Guest post by David Middleton
EPA chief Scott Pruitt, speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, made one of his strongest statements yet rejecting the science of human-caused climate change.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said on the program “Squawk Box.”
“But we don’t know that yet,” he continued. “We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific consensus on climate change — which has concluded that it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” They also contradict the very website of the agency that Pruitt heads.
The EPA’s “Climate Change” website states the following:
Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20thcentury. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.
Pruitt spoke with CNBC even as there is growing anticipation that the Trump administration will soon move to begin a rollback of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, an EPA policy capping emissions from electricity generating stations, such as coal-fired power plants.
[…]
“On Climate Change, Pruitt Contradicts EPA’s Own Website”… No schist, Sherlock.
Mr. Pruitt has been on the job for about three weeks. To my knowledge, he is the only Trump appointee in the EPA so far. Why is Chris Mooney shocked that Mr. Pruitt hasn’t had time to revise every bit of nonsense on EPA websites? He’s the EPA Administrator. He has a job to do, running the EPA. Erasing 8 years of propaganda from EPA websites is probably not at the top of his “to do” list. But, thanks to English major and former AGU board member, Chris Mooney, Mr. Pruitt knows which bit of propaganda the IT folks should tackle first.
Why would The Washington Post even think this is a newsworthy item? If I didn’t think The Washington Post was a reputable newspaper, I would call this “fake news.” As usual, any and all, sarcasm was purely intentional.
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Great picture of Pruitt. I assume he’s showing how high it’s piled. He’s under-estimating, but it’s a good start!
No. I think he could be saying: ‘I don’t care how big you are, I can take you with one arm tied behind my back’.
The EPA and other government websites regularly make the claim that CO2 warms the atmosphere by the same process that warms real greenhouses. Thus the name Greenhouse Gas and Greenhouse Effect.
However, real greenhouses warm not by radiation, but by limiting convection. Thus, the EPA and other government institutions are contradicting themselves, because the CO2 greenhouse effect is believed to be due to radiation.
So which is it? Does CO2 warm the atmosphere by the same process as real greenhouses or not? And if the process is different, why is CO2 called a greenhouse gas.
This is a very fundamental question. If CO2 does not warm by limiting convection, then why is it called a greenhouse gas? Why is “radiation” called a greenhouse effect, when greenhouses do not warm as a result of radiation. Rather they warm as a result of limiting convection.
How can it be science, when the same term is used for two different effects with two different causes? How does it advance scientific understanding to use confusing and imprecise labels. Should we now call typhoid and influenza by the same name, because they both cause a fever in the patient?
” If CO2 does not warm by limiting convection, then why is it called a greenhouse gas?” HUH! Keep you day job, Ferd.
John, please clarify.
“The EPA and other government websites regularly make the claim that CO2 warms the atmosphere by the same process that warms real greenhouses.”
I don’t think they do. Got an example of that?
Crickets.
Ferd asks a very good question. A greenhouse warms by retarding convective cooling. The greenhouse effect warms by retarding radiative cooling.
They are two different processes. So, why is it called the greenhouse effect? Probably because no one could think of a better name for it and the processes are analogous. They both act by retarding something, as does the EPA, which works by retarding economic growth.
Now, the EPA does imply that it does work like a bathtub…
This is far more problematic than the greenhouse misnomer. The carbon cycle and human impact on it, isn’t even remotely analogous to a bathtub.
David, I can understand pointing out problems with the bathtub analogy, but it seems to be basically a reasonable one, and more than remotely connected to the carbon in the atmoshphere. There are sources (the faucet) and sinks (the drain). If one equals the other the level stays the same. If we increase the input, the level rises.
It even works at a slightly more sophisticated level because as the level rises, more water is lost to the drain. Just as if we increase CO2 in the atmosphere more CO2 is soaked by the sinks.
If we include the water from the drain collecting in a swimming pool and a pump from this to the faucet we have a better model as it demonstrates the cycle.
Fossil fuel burning is then represented by a small additional input to the bathtub from a hose perhaps.
This is a model to aid understanding, not to reproduce all the subtleties of the real system.
Seaice,
I really do appreciate your sincerity.
David,it is nice to be appreciated.
The bathtub analogy seams fine except for the statement
“As global temperatures increase, size of “drain” decreases.”
That is total bull crap and they know it.
It’s an abysmal analogy. The CO2 isn’t flowing into a system, like water from a faucet into a tub. It’s coming out of and then going back into the Earth.
http://www.biochar.org/joomla/images/stories/steiner-globalcarboncycle-correct.jpg
It’s currently coming out of the system slightly faster than it was before humans discovered fire.
No example even? Not one?
https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/g.html
http://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/
In defense of the EPA, they have corrected their previous error…
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/basics/today/greenhouse-effect.html
So far, so good.
The picture above looks gneiss.
Hence, no schist… 😉
It’s not gneiss to say such things. I am sure that this comments section will contain quartz of the by the time its is over.
The snowflakes of the world will have a difficult time cummingtonite over Pruitt’s announcement.
Can I take that for granite?
I think the actual German would be keine Scheisse
I was speaking Geologeese… Not German.
Sedimentary, my dear Watson!
Holmes apparently used elementary German.
As opposed to sedimentary geology?
“no schist” spoken like a true geologist David. But that rock Sherlock Homes is examining looks very gneiss
Hence, no schist… Must’ve drilled through a reverse fault, we just hit a repeat section.
Wow kamizedave! No one will beat that mineralogical gem!!
Your humour has hit rock bottom.
…taken with a grain of basalt…
It reminds me of that famous van Gogh painting Stauro Lite
+1
Best geo-pun of the group!
I thought StauroLite was a rock group…
Must be christian rock…
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/37/48/a9/3748a9face02269c43fbfe710e7157b7.jpg
Image credit Pinterest
That was goooood!
Yep, 3rd image over. Well, rock on.
You guys have this all wrong… Schist is another term for shale.
In fact what’s going on in the oil and gas patch a “Schist revolution” 2.0.
That is having really schisty consequences for the Russians, Saudis, Iranians and other assorted oil dictators, and my guess is they’re all pondering the realities of Watson’s comment “No schist, Sherlock” and Holmes’ first rejoinder ” frack that”, followed by “drill, boy, drill…”
Schist is shale that has been FUBAR’ed.
Good one, Mike Bromley!
Glad to see gneiss rock and schist friends having a crack on some boulder-line news! Keep in mind – it is not Pruitt’s Fault do sort out the rift in EPA – let alone the global drift!
I am still missing the volcanologists comments – the ones that have a Magma cum Laude – but are not rock solid. The main reason is they love ash holes and would comment on the Washinton post article! Geologist – rock on and don’t loose your luster!
Gneiss observation, David.
Only just idling in first gear – just wait until we get up to speed. It’s going to be very interesting !
So the first thing he should be (I hope) empowered to do is take down the fictional nonsense on the EPA’s web site. NOW IS THE TIME for all Climate Realists to GET THE WORD OUT that the CAGW hypothesis has failed, that there is no need at all to solve a “problem” called “carbon.” (CO2 to the sci-literate).
Gawd, I hate having to give the WashPo even ONE click. Time to bleach my keyboard . . . ackk, thppt!
“Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone.”
Yes, they can. Read further:
Climates change by definition, naturally.
Man, that was easy.
Andrew
Funny you should mention that…
According the the model depicted on the EPA website, Earth would have continued to cool after the 1970’s, which gave us this…
?w=720
There are very few publications poorer than Seance Noise for the quality of their seance. I threw the complete AAAS complex under the bus a long time ago. They were only capable of straight line extrapolating the recent past without regards to science.
So nothing changed till 1970 or so? All the warming came about only when CO2 after 1970 kicked in but CO2 before did nothing? I thought that warming started in the 1880’s or so.
Technically, the warming started around 1600. The model posted on the EPA website indicates that the anthropogenic effect became noticeable around 1960. Prior to about 1960, atmospheric CO2 was rising faster than cumulative anthropogenic emissions.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/07/a-brief-history-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-record-breaking/
This is why it is virtually impossible to segregate the anthropogenic and natural drivers of climate change.
“According the the model depicted on the EPA website”
And you believed them?
I believe that’s what the model depicts. The inputs on the other hand are GIGO.
Priceless that they are called “observations” as many times as the raw data has been adjusted.
My $4 reading glasses adjust my observations all the time… 😉
According to the EPA chart, there were some periods where human factors caused the temperature to fall. How could that be?
David Middleton:
Yet, equally impossible to fathom is the fact that ‘natural’ CO2 is supposed to lag T, yet ‘man-made’ CO2 is supposed to drive T – if the denizens of Mini-Truth are to be believed.
It does actually work that way, to the minimal extent that “man-made” CO2 affects temperature.
CAGW theory will one day be the poster boy lesson of “watch out for the confounding factor” and will hang in every science lab.
“Watch out for the confounding factor” makes a good bumper sticker too!
(Actually Pam, President Trump need this when dealing with press coverage)
With Michael Mann’s face on the toilet paper in the bathroom!
Oh, but I’m sure a surge of marches, placards, selfies and hash-tagged twitter-storms will convince the public that climate whatevers must be the greatest threat to the future of the planet. /sarc
You mean the new franchised march industry? It’s running low on energy and attention span.
But long on BS.
The BBC are fake-newsing this article on the grounds that Pruitt discounts *CO2* as contributory to global warming when he was clearly referring to MAN-MADE CO2.
The UK Guardian is doing the same. They portray him attacking their ‘god’ CO2.
Dave_G:
It is worse than you say.
On its main news programs the BBC is saying,
That is clearly wrong because there is no scientific evidence – none, zilch, nada – which shows CO2 is causing ANY global warming. There is only an hypothesis that CO2 may be causing global warming and models constructed to show what effects of that hypothesis may be.
There is no reason to wonder why the BBC is not citing any of the “scientific evidence” it is proclaiming: they cannot cite it, nobody can because it does not exist.
Meanwhile, the BBC is NOT reporting the petition from Lindzen et al..
Richard
richardscourtney
It is will known that CO2 absorbs an emits radiation. More the challenge is to determine what happens to water vapor, clouds, precipitation etc. Roy Spencer observes that about a 3% change in cloud cover could explain the warming – but we can’t measure clouds that accurately!
David L. Hagen:
Thankyou for supporting my post. You make two points and I expand on both.
Firstly, the Earth has been warming from the Little Ice Age since ~1600AD. This warming has been intermittent. Emissions from human activities (i.e. anthropogenic emissions) of greenhouse gases (GHG notably CO2) may have enhanced the warming from after ~1960 AD but if they have then the enhancement is too small for it to be discernible. This has been noted and commented by many people, most recently by Richard Lindzen in his letter to President Trump where he writes
In this circumstance the scientific null hypothesis applies; i.e. nothing is observed to be different from previously observed natural activity so it must be assumed that natural activity is responsible for what is observed.
Secondly, as you say, recent climate changes could be attributed to changes in cloud cover: clouds reflect sun light back to space so it does not reach the Earth’s surface.
Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid-1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid-1980s and late-1990s
(ref. Pinker, R. T., B. Zhang, and E. G. Dutton (2005), Do satellites detect trends in surface solar radiation?, Science, 308(5723), 850– 854.)
Over that short recent period of less than two decades, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 W/sq m. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq m.
Richard
It’s not Pruitt’s fault !
(Geo-pun intended) 😀
Shear folly …
That didn’t settle well.
Are you talking about a Pruitt fault line running through the greenie “schist”…?
to me it isn’t earth shaking news.
Or better yet …. it’s not CO2’s fault 😜
“Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific opinion predetermined by our political masters (errr… “consensus”) on climate change …
There’s too much taking the mica going on here…
Well, none of this should be taken for granite.
My sediments exactly.
Every time he gets interviewed or is at a Congressional hearing, he is going to get asked the question “Do you deny that humans are having an impact on the climate?”
The questioner will wait with baited breath for the “gasp” moment: when he says he “doesn’t believe that climate change is proven.” Gasp, blasphemy, the not-to-be-spoken words, I can’t believe you just said that, you are anti-science then, what about the 97% of global warming scientists who get funding to study global warming.
I guess they’ll get over it at some point.
Your envisioned “gasp” moment will happen when he is brazen enough to speak, out loud, that which ” …should not be named.” genuinus coelum naturalia”
Nah! Its quartzite………………………….. as any fule knos
How come Curley Howard never got to use that?
My hero… Curly Howard + geology puns… Throw in John Belushi, and you have my college education… 😉
Mods, please, the bad puns…Do Something!!
[The mods wood never fund a bad pun they did not lichen.
Ask not for whom the mods troll, lest they troll for yew. .mod]
You sound like VIzzini.
“No more Rhyming now, I mean it!!!”
“Anybody want a Peanut?”
May Saints preserve us.
…At least during the home games!
So, Pop Piasa – Are you situated in NOLA, by chance?
I’m a little upriver of St. Louie, but I love going to N’Orleans for the music and ambience (partytown).
Will the flakes at EPA be metamorphosed now or become crustal plate relics?
…or perhaps impact ejecta?
fossils.
“Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific consensus on climate change”
Lol. That’s a consensus of international global-government pushing leftists.
It’s a consensus of ideology, NOT of science.
Indeed, the science is on the skeptics side. See MIT’s Richard Lindzen’s letter to the president sent today: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/09/lindzen-responds-to-the-mit-letter-objecting-to-his-petition-to-trump-to-withdraw-from-the-unfcc/
No, sigh, it’s actually the truth.
Which truth, you miserable troll.
tony mcleod:
I don’t know what you mean by “truth” so let me provide you with some indisputable facts.
1.
There is no evidence that human activities are having any discernible effect on global climate: no evidence, none, zilch, nada.
2.
In the 1990s Ben Santer pretended to have found some such evidence
(ref. Santer B, et al. “A Search For Human Influences On The Thermal Structure Of The Atmosphere”, Nature Vol.382, 4 July 1996, p.39-46)
3.
but that was soon revealed to be an artifact of Santer’s improper data selection
(ref. Michaels P & Knappenberger P Nature Vol.384, 12 Dec 1996
4.
and the apparent and temporary effect Santer had selected was a result of observed volcanic and ENSO effects
(ref. Weber GR Nature Vol.384, 12 Dec 1996).
5.
Since then, research conducted world-wide at a cost of more than $3 billion per year has searched for evidence of a discernible human influence on global climate.
6.
The decades-long search for evidence of a discernible human influence on global climate has failed to find any.
7.
A finding of a discernible human influence on global climate would be rewarded by at least two Nobel Prizes (Physics and Peace).
8.
If Mr Pruiit were to constrain EPA expenditure on the search for a discernible human influence on global climate then that would reduce the waste of money that is the cost of the search.
Please say if you want any additional pertinent truth.
Richard
“tony mcleod March 9, 2017 at 3:15 pm”
Here is your chance to prove the 8 points of the post by Richard at 1:18 am wrong. It’s less than 18, so give it a go this time!
Probably best not to feed the trolls hunter.
Richard the truth I refer to is the fact “Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific consensus on climate change”.
That statement is actually true, whether you agree with Pruitt or with a consensus of international scientests.
Perhaps there is plenty of evidence, it’s just that you don’t find it as compelling as I do. The earth has warmed by maybe a degree in a hundred years, if it keeps warming and warming quicker over the next say five or ten years, maybe that would change your mind. If it turns around and cools then maybe I’ll change my mind.
tony mcleod:
The consensus of scientists is demonstrated by – among other petitions – the petition of Lindzen et al. to President Trump. It is the exact opposite of what you assert.
Scientists study evidence. There is no evidence that human activities are having any discernible effect on global climate.
Pseudoscientists promote beliefs.
Pruitt is tasked with replacing pseudoscientists with scientists.
I hope I have made that sufficiently clear for you to understand it.
Richard
tony mclod.
I give you credit for an excellent evasion.
You admit that you have no idea what you are talking about and just have decided to believe one set of scientists over another. Mostly because the one set is saying what you want to hear.
So according to your last statement, Tony, your belief in global warming is predicated on whether or not the Earth continues to warm. That means you don’t really accept the theory. You actually just choose to see any warming as caused by humans. In other words, warming due to natural causes is caused by man while cooling is a natural phenomenon. You could be the poster boy for the illogical AGW artifice!
Abundantly.
As I said, if it is in the WaPo – do not believe it. Or know they are totally clueless!
File this under the big DUH.
Nah, just a bunch of Schist Heads
Schmidt heads.
Or at least the type of Schist they are purveying as news
Public sediment seems to be settling on Pruitt’s side precipitating a seismic shift in the entrenched strata of a solidified bureaucracy.
I hate to tell, you, Mooney, that what you tout as science is nothing but pseudo-science. Science is settled: carbon dioxide is not the cause of global warming. Educate yourself and take a look at the geologic history of Earth. Within the last 500 million years carbon dioxide and global temperature followed completely different paths. At no time did carbon dioxide run parallel to or cause global temperature increase during the 500 million years in question.
Ah, The dialogue finally changes. I thought the day would never arrive. Free at last, free at last ….. to be a proud skeptic.
Here’s what Scott Pruitt has to say about the Paris Agreement
http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-calls-paris-agreement-a-bad-deal-amid-internal-white-house-struggle/
EPA Chief Calls Paris Agreement ‘A Bad Deal’ Amid Internal White House Struggle
“Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt weighed in on an issue the Trump administration has been silent on since taking the reins of government in January.
Pruitt said the Paris climate agreement was “a bad deal” that should have been treated by the Obama administration as a treaty, instead of an executive agreement.
“I happen to think the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, or the Paris Agreement, if you will, should have been treated as a treaty, should have gone through senate confirmation,” Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning. “That’s a concern.”
Pruitt’s comments, first reported by Reuters, is the first time a top Trump administration official has weighed in on the agreement since January.”
end excerpt
Scott Pruitt rocks. He’s not just some flake. I can’t wait till he turns his flinty eyed stare on some lightweight reporter who asks him why he doesn’t believe in human caused climate change. “Why, it’s sedimentary, my dear Watson.”
Can’t do anymore guys. My pun skills shale in comparison to yours.
I just turned over to MSNBC (know your enemy:) and they were reporting on Scott Pruitt saying the science wasn’t settled, and they are also reporting that some environmental group (I didn’t get the name) is now calling for Pruitt’s resignation. 🙂
We’ve at least managed to keep the environmentalists to a status of ideologically authoritarian outliers. For true totalitarians a “resignation” equates to execution at dawn..
It’s time for people in government to call out the environmental movement’s interference in public affairs. The government is elected to govern. Not Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or the U.N. or any other special interest group.
I also saw an interview on MSNBC with a Republican representative from Florida, named Carlos Curbelo. He proved to be a real clueless fellow, when asked about Scott Pruitt’s statment that CO2 was not the controlling mechanism of the Earth’s climate. Rep. Curbelo said it was “Reckless and totally acceptable.” He said, “CO2 is VERY dangerous.” He said he is going to have a talk with Trump about this.
Rep. Curbelo did seem happy with Trump’s position on the “Dreamers”, the illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. as young children, and have known nothing but America all their lives and are in effect Americans, and Trump has expressed sympathy for their plight, and Rep. Curbelo was happy about that.
I, personally, have no problem with allowing law-abiding Dreamers to stay in the U.S. They really are Americans for all intents and purposes. They grew up in American schools, they speak American, and many don’t speak any other language, and have no memory of any other nation. My only required qualifications for being an American citizen is that you abide by the law, you don’t become a tax burden, and you love the United States. So if Trump gives the Dreamers a break, some people might not like it, but I won’t have a problem with it, as long as they fit those qualifications.
Rep. Curbelo needs to get up to speed on the science or lack thereof, of human-caused global warming/climate change. He thinks he is up to speed, but clearly he is not. Trump will straighten him out, on that subject. 🙂
None of it is about saving the planet, or even the children, it is about job security and fleecing the taxpayers.
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, they got sucked into the maelstrom and are fighting their way out.
Rescue is easy, just admit to a shadow of a doubt, then the whole façade falls apart and people get on with things.
Important things.
(sorry for the rant).
This failure to understand, or properly consider, natural causes is apparently widespread far beyond climate research. I just read a 2010 paper about conservation and restoration of eelgrass that disappeared in the north Atlantic rather suddenly in the 1930s. This paper did not discuss disease while citing the early papers from the period when a disease (wasting) was suspected. In those days diseases were important but now the emphasis is on eutrophication. While this is real, measurable and treatable the problem is really hypertrophication which has been blamed for just about everything in the marine ecology literature. Nitrogen, like carbon dioxide, is a critical element to life and fisheries production often correlates with its concentration. There are some still carefully studying nitrogen cycles.
While all this might be blamed on information overload which we all suffer from and long ago predicted to be serious, this particular paper came from a laboratory with a now old history of studying marine diseases.
It is also interesting that some of the early suggested possible causes were for a period of poor illumination and moon declination which could affect tides. The disease has received some more recent (1991) interest in other seagrasses due to a possible similar turtle grass mortality in Florida Bay so maybe it will eventually work out. These are very complicated soft rock geology (no schist or gneiss) shallow water systems that depend (of all things!) on climate and sea level. The current lack of interest in marine diseases has been lamented and I was taught that science had to consider all possibilities.
@ur momisugly H. D. Hoese March 9, 2017 at 2:27 pm : My own experience with an unrelated grass in shallow estuaries (NZ), found that stormy summer growing seasons with much light-limiting floodwater would trigger a form of estivation. It disappeared until settled summers returned, but maintained viable systems under the tidal sand flats to that end.