What grabbed my attention most about NPR’s post-Turkey Day coverage of the federal government’s new climate change warning was that public radio featured real scientists talking real science.
One of South Dakota’s smartest writers, Sam Hurst, notes that much of the rest of the broadcast press is failing to ask scientists about climate change:
I have studiously watched the response of cable networks to the release of last week’s administration report on climate change, and there is one conspicuous unifying pattern to the coverage. The panels of experts do not include a single scientist. We are forced to endure the babble of retired politicians, pollsters, generals, economists, former prosecutors, and this morning CNN even had the audacity to interview the Vice President of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. Over the weekend, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst gave us the brilliant insight that while she is not a scientist, “climate always changes.” Retired Pennsylvania Senator and perennial president candidate Rick Santorum gave us the expert insight that climate scientists are in the pockets of financial interests. In every case, anchors and reporters allowed the babble to go unchallenged because the anchors themselves are unprepared to speak to the science of climate. Their role is to give “each side” equal time to express their “opinion.” And yet, there is NEVER a voice for science on the panels [Sam Hurst, “A Few Words…About the Greenhouse Effect,” The Constant Commoner, 2018.11.26].
Hurst is right on. The press has an obligation to educate the public about science and how it will affect our lives. The press thus has an obligation to put scientists at center stage in discussions of climate change. The moment any speaker in a conversation about climate change says, “Well, I’m not a scientist,” the press should cut off the speaker’s but and say, “Let’s turn then to someone who is a scientist.”
The liberty movement’s countermessaging on supposedly human-caused global warming has generally been pretty bad, but here’s link to a list of professional scientists who doubt (1) our ability to accurately forecast the rate at which average surface temperature will increase in the future, (2) our ability to determine that the increase is caused by human activities, or (3) our ability to determine that the impact of the increase will be a net negative for society or the environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_disagree_with_the_scientific_consensus_on_global_warming
I saw the author of this book on C-SPAN 2 a few months ago. I’m old enough to remember the “acid rain” hoax, and I thought his presentation was extremely interesting.
Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex (2017)
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Tyranny-Exposing-Totalitarian-Industrial/dp/1594039356/
Acid rain was real. Collective action addressed that real pollution:
Why are some conservatives so committed to rejecting basic evidence that we are damaging the planet and suggestions that we do less harm?
And, before we race off on this tangent, can we all agree with Hurst that the first people we interview about climate change and other scientific phenomena should be scientists, not political pundits?
Acid rain was hardly a hoax. Studies of northern Wisconsin lakes demonstrated acidification resulting from acid-generating emissions. There were federal regulations promulgated and SOX was reduced, direction to switch to low sulfur coal and pollution control. Later there were reduction in NOX.
I should be used to the wilful blindness of deniers like Kurt and the Pootiepublicans, but I’m still surprised by their absurdity.
The media is truly failing by not providing panels of qualified scientists to discuss science! Nuts.
I’d written:
Cory replies:
So is global warming. The hoax was the hysterical claim that acid rain required heavy-handed emergency government intervention.
Probably because they expect some financial benefit from doing so, which I suspect is the same reason many professional scientists exaggerate the threat posed by global warming:
https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Corruption-Climate-Science/dp/0988877740/
I saw the Rick Santorum interview Hurst mentions, and I thought he hit it out of the park. Santorum is no libertarian, and he often strikes me as smug and annoying, but I’d actually be fine with him being the first person we interview about climate change.
Deb Geelsdottir writes:
I should be used to Deb’s relentless, obnoxious, defamatory lies, and for the most part I am.
“Deb’s relentless, obnoxious, defamatory lies”
No Kurt, the only one saying anything “relentless, obnoxious, defamatory” is you, about me. You are the very definition of a climate denier. Climate deniers must utilize wilful blindness.
Kurt, I think your main objection to me is that I’m an uppity woman who doesn’t know her place and I say your biblical interpretation is bunk. Both of those items have gotten you quite upset before and I don’t think you’ve gotten over it yet. It’s time to move on.
Deb writes:
If people saying the Bible isn’t true got me upset, I wouldn’t have time for anything but being upset. I’m probably too easily irritated by “uppity” people regardless of gender, but my main objection to you is your relentless, obnoxious, defamatory lies.
Ah, so let’s be clear: Kurt’s not saying acid rain itself was a hoax. We agree it exists… and we agree it does damage? The disagreement seems to be purely on cost-benefit ratio of government action to solve the problem.
Again, all the more reason we need scientists to talk about their work rather than letting politicians backed more by their quest for campaign dollars from fossil fuel companies and other polluters drive the conversation. Scientists first! (If I form a new party to topple the Dems and the GOP, I’ll see if I can work “technocrat” or “science” into the name.)
There are no lies in my comments. So apparently you do have issues. That’s your problem, not mine, so you can leave me out of it.
Have you seen the news that scientists landed a camera and other photographic equipment on the planet Mars? I watched the Mars landing as it made a precision landing 240 million miles away.
It’s a hoax, I know. Damn scientists.
You’re right Roger. It’s just their relentless, obnoxious, defamatory lies. 😁😁😁
Dr. McT, and I, grudznick, are scientists who are always available for the bloggites here when they don’t quite understand those concepts that are about, or for, #4Science.
Mr. C is righter than right. How could some god, one who created the earth a few thousand years ago, have allowed some random act to create Mars billions of years ago??? Mr. C points out that, Mr. Evans, as handsome a man as he seems, is a bit overgodding. And that doesn’t sit well with people who are #4Science.
The Climate Report also deals a death knell to nukes. Nukes require stable water conditions and that ain’t happening with droughts and floods, tsunami’s and hurricanes. We need South Dakota to start putting solar collectors in the fields that should lay fallow due to unstable prices at the markets. Cut soil farming in half for better prices and use the other half to grow renewable energy. Bonus points, solar collectors also help supply water along with plant growth nearby.
Kurt keeps changing what he claims “the hoax” is. That’s a typical response from the anti-science lobby who get tripped up in their ignorance.
So, let’s go down Evans’ new “hoax” canard: his fiction that acid-rain, which he now admits as real, didn’t require what he terms “heavy handed emergency government intervention.” This, of course, is code word for, yeah, acid rain is real, but so what?
When the doubt industry, which Evans is parroting, gets backed into the corner by science this is their way to 5 or 6 more years of delay, and Evens speaks the industry line perfectly. I’ve seen it play out in the nuclear industry, on Agent Orange, on DDT, on smoking cigarettes, on acid mine drainage, on leaking underground storage tanks, on just about every other regulatory problem that comes along.
Our air quality laws are written to protect human health and the environment first and consider costs/benefits in terms of the methods used to address those human health and environmental issues. In other words, the air quality standards are set to protect life and health of the environment. The way we get to meeting the standards, what sort of controls are necessary to meet those standards, are where costs and benefits come in.
Neither of these were done in “an emergency” fashion. It took a decade to get everything in place. So much for “emergency” intervention.
Also, the way many utilities and other industries went about addressing this issue was to switch to low-sulfur coal from Wyoming and Montana and away from high sulfur coal in the Midwest and East. Now, excuse me, that was a matter of making some phone calls and negotiating and not “heavy handed” at all. Other solutions required retrofitting some controls on stack emissions, which was phased in over decades. That’s about as “heavy handed” as it got, so stop with the fake whining, Kurt.
The fact that this same scenario plays out over multiple issues over more than a half century ought to make someone a little less dense and gullible than Kurt to sit up and say, “Hey, I won’t get fooled again.”
Mr. Evans, pull your head out, please, you’re choking. Acid Rain is real and still is, but we used this to help cut it back to the point that it is not so much of a threat anymore.
“The Economist
Working with business and government leaders, we showed how market incentives can be levers for change.
Problem
Decades ago, sulfur dioxide pollution – mostly from coal-fired power plants – was causing acid rain and snow, killing aquatic life and forests. A debate ensued: Regulation would direct all plant owners to cut pollution by a set amount, but this method, critics argued, would be costly and ignore the needs of local plant operators.
Solution
We devised a cap-and-trade approach, written into the 1990 Clean Air Act. It required cutting overall sulfur emissions in half, but let each company decide how to make the cuts. Power plants that lowered their pollution more than required could sell those extra allowances to other plants. A new commodities market was born.”https://www.edf.org/approach/markets/acid-rain
And here you thought cap and trade was to get trade your old one with the ear flaps to get a new red hat.
Acid rain, cap-n-trade, Y2K, climate change, green energy, Nazis, racist, white privilege and you fools are all in the same bucket as the sky falls.
You guys are all in a safe together in your “scientific cabal of genius”. . . I won’t pick on you today.
Yes, Jerry, cap and trade was a conservative idea, by the way. It had been successfully used to reduce ozone depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons. I remember the concern of environmentalists about whether cap and trade would work, and many groups opposed that ideas as a way to address ozone depletion. But it turned out creating a free market to address waste products can work in certain situations.
Conservatives seemed to drop the idea once it proved it could actually work. At first it was put out there as an alternative to top-down government regulation, and I don’t think anyone expected it would actually be used. Certainly that was why industry initially supported cap and trade. But when cap and trade proved to work, well, industry ran away from the idea and since industry funds the conservative movement, they ran away from it, too.
Science is fact but science isn’t fact when it comes to biology. Liberalism is so awesome.
Not only Cap and Trade Mr. Pay, but also the EPA itself! What a timely and fantastic idea. Now the likes of Mike Rounds and the rest of the crooks and liars, want to rid ourselves of that great conservative idea to protect us. Rounds likes to bring his farce up every now and then, but then, the great Romaine Lettuce recall, or something else like it that is killing people comes up, because of farmers using dirty crap polluted water for their crops, makes him go back under the wet stone he lives under.
Intelligence is fact, but intelligence isn’t fact when it comes to Steve Pearson. Prickly pears are so awesome.
Good news jerry….we can build the gas-cooled reactors that do not require water.
Natural gas power plants that are used to back up your renewables today have the very same issues with water. If only there were scientists and engineers who could work to solve that problem….
#4Science
#grudzisgreat
We should be irradiating our lettuce to kill the pathogens. Food Irradiation. The way that they harvest the lettuce means that the bacteria/pathogens cannot be easily washed off. Or you stop eating romaine lettuce altogether.
Better news Doc, no one is building them except for the UK!
The problem was in northern California only. The largest producer of lettuce in Europe, Spain, uses strict control of clean water and soil to produce its delicious lettuce. They then export it to the rest of the 350 million belly buttons of Europe. They don’t irradiate it either. Funny how that works in other places ain’t it. https://www.foodswinesfromspain.com/spanishfoodwine/global/food/features/feature-detail/REG2017735569.html
Something else Europe does not do, they don’t chlorinate the chicken, they use clean water and air without chlorine to process raw chicken for human consumption, yummy. Next time you eat chicken in the United States, dip it in Clorox for old times sake.
Big blast attack in Afghanistan as people are driven from their homes and lands due to severe drought. Climate change is real and has impacted the Middle East as we see in Syria, Central America as we see with Hounduaras and Guatamala with the exodus of people seeking asylum. In Afghanistan
“Afghanistan’s worst drought in decades has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes and is pushing families to marry off their children in exchange for dowries to survive, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
About 223,000 people have been uprooted from their homes in the drought-hit western provinces of Herat, Badghis and Ghor this year, according to the UN children’s agency (Unicef).” Child abuse to survive and we are plowing under our food stock.
“Big blast attack in Afghanistan as people are driven from their homes and lands due to severe drought.” where do you get this crap jerry?
You need to stay out of mike’s meds.
‘Junk Science’ Is Everywhere, And The Media Eat It Up
Junk science – worthless theories or data presented as fact – can be found everywhere, from scientific journals to media reports. It’s become a profitable industry, where scheming researchers get taxpayer-funded grants to find specific conclusions, then those manipulated and fake conclusions are reported back to the public as if they are real, and then policies and recommendations are made that further cost people money.
A good example of this is “research” surrounding sexual assault statistics. Researchers at universities use taxpayer dollars to find out how many women and men are sexually assaulted on campus. They don’t specifically ask if anyone has been sexually assaulted, instead they ask about a wide range of behaviors the researchers then deem to be sexual assault, such as “unwanted” behaviors. The behaviors need not fit into a legal definition of sexual assault or rape, but if respondents answer “yes,” they are considered sexual assault victims.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/38793/junk-science-everywhere-and-media-eat-it-ashe-schow
The blast was in Kabul and quite a large one at that with an ongoing gun battle. “At least 10 people have been killed and 19 wounded in an attack on a security compound in the Afghan capital Kabul, a health ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.”
We had 3 more Americans Killed in Action yesterday with 3 American soldiers wounded and one American civilian.
We have a terrible drought in Australian right now as well as Afghanistan, central America and man other parts around the world. Ice is melting in the Arctic to the point of shipping safely. I follow news around the world unlike you, who only follow Pravda, your hometown newspaper in Russia.
Dailywire/Ben Shapiro is junk science. Nuf said.
Jason,
First, you don’t put anything in quotes, so you are giving the impression that you wrote that. You didn’t. That is plagiarism.
Second, a lot of research uses self-reporting of actions that have occurred. Everyone trained in social science research knows the worth and limitations of self-reported activity. That does not make it “junk science.”
Third, none of that research is meant to claim that “rape” occurred in these instances. It is specifically asking about certain behavior to see whether various degrees of sexual assault have occurred.
I don’t know what your problem you and the right has with that sort of research. Usually it is accompanied by other questions regarding locations, etc. Universities are actually required to report on what actions they are taking to limit sexual assault on campus. This is one way they can find out the extent of the problem, where and when it might be occurring, etc., so they can plan for better security and counseling. I think it is about time this happened, and parents of college-aged students want even more attention placed on this.
Excellent observations Donald, thank you.
I haven’t heard the term “junk science” in sometime now since most conclusions, positive or negative, are peer reviewed, whereas that was not the case a few years ago.
Washington Post is now reporting the blast in Kabul 11/28/2018
“KABUL — A massive suicide vehicle bomb exploded Wednesday near a foreign compound on the eastern outskirts of the Afghan capital, sparking a gun battle that continued into the night, police and U.N. officials said.
A security alert sent to United Nations staff in Kabul said the blast occurred near the compound of a private security company between a residential area for foreign aid workers and the military side of the capital’s international airport. The notice said the explosion was followed by exchanges of gunfire that were continuing.”
Climate change is causing a whole lot of unrest in Afghanistan as well as other parts of the world.
Roger, with dips like OldSferbrains and the Troll, peer reviewed means Pierre-reviewed. By wingnuts. For wingnuts.
Donald Pay wrote:
First, you don’t put anything in quotes, so you are giving the impression that you wrote that. You didn’t. That is plagiarism.
So Donald,
Are you saying Cory plagiarized when he didn’t use quotes above in his post?
Troll. I think Donald suggested you plagiarized. Stick to the subject, instead of trying to deflect your guilt to someone else.
Better back off Jason. mike is really tough. He will call you names because he thinks it’s powerful. . .
Climate catastrophe’s are here now. “Crop yields are declining. Tropical diseases like dengue fever are showing up in unfamiliar places, including in the United States. Tens of millions of people are exposed to extreme heat.
These are the stark findings of a wide-ranging scientific report that lays out the growing risks of climate change for human health and predicts that cascading hazards could soon face millions more people in rich and poor countries around the world.” New York Times 11/28/2018
Buckle up kids, cause it is here in the United States now. Are we gonna be like Australia is right now, with the people saying no more bailouts for ag producers or are we gonna plan ahead? Naw, we here are fundies, we are gonna pray it away. Good luck with that, better get a plan B
Scientists (a whole bunch of them) have these reports. They ain’t kiddin. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32594-7/fulltext
I just don’t think Climate Change is that hard to understand. If you don’t get it by now, there aren’t enough scientists in the world to teach you. No matter who you put up on TV to explain Global Warming, deniers will stand there and claim it’s was not good enough and the scientist is clearly bought and sold by Big Green Energy and/or an idiot. Show them a prerecorded video of a scientist talking about Global Warming and they’ll do just the same.
The primary cause of this is women drinking alcohol during pregnancy and stunting the portion of their child’s brain which allows for making sense of things like: the whole ‘air’ atmosphere on earth has the thickness equivalent of the peel on/of an apple. So, when you look up at the sky, it doesn’t just ‘go up forever,’ it is VERY thin and breakable.
Yeah, some people just don’t get that – relatively basic stuff.
Sad.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TESLA BATTERY !!!!!
“The Tesla big battery in South Australia on Friday celebrates its first anniversary since swinging into action on November 30 last year – a day before its official opening.
In that period, the 100MW/129MWh Tesla big battery – officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve – has defied the critics and naysayers and proved that it can make money, lower prices and boost grid security. More than that, it has become a major signpost to the future of faster, cheaper, smarter and cleaner grid.
The Tesla big battery – still the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery – officially exchanged contracts on December 1, but readers will remember it was actually called into action a day earlier by the Australian Energy Market Operator anxious to help it deal with potential grid issues.”
https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big-battery-turns-one-celebrates-50-million-in-grid-savings-95920/
Saved 50 million, that ain’t chump change. Why can’t we have nice things?