Scott Pruitt Shows He's The "Arsonist" For Climate Change We All Believed

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!

New Climate Paper Skewers The Trope of "Natural Causes" For Global Warming

Fig. (a) shows global temperature anomalies (1880- 2013) as functions of radiative forcing using CO2 forcing as a linear surrogate. The line has a slope of 2.33 C per CO2 doubling. Fig. (b) shows the residuals from the straight line in (a), which are estimates of the natural variability.


In an audacious new paper appearing in Eos Transactions (1st December, pp. 8-9) author S. Lovejoy of the Dept. Of Physics, McGill University, provides a sound basis for "climate closure" in terms of the primary cause of global warming.  The paper is timely, given the ubiquitous narrative by the anthropogenic denialists that the Earth has been subject to warming - but not from humans  - rather via a "giant fluctuation of solar, nonlinear dynamics that is internal to the atmosphere" or some other natural origin. Of course, this is poppycock, the active straws grabbed by desperate people - mainly driven by economics- who have no other out. After all, most people in the world with more than air between the ears already concur some type of climate havoc is occurring. The only issue is to pin the cause on the right source.

This is where Lovejoy's paper enters. While acknowledging the effects of climate forcings are "difficult to quantify" he points out that ever since 1880 the  forcings  have been directly linked to economics. In other words:

"To a good approximation, if you double the world economy (e.g. by increase in GDP %), double the carbon dioxide (CO2), double the methane and aerosol outputs, double the land use changes (i.e. from rural to urban) you get double the warming." 

As he notes, this justifies using the global CO2 forcing since 1880 "as a linear surrogate for all the anthropogenic forcings". With reference to the graphs shown, Figure (a) (he calls it 1(a)) shows the global annual temperature plotted not as a function of the date but as a function of the CO2 forcing. As he points out:

"Even without fancy statistics or special knowledge, it is easy to see that the temperature (plotted in green) increases very nearly linearly with some additional variations" - which represent the "natural variability"  Then the gradient (black) is found to be 2.33 C per CO2 doubling which then is the actual historical increase in temperature arising from the observed increase in CO2. This is the "effective climate sensitivity".

Lovejoy further has put a check on his assumptions, noting that the figure "sits comfortably" with the IPCC range of 1.5 C - 4.5 C per doubling for the "equilibrium climate sensitivity"

This is important because by avoiding many statistical details, Lovejoy has succeeded in presenting a paper that ought to be accessible just to a person who's been exposed to some basic algebra with only a minimum of physics background.

Then in Figure (b) we see the differences (residues) between the actual temperature and the specifically anthropogenic part. These residuals are the natural variability.  That this is reasonable is confirmed, as Lovejoy notes, because the average amplitude of the residues (+ 0.109 C) is "virtually the same" as the errors in 1-year global climate model hindcasts (+ 0.105 C and + 0.106 C, from Smith et al, Science, 317, 796, 2007 and Laeple et al, Geophys. Research Lett., 35, L10710, 2008), respectively.

In effect, as Lovejoy observes:

"Knowing only the slope of Figure 1(a) and the global annual CO2, we could predict the global annual temperature for next year to this accuracy. Clearly this residue must be close to the true natural variability."

The range of the straight line in Fig. (a) is thus an estimate of the total anthropogenic warming since 1880. Or about 1 C.  Lovejoy next asks:

"What is the probability the denialists are right and that this is simply a giant natural fluctuation?"

To answer this Lovejoy compared industrial variations to preindustrial ones. Then, applying a Gaussian distribution to the data, he arrives at the result that "the chance of a 1 C fluctuation over 125 years being natural is in the range of 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 3,000, 000. "

He further notes that "for long periods the standard deviation of temperature differences is twice the 0.1C value. Hence, a 1 C fluctuation is about five standard deviations or a 1 in 3 million chance".

This appears whopping improbable but he reminds us that nonlinear geophysics "tells us the extremes should be stronger than the usual Gaussian (bell) curve allows".  In other words, such global fluctuations would be about "100 times more likely than the bell curve would predict".

Factoring this in, we still arrive at a lower bound probability of at most 1 in 1,000 for natural causes to predominate over anthropogenic ones. Most of us would take those odds - say in a gambling venue - any time we get them

What impressed me about the work and conclusions is how much it conforms with the earlier research into  C14:C12  isotope deviations compiled by P.E. Damon ('The Solar Output and Its Variation', The University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 1977).  (When the Sun is more active, the heliosphere will be stronger, shielding the Earth from more intense cosmic rays. The effect of this is to reduce the C14 produced in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Conversely, when the Sun is less active – as it’s been from 2000- 2008 then the shield is weaker and more intense cosmic rays penetrate to our upper atmosphere yielding more C14 produced. )


Damon's results are shown in the accompanying graph below. To conform with solar activity the plot is such that increasing radiocarbon (C14) is downward and indicated with (+). The deviations in parts per thousand are shown relative to an arbitrary 19th century reference level (1890).















As John Eddy observes concerning this output (Eddy, The New Solar Physics,  p. 17):

“The gradual fall from left to right (increasing C14/C12 ratio) is…probably not a solar effect but the result of the known, slow decrease in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic moment. exposing the Earth to ever-increased cosmic ray fluxes and increased radiocarbon production.

The sharp upward spike at the modern end of the curve, representing a marked drop in relative radiocarbon, is generally attributed to anthropogenic causes—the mark of increased population and the Industrial Age."

Assuming the validity of the arbitrary norm (zero line or abscissa) for 1890, then it is clear that the magnitude of the Middle Ages warming period (relative C14 strength of -18), for example, is less than about ½ the relative effect attributed mainly to anthropogenic sources in the modern era (-40). Even if one fourth the latter magnitude is assigned to solar activity (based on solar variability component detected over 1861-1990 amounting to 0.1- 0.5 W/m^2 vs. 2.0 to 2.8 W/m^2 for heating component arising from greenhouse gas emissions, cf. Martin I. Hoffert et al, in Nature, Vol. 401, p. 764) the anthropogenic effect is at least 3/2 times  that for the last (exclusively solar) warming period..

Is there still a role for natural variability? Of course, and as Lovejoy notes "without it the warming would have become unrealistically strong".

The problem is that now, there are few or no know agents of "natural variability" that can put a cap on warming. The only man-made one we know would work for sure, is a "nuclear winter" effect induced by a massive exchange of thermonuclear warheads. But I am sure nobody wants that!