Guest post by David Middleton
My first thought up reading this headline was that Ambassador Terry Brandstad had resigned… Which would be odd because he is a Republican, Trump nominee and was just confirmed by the Senate last month…
by ABIGAIL WILLIAMS and TIM STELLOH
JUN 6 2017
America’s top diplomat in China has resigned over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from a landmark climate change agreement, two sources told NBC News Monday.
Charge d’affaires David Rank was set to be replaced by former Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad, who was confirmed as ambassador to China on May 22 but hadn’t yet arrived to the post.
Rank, citing the Paris climate agreement, announced the resignation during a town hall meeting on Monday with embassy employees.
[…]
NBC (Second only to CNN for fake TV news)
Resigning in protest shortly before you were going to be replaced… Strong move. 
According to the State Department, Mr. Rank retired…
A State Department spokesperson confirmed Rank’s departure to NBC News, but said he was “retiring,” adding: “Mr. Rank has made a personal decision. We appreciate his years of dedicated service to the State Department.”
Featured image from the NRA.
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I was at Jarry Park, Montreal in the 1970’s to see my first Major League baseball game. Expos vs Dodgers.
My goodness what howitzers for arms those guys had and that was only during pre-game warm up.
I saw Le Grand Orange so it must have been 1972.
My favorite ballplayer of all time! Daniel “Rusty” Staub! Hit something like 0.455, 3 hr and 11 rbi in the ’73 series… should have been the MVP even though the A’s won 4 games to 3.
Steve Rogers… ’nuff said.
I loved how the Jarry Park PA announcer pronounced the Expos’ catcher’s name… John Boc’-a-bella!
Speaking of great Expos catchers… I got to shake hands with Gary Carter outside the Astrodome in ’86, when he was with the Mets.
I (retired airline employee) met Gary Carter at Toronto airport while he was flying on a through flight from Winnipeg to Montreal. (YWG-YYZ-YUL) really friendly unassuming guy.
July 06, 1970
In Montreal they love Le Grand Orange
no … go away troll …
Are you implying that this or any other blog should confine itself to climate “science” only?
When we know from the guy who started it all [ Maurice Strong at RIO in1992] through IPCC cardinals like Ottmar Edenhofer [in 2010] and UNEP head Christine Figueras in 2015, who all said one way or the other that the “science” is only a means to an end to effect economic and social engineering outcomes through climate policies? Who cares if the science is hijacked and GIGO, as long as it serves to policy purposes.
And that manipulating pliant MSM with alarmist headline grabbing cut-and-paste news releases of often unadulterated junk “climate science” is part and parcel of the modus operandi?
If you are the real Indur Goklany and not a troll impersonating him, you should know first hand how the game is played from your days inside the IPCC. Cherry picking “science” with predetermined headline grabbing “findings” [Hockey Shtick, anyone…] as means to an end…
One of WUWT’s redeeming features is that it is one of the few venues that actually spends time exposing the fake news that passes for MSM reporting on climate related matters. NBC depicting a lackey charge d’affaires as the US top diplomat in China and then pinning his resignation on the US leaving Paris is about as low brow muck raking as it gets. Text book case of unadulterated targeted fake news.
So who are you? The real Goklany or a troll?
Tetris I doubt you will get an answer to your last question. I followed this thread to the end Goklany or whoever seemed to disappear. As for the CAGW crowd using science only as a means to an end is quite true has been since early days. I had friends in the climate science game back when AGW was just raising its head in the media.. Several took early retirement, others changed their field of study, still others moved to positions where they were not going to be dependent of federal grants. Each warned me of what was coming and that I, a stickler for good Scientific Method, was not going to like it. Their concern was that it was all about politics and money which were going to pervert the science. When I have argued that it is about the money people thing I am talking about big fossil fuel. Nope, it is about the money going down as research grants. Remember prior to the ‘rebranding” of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, we spent billions on climate and oceanographic research and had since WWII in support of DOD. The Cold War ended and suddenly the loss of funding was on the horizon. That was true also in the United Kingdom.
One of the biggest fake news when Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement is that US is the third country in the world with Syria and Nicaragua being the two other countries that is not part of the agreement. This fake news is repeated around the world and after so many repetitions, it has become an accepted and unchallenged truth. A check of the official UNFCC website will show that of the 197 member countries on 144 (today 149) have ratified the Paris Agreement and a large number of the 144 ( as the time of Trump withdrawal) are small island countries that have one vote in the UN general assembly and at COP and MOP of the UNFCCC just like India.
So?
Is that the real Dr. Indur Goklany – who I have no recollection seeing at WUWT before but whose views on the CAGW/CACC bandwagon I can relate to – piling in, shooting from the hip,or are the Mods faced with a clever troll?
I think Dr. Golkany objects to posts he views as being purely political. And I don’t think he gets my sense of humor.
I’m reasonably confident that this is the real Dr. Golkany.
Dr. Golkany has been a frequent contributor to WUWT. I think he simply doesn’t like posts of an overtly political nature in general and doesn’t like my “style” in particular.
He apparently hasn’t read WUWT’s “about” page, either.
I just don’t think his obtuseness rises (or sinks) to the level of trolling.
David M
If so, at whatever his age, IG needs to make an effort to grow up – and fast.
With his accomplishments, including a good stint at the IPCC, he cannot – based on what is unfolding in terms of best available science and the socio-economic evidence, pretend that the climate “establishment” CAGW/CACC meme is nothing more than socio-political ideology “pure et simple”, and insist it belongs in the realm of science as we have understood this since the Enlightenment [modern day Popper included].
Said with a PhD plus many years of learning in subject matters at the core to the issue set, the sooner IG accepts that the CAGW/CACC is about politics and not about [pseudo] science, the better for his credibility.
tetris, you evidently missed upthread that the “Indur Goklany” posting was not the actual person, but an imposter.
The Indur Golkany who posted in this thread was not the real Indur Golkany. Anthony discovered the fraud and deleted his fake comments.
In keeping with his proclamation, David Rank should refuse to accept all related government retirement benefits.
I have no doubt he will be collecting his pension by the time he returns to CONUS.
For Indur Goklany
Note that if you click on the header of his posts it takes you to his site:
http://goklany.org/
Seems he is real and worth reading even if you disagree with him. He is a contemporary of many of us who read here. It doesn’t make him or any of us right – per the oft referred to Einstein quote. My guess is that this whole AGW and attendant issues will not be resolved in our lifetimes.
But in case Dr. Goklany missed my comment upthread, there is a good reason to be skeptical of a lot of things. I would bet Dr. Goklany has run into this sort of thing himself:
http://issues.org/33-4/the-science-police/
+1,000,000
This has been an interesting thread! The comments were hijacked by a fake troll on a story about fake news!
Fake science came first. Pushing the 1930s record heat down below the 1998 temperatures by Hansen in 2007, was the big bold step inspired by the late Stephen Schneider ‘s statement about choosing to lie and cook the books (oh he used a lot more wheedley words than this). Then climategate and fake investigations, fake consensus, then fake Karlization of the Pause. The lying and manipulation of data and fantasy statistics, fake education…. I can almost excuse the press for fake news, making up or distorting facts. It does away with the need to do expensive investigative reporting. Even the polifact checkers couldn’t resist the temptation.
Oh and pollsters became handicappers.
Have you heard that the CNN exec are so embarrassed by the three news staffers and the fake story they have to retract, that they have created a new rule.
All stories, fake and real, about Russia now have to be approved by the execs themselves.
I tried to watch CNN this afternoon as a break from the BilgeBC but it was so much constant whining it was unbearable. There was no news! It was just a long litany of Trump Russia Whine Trump Russia Whine. Oh, and ‘turn the cameras back on!’
Message to CNN: Congress under Trump has already passed more Bills than Obama and Bush put together (if I got the count right). How about letting the public know a little something on the actual governance of the country?
“Message to CNN: Congress under Trump has already passed more Bills than Obama and Bush put together (if I got the count right). How about letting the public know a little something on the actual governance of the country?”
You got the numbers right. I think Trump signed his 40th legislative bill yesterday, which is more than prior presidents have done, and no president has had the opposition Trump has had to put up with.
The MSM isn’t interested in reporting on anything positive about Trump. Their agenda is to destroy Trump and conservatives and promote the socialist lifestye.
This has been their objective since the Vietnam war. The only difference between then and now is there are many more Leftwing media outlets today than then, and there are a few conservative media outlets now, when there were none back then.
The Leftstream Media is one of the most serious threats to individual freedoms that exist. People cannot govern themselves properly if they are fed a bunch of lies, and that’s what the MSM is giving them today. Lies that are crippling our society’s ability to function properly by leading us astray on politics and climate change and everything else. Everything they do has a negative impact.
This man is a career diplomat and he seems to have resigned from the service over Trump’s decision….
He was not being replaced by Brandstad.
“A tweet from the China expert John Pomfret quoted unnamed sources as saying that Rank had resigned as he could not support Trump’s decision last week to withdraw from the Paris agreement.
In another tweet, Pomfret said Rank called a town hall meeting to announce his decision to embassy staff and explained that he could not deliver a diplomatic note informing the Chinese government of the US decision.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/05/us-diplomat-china-quits-trump-paris-climate-deal
Fake news writ large…
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/05/top-u-s-diplomat-in-china-quits-over-trump-climate-policy.html
The story is based on a Tweet from someone who wasn’t there, who cited unnamed sources and supposedly was confirmed by an anonymous source.
The only aspects of the story that can be confirmed are that Rank was the interim acting ambassador (Deputy Chief of Mission) between the Obama and Trump appointees, he was about to be replaced as the “Top American Diplomat in China” and that he retired.
If he actually did call a “town hall meeting” of State Department employees for the purpose of undermining US policy, he should have been fired on the spot.
To be honest that at least would make it based on a tweet from possibly a real person, rather than around the lunchroom in the studio. We have all seen news articles based on less. The news industry has now got to a point very few trust them and they seem to struggle to understand why.
Griff
I am confident you are a fake person, go find your polar bear.
His ideas might be unreal, but he’s quite real, I assure you.
Fake news from a fake news organization is more like it.
What about this one, Anthony?
I like Trump’s email today. After the resignations from CNN, he calls the network FNN, as in Fake News Network.
I like how the MSM are so outraged when they claim Trump says the Media is unAmerican. The only thing is Trump isn’t saying the Media is unAmerican, he is saying the LYING Media is unAmerican. If you are not lying, then you have no reason to be outraged at Trump’s statement. If you are, he is right, and you *are* unAmerican.
No, Trump isn’t saying all Media is unAmerican, just the parts of the media that lie and mislead the American people. Of course, you can expect the MSM will misinterpret everything Trump says, and that is the case here.