Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
Justin Trudeau approves two big oil sands pipeline expansions
Posted on 1 December 2016 by Andy Skuce
In an announcement on November 29, 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved two new major pipeline expansions for Canadian bitumen. Altogether, the two projects will add over a million barrels per day to Canada's export capacity.
At the same press conference, Trudeau rejected the application for the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have provided 525,000 barrels per day of transportation from Alberta to the Pacific Ocean through the northern British Columbia coast, near Kitimat.
Northern Gateway (map by Enbridge)
The proposed export route would have involved tanker transport through fjords and treacherous seas in an area of protected wilderness known as the Great Bear Rainforest. Trudeau promised a legislated ban on all oil tankers on the BC Coast north of Vancouver Island. The Northern Gateway project was fiercely resisted by First Nations.
Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX)
The Trans Mountain Expansion project involves the twinning and expansion of an existing pipeline that runs from Edmonton, through Jasper National Park, to the Pacific coast at Vancouver.
The project currently has a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day and will be expanded to have a total capacity of 890,000 barrels per day. Around 400 Aframax tankers per year will transport diluted bitumen from the Westridge Marine Terminal, through Vancouver's Burrard Inlet, then down narrow passages, with strong tidal currents, between the Gulf Islands, and finally through the busy shipping lane of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the open ocean and markets around the Pacific. The project should be completed in 2019.
Chart by Doug Bostrom. Green line shows outbound tanker course, red overlay shows areas with strong tidal currents, in knots. High resolution PDF (big file)
Trump and the GOP may be trying to kneecap climate research
Posted on 30 November 2016 by dana1981
Last week, Donald Trump’s space policy advisor Bob Walker made headlines by suggesting that the incoming administration might slash Nasa’s climate and earth science research to focus the agency on deep space exploration. This caused great concern in the scientific community, because Nasa does some of the best climate research in the world, and its Earth science program does much more. Walker suggested the earth science research could be shifted to other agencies, but climate scientist Michael Mann explained what would result:
It’s difficult enough for us to build and maintain the platforms that are necessary for measuring how the oceans are changing, how the atmosphere is changing, with the infrastructure that we have when we total up the contributions from all of the agencies ... we [could] lose forever the possibility of the continuous records that we need so that we can monitor this planet.
Walker’s comments set off alarm bells for another reason. Were it simply a matter of transferring Nasa’s climate and earth science programs to other agencies, what would be the point? Such a transfer would be logistically difficult, and if the research funding weren’t cut, it wouldn’t save any taxpayer money. And it’s not as though the branches doing Nasa’s climate research are distracting other branches of the agency from conducting deep space exploration.
The suggestion does however look a lot like a Trojan horse whose true purpose is to cut government-funded climate research, perhaps transferring some of Nasa’s programs and budget to other agencies and simply scrapping the rest.
Bob Walker’s politicized science
In an interview with The Guardian, Walker accused Nasa of “politically correct environmental monitoring” and “politicized science.” Carol Off from CBC’s program As It Happens conducted a follow-up interview with Walker and asked for examples to support his accusations. Walker cited the example of Nasa’s announcement that 2014 was the hottest year on record, claiming:
Dear Mr President-elect: a message from across the Pond
Posted on 29 November 2016 by John Mason, BaerbelW
Dear Mr President-elect,
On 6 Nov 2012, at 11:15 am, you tweeted:
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
We'd like to take you on a quick tour back through the ages, because the early understanding of Earth's climate - and the role that carbon has to play in it - came from the West, not the East. Let's run through it quickly.
In 1800, British astronomer William Herschel first measured the heat that occurs in the warm – now known as infra-red (IR) – part of the spectrum. In 1824, French engineer Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier calculated that Earth should be colder than it is, at its orbital distance from the Sun. Today, it is common knowledge that outgoing IR radiation is emitted by the Earth's surface in response to heating by the Sun. But Fourier was the first to figure out that the IR was being slowed down during its journey back out to space. The air, he said, must act as a form of insulating blanket, keeping the planet warm. Smart guy.
This was just two years before Samuel Morey patented the first internal combustion engine.
In 1861, Anglo-Irish physicist John Tyndall observed that some atmospheric gases were transparent to IR radiation. But he found that others, like water vapor and carbon dioxide, were powerful IR absorbers. He was the first to propose that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could influence the Earth's climate. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius took it further. He made the first detailed calculations to see what a doubling of carbon dioxide levels might do to temperatures. His answer was a 5-6°C increase in the average global temperature. His ‘hot-house theory’ was set out for the first time in 1908 in his popular book ‘Worlds in the Making’.
In 1909, American astronomer Andrew Douglass developed the techniques of studying tree-rings and was the first to find the connection between tree ring widths and climate. In 1931, American physicist E.O Hulburt ran calculations to determine the effect of doubling carbon dioxide with the added burden of water vapor. His figure? 4°C of warming. In 1938, English engineer Guy Callendar discovered evidence of a warming temperature trend in the early twentieth century. He also found that CO2 levels were increasing and he warned that over the coming centuries there could be a climate shift to a permanently warmer state.
Scientists rate Canadian climate policies
Posted on 28 November 2016 by Guest Author
James Byrne is a Climate Scientist and Professor at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. He has published extensively on the impacts of climate change on water, ecosystems and society; served as an expert reviewer of many environmental impacts reports; and has led national and international environmental science and solutions communication programs. Catherine Potvin is Canada Research Chair on Climate Change Mitigation and Tropical Forests: Science for Empowerment. Her research includes biodiversity and ecosystem functioning; livelihoods, empowerment, and biodiversity; REDD+: carbon and co-benefits; and science to inform climate change policy.
Submitted on behalf of 60+ Sustainable Canada Dialogues Colleagues.
The Paris Agreement was ratified globally in November. This is unprecedented amongst international agreements for how quickly it has come into force. The Agreement allows each country to decide how it will tackle climate change, and requires as of 2020, regular reporting on progress. Countries of the world have officially embarked in a global race to implement ambitious climate policies that contribute to reducing green-house gas emissions at the planetary-scale.
This process is not unlike the Olympics games where countries get together to compare their strengths and performance. If Canada wants to be a medalist in 2020, domestic climate policies must rapidly be adopted to accelerate the low carbon transition. In this context, Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD) – a network of 60+ scholars from across Canada – produced Rating Canada’s Climate Policy; a progress report on Canada’s climate actions over the past year. We analysed climate decisions made in Ottawa in 2016 in relationship to the 10 policy orientations that we proposed previously in our position paper entitled Acting on Climate Change: Solutions from Canadian Scholars.
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48
Posted on 26 November 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Nov 20, 2016
- Fighting climate change with inner change: a case for heightened spiritual awareness by Tibi Puiu, ZME Scince, Nov 16, 2016
- Two Scientists' Upbeat Views on Marrakech by Bud Ward, Yale Climate Connections, Nov 17, 2016
- On climate change policy, neither time nor Trump are on Turnbull's side by Lenore Taylor, Guardian, Nov 18, 2016
- America’s TV meteorologists: Symptoms of climate change are rampant, undeniable, Opinion by Paul Douglas, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, Nov 18, 2016
- Climate Change in Trump’s Age of Ignorance, Opinion by Robert Proctor, Sunday Review, New York Times, Oct 19, 2016
- Climate change is real: Just ask the Pentagon by W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times, Nov 11, 2016
- Trump’s dilemma: to please his friends by trashing the Paris climate deal, or not?, Opinion by Bill McKibben, Guardian, Nov 18, 2016
- Video: UNEP chief scientist on 1.5C climate goal and Donald Trump by Leo Hickman, Carbon Brief, Nov 17, 2016
Trump or NASA – who's really politicising climate science?
Posted on 25 November 2016 by John Cook
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Climate research conducted at NASA had been “heavily politicised”, said Robert Walker, a senior adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump.
This has led him to recommend stripping funding for climate research at NASA.
Walker’s claim comes with a great deal of irony. Over the past few decades, climate science has indeed become heavily politicised. But it is ideological partisans cut from the same cloth as Walker who engineered such a polarised situation.
Believe it or not, climate change used to be a bipartisan issue. In 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush pledged to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect”.
Since those idealistic days when conservatives and liberals marched hand-in-hand towards a safer climate future, the level of public discourse has deteriorated.
Surveys of the US public over the past few decades show Democrats and Republicans growing further apart in their attitudes and beliefs about climate change.
For example, when asked whether most scientists agree on global warming, perceived consensus among Democrats has steadily increased over the last two decades. In contrast, perceived consensus among Republicans has been in stasis at around 50%.
Polarisation of perceived consensus among Republicans and Democrats. Dunlap et al. (2016)
Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 5
Posted on 24 November 2016 by Guest Author
Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
The simple, cheap instruments measuring global warming in the oceans
Posted on 23 November 2016 by John Abraham
Earth is warming due to the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Scientists are working hard to measure how fast the planet is warming, how much warming has occurred over the past few decades, and how this is affecting coastal areas, ecosystems, and fisheries. By understanding these factors, scientists can better project future climate impacts.
A large component of Earth’s warming involves the oceans, which absorb excess heat. The difficulty of gathering measurements in the oceans is that they are vast, deep, and often hard to reach. It’s also costly. Think about it: if you wanted to take the ocean’s temperature, how would you do it?
Centuries ago, ocean measurements were made with buckets dropped from the sides of ships. Over time, measurements have become more numerous and more accurate, partly thanks to technology advances. Today, a global array of floats that take continuous profiles of the upper ocean monitors ocean temperatures at more than 3000 locations to depths of 2000 meters.
However, this array was put in place in 2005. Prior to that, the backbone of ocean measurements was a device or probe called the expendable bathythermograph (XBT for short). These small, torpedo-like probes, deployed from ships, gather temperature data to depths of 300 to 2000 meters as they descend through the water.
XBTs were designed as a simple, inexpensive way to obtain temperature measurements from virtually any ship. These XBTs were originally used by navies to determine the depth of the sound channel, where sound waves can travel thousands of miles. They were first introduced in 1967 and immediately adopted by scientists worldwide. Since their debut, several million have been deployed, with some 20,000 launched annually in all ocean basins.
A very important and critical component of their success has been the excellent relationship established by the scientific community with commercial shipping companies. Commercial vessels aid scientists by voluntarily deploying XBTs along routes that are continuously repeated, often in remote regions not sampled by other types of oceanographic equipment.
With XBT use dating back to the 1960s, these measurements offer a unique historical perspective on temperature change in the oceans, which is often associated with global warming or even varying location and the intensity of ocean currents. XBT records, together with those of other observational tools later put in place, are crucial for determining how fast the ocean is warming - an essential factor for quantifying our effect on climate. XBT data are also used to measure how ocean currents change and how heat is transported across ocean basins, both of which are linked to extreme weather events worldwide.
Mitigation in Australia
Posted on 22 November 2016 by Riduna
Need to Curb Emissions
If we continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions at the current rate average global temperature could rise 1.5°C above the pre-industrial within a decade and 2°C by 2040. A rise of 2°C is likely to produce an increasingly dangerous climate which could make some parts of the world uninhabitable, accelerate ice melt and sea level rise and threaten our ability to feed a growing global population. And now, some climate scientists are debating the possibility of a 3°C rise before 2100. That would prove catastrophic.
If we wish to avoid scenarios where populations are driven from their homes by flood or starve because of drought or deluge producing crop failures, it is imperative that we avoid a rise of 2°C this century. The chances of our achieving this by replacing combustion of fossil fuels with clean energy source – and achieving this in a timely manner – are rapidly diminishing, given that average global temperature is already 1.3°C above the pre-industrial.
The current level of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the rate at which they continue to rise makes it imperative that they be reduced. To this end, technologies have been developed by the more advanced economies which can reduce demand for energy, significantly speeding up the rate at which we can reduce fossil fuel use. These ‘mitigating’ technologies are continually being improved and in the European Union and North America have been deployed to great effect. Yet in Australia, their use is at best disorganized, lacks uniformity at National or State level and at a local level is at best tokenistic or does not occur at all.
Fig. 1. Comparison between atmospheric concentration of CH4 and CO2 over the last 400,000 years and their effects on average global temperature to 2013. Source: R.Morrison, Wikipedia.
Groups working with Republicans on climate are discouraged, but see a glimmer of hope
Posted on 21 November 2016 by dana1981
Because America is entirely governed by two political parties, passage of legislation usually requires bipartisan support in US Congress. However, the Republican Party is the only major political party in the world that denies the need to tackle climate change. Therefore, for several years any hope of passing climate legislation hinged upon breaking through the near-universal opposition among Republican legislators. A number of groups have focused on doing just that.
In the wake of the 2016 US election results, I contacted these groups to assess their feelings about the prospects of US government action on climate change in the near future. The general sentiment was understandably one of discouraged pessimism, but each group identified glimmers of hope.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s success and growth
Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) is one of the leading grassroots climate organizations in America, and has also expanded rapidly internationally. The group has seen explosive growth in recent years, now hosting chapters in 356 of America’s 435 congressional districts (over 80%), with a membership approaching 50,000 strong.
Under the CCL proposal, carbon pollution is taxed at the source, and 100% of the revenue is returned to taxpayers via a regular rebate check. It’s a bipartisan solution – liberals get their desired carbon pollution tax, while conservatives get a free market policy that doesn’t grow the size of government. Moreover, modeling projects that the policy will have a net overall positive effect on the economy.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby has also achieved several significant successes. The group was involved in spearheading the Gibson Resolution, in which 15 Republican members of Congress called for action to tackle the risks posed by climate change. CCL was also the driving force behind the creation of the House Climate Solutions Caucus – a group currently comprised of 10 Republican and 10 Democratic members of Congress exploring bipartisan climate policy solutions. And CCL initiated the California state government’s Resolution urging the federal government to pass a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #47
Posted on 20 November 2016 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... SkS Highlights... Toon of the Week... La Niña Update... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
Fears that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming pushed almost 200 nations at climate talks in Morocco on Thursday to declare action an "urgent duty".
Trump has called man-made global warming a hoax and has said he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which seeks to wean the global economy off fossil fuels this century with a shift to renewable energies such as wind and solar power.
In a statement, the ministers at the meeting said momentum for cutting greenhouse gases was "irreversible" and reaffirmed their commitment to "full implementation" of the Paris accord.
"We call for the highest political commitment to combat climate change, as a matter of urgent priority," they said in the Marrakesh Action Proclamation.
"Our climate is warming at an alarming and unprecedented rate and we have an urgent duty to respond," it said. Delegates applauded and joined hands above their heads in a standing ovation after the proclamation was read out.
"We call for the highest political commitment to combat climate change, as a matter of urgent priority" by Alister Doyle and Nina Chestney, Reuters, Nov 17, 2016
For more reporting on what transpired at Cop 22 in Marrakesh, see:
- Poor nations pledge deep emissions cuts at Marrakech summit by Arthur Neslen, Guardian, Nov 18, 2016
- "We call for the highest political commitment to combat climate change, as a matter of urgent priority" by Alister Doyle and Nina Chestney, Reuters, Nov 17, 2016
- COP22 headlines: what did Marrakech climate summit deliver? by Megan Darby, Karl Mathiesen, Ed King & Lou Del Bello, Climate Home, Nov 18, 2016
- COP22: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Marrakech by Sophie Yeo, Carbon Brief, Nov 19, 2016
To access the official COP 22 website of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), click here.
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #47
Posted on 19 November 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Nov 13, 2016
- Trump win opens way for China to take climate leadership role by Valerie Volcovici & Sue-Lin Wong, Reuters, Nov 11, 2016
- Kerry urges global warming activists to march in streets in battle against climate change in visit to Antarctica, AP/South China Morning Post, Nov 12, 2016
- Trump's climate change denialism portends dark days, climate researchers say, RT, Nov 11, 2016
- Bill McKibben: Trump's Presidency Comes When the Warming World Can Least Afford It by Nermeen Shaikh & Amy Goodman, Democarcy Now!, Nov 10, 2016
- The Road Ahead in Saving the Climate by Hunter Cutting, Nexus Media, Nov 9, 2016
- Image of the Week – Climate Change and the Cryosphere by Sophie Berger, Cryosphere Division, EGU Blogs, Nov 11, 2016
- Warming up: new research points to a more sensitive climate to rising CO2 by Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 13, 2016
- Climate science’s long history matters—and so does the history of news reporting about it by Steven T. Corneliussen, Physics Today, Nov 11, 2016
Two Scientists' Upbeat Views on Marrakech
Posted on 18 November 2016 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Two scientists who participated in a recent global climate-change meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, come across in a new Yale Climate Connections video as hopeful, bordering on optimistic, about continued international efforts to address the problem. (See related posts here, here, and here.)
Glaciologist Jason Box, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and Cara Augustenborg, an environmental scientist with University College in Dublin, point to a spirit of resolution and perseverance in Marrakech in the days immediately following the U.S. election of Donald J. Trump.
“I thought before the election that, if Trump wins, we’ll all just go home,” Augustenborg told a meeting at Trinity College in Dublin on November 15, a week after Trump’s election. “But I was really surprised that the attitude in Marrakech was really quite positive. Negotiating team members and civil society representatives took the approach of: ‘Look, this is going to make it harder for the U.S., definitely, but it’s only one country out of 196, and the rest of us are still on track, we’re still going to act.'”
“Everyone’s got more resolve to make the Paris agreement a success,” Box said in a November 16 Skype interview with independent videographer Peter Sinclair. “That’s what everyone’s talking about.”
He said “the ‘T’ word” was not a principal focus of international participants. “This disruption, optimistically, will stir things up,” he said in the monthly “This is not cool” video.
Trump begins filling environmental posts with clowns
Posted on 17 November 2016 by John Abraham
Come on, you can admit it. I admit it. I admit that after Trump’s election victory, I secretly hoped and even though that his rhetoric was worse than its bite. He only said those crazy things during the campaign to get elected. He wouldn’t really follow through on his plans to completely gut the US commitment to keeping the Earth habitable. Oh how naive we were. Trump’s plan to fill positions in his administration shows things are worse than we could have ever feared.
According to recent reports, Trump has picked long-time climate denier and spokesperson for the fossil fuel industry Myron Ebell to head the Environmental Protection Agency transition. This basically means the EPA will either cease to function or cease to exist. It also appears that the US will pull out of any agreements to limit greenhouse emissions.
It means we have missed our last off-ramp on the road to catastrophic climate change. That may sound hyperbolic, but I study the rate that climate change is happening – the amount of heat accumulating in the Earth’s system. We didn’t have any time to waste in implementing Obama’s aggressive plans, and Trump will result in a decade of time lost.
So who is Myron Ebell? He is a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and chair of the Cooler Heads Coalition. Where did he get his PhD in science? Nowhere. In fact, he isn’t a scientist at all, but he does have a degree in economics. Yeah!
What President Trump means for the future of energy and climate
Posted on 16 November 2016 by Guest Author
Mark Barteau, Director, University of Michigan Energy Institute, University of Michigan
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
President…Donald…Trump. For those on both sides of the aisle who vowed “Never Trump!,” that’s going to take some getting used to. On this morning after a stunning election, the first impulse may be to describe the future in apocalyptic phrases. Game over for the climate! Game over for NATO! Game over for the Clean Power Plan! Game over for Planned Parenthood!
While there are certainly extreme outcomes possible for these and many other issues that divide our nation, we may see some moderation, especially on matters where the divisions do not rigidly follow ideological fault lines.
Of course, the president-elect himself is famous neither for hewing to right wing orthodoxy nor for consistency between his various pronouncements. As he has said: “I like to be unpredictable.”
But make no mistake, in the energy and climate space Trump’s number one priority is to dismantle the Obama legacy as he sees it. And he sees it largely through the lens of organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, pro-fossil fuel organizations severely allergic to regulations.
A prime target is the Environmental Protection Agency and its regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Power Plan and methane emissions measures, which are described as “job killers.”
US election: Climate scientists react to Donald Trump’s victory
Posted on 15 November 2016 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief
In what’s widely being described as the most shocking upset in US election history, Donald J Trump has beaten Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States.
As one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, any change at the top of US politics warrants a consideration of what it might mean for the country’s climate and energy priorities.
But given Trump’s comments on the campaign trail, the US’s recent reputation under Barack Obama as a nation serious about tackling climate change now looks to be in peril.
For example, Trump said he thought climate change was a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese. In addition, he pledged to end federal spending on low-carbon energy and to pull the US out of the UN’s Paris Agreement on climate change. Carbon Brief has been asking climate scientists for their reactions.
- Dr Philip B Duffy, Woods Hole Research Center
- Dr Malte Meinhausen, University of Melbourne and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
- Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
- Dr Rachel James, University of Oxford
- Dr Twila Moon, University of Bristol
- Prof Andrew Dessler, Texas A&M University
- Prof Shaun Marcott, University of Winconsin-Madison
- Prof Charles F Kennel, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
- Dr Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
- Prof Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Sorbonne Universityand IDDRI
- Prof Jason Box, Geologic Survey of Denmark and Greenland
- Prof Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Université Catholique de Louvain
- Dr Michael. E. Mann, Penn State University
- Prof Eric Steig, University of Washington
- Dr Niklas Höhne, Wageningen University
- Prof Jim Skea, Imperial College London
- Prof Katherine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
- Zeke Hausfather, Berkeley Earth
- Dr Bill Hare, Climate Analytics
- Prof Piers Forster, University of Leeds
- Prof Ken Calderia, Carnegie Institution for Science
- Dr Glen Peters, Centre for International for Climate and Environmental Research Oslo
Dr Philip B Duffy, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center and former senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy:
Dr Malte Meinhausen, senior researcher in climate impacts at the University of Melbourne and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
On Trump and climate, America is split in two by these demographics
Posted on 14 November 2016 by dana1981
The world is shocked that America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. Exit polls show that the country is sharply divided on Trump along the same lines as its sharp divisions on climate change.
Political ideology was the single strongest determining factor in the election. 90% of Republicans voted for Trump, while 89% of Democrats voted for Clinton. Ideology is also the primary factor associated with acceptance or denial of human-caused global warming, as climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explained eloquently in this video:
Race was the second-clearest determining factor in the presidential election. Trump won white voters by 21 percentage points; Clinton won minorities by 53 points. Minorities are also far more likely to accept and be concerned about climate change than white Americans. As Samantha Bee explained, white Americans bear responsibility for electing Donald Trump:
Fourth, voters younger than 45 went for Clinton by a 12-point margin, while older voters preferred Trump by 11 points. Voters under the age of 30 voted for Clinton by an 18-point margin. Similarly, young Americans are far more likely to be concerned about climate change than older Americans.
Finally, there is a gender gap, though it’s smaller than many expected. Despite accusations from 15 women that Trump groped, kissed, or assaulted them, and a recording of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, he only lost the female vote by 12 points – the same margin by which he won the male vote, and approximately the same margin by which Obama beat Romney and McCain among women. White women even favored Trump by 10 points, and white women without a college degree by an astonishing 28 points.
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #46
Posted on 13 November 2016 by John Hartz
A Blow to the Gut... A Response... Toon of the Week... La Niña Update... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
A Blow to the Gut...
Donald Trump is seeking quick ways of withdrawing from a global agreement to limit climate change, a source on his transition team said, defying widening international backing for the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Since the U.S. President-elect was chosen, governments ranging from China to small island states have reaffirmed support for the 2015 Paris Agreement at 200-nation climate talks running until Nov. 18 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Trump, who has called global warming a hoax and has promised to quit the Paris Agreement, was considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to the source, who works on Trump's transition team for international energy and climate policy.
"It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election" on Tuesday, the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Paris Agreement won enough backing for entry into force on Nov. 4.
Trump looking at fast ways to quit global climate deal: source by Valerie Volcovici & Alister Doyle, Reuters, Nov 12, 2016
A Response...
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Bill, you’ve also said that the damage from this election will be measured in geologic time.
BILL McKIBBEN: That’s right. The Trump presidency comes at a moment when we could least afford it. It’s not like we were winning the climate battle before, you know, but we were beginning to make at least a little progress. There was beginning to be the kind of ramp-up of renewable and clean energy in this country and around the world. The world managed a year ago at Paris to do something, anyway, for the first time, about climate change. Now we’re going to hit not a pothole, but a ditch in the road. And it’s not as if—I mean, the thing to remember about climate change is it’s not as if we can just pick up four years from now where we left off. Physics is our enemy, and it imposes a difficult time limit here. We don’t have any more presidential terms to waste. So we’re going to have to figure out, as a nation and, maybe more importantly, as a planet, how to work around Trump, to one degree or another.
Bill McKibben: Trump's Presidency Comes When the Warming World Can Least Afford It by Nermeen Shaikh & Amy Goodman, Democarcy Now!, Nov 10, 2016
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46
Posted on 12 November 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Nov 6, 2016
- Opinion: Americans, if you care about the planet, vote Hillary Clinton Op-ed by Mark Leiren-Young, National Observer, Nov 3, 2016
- If Clinton Wins, The Next Energy Secretary Might Be The Current One by Dino Grandoni, BuzzFeed News, Oct 30, 2016
- Arctic summer sea ice to disappear with 2C warming, study says by Robert McSweeney, Carbon Brief, Nov 3, 2016
- Top 5 urgent Climate Change/Election Stories MSM Suppressed by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Nov 5, 2016
- Renewable Energy: Germany to Build World's First Hydroelectric Wind Turbines by Rhenn Anthony Taguiam, Nature World News, Nov 3, 2016
- Nicholas Stern: cost of global warming ‘is worse than I feared’ by Robin McKie, Observer/Guardian, Nov 5, 2016
- Don’t make a choice that your children will regret, Open-letter to Us Voters by David Archer, Rasmus Benestad, Ray Bradley, Michael Mann, Ray Pierrehumbert, Stefan Rahmstorf & Eric Steig, Real Climate, Nov 4, 2016
- Faith groups strengthen call for climate justice, Ekkelsia, Nov 5, 2016
Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 4
Posted on 11 November 2016 by Guest Author
Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
