Democracy Has Prevailed.

February 18, 2016

Meanwhile, Outside It's Getting Warmer and The GOP Is Still Denying The Science.

From The Weather Channel:
January 2016 was not only Earth's warmest January on record, but also featured the largest warm departure from average for any month, according to two separate analyses released this week.

The first month of 2016 started with a global temperature departure of 1.13 degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 average, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

That may not sound impressive, but ingesting temperature data over the entire surface of the Earth, NASA's analysis found this was the largest monthly warm temperature anomaly in their database dating to 1880, topping a record set the previous month.

A separate analysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting also found January 2016 set a new record-warm anomaly for the globe, 0.72 degrees Celsius above the 1981-2010 average. That reanalysis, however, dates only to 1979.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency's calculations also found January 2016 was the globe's warmest on record, but the departure from average was the fourth highest on record for any month behind December (+0.66C), November (+0.54C) and October (+0.53C) all in 2015.
We know the Democratic candidates for president are on the right side of the science but what about the Republicans?  At least the frontrunners?

From The New Republic, here's Donald Trump:
Trump’s views on climate change broadly mirror those of his fellow Republican candidates. “I believe there’s weather,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt in September. “I believe there’s change, and I believe it goes up and it goes down, and it goes up again. And it changes depending on years and centuries, but I am not a believer, and we have much bigger problems.”

“I don’t believe in climate change,” Trump said flatly, in an interview with CNN in September. And the next month, as a cold front swept through the Northeast, he tweeted that “we could use a big fat dose of global warming!”
And Ted Cruz:
Cruz has gotten creative in rejecting climate science as partisan agenda. “Climate change is not science, it’s religion,” he told Glenn Beck in October, disputing the climate change “denier” label. The proper term, Cruz argued, would be “skeptic,” since good scientists are skeptical—ignoring the fact that, on climate change, scientists overwhelmingly agree that it is a real and pressing problem. In addition, Cruz’s American Energy Renaissance Act would open federal lands to oil and gas exploration and allow exports while leaving fracking regulation to states. The act would also prevent the EPA from regulating emissions.
And Marco Rubio:
He fully aligned himself with the skeptics in the build-up to his presidential bid, declaring on ABC’s This Week in 2014, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” Last April, he downplayed the human role again, saying, “Humans are not responsible for climate change in the way some of these people out there are trying to make us believe.” Not surprisingly, he voted against a Senate amendment in January that said climate change is real and “significantly” caused by human activity.
And yet, it's still getting warmer out there.  (On a side note to our readers in Pennsylvania, Senator Pat Toomey also voted against that "significantly" amendment.)

Only in America:
Of all the major conservative parties in the democratic world, the Republican Party stands alone in its denial of the legitimacy of climate science. Indeed, the Republican Party stands alone in its conviction that no national or international response to climate change is needed. To the extent that the party is divided on the issue, the gap separates candidates who openly dismiss climate science as a hoax, and those who, shying away from the political risks of blatant ignorance, instead couch their stance in the alleged impossibility of international action.
Warmer and warmer.  Denying it won't make it go away.

9 comments:

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

[Fabulist] Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the real problem with climate skeptics
http://www.techinsider.io/neil-degrasse-tyson-climate-change-deniers-2016-2
The real problem is we do not educate people to unquestioning believe anything [progressive] Scientists tell them.
Science Deniers do stupid things like trying to find a Bush quote that Tyson relayed in a speech.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/22/does-neil-degrasse-tyson-make-up-stories/

Zeus0209 said...

As a comment at the bottom of the referenced Post article so eloquently puts it:

"Neil got a quote wrong about Bush Jr. who's wanted by several groups in Geneva as a War Criminal. How dare him get a quote from a thug wrong. Junior cancelled a planned trip to Switzerland a couple of years ago when he found out that they would not be afraid to arrest him there and put him on trial.

Oh well I guess we must all be as pristine as possible and make sure that we invalidate Neil for stating an error. But the good thing is that one of his quotes is backed up by scientists world wide. "We are reaching an irreversible green house effect."

Dayvoe said...

And still it gets warmer.

LOOK OVER THERE!!!!

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

Zeus,
Your logic:
The Members of UVA fraternites are rapists. Several feminist groups including NOW know this for a fact.
So no one has the right to question the claims and actions of Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely and the accuser Jackie.

Zeus0209 said...

Heirmega Suthrone,
I was able to verify that Logic is still offered as a class at CCAC. I took it like 20 years ago. It's a 3 credit on line class (no prerequisites!) that starts on May 23 and ends June 30. Follow the link below, hit "search for classes", enter "Philosophy" under the subjects and look for phl-103. It can't possibly cost that much and it'll make you such a stronger argue-er-er. You're welcome.

https://ccaccentral.ccac.edu/WebAdvisor/WebAdvisor?TYPE=M&PID=CORE-WBMAIN&TOKENIDX=5024294590

Zeus0209 said...

I hear the professors are very patient.

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

I took logic at CCAC 30 years ago.
You are right your argument that Bush Jr. being wanted by several groups in Geneva as a War Criminal means you can use him to promote a false narrative should not be called logic.
I should have called it a Narrative or Standard.

Zeus0209 said...

You be why the profs have become so patient...

Ol' Froth said...

HEir, weren't you the guy who said some years back that you trust the people behind the Weather Channel over the scientists and NOAA? Well, look above and you'll see this is coming from your trusted Weather Channel.