Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Accelerates- Are We On The Cusp Of The Runaway Greenhouse Effect?

Graphic showing the process by which the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting.


Dog- sledding near Chena Hot Springs, AK in March, 2005. We were unable to go as far as we would have liked because the much higher temperatures had melted the surface ice.


The news that last Wednesday saw record high temperatures in Greenland,  40 degrees above normal, and a record melt event  over the Greenland Ice Sheet triggered more cause for concern among climate scientists.  According to Zachary Labe, a climate researcher at the University of California -Irvine (quoted in The Washington Post):

"It's another series of extreme events  consistent with the long term trend of a warming, changing Arctic..

Meanwhile, Marco Tedesco - an ice researcher at Columbia University, quoted in the same article, noted it's "been extremely warm in east and central Greenland, adding:

"This has triggered widespread melting that has reached about 45 percent of the ice sheet"

In addition, Jennifer Francis  - a leading researcher studying the connections between Arctic change and mid-latitude weather - has noted the relation of Arctic changes to deformation in the jet stream.  She also was one of those who had indicated that such changes could well have played a role in the extreme jet stream patterns that in recent months have wreaked havoc.  That includes spawning tornado swarms and record flooding in the central U.S. during the last two weeks in May. The analogy here has been made to "a refrigerator door left open" - with intensified warming displacing the normally cold air that remains in the Arctic.

 In her words, referencing last week's record Greenland melt:

"The jet stream this week was one of the craziest I've ever seen!...We can't say yet that the Arctic warming is causing this particular pattern, but it is certainly consistent with that."

This is serious and has grave repercussions continued local (e.g. mid-latitude) weather disruptions as well as sea level rise.  The most critical connection is to the clear change in planetary albedo (the reflecting surface).

Here on Earth we are faced with a positive albedo feedback mechanism playing a major role - driving us toward the runaway. This concept was well explicated by Sagan in one of his essays, 'Ambush : The Warming of the World', in his book:  'Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Beginning of the Millennium':

"Melting of ice caps (already occurring) results in diminished albedo (reflection of solar radiation back into space), and a darker Earth surface - with more infrared radiation absorbed - reinforcing the tendency while enhancing the melting effect, leading to further darkening of the surface, reduced albedo and more melting."

This mode of positive feedback is what we're faced with in the melting of the Arctic, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/04/bad-news-record-summer-melt-in.html

Adding to the urgency of facing the issue, Harvard climate scientist (professor of atmospheric chemistry) James Anderson has warned in a recent FORBES interview that we may have only "five years left to save ourselves from climate change".    

This is given the CO2 concentration currently  in the atmosphere (415 ppm)  hasn't been seen in 12 million years. This condition  is rapidly pushing the climate back to its state in the Eocene Epoch, over 33 million years ago, when no ice existed on either pole. Prof. Anderson, best known for  establishing   chloroflourocarbons were damaging the Ozone layer noted pointedly: 

"We have exquisite information about what that state is, because we have a paleo record going back millions of years, when the earth had no ice at either pole. There was almost no temperature difference between the equator and the pole,"

Adding:

"The ocean was running almost 10ºC warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme, because water vapor, which is an exponential function of water temperature, is the gasoline that fuels the frequency and intensity of storm systems."

Reinforcing that scenario Harvard's  Anderson acknowledges:

 "Can we lose 75-80 percent of permanent ice and recover? The answer is no." 

In other words, with that vast, reflecting ice surface gone, humans will have to figure out an alternative means of raising the albedo..  Basically, to avert such feedbacks would require perhaps the most monumental  engineering  effort  in the history of mankind -  dwarfing anything seen  hitherto. It would have to be mounted to reflect as much sunlight away from the Earth's poles as the melting ice sheets are now..   But here's the rub: short of launching into space twenty or so vast reflectors of 20 square kilometers surface each - likely at a cost of $2 trillion per reflector (conservative estimate) - that isn't going to happen.  

At the same time as intensifying warmth has accelerated melting in the Arctic and plausibly disrupted the jet stream leading to tornado swarms and flooding in the U.S. , heat waves have scorched India. (New Delhi recently topped 123 degrees F.)  But how many in the U. S. knew about India's travails at the same time flooding and tornadoes savaged the central U.S.?

One problem with educating the global citizenry on the existential crisis of greenhouse warming, is that information tends to be localized.   Hence, a  resident of New Delhi may have no clue of the tumultuous havoc wrought in the U.S. with massive flooding, hundreds of tornadoes and what not. Similarly, the typical U.S. resident may have no clue of the rising, infernal temperatures in Delhi lately, reaching a record 118.4 degrees on June 10   As one VOX media piece put it:  "Caucus voters in flood-ravaged Iowa, can see climate disruption simply by looking out the window."

This information disconnect means too many are unaware of global warming as a global phenomenon.  Even worse, the Trump cabal - "graduated" from climate change deniers to planet destroyers - is now determined to actively interfere in research by federal scientists.  As The New York Times reports , those scientists who prepared the National Climate Assessment will now be instructed not to include the worst-case scenarios of climate change in their reports, so the full extent of potential impacts will be hidden from readers. They will also be asked to project their model results through 2040 instead of the end of the century, masking some of the most dire effects of climate change.

Compounding that, the Trump criminal enterprise is reportedly setting up a “review panel” to publicly scrutinize the conclusions of the National Climate Assessment

Blogger John Atcheson-   much like Harvard's Anderson - put the current crisis in stark perspective when he observed:

"Most of the climate-related estimates you hear in the news and from the IPCC have built in assumptions that we humans will take necessary actions to mitigate the worst of the climate crisis. There’s no evidence that making such assumptions is a prudent thing to do. We’ve known about this unfolding tragedy for three decades now, yet we’ve been steadily increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses we release. In fact, in 2018 we set a record for the most CO₂ ever emitted, and for the single largest increase in emissions year-to-year. Meanwhile, in May of this year, atmospheric CO₂ levels reached 415 parts per million, a level higher than it’s been for more than 3 million years – literally before the dawn of human existence.

The second reason the climate crisis is likely far more dire than most people have been led to believe is that the IPCC, most of the scientific community, and the media present mid-range scenarios for temperature increases, not worst-case forecasts, and usually they don’t include potentially dangerous feedbacks.." 

Let's be clear all of the techno-baloney "solutions" advanced  thus far in order to dodge the necessary revolution in our economic system (based on radical consumption and waste), e.g..

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/11/dont-trust-economists-with-climate.html

 - are essentially refined balderdash and baloney.

  Hence fixes like tinkering with the amount of sunlight that strikes the Earth by injecting sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere (to increase cloud cover)   is like trying to douse a kitchen fire with a cup of water. It simply can't work given the scale of the problem.   

The 'good'  news, despite the fact that warming conditions are likely being understated, e.g.

Climate report understates threat

Is that we are not yet at the cusp of the runaway Greenhouse effect.  The late Carl Sagan estimated this sub-threshold to occur near a CO2 concentration of 500 ppm.  We are currently at 415 ppm but the rate now seems to be increasing at 2.5 ppm/ yr compared to the previous 2.0 ppm/yr.   Doing the math this means we'd not arrive at the cusp concentration for another 30 years - assuming of course the rate of increasing concentration stays the same. Similarly, we'd reach the actual runaway (taken as 600 ppm) 40 years later, at around 2089-90.   That means our grandchildren will be the ones having to deal with what can only be regarded as catastrophic climatic conditions.

What about the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet? We can perhaps take some mild comfort from the perspective of Mike MacFerrin - a glaciologist at the University of Colorado.  He has suggested in one recent tweet that it may be too early to panic and the observations of rapid melting thus far in 2019 have merely been "anomalous variations."  

Well, we have to hope he's correct.  Ultimately, when all is said and done, John Atcheson is correct and nations have blithely allowed CO2 emissions to increase over 3 or more decades taking us to the brink of climate apocalypse.  Much of this is a result of gov't retrenchment of regulations - say when administrations change in the U.S. (or elsewhere). And not too put too much of a fine point on it but the Trumpies now have rolled back coal plant rules. ('EPA Rescinds Obama Power Plant Rules', WSJ today, p. A4).  As another WSJ columnist (James Mackintosh) noted, nothing will change so long as it remains more profitable to extract oil, gas or coal and burn them.  

That leaves humans with a Hobson's choice decision: Enjoy more comfort today using more fossil fuels, e.g. for a/c, heating, plane trips, car trips etc. and toss the planet into the dustbin for future generations. OR shape up, cut back on consumption, allow carbon taxes and at least provide a chance (albeit slim) of leaving their progeny with a halfway livable world.

See also:

Environmental Policy | Healthcare Policy

The Climate Crisis Is Also a Health Emergency

And:

Economics 101 and Ecological Collapse

And:

Life Changes At The Cusp Of The Runaway Greenhouse - Brane Space

Colorado & The Mountain West - The Next Firestorm States?

"Tropical regions with one day of severe humid heat now can expect 100 to 150 days by 2070, if current greenhouse gas emissions continue.  World population of 8.6 billion is forecast as 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100...in a world shrinking for human use, and more of it uninhabitable, unproductive and submerged."   - Bert Melcher, letter to the Denver Post, Dec. 2, p. 3D)

The apocalyptic scenes in the final '60 Minutes' segment last night were hair raising and outright terrifying - and that's for people watching them from afar. I refer to the horrendous Camp fire that tore through northern California leaving over 173,000 acres barren and full of ash and detritus, with recovery workers having to sift carefully through incinerated remains in search of human bones, teeth.  If they were found, they were carefully placed into paper bags then carried back to a makeshift lab for DNA analysis.   Using this technique, 41 bodies-identities were recovered from the ashes.

The scenes of the fire itself, taken by a fire brigade team, could have been out of Dante's Inferno. Flames reached everywhere and in no time - making escape almost impossible. The head of the Fire rescue team described flames two hundred feet in height - that's as tall as a twenty story building-- and "miles in width" - burning up the equivalent of "one football field a second".  A computer simulation was then rendered to show how fast it spread on a scale topographical map. The question arose as to whether this conflagration was unusual or other states could also experience it.

Ironically, barely two hours earlier I'd just finished reading an unnerving article ('Climate Change Clobbering Colorado And Western U.S.) in Sunday's Denver Post (p. 1B). The map accompanying the article (see below) made it clear western Colorado has had at least the same increase in temperature as the torched areas of California, and also many of the same conditions, especially prolonged drought, many dead or dying trees and people who are building homes close to them.


Basically, the changes in temperature as well as increased drought -  compared to California-   shows all these states are also on track for raging firestorms.  The 300 scientists who produced the National Climate Assessment, including several based along Colorado’s Front Range, point to recent ruinous climate events as evidence that global warming is affecting the United States as never before and threatening to disrupt lives coast to coast. Those impacts are pretty much locked in until 2050 due to past emissions that raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 410 parts per million. What happens after 2050 depends on how fast humans reduce air pollution from burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and other human activities that further load the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

I already made one unpopular forecast in a previous blog post, to wit,  that humans needed to get 500 million autos out of circulation in the next few years to have any chance at all limiting a greenhouse hell. Will that happen? How can it when so many of our species see the motorcar as their primary ticket to "independence".  Even wifey admitted she'd shudder to think of doing without her Buick Encore - even for a day.  But what about it and the hundreds of millions of cars like it pumping the atmosphere full of CO2?   "Do not go there!  We are not having this conversation!"' she retorted.  Fine, then we all just agree to do or say nothing and let any 'outsiders' bear the burdens, while the planet slowly roasts and us with it.

Look, folks, no one said this was going to be easy.  And if no one is the first to act, then no one else will do so.  We could as well become like slowly boiling frogs.  According to Brad Udall, Colorado State University climate scientist quoted in the Post:

“The message just gets louder and clearer as the years go by. We have got to deal with this problem. We’ve had event after event after event over the last 10 years with climate change written all over them. We have another 80 years ahead of us. And with the current projected air emissions, the future is bleak,.. We need a sane and safe way to wean ourselves off fossil fuels over the next few decades, doing the least harm we can do to our economy but doing right by the environment. … We have to cease all greenhouse gas emissions as soon as practical.”

Jared Polis, our state's newly elected governor, added:

"States must lead the way, because the federal government has dropped the ball.  My administration will be looking carefully at various options to not only deal with the potential short- and long-term impacts from climate change, but how to do our part to combat the root causes of global climate change through bold, proactive policies to transition to renewable energy.  Climate change is a blinking red light, and we have to act now or our children will end up suffering the consequences of inaction.”

What gives in the Mountain  West?

Well, bigger wildfires and a lengthening “fire season” for starters.   These have combined with population growth and reckless home building in burn zones, making destruction of people and property more likely.  For example, as seen in California’s recent devastating wildfires and fierce burns in Colorado this summer. Additionally, the record-low mountain snow in southern Colorado and higher temperatures has accelerated a climate shift toward aridity that favors frequent ignition.

Already, since we moved to this state in 2000, we've been affected by no less than three monster wildfires, including the Waldo Canyon fire, and the Black Forest fire, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/aaarghh-smoke-fills-air-again-more-wild.html

No surprise then the cumulative forest area burned is increasing rapidly as the graph below shows:


.
Federal wildfire analysts have calculated that the 24 million acres burned across the West between 1984 and 2015 was twice what would have burned had global warming caused by humans not happened.  Fires incepted by climate change worsen the problem of more people building homes in forests and flammable former agricultural fields. Colorado state forester Mike Lester said in an interview with the Post that house-building and other urbanization in burn zones has left more than half of Colorado’s population — 2.9 million people — threatened by wildfire. That’s up nearly 50 percent from 2 million in 2012. State task force recommendations to limit construction in what insurers designate as the “wildland urban interface” mostly have been ignored by state lawmakers and property developers.

The more people moving into burn zones, the harder it becomes to restore forest health because safety margins are narrower.   Forests need fires to regenerate, to a point, but totally suppressing fires sets up bigger fires in the future..But this shows again that a large part of the problem is too many people moving into this state, which has too little available land for them to live. (And the situation isn't helped by all the fracking that's going on, and no greater offsets allowed from homes after Prop 112 was defeated. See my post tomorrow).

Global warming is disrupting water flows, too, complicating the water supply necessary to allow more population growth in Colorado and other parts of the arid West. Rocky Mountain snowpack dipped to record low levels this year. Climate scientists have documented lower flows in rivers, including the Colorado River that farmers and urban developers tap as the main source serving 40 million people across seven states. Looming shortages already compelled state officials to prepare emergency plans for curbing use of water from the government-built reservoirs and irrigation systems that enabled settlement of the West.  And there is more and more serious consideration of adopting "toilet to tap" water recycling systems.

Beyond water conservation, some cities are pushing for construction of new and expanded reservoirs to try to store more water when rain falls.

Higher temperatures alone  have forced lifestyle changes, keeping people and pet animals indoors. Since we moved here from Maryland, the number of 90-plus degree days have increased from barely ten to more than twenty-five.  The increasing temperatures even forced us to install a central air conditioning system 5 years ago - something we didn't want to do because of the adverse impact on global warming. Up to then we'd been using a swamp (or evaporative) cooler which is much more eco-friendly.  But as daytime temperatures topped 90 degrees for consecutive days the system simply wasn't able to handle the thermal burden.  All you'd end up getting is hot air blowing out the vents.

Besides, climate scientists say the rising heat hits the elderly hardest, along with children and low-income people who cannot afford to run air-conditioning systems. Still, I already noted two posts ago  how a/c units are forecast to increase to 3.5 b or more by 2050 placing inordinate demands on power grids.  So apart from keeping older farts and kids from croaking of heat stroke, this is not necessarily a good thing.  Increasing demand for artificially cooled air dramatically pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere even as it strains electricity grids, leading to power outages.  Indeed,  at the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect - say by 2060-  one can argue the various power grids around the world will not be able to keep up with demand - not with 40-50 day heat waves at 110-115 F temperatures.

 Add to all that the fact  the conditions are favorable for mosquitoes and ticks to spread more sickness, including the Lyme disease, and you have a vastly higher misery index. One of the newer additions is the  Asian Longhorned tick, i.e.


 that can infect humans with a form of hemorraghic fever.  The critters are asexual so one of them can lay as many as 2,000 eggs at a time without ever mating.

The Zika virus is  also spreading northward.

According to Gregg Garfin, a University of Arizona climatologist who co-authored parts of the national assessment focused on Colorado and southwestern states:

"The droughts, fires, threats to water supplies and heat waves — those things are all amplified and exacerbated by these increases in temperature,   Fossil fuel extraction is probably really good for the economy in the short term, If you look at the long term, then we have to take into account the effects of heat-trapping gases warming up the lower atmosphere. It is important to see the connections."

Will we see the connections, or will we wait until it's too late to do anything? My bet is the latter.  So long as so many view their automobiles and "independence" more important than the planet's capacity to support present day humans - and future generations - we are for the high jump.  Even Janice agrees with that but it will not be her car put on the sidelines first.

Dotard Is A High Level "Genius" For Disbelieving National Climate Assessment ? ROTFL!

"My gut tells me more sometimes than anyone else's brain can ever tell me"

"One of the problems of many people like myself is we have very high levels of intelligence but we're not necessarily such believers".
 
Dotard Donnie's assorted brain farts in the past week.

By now, virtually everyone not living under a rock is aware of the recently released congressionally- mandated National Climate Assessment.    The report-  compiled by 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies-  ought to make every sentient being on the planet sit up and take notice.  This is given that it forecasts "record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South," as well as the disruption of "American exports and supply chains,".  Also,  the decline of "agricultural yields" (possibly "to 1980s levels by mid-century"), and a "fire season [that] could spread to the Southeast."

All told the losses could come to "hundreds of billions of dollars"  - which is definitely lowballed given we are on track to break all existing climate warming records. Nevertheless, one finds e.g.  long time WSJ resident  climate change denier, Holman Jenkins Jr.,  all in for his latest BS contribution: 'Climate Change Is Affordable', p. A15 yesterday).  Jenkins insists the latest assessment "adopts the RCP 8.5 high emission scenario" despite which - get this:  "we still arrive at a manageable $510 billion in estimated climate-related costs by 2090".

Do not believe that jabberwocky for one microsecond. As I noted in my post of October 10th, after the original IPCC report came out:

"The cost of doing nothing until 2040 and allowing the now forecast 4C rise (more likely 6C) by 2100 will be well over $100 trillion in worldwide costs - from the mega-disasters including massive flooding, fires, to loss of jobs, homes, infrastructure - including power stations."

I still stand by that, and it doesn't matter if little Holman J. Jr. still believes his own codswallop that:

"The new U.S. report, as well as a United Nations report issued in October...aim at frightening the public - exactly the approach that so manifestly has failed to move the needle for 35 years.

Maybe it's because voters are skeptical of doom-mongering. Maybe they have grown fatalistic about climate change. Or maybe, reflecting the folly of climate campaigners, they've gotten a message that acting on greenhouse gases requires giving up prosperity."


Which may well be valid to an extent (at least for Right wing  troublemakers), especially given the riots and mayhem that's erupted in France after a relatively small fuel tax was imposed.  In that episode, French police had to fire tear gas and water cannons to "disperse violent demonstrators" (Denver Post, Nov. 25, p. 2A).   They also had to impose road blockades "as thousands gathered in the capital to vent anger against rising fuel taxes." 

One demonstrator quoted actually vowed (ibid.):

"It's going to trigger a civil war and we're going to be ready"

A civil war? Really?  Early indications are that the violent outbursts were instigated by the French far right (Marine LePen's cadre), which would put them right into Holman Jenkins' screed 'wheelhouse' or ideology. Don't give up a fucking thing, keep the planet burning on schedule, and let your kids and grandkids figure it all out or fry.

But the larger reason for inertia and even inattention cited by Holman is simply that too many of the "voters" Jenkins invokes are  inundated with too much 24/7 news from a 24/7 media. They are no longer able to sustain the information load and hence their brains can't process what's coming at them - especially after the political tumult of the past two years.  Oh,  and that in the case of making this planet less inhabitable in the near future material sacrifices will have to be made. Unless they actually want the planet to be unlivable for their kids and grandkids. 

As I wrote in that same Oct. 10 post, I have ten great nieces and nephews who will reach a youngish middle age by 2040. I am pondering now what kind of world awaits them. Will they, indeed, be able to find shelter and prosper in the world?   I don't know, but I refuse to believe the majority of our people have become so innately self-absorbed and focused on their own immediate "prosperity"  they refuse to look down the road at the welfare of their own offspring and their offspring. 

Jenkins insists that:  "the biggest holdup to direct action on climate is showing that preventing these changes would be cheaper than enduring them."

Seriously, mate? You are prepared to "endure" temperatures reaching 110- 115F  in 40-day heat waves, even as power grids crash and a/c in millions of homes ceases to function? Think Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria when thousands died because their meds couldn't be kept cool in the smoldering temperatures, and food spoiled...oh yeah, and fresh potable water ceased to be available. Many Puerto Ricans had to dredge water from chemically -fouled pools and small ponds. Think that would be sport to endure? Think again!

Speaking of a/c (which we know is one of the major contributors to global warming),  according to a WSJ Review piece ('Can India Afford to Cool Down?',  Nov. 24-25, p.C3) -   it is expected  that there'll be a global addition of:  "from 2.5 billion  to 3.7 billion air conditioning  room units by 2050".  Already, India  "is the fastest growing market for air conditioners."     

Indeed, "annual electricity consumption from air conditioning is expected to multiply 30 times, from just eight terawatt hours in 2010 to 238 terawatt hours by 2030".

Which begs the question of what all those denizens will do when climate change - approaching the runaway threshold - renders all those a/c units the equivalent of useless junk. Fortunately, I will be long gone before then.

If people were rational beings, as opposed to pawns manipulated by the media pundits and BS'ers like Jenkins and his WSJ op-ed cohort, fear would not be necessary . Able -minded citizens could examine the climate news and data dispassionately e.g.

Climate report understates threat

And arrive at the same conclusion as climate scientists like Myles Allen.  Prof. Allen,  an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the IPCC report. was quoted in one NY  Times piece after the release of the UN report:

"It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,”

This instead of paying attention to dummy Dotard Trump who most recently spewed reams of fucktard baloney on climate in one unhinged, inchoate statement after the release of the National Climate Assessment, e.g.

"One of the problems of many people like myself is we have very high levels of intelligence but we're not necessarily such believers You look at our air and our water and it's right now at a record clean. But when you look at China, Russia and many other places in the world...the air is incredibly dirty. And when you're talking about an atmosphere the oceans are very small and it blows over.  I mean we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia.  It just flows right down the Pacific.  ….

Number two, if you go back and look at articles they talked about global freezing  They talked about at some point the planets could have freeze to death, then it's going to die of heat exhaustion.."  

Seriously, folks,  that is our resident's "high intelligence" on display in all its glory,  including the grammatical miscues.  Those, by the way,  pale in comparison to the sheer ignorance of what this imbecile is spouting.  When I showed it to my psychology postdoc niece (Shayle), she wondered whether an 8 -year old wrote it. (A very dumb eight year old.) I had to tell her, no, it came from the Twitter account of our so-called president. 


All Dotard's gut-spewing  ignorance aside, the National Climate Assessment - despite its economic lowballing -  represents a scientifically informed forecast of widespread environmental and economic devastation, and makes no bones about the source, i.e.:

"The evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen.  The impacts are intensifying across the country and the climate-related threats to America's physical, social and economic well-being are rising."

One doesn't know how much more clearly the risks can be stated, and yet too many appear to have adopted the pose of the classic frog left in water that's increased in temperature 1 degree at a time - so it slowly boils.

 Of course, the question many are asking is:  why would this backward administration laden with science troglodytes and knuckle draggers  agree to the Climate Assessment's unaltered release?   (Although on  Black Friday, when supposedly no one was paying attention. But alas for them, because it was a slow news day the headlines were captured big time.)

 The answer for the cynically-timed release,  reports the NY Times was because:

"White House officials made a calculation that Mr. Trump’s core base of supporters most likely would not care that its findings are so at odds with the president’s statements and policies." 

The resident could tell them the sky is green, and they'd argue in defense  of his atmospheric wisdom.  (Or he could just tell these idiots that the "planet will die of heat exhaustion.")

Dotard's climate science retardation is buoyed by the likes of the clown Steven Milloy, who oversees the junk website junkscience.com and was a member of Mr. Trump's E.P.A. transition team.  (Well, morons pick morons to do their dirty work for them, including spewing crap to other morons.)  This twit actually declared:

 "We don’t care. In our view, this is made-up hysteria anyway — part of the deep-state conspiracy to undermine Trump's spectacular agenda. We had to decide whether to stop the deep state from doing this in the first place, or trying to alter the document, and then creating a whole new narrative — it’s better to just have it come out and get it over with," 

Gee whiz, that's magnanimous of you, asshole!  Would you have preferred to have waited for release until the entire country is in the midst of a contiguous wildfire, like California suffered?  But this is the sort of dreck we have to deal with - and sadly-   one still sees it surfacing in the high IQ societies like Mensa and Intertel, e.g.

Brane Space: Skewering The Spurious Global Warming Narrative Of ...

brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/10/skewering-spurious-global-warming.html

1. Cached

Why do so many 'brainiacs' subscribe to this balderdash?  My guess is the Dunning-Kruger effect is operative.  For reference and clarification, the Dunning-Kruger effect is defined by Wikipedia  as “a cognitive bias whereby unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate.” Wikipedia adds that “This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.” 

Or, as psychologist David Dunning (the discoverer) once explained to Errol Morris, writing in an essay series, “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is,” for the New York Times:

 “If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent … [T]he skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”  

Thus, bright though these Mensans and Ilians may well be, they lack the critical backgrounds in physics and basic climate science to claim any authority in validating their opinions.  All we can do is make our cases against their twaddle and hope at some point their actual intellect kicks in and can differentiate between fact and fiction. 

According to Bush I's  E.P.A. administrator, William Reilly, what we're seeing with Milloy and Dotard (and even the high IQ deniers)  is a new frontier of disavowal of science, of disdain for facts.   According to Reilly:

"But many Americans — just how many is unknown — are becoming accustomed to it, which is the objective of every authoritarian state. It keeps pumping out the ignorance and lies until public muddlement morphs into the status quo; it persists in disdaining facts until facts become mere play things "

What we have to hope is that the percipient and truly intelligent citizens - who can decipher scientific facts from fabulist nonsense - remain in the majority. If not, we are all for the high jump - which would probably make the likes of Holman Jenkins and Steve Milloy ecstatic.

See also:

CNN | Media Criticism

CNN's Anderson Cooper Cancels Segment With Climate Report Author to Give Rick Santorum More Air Time