no way to dispute the second. But please, try – I’ve provided the links to every source of data I used in the articles tagged at the link in my first comment.
Brian Angliss
Do you really know so little about the scientific method and logical arguments?
Have you really not fact checked the 97%?
Your appeal to “overwhelming scientific consensus” is an fallacious appeal to authority, NOT a scientific argument.
See Alex Epstein ‘97% Of Climate Scientists Agree’ Is 100% Wrong
Numerous other authors affirm Epstein’s shredding of the 97% assertion.
Under the scientific method, those proposing the catastrophic majority anthropogenic global warming model (politically redefined as “climate change”) bear the burden of proof.
Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman laid out the high standard for the scientific method in Cargo Cult Science, Caltech 1974. It’s
Thus every person able to read and understand can raise an issue of “inconvenient” facts. All those signing the Global Warming Petition have science degrees from America, qualify, and based their signing on the observed evidence (not politics or grant $). Those with PhD’s are further expert at original scientific research with strict peer review.
Remember, it only took a little child to declare the obvious: The Emperor has No Clothes!
For an introductory understanding of logical argument, I recommend that you obtain and study: The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-eight Lessons on how to Recognize Bad Reasoning. Best wishes on learning how to think.
David, rather than address my point about the expertise (or lack thereof) of the signers, or my point about the tiny minority of people represented by the GWPP and how both of those points mean that the GWPP isn’t a consensus-countering petition, you chose instead to focus on a single point in my conclusion. That’s called a “red herring,” and is itself a fallacy.
Furthermore, your claim that I’m making an appeal to authority, but your understanding of the fallacy is lacking. The acutal fallacy you’re claiming I’ve made is known as an appeal to misleading authority, and there’s nothing fallacious about appeals to authorities when a) the authority is an expert on the subject at hand, b) the authority is unbiased, c) the authority’s opinion is unrepresentative. You can certainly claim that any individual may be disqualified by any or all of the three points I mentioned, but unless you’re going to prove that point, your fallacy is not applicable. If you’d like an even longer-winded explanation of why you’re wrong, I’ve written extensively only this and other logical fallacies I’ve come across in a series titled “Climate Illogic.” Rather than link directly (I don’t want this post to be moderated out for too many links back to my own site), Google it and the website I mention in my original comment and it’ll pop up.
Epstein and the other authors who have made similar arguments are all wrong. If someone polled physicists about gravity, you wouldn’t expect that they’d talk about how it is or is not real. That’s the point we’re at with these kinds of studies – when a conclusion becomes well accepted by the scientific community, the community stops explicitly mentioning it. Here’s a great paper on this exact subject: Shwed and Bearman 2010. It’s well worth the read. Note that it found that the reality of global warming stopped being seriously contested in the early 1990s.
Brian Angliss Remarkable expertise on fallacies!? e.g., Your c) is backwards! I did address your points by pointing out 3 categories of persons who could give evidence overturning the “consensus”. I highlighted the Feynman’s high standard for the scientific method which you appear not to be familiar with. Science is not a democracy, so your % of petition signers/population is irrelevant. Are you really unfamiliar with “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn? He demonstrates that the consensus by ALL experts is repeatedly proven wrong by the next scientific revolution. e.g. ALL the Aristotelian experts on Aristotle’s science were overturned by Galileo’s experiments.
Have you studied the reports by the Apollo NASA engineers and scientists with The Right Climate Stuff? http://www.TheRightClimateStuff.com
NASA’s Apollo engineers ONLY used validated models. They found IPCC models were NOT validated. So they developed a physics based model that they did validate over the available recorded temperature data. e.g., See: Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity for use in Regulatory Decisions February 2014 etc. Yes we have seen global warming since the Little Ice Age. Statistician Doug Keenan’s $100,000 prize showed that a known positive or negative trend cannot be found in time series with random variations. Thus the IPCC’s case has NOT been validated. It is still an open scientific question.
Yep, I got point c) backwards. Typos don’t disprove my point, however – your claim that the consensus argument is an appeal to misleading authority is incorrect.
I have read some of the documents produced by The Right Climate Stuff. It’s largely wrong, however (climate models have been validated against volcanic eruptions for one, and ECS isn’t strictly model based – it’s also paleoclimate-based, and the paleoclimate records point to higher sensitivities, not lower), and their approach is out of date given how aerospace engineering is largely done these days. After all, it’s almost impossible to conduct validateable experiments on spacecraft when there is only one or two ever made. Validation is always preferable, but it’s not always possible. In those cases, statistical Monte Carlo models are required. And I say that as an EE who has worked in aerospace for the last 10+ years and whose designs fly or die by statistical models.
I haven’t read Kuhn personally, no, but if you’re presenting it fairly and accurately, then Kuhn’s argument only applies to radical revolutions. A scientific revolution of the type you describe (Aristotlean replaced by Copernican) are almost impossible in fields like physics these days. Relativity didn’t replace Newton’s Laws of Motion, but rather augmented and clarified them. The only recent example of a revolution of this type I can think of is from medicine – the discovery that ulcers are caused by a bacterium and not by diet. But medicine isn’t physics or chemistry, or even the various interrelated fields of climate science, where you’d have to posit radical errors in quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics, radiometry, and the empirically measured properties of gases in order to generate an alternative hypothesis. There’s a reason there are no coherent alternatives to AGW – none of the alternatives come even close to matching all the data.
I won’t bother to address your Keenan comment except to say that just because you can do something with math doesn’t mean it’s physically possible, and mere statistics are no substitute for physics. I have seen engineers devise models that produced a negative resistance who I sent back to the drawing board because that’s a clearly non-physical answer that means they screwed up somewhere.
I have a question for you, though. You were the person who posted about the GWPP in the first place. And yet now you’re saying that it doesn’t matter because “science is not a democracy.” So why bother posting it in the first place, if not to imply that consensus arguments are wrong? Is it too much to expect some logical consistency from you, David?
Finally, your most recent response included at least five distinct claims, none of which actually address the numerical calculations I presented in my original comment (0.25% of the graduates, 0.44% of the people working in the GWPP-specified fields) except to dismiss them as meaningless (thus my question above). Instead of addressing that point, you’ve fallen back on a rhetorical technique known as a “Gish Gallop.” It’s an attempt to win a debate by forcing your opponent to spend far more time debunking your claims than you take making them. It probably wins you debates from time to time, but it’s still dishonest.
Brian Angliss The CFD models used to design aircraft have been thoroughly validated. Search NASA Validation CFD. You assert “you’d have to posit radical errors in quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics, . . .” Not so. You only have to 1) find bias and negative feedbacks not included in IPCC. 2) recognize that by fitting > 100 parameters in Global warming models you can fit any historic data but still not achieve accurate forecasting. Study postings at JudithCurry.com on “uncertainty”. There is far more to actually upholding the scientific method and testing models than grant driven consensus.
David, what I said is “Validation is always preferable, but it’s not always possible.” Pointing out a single example of a validated model does nothing to negate the truth of this statement, nor does it have any impact on my point that climate models have been validated by running them against volcanic eruptions and historical data.
You seem to be confusing a few critical points, however. I said “you’d have to posit radical errors in quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics, radiometry, and the empirically measured properties of gases in order to generate an alternative hypothesis.” Global warming theory is not based on modeling – it’s based on data and known physics. You could take away modeling entirely and the data and physics would still say that global warming was real and caused by burning fossil fuels, and that effects like deserts getting dryer, droughts going longer and floods getting bigger would still hold. And the climate sensitivity would still be between about 2 and 4.5. Modeling is only necessary for projecting how the future will change.
Nor does your comment change the fact that no alternative presented to date comes even close to matching the data. That’s the problem – for solar or geologic heating to be the cause (the only two hypotheses that could produce sufficient energy to match the observed increase in global temperature), carbon dioxide would have to not be a greenhouse gas, and yet that property of carbon dioxide is well observed and explained by quantum mechanics. Thus my claim that we’d have to have a radical problem with quantum mechanics for AGW theory to be wrong.
Finally, I’m absolutely certain that there are errors and biases in the models used by scientists to inform the IPCC (this may be a personal pet peeve of mine, but the IPCC does no actual science, so the “IPCC models” are models run by others but referenced by the IPCC). No model is perfect, after all. The question is whether those errors and biases substantially alter the conclusions.
When I run an electrical model, there are all sorts of effects that I leave out. Each effect I ignore makes the model more “ideal” and less realistic, but depending on what my needs for the model are, that may be OK. Usually I use an ideal model to determine if my circuit approach is mostly correct. Then I add features that improve the realism to determine if the circuit can survive temperature variation, radiation, and multiple years of operation. Eventually I have a model that works well enough to use statistics to project whether my circuit will work, usually to a 99+% certainty and a 90% confidence, under all conditions the circuit is supposed to see. But even my models don’t need to explicitly model bathtub electronics failure profiles over life, air pressure, how humidity affects the surface resistance of the PWA, and dozens of other factors – those are third or even fourth order effects that have no impact on the performance in 99.999+% of designs.
Climate models work the same way. In order for your criticisms to matter, you need to demonstrate that the models are missing meaningful physics for the purpose the model has been designed for (as opposed to some other purpose you would like the model to be designed for).
I don’t bother with Curry’s website – her criticisms have largely been found to be baseless, and the few times she’s found anything meaningful, others have incorporated them, analyzed them, and found that even making her corrections did not significantly affect their results.
Brian Angliss. Re: “The question is whether those errors and biases substantially alter the conclusions.” By ignoring uncertainty, you fail to recognize how very weak is the physics backing today’s climate “consensus”. It is easily inverted by ignored physics. e.g. see Bevan Dockery finding global CO2 lagging and tracking temperature changes. (Murry Salby has shown similar results.) This shows short term changes that correspond to CO2 lagging temperature over the interglacial/glacial temperature changes.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/16/climate-change-debate-latest-results/
Your confidence in ignoring Curry’s website is at your scientific peril. She provides the best understanding of uncertainty and the wide range of issues dismissed or ignored by the IPCC. Most “climate scientists” have not studied or fail to recognize the massive uncertainties in climate modeling and consequent nullification of the significance of their results.
For the international standard on uncertainty see the Guide to Uncertainty in Measurement. BIPM. http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/gum.html
(PS I would never hire a scientist let alone an engineer with such a cavalier attitude towards uncertainty.)
“I don’t bother with Curry’s website”
More fool you.
“her criticisms have largely been found to be baseless”
Bollocks.
“However you look at it, the claim that the Global Warming Petition Project somehow disproves the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming is false”
So by the same token, the “97% scientific consensus” must also be false, as only a tiny percentage of those scientists covered by the “consensus” will have the requisite qualifications in climate “science” too.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I’m afraid that’s incorrect, Catweazle666. The bulk of the consensus studies performed to date have controlled for expertise in various ways. For example, Cook et al 2013 not only reviewed the abstracts of peer-reviewed climate papers, but also asked the authors to rate their own papers. The authors’ own ratings showed a much higher percentage of “agreed with consensus” than the abstract ratings did. That means that the abstract ratings likely underestimate the degree of consensus. And remember, this is a consensus of agreement in the peer-reviewed literature, not of individual scientists. However, it’s probably reasonable to assume that the majority of authors agree with the content of the papers they write or co-write.
Doran & Zimmerman 2009 explicitly looked at different levels of expertise and found that the more expert someone was, the more strongly they had been convinced by the data that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Anderegg et al 2010 went even further and controlled for possible “pal review” by only looking at the top five (IIRC) cited papers of each author, and again the greatest amount of consensus was found among the people with the most expertise.
At this point the scientific consensus on global warming has been tested using scientific, statistically valid polling techniques at least 6 times. The methodologies have all been different and yet in every case the expert consensus has been found to be between 90% and 100%. This is called “replication,” and it’s the gold standard for science.
And the GWPP? It’s not a statistically valid poll, there’s no way to verify any level of expertise of the signers, and even if there was, the numbers show that the signature are a tiny minority, not a counter-consensus.
Rubbish.
Read the studies yourself. If you don’t know enough about polling to understand the methods and how they differ from each other, study up on polling (the American Association of Public Opinion Research is a good starting point with lots of good white papers on the topic) and then read the studies. And then look at what the GWPP did with their petition and ask yourself if their petition looks anything like a statistically valid public opinion survey.
BTW, Art Robinson was kind enough to comment briefly at Scholars & Rogues after I published my first analysis. I asked him to provide a rationale for the degrees he identified as “climate related” – he never responded. If he had, perhaps we could better understand why fields that have no apparent connection to climate change (metallurgy? nuclear engineering? really?) or why there doesn’t appear to have been an any attempt to verify that the signers were well informed. I also asked why he has never said how many letters he had to mail to get his 31,487 signatures. The normal response rate for direct mail campaigns is 4%, which would imply that he had to mail more than 750,000 letters to get a paltry 31,487 responses. If that’s even close, it would distract from the GWPP’s false anti-consensus message.
I see no point in debating with an individual so uninformed as to believe “consensus” has any place in science.
Have you derived Newton’s laws of motion for yourself from first principles? If not, then you’re relying on the authority and consensus of physicists.
If you smoke, quit on the advice of your doctor, or never started for health reasons, then you’re relying on the authority and consensus of epidemiologists who discovered the links between smoking and cancer.
If you avoid eating arsenic because it’s toxic, then you’re relying on the authority and consensus of scientists.
I’m not sure it’s possible go through a day without relying on the authority of experts and the consensus of scientists in some way. So while consensus may not have a place in the scientific method, is surely has a place in our lives and in communicating science to lay people.
And ultimately that’s the point of the GWPP – to cast doubt upon the overwhelming consensus of scientists who have been convinced by nearly 200 years of scientific thought and mountains of data from around the world.
Brian Angliss, I think you are deliberately misstating the nature of the “Appeal to Authority” fallacy. Doing so is to cite the authority, and ignore the evidence they have to support their position. If the evidence is wrong, so is the authority, regardless of their positon. You are also doing something of a “tu quoque” fallacy, as the GWPF is alleged to be using your own favorite arguments.
Tom, I’m not misstating anything about appeals to misleading authority. Authentic authority is derived from evidence and is usually verified via a third party of some kind (a university when it bestows a degree, journals when they publish a paper, et al). The fallacy is when the authority is not authentic due to the reasons I listed above.
My point was that, unless you have the ability to review the evidence yourself, pointing to an authority who has reviewed the evidence and who knows enough about the topic to review the evidence correctly is the correct and reasonable thing to do. And in every case I mentioned above, if you haven’t done the analysis yourself, then you’re relying upon the authority and consensus of people who have.
For the record, though, it’s pretty easy to derive the laws of motion from first principles using modern technology and a little basic calculus.
As for your claim of tu quoque, I can see why you might think that. I don’t agree, however, for two reasons. First, catweazle666 essentially resorted to an insult rather than address my argument. There was little to no reasoned criticism there. Second, my response directly related to his consensus point, although I did pull in the question of authority myself given it’s related. I didn’t criticize him directly as he did me, so I don’t think tu quoque applies.
As an aside: Maibach hired Cook, who may be thinking “what have I gotten myself into.”
Maibach was one of Shukla’s RICO 20.
I thought I recognized that name.
Sounds like it’s time to drain the swamp!
>>As climate change continues to increase the
>>frequency and severity of these extreme events…
Are they referring to the ever-increasing tornado frequency in the US, and the ever-increasing death toll they have created? Yes, that is a terrible, terrible, consequence of this evil global warming.
Oh, wait a minute…..
“As climate change continues to increase the
frequency and severity of these extreme events”
It makes one wonder what world these people are looking at. Not this one.
I imagine that they are looking at the total energy of tropical cyclones across the world, which have really increased since 1993. And this increasing cyclone energy is wreaking havoc, costing the US more and more in reconstruction work in recent years.
Oh, wait a minute……
http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bVM78-aHdek/UOHJy3G0R-I/AAAAAAAACXs/KF9x3Yav57c/s1600/normhurr.31Dec12.jpg
Sciency America is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Nincompoops who repeat rhetoric and print rhetoric in their magazine, associated with an incorrect theory (CAGW, the majority of the warming in the last 150 years was caused by solar cycle changes, not changes to atmospheric CO2, if that assertion is correct the warming is reversible) is part of the reason why this scientific problem (what causes the glacial/interglacial cycle, what causes/caused cyclic warming and cooling in the paleo record with a period of 1450 years and a beat of plus or minus 500 years, why the planet has warmed in the last 150 years) has not been solved.
There has been massive climategate inappropriate manipulation of data and analysis to push CAGW. The Trump administration can speed the end of climategate and the cult of CAGW which has continued unabated, by presenting a list and time line of the inappropriate changes to the GISS temperature ‘record’.
Try to imaging GISS data manipulation being presented in congress at the same time there is ‘unexplained’ cooling.
People have no idea how significant the cooling will be.
Come on man. There are cycles of warming in the paleo record that correlate to solar cycle changes. Each and every warming period was followed by cooling (sometimes abrupt cooling) when the solar cycle again changed.
http://www.solen.info/solar/
December 12, 2016
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
These poor PhD students will have a very rude awakening in about 5~7 years when the disparity between reality vs. CAGW hypothetical projections exceed 3 standard deviations for 25 years.
When that happens, a large portion of them will be unemployable as the CAGW hypothsis will be tossed on the trash heap of failed ideas…
Perhaps they can find employment in the exciting food service industry….
How they’ll ever pay off $200,000 in student loans will also be a very rude awakening for them…
And so it goes, until it doesn’t…
It would be naive to expect those reliant on the public purse to give up trying to keep the money flowing. However those providing the funds need someone prepared to question where this funding is going and for what. I hope President elect Trump will be that person. Too much money is being squandered on irrational fear mongering.
You know, if I were a government scientist under the new administration, I would not be signing a letter like this.
If someone wants to make budget and personnel cuts in the numbers of Earth scientist, the Trump now has a ready-made list of applicants. Huge rationality FAIL, I would say…
R
But don’t you see, these noble souls are sacrificing themselves for you, for me, for all of us; even though we are clearly not worthy of their sacrifice.
This just goes to show you how much they believe in CAGW. No amount of evidence will convince them to the contrary.
And that is how I know they aren’t scientists, because scientists work with facts.
“Richard Heede is the Principal of Climate Mitigation Services, a consultancy focused on climate stewardship from emissions inventories to profitable action. ”
This guy is poised to make big money from continuing the global warming s c a m.
How many of these “chalk dust heroes” have any idea who Lysenko was?
Seems to me this bunch of nitwits just offered up themselves, in one convenient list, as people to ignore moving forward.
Its an over ambitious funding pitch just the same as Boeing’s Air Force One and Lockheed’s F-35 and hose two haven’t fared well.
I’d be curious to know how many of those 333 PhD student signatories have a faculty adviser who is also a signatory. Follow that up with an anonymous survey of how many felt pressure to sign.
I do hope Griff hasn’t been taken in by the now sadly normal hysteria of the BBC whenever there is any coastal storm damage along any part of the UK coastline and which they imply, sometimes implicitly sometimes explicitly, is because of human caused climate change.
To reassure him, the Thames Barrier (and much of the sea defences around south-east Britain) was embarked upon by people who understood that because of isostatic readjustment after the ice age London would inevitably face gradual increased threat from storm or flood surges. They were not living in some paranoid delusion that the Earth was out to get London, or any other port city, because of evil people using fossil fuel. They also understood that there were many other factors involved in changing sea levels, something sadly lacking in the green community.
In fact, England’s east coast has been suffering erosion for thousands of years. In the Middle Ages an entire city was washed away by storms. Now, thanks to the green movement we are allowing people’s homes and villages to continue to be washed away when we have the means to prevent it. By contrast, across the North Sea the Dutch have not only defended their coastline but actually reclaimed vast tracts from the sea. It is just a matter of resolution and putting people before daft green theory.
Griff is of course perfectly entitled to claim whatever he likes about global warming, but I do hope he isn’t taken in by the increasingly dishonest reporting of the BBC on anything to do with sea levels. Or a few other related topics for that matter….
I spent a little while looking up all the major flood events in the UK since 1990, making particular note of when the previous ‘record flood’ had been and how high it was, when mentioned.
I can assure you the situation has changed since the millennium…
If also you want to look at severe storms and coastal damage, you’ll find the same thing.
If you don’t like that, well then: I have some beachfront property I’d like to sell you!
I already have some, Grifter, and very nice it is too.
Further, despite all your alarmist lies, the sea level hasn’t risen any measurable amount in the last 35 years, not an inch.
Further, I fully expect it will go to my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and their children and grandchildren too.
But if you have some more and you’re that worried about it, I’m sure I can see my way clear to buying it from you.
How’s a tenner sound?
After all, if things are as bad as you say, that’s all it’s worth, right?
10 vs 10,000
!!!!! SATIRE ALERT!!!!!
Brothers and Sisters,
Let us set aside our differences and just accept the fact that Mother Earth considers our species to be an Unrighteous Plague.
The time has come to put away our Sinful Contrivances and Unholy Machinery and embrace the simple lifestyle of our Humble and Virtuous Kin: the Amish.
If ever there were poster children for the “Green” Movement, it is the Amish.
So we should stop driving our fancy SUVs – don’t be vain and don’t be whiney, you don’t want them to get medieval on our hineys.
!!!!!! WE NOW RETURN TO NORMAL PROGRAMMING !!!!!!
+1 – Excellent
I liked that.
Undoubtedly many of these uber greeneys want to be Amish. So why don’t they just go there? Ah, yes, because they are hypocrites — they want to be Amish-plus — Amish with all the mod cons.
R
Loved that. Thank you, Freedom Monger! That’s a keeper. 🙂
When your bread and butter is fake news……
Carbon pollution
Renewable Economic Opportunity
Hottest year evah!
We found the hotspot!
Models and observations are in line
Data Homogenization is fine!
Social cost of carbon!
Extreme weather is on the rise!
Sea Level is rising faster than we ever thought!
They fooled half the population and treated the other half as dimwits. Now the dimwits get to run the show.
“Wind technician” is the fastest growing job category in America, and the solar industry has hired more veterans than any other sector .”
The reference:
Shah, J. Clean Energy Jobs Are Exploding in America. Why Don’t Mainstream Reporters Know? Greentech Media (Sept. 2, 2016). [link]
The relevant section:
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “wind technician” is the fastest-growing job category — expanding twice as much as the next-fastest growing job, occupational therapy assistant.
What did I find when I sent searching?
It was a projection to 2024. Not actual numbers.
And the numbers are pitifully small. An increase of 4800 jobs over the next 10 years. 1.3 jobs a day!
https://sunshinehours.net/2016/12/12/wind-service-technition/
Increasing from 1 to 2 is a 100% increase.
“And the numbers are pitifully small. An increase of 4800 jobs over the next 10 years. 1.3 jobs a day!”
Well, let’s see, Trump saved 1,100 Indiana jobs, and U.S. steel is contributing 10,000 new jobs because of Trump, and the richest man in Japan is contributing $50 billion and creating 50,000 new jobs in America because of Trump. And that’s just over the last few weeks.
Wind technicians will probably be required much less in the future, but that’s ok, they can take one of Trump’s new, well-paying jobs instead.
It’s only about 500, the rest of the jobs are still going to Mexico, at a cost of about $450K per job in tax subsidies. US Steel is projecting those jobs for the entire steel industry, not just itself, and that’s only assuming that all of the tax and regulatory changes that Trump has proposed actually get passed.
What none of these whiners get is that we are now living in the age of postmodern politics. DJT does not read – anything longer than a page. He will never see the letter – it will be sent to his climate lieutenants for interpretation and they will tell him it is BS. Even more, DJT as the BSer in Chief knows his BS and knows that anything coming from the press (I would bet money he has never opened an issue of SciAm) is automatically BS. Ditto any group of people who appeal to him as authorities.
From state level up, few if any politicians read any of the letters sent to them. The numbers are just too large. They all use staff members to categorize and summarize the letters. Then they read the synopsis.
“DJT does not read – anything longer than a page. He will never see the letter – it will be sent to his climate lieutenants for interpretation and they will tell him it is BS.”
I don’t know. If I were president-elect and were interested in the subject, I would trip on over to the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change, WUWT, and read what the experts and others had to say about this subject. What better place to go for unfiltered information? And it doesn’t take long to read the articles. (It takes a LOT longer to comment and keep up with same:).
Ole Trump may be reading us right now. I wouldn’t put it past him. He has a curious mind. Don’t pay attention to the smears of his intellect.
Hey TA,
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not dissing DJT’s intellect. I’m just saying that his methods are VERY different from any past politician. And I totally agree about tripping over to WUWT. I’m sure his people are reading this.
Just now I tripped over to the HuffPuff and saw that DeCaprio is front and center saying that “He met with Trump and he will do the right thing about climate change.” OK, in reality, he gave his movie to Ivana. Nothing about the meeting itself. Have you noticed that everyone who comes out of a meeting with DJT thinks that they have convinced the Donald to their point of view?
Lots of people have met with DJT: Romney, Christy, Guliani – How did it work out for them? DeCaprio is like a second-grader coming out of the principal’s office and claiming that he got recess extended to three hours a day.
“Have you noticed that everyone who comes out of a meeting with DJT thinks that they have convinced the Donald to their point of view?”
Yes, I have, and they all have great big smiles on their faces after coming out of Trump’s office.
You should have seen Carly Fiorina today She visited Trump Tower to meet with Trump. She was smiling from ear to ear after talking to Trump. He’ll probably give her a good job, and I think he should. She is a very smart person. If they can bury the hatchet, that’s good for all of us.
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Attributed to Mark Twain. If you are very good, and have time, you need to get as much information as possible into a well written one page summary. That takes a lot of effort as opposed to “stream of conscious” writing. It’s why there are short summaries of long reports. The short one for the head honchos, and the details for the fact checkers.
Look how well the IPCC SPM worked versus the information in the Working Papers. ;-(
I wouldn’t worry too much, from what I’ve seen, Donald Trump has his finger on the pulse of just about EVERYTHING. He certainly knows the game that’s been going down thanks to Gang-Green [gangrene]. I have every reason to think he will deal with it/them appropriately.
Isn’t “Carbon Pollution” an oxymoron? Shouldn’t they know this?
Wot About the 31,000 real scientists at http://www.climate.petition.org?
Things change. I will never stop by the magazine racks at bookstores again. That was a pitiful era of low information quality. Such declining brands are easily co-opted by alternate agendas when their acquisition cost falls to penny stock levels.
I picked up a recent SA, and could hardly wait to read it with a nice cup of cocoa when delight turned into gobsmacking horror as it became painfully apparent that a great natural science magazine had turned into political science. The mag included multiple instances of anti-Trump, anti-right diatribe throughout. Ordinarily I would have thought such an edition would have been an embarrassment even to the publishers who must have realized they had crossed a line. Alas, I don’t believe so. RIP Scientific American. I’m sad that it will be the last one I buy.
I’m just realizing that Scientific American is suffering from the same political affliction that has now infected the once great game of American Football. Why in the world do they do that to themselves, especially in a world where technology has already so fractionalized their all-important audiences?
Not just the NFL, the NCAA had decreed that they aren’t going to hold anymore tournaments, etc in N. Carolina until the rescind a law that keeps men out of women’s restrooms.
There is a cultural war going on. The Left is trying to destroy the traditional conservative, religious culture of the United States.
President John Kennedy had a goal of sending men to the moon. President Obama has a goal of sending men to the women’s rest room.
Question: Should ‘Scientific’ American be charged/accused or otherwise taken to court for false advertising? It has been years since they scientifically did anything.
Speaking to Griff’s problem with folks who didn’t buck the “consensus” and thus may be “on the bubble” (loosing their jobs). I go back to the shuttle Challenger launch. There was one engineer who stood up and said what needed to be said – don’t launch. He was overruled by launch managers who knew better. A few hours later he was proven correct, and seven people lost their lives.
That’s why these folks who “went along to keep their jobs” should be on the bubble. They are in a position of responsibility and sold their ethics for a paycheck.
Nuff said.
Well, to be fair to the engineers, there was enough uncertainty about what would actually happen, that the launch might have gone off successfully.
NASA felt pressure to launch on schedule, and they pressed the engineers and the engineers finally said ok. The engineers didn’t know the vehicle would explode if launched under those conditions, they just knew there was a greater chance of something going wrong. That’s all they could definitively say to the NASA bureacrats. Other engineers were adamant that there was great danger in launching under the very low outside temperatures on that morning. Frost was on the launch facilities.
Had it been me, I would have erred on the side of caution. Of course, that’s easy to say in hindsight, but I personally would not have hesitated to delay the launch.
President Reagan was scheduled to talk to the astronauts, which included the first “Teacher in Space”, live once they reached orbit so this was the pressure NASA was feeling, although there is no evidence Reagan put any pressure on them to launch at all, and it is my opinion that the NASA administrator and his minions put the pressure on themselves and rolled the dice. And lost.
A tragedy all around.
NASA knew of the problem for years from inspecting returned solid rocket boosters. Instead of fixing the problem (the shelved ASRM changed the design from piston seals to face seals but NASA decided that installing joint heaters was sufficient) they chose to characterize the problem and came up with minimum temperature launch criteria. But the system worked; nobody got fired or jail time, so the bureaucracy was saved.
yes, there are a whole bunch of people over the ages who’ve stood up and shouted, been put down by the majority and triumphed in the end.
that does not mean that everyone who stands up and shouts is onto anything. which seems to be the current meme in the US.
there are more people who have advanced society by building on what’s there.
It is revealing to see who the first lobbyist’s through Trumps door are . The grant seeking global warming cartel see their self interest threatened and a craping themselves .
All Gore looked like a broken man leaving Trump Tower as Ambassador for the Green Grant seekers .
Do the right thing Mr. Trump and stop the outright rip off of tax payers that has been going on for over 8 years .
All Gore looked like a broken man leaving Trump Tower as Ambassador for the Green Grant seekers .
I think Mr Trump had smiled and told him “Al, You’re fired!”
Like a broken man? Not in the slightest. Whatever the outcome, he can say he did his best. I pity those sitting on the sidelines doing nothing.
You could say the same for Josef Stalin, of course.
Al Gore, Leonardo what’s his name, all lining up to convince the DJT of the righteousness of their cause and expecting to win. Like meeting with Godzilla and asking him not to step on Volvos.
Could we please have a little less denigration of black carbon soot?
Yes its gloriously messy stuff, and black, and melts ice-cubes in laboratories but it is a fantastic soil (dirt) conditioner. For lack of a better term it ‘breaks up’ clay soil and makes it friable. In fact, is it not why especially fertile soil is the colour it is (black) anyway?
No-one’s quite sure sure but dirt, liberally sprinkled with soot, grows plants like nobody’s business. Witness how German farmers in the 1920’s were distraught as soot spewing coal powered trains were replaced with clean electric trains.
And its role as asthmatic breathing causation and general all-round lung destroyer is really rather coming into question, what do we suppose is going on here… maybe the black soot is a ‘symptom’ or indicator of other problem rather than the cause?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38224437
It makes your laser printers work.
Beside that, isn’t calling anything ‘black’ a racist statement?
What is interesting is how many of the signers are in creatively squishy fields of study like Public Health Education, not just the normally squishy Public Health.
Scientific American promoted environmentalism and science speculation nearly all my life. It was once a serious, and popular science magazine before the 1970s. It should have changed its name in the 1970s to “Unscientific Guesswork“. In an effort to make science more popular and relevant to the lives of its public, SciAm went down the path of hype, guesswork and speculation. Any kind of new idea gets a big spread. Not matter how fanciful. SciAm was also the first English publication to use the term “renewable energy” back in 1971. Since then they’ve been on a 45 year long crusade to sell it to us. No matter how impossible the economics may be. SciAm ended up preferring speculation to actual science:
Below is a comment I wrote specifically for SciAm but they just closed their comments a minute ago. The comment is appropriate for current WUWT article as well as anyone reading SciAm about it:
“Over 300 of these 800 signatories to this letter are students, not academic employees, professors, or scientists working in industry. They have been misled by a determined group of activists to believe that anthropogenic global warming exists and must be reduced by determined governmental action. I hate to tell you, guys, the warming that exists is not anthropogenic. To convince yourself, do this at home: get a global temperature curve such as HadCRUT3 that has not yet been attacked by imaginary corrections from IPCC. Put it into your computer and compare it to the Keeling curve that shows distribution of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Start it from 1850. That date is important because your leading agitators regard it as the start of the industrial age, when atmospheric carbon dioxide first began to increase. What you will see is that the Keeling curve has a steady, gently increasing upward slope because of constant addition of carbon dioxide to it, but is otherwise smooth. This is not at all true of global temperature, however, that parallels it. Your agitators have told you that anthropogenic global temperature increase follows the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But this is not happening because global temperature constantly goes up and down except when they decide to falsify it. Using the HadCRUT3 temperature curve we find two sections in it where the temperature significantly goes down. It can no way be called warming that follows the carbon dioxide change shown by the Keeling curve. This includes a 35-year cooling section that starts in 1875 and ends in 1910. Plus, there is also a ten-year cooling section of from 1940 to 1950. The latter is also known as the World War II cold spell. Temperature stayed down and did not reach the 1940 level again until 1980. Together, these two cooling sections take up one third of the temperature curve from 1850 to 2008. It is quite impossible to assign such a temperature history to something called carbon dioxide greenhouse effect There is absolutely no resemblance between what temperature does and what the parallel Keeling curve does that represents behavior of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This simply takes the legs out from under the claim that anthropogenic greenhouse effect exists. The only thing you can say for sure is that global temperature does not follow global carbon dioxide trace and therefore is controlled by natural forces and not by any human activities. You have simply been tricked into signing this letter by lies. Clearly, the ringleaders do not understand, or, more likely, do not want to understand that there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming or AGW because they benefit from this.”
“We write as concerned individuals, united in recognizing that the science is unequivocal”
Whatever it is supposed to mean that “the science is unequivocal” it is certainly not a scientific statement.
Even IPCC does not think or write that the science is unequivocal, The gut feeling by IPCC on that question is everything from a walk in the park to catastrophe:
“The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)( Note 16 ).”
Note 16 “No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.”
IPCC; WGI ; AR5; Summary for policymakers; Page 16
Scientific American should change its name to Unscientific Activists .
Anti-American Activists ?
Trump should ask these “scientists” to give him the best estimate possible of the average temperature rise of earth between now and the year 2100. Take their word for it! Then ask the scientists how far south would someone have to move from say Dayton Ohio to achieve this average temperature difference in their surroundings (will probably be something like Knoxville Tennessee). Then ask the American people “would you rather spend uptine trillion dollars to avoid this or is it OK for the people in Dayton Ohio be subject to the temperatures of Knoxville Tennessee in the year 2100?”
Scott,
I’ve taught this in presentations for years. Take an isopleth map of average U.S. temperatures, then overlay the IPCC sensitivity range of 1.5-4.5 deg C for a doubling of CO2. It’s like moving from northern Iowa to southern Iowa. Scary! Catastrophic!. Meanwhile, every year northerners flock to retire in Florida, a voluntary “climate change” of about +15 deg C. Warm is good.
Regarding clean energy, I say, “bring it on” , BUT … for the right reasons.
Can humans, however, not make any significant advances without being motivated to do so out of fear for their lives?
Okay, so maybe it’s a neat creative idea to make up this CO2-pollution demon that all nations can get behind to fight against and improve the world. But this is not only scientific bias. This is molecular bias. What has that little CO2 molecule ever done to YOU ? Yet here a bunch of you are condemning it as some evil thing, ESPECIALLY if Earth-raping humans have anything to do with producing more of it.
The CAGW (I usually hate acronyms) narrative embodies “bias” on so many levels. It supports a notion that humans are essentially cancer cells on the globe (which we might very well be, but let’s just say this directly and say how we are truthfully, without contriving stuff to give us a fake measure of control over a fake underlying cause, or at least reveal the REAL cause or causes we are cancer cells. The narrative supports a one-sided view of CO2, exaggerated via false associations with visible pollutants. Via demonizing and false associations, we, thus, create this common enemy for the world, which might do some good (for the wrong reasons), but also does bad stemming from the wrong reasons, which is even “badder” bad.
In this spirit, then, I would treat the open letter as follows:
We, the undersigned, urge you to take immediate and sustained action against human-caused climate change. We write as concerned individuals, united in recognizing that the science is unequivocal and America must respond.
Should read:
We, the underhanded, urge you to take immediate and sustained action against deniers of human-caused climate change. We write as invested individuals, united in politicizing the notion that the science is unequivocal and America must respond to continue our grant funding and pay checks.
Trump should put up $100 million (say) on a series of bets about climate characteristics at various future dates. Such betting is legal in the UK. Then he should challenge warmists like these petitioners to put up or shut up.
Here’s my open letter to “Scientific American”: Return to science; stop with the political crap.
Otherwise, you’re no better than the idiots in the Obama administration that are so brainwashed they’re laughable.
PhDs must be cheap in the US.
On the contrary, they are very expensive. These guys have a lot invested in continuing the global warming gravy train. It’s the only way they can pay back their student loans.
I think it is wonderful, that a list has been conveniently provided to trump, of those, who are the evil problem. They even signed the list and painted a bright target on their chest and hung a “kick me”sign on their a$$es. Trump couldn’t dream of better, Amazing! GK
Can you imagine being PhD student nearing completion who has accepted the warm embrace of the climate crowd. Eek!
Of the purported 800 or so ‘scientists’ who may or may not have signed the letter have ANY contributed to the advancement of the so called ‘science’ of climatology by actually publishing, in a peer reviewed journal, any paper or work advancing this science? If so, how many? and who are they? If they haven’t then they should be simply listed as “interested” observers. They are not scientists until they have done something scientific. A PhD dissertation usually counts for this purpose – PhD students do NOT count.
This is what happens when you let people refer to themselves as social scientists.
Another “petition” signed by a virtual army of “scholars” and/or wannabe experts?! These movers and shakers seem to be soooo stuck in the ’90’s – when they thought that the pre-Climategate 1.0 “scientific” world was their oyster.
Whoever dreamed up this particular “petition” is simply mimicking a failed pre-Kyoto strategy dreamed up in ’97 by former UNEP “Chief Scientist”, Joe Alcamo – along with Mike Hulme and Rob Swart … and a generous helping hand from the WWF (former home of Ontario’s and now Canada’s manipulator/puppet master in chief, Gerald Butts).
It certainly appears as though this latest and greatest “petition” was launched by those who might have borne in mind Alcamo’s recognition of reality:
For the evolutionary history of this early mode of persuasion, pls see:
The climate consensus coordinators’ cookbook
Although, to their virtual credit, the originators of this latest and greatest … uh … recycled “strategy” have improved upon the ’97 effort by actually including purported academic credentials. But then, so did the UK Met Office when it launched a petition in the immediate aftermath of Climategate. And so did approx. 70 whiners a few years ago, but the WSJ declined to publish their letter! [references/links available on request!]
The reality is that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really 0.0, The gas in the Earth’s atmosphere that is most responsible for trapping heat is really N2 yet nothing is being done about it. N2 absorbs heat energy via conduction and convection but is a very poor LWIR radiator to space. N2 also has the highest climate sensivity of any gas in our atmosphere. A doubling of N2 in our atmosphere would increase the surface pressure by more than 70% which would result in a huge increase in global temperatures. So far nothing is being done to counter N2’s global warming effects on climate.
The USA does not have any money available to waste trying to force the sun and the oceans to provide the ideal climate, everywhere, all the time. We are deep in debt with huge annual fedeeral deficits, and huge annual trade deficits. To waste money on climate change, the federal government would have to borrow the money. I estimate that the money the federal government is borrowing today will end up costing the tax payers more than 12 times the money borrowed to repay over the next 180 years, According to the Paris Climate Agreement, the anti climate change effort is to be paid for by the rich nations and not poor debator nations like us.
It must be pointed out that extreme weather events, weather cycles, and sea level rise are part of our current climate. So if somehow we can intimidate the sun and the oceans to stop changing the climate we will still have extreme weather events, weather cycles, and sea level rise to deal with. There is no real economic benefit in stopping on going climate change.
Be patient. When the activists have accomplished their global political agenda concerning CO2 they will need another crisis to demonize. Perhaps it will be N2. These people can convert any known substance into HAY (They love to hate gases). GK
As a wise Australian once remarked, the beauty of an open letter is that you don’t have to answer it!
It’s time we stop kidding ourselves. The real atmospheric threat is O2, oxygen. I am simply appalled that so little is being done about this killer molecule. Talk about dragons [cue moderation cue], you know what oxygen does in relation to flames, right? Why do you think forest fires are prominent in the news? What do you think is fueling those fires? Oxygen ! The stuff is positively destructive !
And look at how it combines insidiously with hydrogen to form the water that floods homes, taking large tolls on life in unsuspecting communities located near rivers and streams. Oxygen is the root cause of any major storm, and yet what are we doing about it? … NOTHING.
Do you LIKE rust ? Why isn’t something being done about all the destructive rusting going on? We just seem to accept rust as … “natural” … , and yet it causes needless wear and tear on our most treasured possessions. Why are scientists distracting themselves with CO2 research, when the REAL enemy to humankind is O2.
Don’t these guys know that oxygen destroys cells, tissues, and, eventually, the entire body? Ever hear of free radical molecules? … and aging? Well, listen up, bub, because these are caused by a species of oxygen in its most virulent form that systematically destroys a cell’s DNA, enzymes, proteins, and membranes. This is scary stuff, and yet we continue to allow it to go on. Simply irresponsible !
Oxygen (O2) poses the greatest threat of any naturally-occurring atmospheric molecule, and still we do nothing about it. Dear President-Elect Trump, we the undersigned …
This letter is great. It furnishes President Trump with the names of “scientists” who should be denied federal grants.
Gotta offer a snide observation. According to the definition of “compound,” ozone is not a compound? (Consists of only one element.) And breathing oxygen is worse than breathing ozone? (You don’t want to ingest elements, but the compounds may be okay. Try that with nitrogen and oxygen.) I mean, this reflection took only 30 seconds. And these guys are presuming to speak down to us on behalf of science? (R-rated, no chemists allowed.)
David Middleton,
”
2. Reduce carbon pollution and America’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Apart from black soot, there’s no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, etc. are carbon compounds. Just in case anyone is unclear on the concept…” –
Yes, that’s ‘kay with me.
Cheers!
ok this must be Common Core in ACTION!!! Lucky Trump is going to be doing away with that. Also EPA, FDA, TSA, DHS, USAID, USDA, to name a few that will be changed.
Go to College get brainwashed come out a zombie join the masses of other zombies!
Bring on C02 rain forests love that stuff!