Trump Is Going to Texas, But Will He Learn Anything?

1. Scientists have been warning that climate change will produce more "rain bombs," catastrophic amounts of rainfall in short time-spans. Storms will get more severe. More rain will fall, and faster.

2. Ocean temperatures are warmer. Warmer oceans make for stronger hurricanes.

3. Warmer water also increases in volume. Warmer oceans are rising, without even factoring in the melting of glaciers and the disintegration of the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Coastal flooding in some areas is already a constant fact of life, even without hurricanes.

4. It's damn near impossible to get flood insurance for homes from private insurers. The US government stepped up, creating the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to provide insurance to homeowners in areas prone to flooding. From 1978 to 2004, NFIP generally took in more in payments than it paid out in losses. But in 2005, Katrina hit. The NFIP was on the hook for $18 billion — an amount equal to all of the premiums paid into the program from 1991 through 2005. Then, in 2012, Sandy hit. Losses neared $10 billion.

5. Shoring up NFIP became a big political fight in Congress after Hurricane Sandy. Some 67 Republicans in Congress, including Speaker Paul Ryan and 5th District Madam Virginia Foxx, voted against a NFIP funding bill in January 2013. Screw those Northeastern Democrats!

6. The NFIP is currently $24.6 billion in debt.

7. The NFIP is underwater because it doesn't charge enough in flood insurance premiums to cover the costs of recovery. Rich people with expensive ocean-front properties don't want to pay more, and they have considerably more political influence over Congress. Funding for NFIP is basically a political football.

8. Then comes Hurricane Harvey, followed by a rubber-necking Trump who understands little, cares even less, and seems perfectly immune from deep knowledge. We know where he stands on science.

Congrats, America! You Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, and Here's Your Reward

Unprecedented droughts. Worse and worser heat waves. Rain "bombs" and fiercer storms slashing the landscape. The average temperature in the United States "has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years," according to a comprehensive climate report paid for, researched, and written by the U.S. government -- "Climate Science Special Report."

That report was just leaked to the NYTimes because some of the scientists involved in its writing are fearful that the current administration with suppress it. Or "edit" it for content to please the Koch Bros.

With no interest in science at the highest levels of our leadership, and with no chance of changing that head-in-the-sand status quo for the foreseeable future, we are so thoroughly f***ed. To paraphrase the coroner in "The Wizard of Oz," we're not only merely f***ed. We're really most sincerely f***ed.

Our Idiot Will Make the U.S. a Rogue Nation

Exxon Mobil’s chief executive, Darren W. Woods, is strong in his defense of this nation's remaining a part of the Paris climate agreement. Woods is part of a "nearly united corporate front" that's been urging Trump not to withdraw from the agreement. “By expanding markets for innovative clean technologies, the agreement generates jobs and economic growth. U.S. companies are well positioned to lead in these markets,” a host of corporate giants, including Woods, wrote in full-page advertisements that ran recently in The New York Times, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

But Steve Bannon is evidently back in the driver's seat in the Oval Office, and CBS News is reporting just now -- or confirming -- that Trump will indeed announce that he is withdrawing us from the Paris agreement.

According to Michael Shear and Diane Cardwell,

Environmentally oriented groups like Ceres, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions have brought together big companies like Apple, Ingersoll Rand, Mars, National Grid and Schneider Electric to appeal to the president to stay in. Many of them operate globally and worry that if the United States abandons the deal, it would be harder to operate in existing markets and break into new ones.

But, never mind. Trump means to pander to the ignorance of his greedy, short-distance sprinters (Donald much prefers a golf cart to walking anyway), and he will make the United States the newest pariah on the planet.

How far above sea level is Mar-a-Lago?

Sorry. The Future Has Been Canceled

Scott Pruitt

“The future ain’t what it used to be at the E.P.A.”

--Scott Pruitt, Trump's administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference

Scott Pruitt would know. He's the lawyer that used to put out oil and gas industry propaganda under his own name as attorney general of Oklahoma, where defending the fossil fuel industry comes before church.

He's now in charge of protecting the environment of the United States, which means that pirates are now at the helm of the ship of state.

Pruitt just changed his testimony at his confirmation hearing -- "I never said I thought climate change was a hoax" -- to "carbon-dioxide has nothing to do with the warming of the planet." Such an attitude not only flies in the face of widespread scientific consensus that carbon-dioxide does indeed trap more heat at the earth's surface, but it also denies reality. Anyone heard lately about the Rhode-Island-size chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf that's about to drop into the ocean because of softening ice?

Pruitt is not only spouting his crap against the evidence of science and freaking reality. He's preparing to defy the very law itself. Under provisions of the Clean Air Act (passed under the last liberal president, Richard Nixon), the EPA which Mr. Pruitt now heads must regulate pollutants that harm human health. In 2009 carbon dioxide was judged to be an "endangerment" and therefore must be regulated by the EPA. That finding has been unheld in federal court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the lower court.

So what's a Trump/Pruitt to do? Why, issue an executive order, naturally! According to the reporting of Coral Davenport, "Mr. Trump is expected to announce an executive order next week directing Mr. Pruitt to begin the legal process of unwinding the climate change regulations on [carbon dioxide] emissions from power plants."

The wrecking crew owns this joint now.

The Rest of the World Must Declare Us a "Rogue Nation"

“You are a slow learner, Winston."

"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

― George Orwell, 1984

The climate-change-denier in chief, Donald Trump, has named fellow climate-change-deniers to top posts in his administration -- Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry at the Energy Department, and Ryan Zinke at the Interior Department.

During the transition period (the first week of December), Trump officials demanded that the Energy Department turn over the names of scientists who had worked on President Obama's climate change initiative, a decree that the department refused, as anyone familiar with the history of witch hunts should have done.

Just yesterday, employees at several federal agencies including the Department of Agriculture have been barred by the Trump administration from making any statements, or providing any documents to the public or journalists -- a "gag order."

A memo sent to staff of the Environmental Protection Agency said that no press releases were to be sent to "external audiences" and that "no social media will be going out," according to a report by The Hill. The memo also says that a digital strategist will be coming in to oversee the agency's social-media policies, and that "existing, individually controlled social-media accounts may become more centrally controlled."

Centrally controlled. Big Brother is watching you.

Staff at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service also got a memo on Monday telling them not to provide any documents to the public, including press releases and social-media content. The email told employees, including about 2,000 staff scientists, that "starting immediately and until further notice," they were not to release any documents or post anything to social media.

The Trump presidency: "We will strangle science in its cradle in order to deny that two plus two is four."

Better Start Kissing Your Medicare Goodbye Now

Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, whom Trump is naming to head the Department of Health and Human Services, has already announced that the phasing out of Medicare ("privatization") won't come in the first toxic wave of new Trump legislation but will come in the second wave next summer. Price seemed confident that a simple Republican majority in the U.S. Senate would be able to phase out Medicare using "budget reconciliation." Passage of an end to Medicare is guaranteed to pass the House.

Via TPM: "Price, an orthopedic surgeon and Budget Committee Chair in the outgoing Congress, is an arch-critic of 'Obamacare' and a top supporter of Speaker Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers."

Price is a surgeon who opposes abortion rights. In the U.S. House he supported the proposed Protect Life Act, which would have denied Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) funding to health care plans that offered abortion. That law would also have allowed hospitals to decline to provide emergency abortion care. 

He voted against a bill prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and he voted in favor of constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. He voted against H.R. 2965, which would have ended "don't ask, don't tell." In 2008 Price signed a pledge sponsored by Americans for Prosperity promising to vote against any Global Warming legislation that would raise taxes.

He joins the Trump Locker Room, and he's bringing his own towel.

John Locke Foundation Called Out for Participating in Outright Fraud

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with 18 other Democratic senators, named the John Locke Foundation of North Carolina, along with other "climate deniers" in business and think tanks, for deliberately and consistently misleading the public about the role of fossil fuels in climate change.

Whitehouse accused the 48 groups – including some major corporations, media outlets and research organizations – of trying to “fool the public about the risk of climate change.” Those entities, he said, “provide talking points to right-wing talk radio” and “take advantage of a lazy media's impulse to offer both sides of the story even when one is false.” [N&O]

Senators Dick Burr and Thom Tillis immediately started whining that Sen. Whitehouse was trying to suppress free speech.

Actually, dear senators from North Carolina, fraud is not covered by free speech rights.

Climate-Change Denier

Thom Tillis, too antediluvian for North Carolina!

NC GOP: First in Ignorance

Watch the four leading contenders in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate all deny that climate change is real.

Yup. Head-butting science is the way to get ahead in today's Republican Party.

NC DENR Disappears Climate Change Science

Mr. John Skvarla (bless his heart!) can't seem to scrub anything clean except the website of his Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which has recently been washed of any scientific evidence of climate change.

Maybe Gov. Squishy told him to do it. McCrory too has become a national laughingstock on whether the science of climate change has anything to do with anything other than God's will.

Was it perhaps also God's will for Duke Energy to defy environmental laws and pollute our state's water supply at every last one of their dozen + coal ash dumps?

Will NC Be a National Laughing Stock, Come Friday?

The Guv has until midnight on Thursday to decide what to do about H819, the controversial Coastal Management Policies Act, wherein the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly commanded the Atlantic not to rise, or at least commanded state government not to talk about it in anything approaching scientific terms or backed up with scientific research.

Kirk Ross has written an interesting update on "Will She Or Won't She?"

This Koch-Head Climate-Change Denier Has Gone Rogue

Richard A. Muller, head of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study, has accepted big money from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and he was -- no surprise -- a dependable skeptic about global warming ... until now. He published an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Saturday with this title: "The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic." Here's the money quote (hattip: The Progressive Pulse):

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause. 

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

North Carolina Republicans Declare War on Science

You've probably heard that the North Carolina General Assembly (the cluelessness of Sen. Soucek, squared) is moving forward on a bill to strangle science before it can project sea-level rise on our coast that might imperil developers and their plans to develop. The revised legislation would ban -- ban -- sea-level rise projections that are based on global climate change data.

Pushing this piece of head-in-the-sand ignorance is a group calling itself NC-20, referring to 20 coastal counties which stand to lose the most in development dollars if builders actually pay attention to scientific research. And guiding the intellectual argument against science for NC-20 is one John Droz, about whom Laura Leslie posted an investigative report late Wednesday night.

It says a great deal about the quality of our current legislative majority that John Droz is the "authority" they are listening to.

Previously, in our great moment as national laughing stock:

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Tornadoes and Global Climate Change

From the NYTimes, this considered opinion, which we appreciate, along with the "scientists are reluctant" disclaimer tucked in here for that all-important CYA moment:

Q: Can the intensity of this year’s tornadoes be blamed on climate change?

A: Probably not. Over all, the number of violent tornadoes has been declining in the United States, even as temperatures have increased, making it likely that this year’s twister outbreak is simply a remarkable and terrifying — but natural — event. Climate science has long predicted that global warming will cause more weather extremes, however, and statistics suggest that this has started to happen. In most areas of the world where good weather data is available, instances of heavy precipitation are rising, often leading to flash flooding. And the same thing is true of heat waves; in the United States, new high-temperature records for a given date now occur twice as often as record lows. That said, scientists are reluctant to attribute any specific weather event to global warming. And, at least so far, only a handful of studies have suggested that tornadoes are likely to become more frequent or more intense on a warming planet. Frustratingly, it is likely to be a year or two before we get good published analyses of the causes for this season’s strange weather — and it may be decades before science can conclusively demonstrate whether or not human-driven warming is affecting tornado frequency. — JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF and JUSTIN GILLIS

Climate Change Deniers' Floating Picnic

From this a.m.'s Charlotte Observer:

...Water is rising three times faster on the N.C. coast than it did a century ago as warming oceans expand and land ice melts, recent research has found. It's the beginning of what a N.C. science panel expects will be a 1-meter increase by 2100.

Rising sea level is the clearest signal of climate change in North Carolina. Few places in the United States stand to be more transformed.

About 2,000 square miles of our low, flat coast, an area nearly four times the size of Mecklenburg County, is 1 meter (about 39 inches) or less above water.

At risk are more than 30,500 homes and other buildings, including some of the state's most expensive real estate. Economists say $6.9 billion in property, in just the four counties they studied, will be at risk from rising seas by late this century.

Naw, we got no problem whatsoever from global climate change.

You Didn't See This on Fox News

Hattip: BrotherDoc (again). NASA reports (scientifically based, so some of you may want to avert your gaze) that 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record. The next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009, "which are statistically tied for third warmest year." The scientific measurements only go back to 1880, so there's wiggle room -- natch! -- for you global climate change deniers.

Said the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "Global temperature is rising as fast in the past decade as in the prior two decades, despite year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Niño-La Niña cycle of tropical ocean temperature."

Sign of the Times

We're going to be reading a lot more stories about this -- and seeing pictures.

Except, don't these whiners know that global warming is just a myth? Don't they get Rush Limbaugh in those parts?

South Carolina Republican Blasts His Party's Know-Nothingism

Who is this man? Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), rated by the American Conservative Union as 93% pure conservative, yet a Congressman who takes global climate change science seriously and who was defeated in his primary because of it ... by a tea party ignoramus who doesn't believe in science but who does believe in certain birther myths.

What did this man do yesterday? At a House subcommittee hearing on climate change, and from the vantage point of no longer giving a good goddamn whose toes he steps on because he'll be out of office in a matter of weeks, lectured his dumber-than-dirt colleagues about two things coming down the track: global climate change and the dominance of the new green technology by China:

"...we're here with important decisions to be made. And I would also suggest to my Free Enterprise colleagues -- especially conservatives here -- whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey, what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don't. And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century. They plan on innovating around these problems, and selling to us, and the rest of the world, the technology that'll lead the 21st century. So we may just press the pause button here for several years, but China is pressing the fast-forward button. And as a result, if we wake up in several years and we say, 'geez, this didn't work very well for us. The two doctors [industry-paid skeptics of global warming] didn't turn out to be so right. 98 [scientists who do see global climate change coming] might have been the ones to listen to....

"There are people who make a lot of money on talk radio and talk TV saying a lot of things. They slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and they're experts on climate change. They substitute their judgment for people who have Ph.D.s and work tirelessly [on climate change]."

Meanwhile, all of the Republicans vying to chair the House Energy Committee -- which handles climate and energy issues -- in the new Congress are climate change deniers. They include Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who infamously apologized to BP shortly after the company's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, and 87-year-old Texas Republican Rep. Ralph Hall, the leading candidate to take the gavel in the next Congress. Congressman Hall took a potshot at the White House's use of the term "global climate disruption" and said that "reasonable people have serious questions about our knowledge of the state of the science."

These are some of the same folks who want "creationism" taught in the public schools, along with "abstinence only."

Idiocracy ain't just a wildly improbable comic movie any longer.

South Dakota Legislature, Go to the Corner and Stay There!

The South Dakota legislature, dominated by a lot of elected people with an "R" after their names, want to stick a finger in science's eye, so they pass a joint resolution calling for "balanced teaching of global warming," which in their particular language includes a warning that "the significance and interrelativity" of "astrological" (and other) data can be interpreted in a number of ways. We are NOT making this up. (Hat tip: the ineffable Ed Cone)

Lord knows, I had my doubts about my horoscope for today: "You don't have to worry about getting every little fact right today -- but your competition does! That gives you a serious advantage, as long as you are willing to move forward quickly into the darkness."

The South Dakota legislature has actually given me hope that they are the "darkness" I'm supposed to move forward quickly into.

When You're Losing the Argument, Confuse the Issue

Some of the biggest (richest) global-climate-change deniers also happen to be the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases -- the oil, coal, and automobile industries. We now know that these industries were being told by their own scientists that "the scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied."

The oil, coal, and automobile industries did not just ignore what their own scientists were saying. They lied about it. Through an industry-funded "front" calling itself the Global Climate Coalition, the Dirty Air People conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the scientific merits of climate change, greenhouse gases, and their own culpability in exacerbating the problems. Among the hungry fish who swallowed that bait were umpteen conservative "pundits."

"By questioning the science on global warming ... groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action."

The handmaidens to this policy of "confuse the issue and delay reform" were the news media, particularly TV news and especially cable news, where supposedly "neutral coverage" demands the 50-50 approach. If you have two scientists saying global warming cannot be denied, then you must put on two "scientists" saying it's all a crock.