The lying maggot Scott Pruitt - now head of the EPA- said under oath in Senate hearings barely three months ago that he wasn't certain humans were the major agent for climate change has now come out and made his aberrant position abundantly clear. Pruitt said on Thursday that he did not believe that the release of CO2 was pushing global temperatures upwards. He told CNBC:
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“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,
The very fact Pruitt could invoke "precision" discloses he hasn't the first clue about the nature of climate science. Like many libertarian climate change deniers Pruitt confuses deterministic science and outcomes with disciplines (like climate science) based on stochastic processes. .Thus, a reasonable skeptic must allow for a higher threshold of fuzziness than allowed in celestial mechanics where I can very exactly predict Jupiter's position in 50 years.
Even so, the parameters are such we are fairly confident of what the outcomes will be. For example, the inputs that predict the most dire effects of rapid warming then, are not so stringent nor do they have attached to them such absurd levels of accuracy. One we can name for instance is the concentration in parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is currently at about 400 ppm. Attendant on that is the fact that in the historical record (analysis via ice cores) there has never been an ice age when the CO2 concentration was higher than 200 ppm (See: 'Greenhouse' by Gale Christianson).
These two quantitative indices already tell us we are in dire straits, because: 1) we have surpassed the 200 ppm threshold and by a factor 2, and 2) the concentrations are increasing. The temperature of the planet is currently out of balance by 0.6W/ m2 and this is almost entirely due to the annual rate of CO2 concentrations increasing. Further, every increase in CO2 concentration by 2 ppm increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m2. Taken in tandem we have the equivalent of 2.5 x 10 7 TJ injected each year into the atmosphere or roughly 400,000 Hiroshima size A-bombs. In most other circumstances a nation lighting up the planet with that many A-bombs would be immediately taken down by the human community. But too many of us appear to just sit while Earth burns.
Pruitt also blabbed in total confounding ignorance, typical of the Trumpites:
But we don’t know that yet ... We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
In fact, numerous surveys of actual climate scientists (not paid whores) show it's as settled as it's ever going to be. Specifically, I've referenced the scientific consensus on global warming reported in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22, by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24) :
“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”
In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.
The authors concluded (p. 24) :
“The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists”
This misbegotten stance puts Pruitt at odds with the scientists of the EPA, which states on its website that carbon dioxide is the “primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change”. This finding is backed by NASA, which calls CO2 “the most important long-lived ‘forcing’ of climate change”. Most recently, the quantification of the annual forcing component has been put in terms nearly every human ought to be able to grasp, i.e. an energy impact equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima scale A-bombs released every year in the atmosphere. And yet dopey, dumbass Scotty Pruitt can't (or won't) process that.
Pruitt’s comments were quickly condemned by scientists, environmental activists and even his immediate predecessor as EPA chief, Gina McCarthy.
“The world of science is about empirical evidence, not beliefs,” said McCarthy, an appointee of Barack Obama. “When it comes to climate change, the evidence is robust and overwhelmingly clear that the cost of inaction is unacceptably high. I cannot imagine what additional information the administrator might want from scientists for him to understand that.”
Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said:
“Pruitt has demonstrated that he is unqualified to run the EPA or any agency. There is no doubt whatsoever that the planet is warming, and it is primarily due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and we can demonstrate clearly that the observed warming of the planet would not have occurred without that change in atmospheric composition. These are scientific facts, not opinion, and it is incumbent on politicians to take account of the scientific evidence.”
Things are bound to get even worse given now the Trump administration is mandating that any studies or data from scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public.
Doug Ericksen, the communications director for Donald Trump’s transition team at the EPA, said on Wednesday the review also extends to content on the federal agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence showing that the Earth’s climate is warming and manmade carbon emissions are to blame.
So, if anyone is interested in the actual facts to do with current climate change, now is the time to do screen shots off the relevant websites because soon they will be replaced by "alternative facts" to suit the Babbits and Munchkins of the country. I.e. those who wouldn't recognize a scientific theory if they were given the attributes in advance.
Meanwhile, former EPA staffers said on Wednesday the restrictions imposed under Trump far exceed the practices of past administrations.
What Pruitt represents then, is an arsonist in charge of the Fire Dept. His corrupt presence ensures the human stewardship of the planet is essentially scuttled for future generations. Because merely for the interval this troll will head EPA - even if only 4 years- the dynamics of the atmosphere can change dramatically. As one observer quoted in the Denver Post has pointed out, we could soon see summer temperatures hot enough to melt asphalt - like in India - and also have as many airline diversions we now have for ice.
Am I being mean or hyperbolic with poor little Scotty? Hell no!
Some of the other Pruitt "achievements" for those who might wonder why he was picked to take down EPA:
He also joined other knuckle dragger AGs opposing EPA plans to curtail methane emissions. In case you didn't know, methane is an even more intense greenhouse gas than CO2, see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/methane-release-increases-because-of.html
- On his linked in page this climate assassin has boasted of "being a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda". Transl.: He is quite happy to see your grand kids choke to death on fracking fumes or mercury pumped from coal fired utilities, or the toxic residue left behind in a place because there aren't enough EPA personnel to do clean ups.
- The goober is a self-declared ally of the Energy industry along with Alabama AG Luther Strange. Both of these a-holes came to the defense of Exxon even as they were preparing documents that tried to minimize climate threats, acknowledging in their own documents the threats were real, e.g. see all 340 pages of the 'Climate Deception Dossiers' here:
www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception
Pruitt's being a whore and a hack for the fossil fuel industry isn't the least bit surprising. Indeed, his outlook of "drill, baby drill and let the world burn" reflects the regressive zeitgeist of his home state, Oklahoma.
If you can grab a good health care policy now, better do it. When we are swamped with all the effluent from Scotty's inaction in another year or two it will be too late. And if the Repuke "make America sicker" plan isn't to your liking, now is the time to make noise - lots of it!
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