As we all know, anthropogenic climate change is almost always a low ranking issue in polls on the issues people care about, typically coming in last or next to last. And when you add in that ‘climate change’ policies will raise the cost of energy bill, raise the cost of food, raise the cost of living, all while increasing government taxation and governmental control of citizens lives, care for the issue drops further. But, that doesn’t mean the Cult of Climastrology will give up their push
Donald Trump and the Triumph of Climate-Change Denial
Denial of the broad scientific consensus that human activity is the primary cause of global warming could become a guiding principle of Donald Trump’s presidential administration. Though it’s difficult to pin down exactly what Trump thinks about climate change, he has a well-established track record of skepticism and denial. He has called global warming a “hoax,†insisted while campaigning for the Republican nomination that he’s “not a big believer in man-made climate change,†and recently suggested that “nobody really knows†if climate change exists. Trump also plans to nominate Republicans to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department who have expressed skepticism toward the scientific agreement on human-caused global warming.
Once you start yammering about consensus, especially based on flawed, manufactured, and disingenuous publications, you’ve dropped science and moved to politics.
Indeed, Trump’s election is a triumph of climate denial, and will elevate him to the top of a Republican Party where prominent elected officials have publicly rejected the climate consensus. It’s not that the presidential election was a referendum on global warming. Climate change barely came up during the presidential debates, and voters rated the environment as a far less pressing concern than issues like the economy, terrorism, and health care. But that relative lack of concern signals that voters have not prioritized action on climate change, if they want any action taken at all. Trump’s victory sends a message that failing to embrace climate science still isn’t disqualifying for a presidential candidate, even as scientists warn that the devastating consequences of global warming are under way and expected to intensify in the years ahead.
Hotcoldwetdry barely came up in the election because almost no one cares except for Warmists. Despite 25+ years of spreading awareness, voters really do not care. Continuing to scold and scare voters is not going to help voters “prioritize” it higher. They just don’t care.
If Trump fails to take climate change seriously, the federal government may do little to address the threat of a warming planet in the next four years. A presidential administration hostile to climate science also threatens to deepen, or at the very least prolong, the skepticism that already exists in American political life. “If the Trump administration continues to push the false claim that global warming is a hoax, not happening, not human caused, or not a serious problem, I’d expect many conservative Republican voters to follow their lead,†said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication.
And there’s the Warmist fascism on display: they refuse to allow for other opinions. Really, if the science was so founded in facts, there would be no doubt. Republicans would agree with it. Instead, the science is shady beyond belief, and no matter how hysterical Warmists become, that won’t change.
Knowing full well that most thinking people do not believe in a “scientific consensus” they keep repeating it like somehow the words will suddenly force people to agree.
Similarly, they continue the usual leftist meme of negatively labeling people they disagree with. In this case the snooty, I’m bettern’ you “denier” label.
If they ever learn that people respond better and are more apt to listen and even change their minds if they aren’t treated like stupid plebs, we could be in trouble. They just never got the old maxim about catching more bees with honey.
Rev,
You are upset that the author referred to “the denial of the broad scientific consensus” as if it were a gratuitous insult. It’s not – it’s an observation. Deny and denial are not curse words. Teach ridicules even the concept of scientific consensus, likely because he hasn’t taken the time or effort to understand how consensus develops.
Here’s a brief review of the history of global warming research.
http://history.aip.org/climate/summary.htm
Scientists make observations regarding a physical phenomenon, in this case that the measured temperatures of Earth were increasing with time. Svante Arrhenius (and others) had demonstrated a century ago that CO2 absorbed infrared radiation at wavelengths that, in theory, would interfere with the loss of radiation from the Earth into deep space, again, in theory, causing the Earth to retain more of the Sun’s energy. It was therefore no great intellectual leap to hypothesize that CO2 added to the atmosphere would cause the temperature to increase, which is just what Arrhenius (and others) hypothesized (see http://warming.sdsu.edu/arrhenius_paper_1896.pdf). So the concept that atmospheric greenhouse gases retain heat is part of the scientific consensus. Why? Because evidence supporting the hypothesis is overwheming and no invalidating evidence has been found.
Scientific consensus is an important component of scientific progress, otherwise each active scientist would be forced to confirm every set of experiments they read about. As you’ve heard here many times, scientific hypotheses are never really proven. The scientific method always leaves the door open for experiments or findings that invalidate an established theory. In the case of AGW, a finding that CO2 doesn’t actually absorb infrared radiation would invalidate the theory, and scientists would be compelled to look elsewhere. What if a skeptic scientist discovers that the method for measuring CO2 in the atmosphere is flat wrong and CO2 is not actually increasing or shows that there is no mechanism for the CO2 to have originated as fossil fuels? Theory invalidated! What if it is shown that the Earth is actually not warming? Consensus ablated!
Oh please.
Does carbon dioxide trap and retain heat? No, although it cools more slowly than some other gases, it absorbs some amount of heat and quickly cools the same amount when the heat source is removed.
Get your shit straight, loser.
Molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) can absorb energy from infrared (IR) radiation. The energy from a photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate. Shortly thereafter, the molecule gives up this extra energy by emitting another infrared photon. Once the extra energy has been removed by the emitted photon, the carbon dioxide stops vibrating.
This ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy is what makes CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Not all gas molecules are able to absorb IR radiation. For example, nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2), which make up more than 90% of Earth’s atmosphere, do not absorb infrared photons. CO2 molecules can vibrate in ways that simpler nitrogen and oxygen molecules cannot, which allows CO2 molecules to capture the IR photons.
Greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect play an important role in Earth’s climate. Without greenhouse gases, our planet would be a frozen ball of ice. In recent years, however, excess emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities (mostly burning fossil fuels) have begun to warm Earth’s climate at a problematic rate. Other significant greenhouse gases include water vapor (H2O), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3).
https://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-dioxide-absorbs-and-re-emits-infrared-radiation
Below ten kilometers the atmosphere warms in a linear way to the Earth’s surface. This final heating is dominated not by solar radiation but rather by radiation from the Earth’s surface. The Earth, being much cooler than the Sun, emits much longer wavelength radiation. At a solar temperature of nearly 6000 Kelvin, the peak of solar output is in the visible (light) part of the electromagnetic spectrum while the Earth, at a temperature of 278 Kelvin, emits most of its energy in the infrared (heat) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Energy of this wavelength cannot be absorbed by tiny oxygen and nitrogen molecules, but it can be absorbed by the larger and more complex molecules of water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). These complex molecules have a number of vibratory and rotational modes which absorbs energy in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. These together with other so called greenhouse gasses (methane CH4, and nitrous oxide N2O) cause the Troposphere to warm as the Earth’s surface is approached (greenhouse effect). Man can and probably is enhancing this effect by adding to the atmospheric concentration of these greenhouse gasses. Most notably we are enhancing carbon dioxide, which has natural sources in the decay of plant and animal remains, through the burning of fossil carbon. Methane, which has natural sources in swamps and grazing ruminant animals, is being enhanced through the proliferation of rice paddies (artificial swamps) and cattle herds (cattle burp methane, more on that later). The atmosphere, heated by the absorption of Earth radiation by these greenhouse gasses, in turn radiates heat back to the Earth’s surface increasing the Earth’s surface temperature.
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/radiation_hays/
Nice cut and paste job.
Says the same thing, loser.
Arrhenius thought CO2 was beneficial to the planet, as opposed to the bed-wetters.
You are correct Jeffery when you say I am:
The reason for that is because the people who use the words “deny” and “denier” to describe people like me use them like clubs in a derogatory manner. Let’s not pretend they don’t. On truth we are more like “doubters” than “deniers”. Most of us myself included do understand the climate changes. We understand mankind most likely has an effect on that change. And we realize too much change can be bad for our health. But, we doubt it is that “urgent”, we doubt how much they claim it will change but most of all we doubt the immense impact AGW advocates blame on people. We also have been told so many stories over the years about ice ages coming, droughts, plagues, warming etcetera, that we have developed an automatic doubt when the “experts” so often demonstratively wrong before start telling us we’re the ones who were wrong. Fool me once, or in the case of climate about a dozen times and we become a bit skeptical.