Warmist Katharine Hayhoe: Don’t call skeptics ‘deniers’ – More accurate to call them ‘climate dismissives’
Should We Call Climate-Change Deniers “Dismissives” Instead?
A renowned scientist proposes an alternative to a contested word.
NPR’s Rachel Martin had a fascinating interview on Tuesday with Katharine Hayhoe, a renowned climate scientist and evangelical Christian, in which they discussed the toxic nature of the world “climate denier”—a word that environmental reporters, including me, use all the time to describe people who don’t accept the scientific consensus that climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous. Hayhoe argued that calling people deniers is “a good way to end the conversation,” and that it’s actually more accurate to use the word “climate dismissive.”
Hayhoe’s terminology comes from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which last year published a report on how Americans view the threat of global warming. It concluded that America was divided into six categories: alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive, the latter being people “who do not believe global warming is real and are likely to believe in various conspiracy theories about the issue.”
I’ve struggled with whether to use word “denier,” especially because of the common accusation that it’s meant to invoke Holocaust deniers. That’s not accurate, as Peter Dykstra explained at Scientific American: The word refers to a type of psychological defense mechanism first conceived by Sigmund and Anna Freud, where “an unpleasant reality is ignored, and a realistic interpretation of potentially threatening events is replaced by a benign but inaccurate one.” That’s why I think of “denier” is the most accurate term for people who ignore, misrepresent, or generally discredit the field of climate science—whether it’s because they don’t like the proposed solutions, or because they just can’t accept reality.
But another compelling reason to use “denier” is that the alternative terminology is inadequate. I won’t use the word “skeptic” because it distorts the meaning of skepticism within science. Climate scientists are skeptical by profession, and yet, a vast majority of them concluded that global warming is
Bill Nye the Eugenicist, ‘Sex Junk,’ Social Justice Warrior
Bill Nye (center in bow tie) is everywhere these days, and he’s out to “save the world.” He’s a frequent talking head on CNN, FOX, NBC, PBS, etc., usually on the supposed need for draconian regulation of humanity to stave off imminent global-warming apocalypse. On April 22nd (Earth Day) he led the March for Science in Washington, D.C., an event that drew thousands and inspired hundreds of copycat marches in cities across the country and around the world. And of course, there’s his new, sensational platform, Bill Nye Saves the World, on Netflix.
Nye and Netflix, no doubt, will insist the title of the new series makes use of obvious hyperbole for over-the-top cheeky humor effect, but the episodes released thus far reveal an aging social justice warrior (SJW) and wannabe hipster with a messianic complex who is peddling an authoritarian ideology/religion under a camouflage of pseudoscience.
Bill Nye the Science Guy has transmuted into a screechy, preachy ubiquitous presence who wants to penalize you if you have more than two children, jail you if you disagree with his global-warming catastrophism, and stigmatize you if you don’t adopt his transgender views or embrace his dogmatic religion of evolution. Even many of his liberal-left comrades are expressing concern that Nye’s strident, condescending new persona is annoying and alienating, and suggest that maybe he’s not the ideal candidate to be the public face of the climate-change/environmental movement. Besides noting that he has failed miserably in television debates, many of his allies acknowledge that Saves the World substitutes ideology and pseudo-science for real science, and that the program is replete with cringe-inducing segments that are embarrassing to watch.
“Bill Nye Is Not the Right Guy to Lead the Climate Fight,” declares the title of an April 27 article critiquing the would-be savior in the New Republic. A review at Gizmodo.com entitled “Bill Nye Spends Most of His New Netflix Show Yelling at the Audience” is by Maddie Stone, a fellow climate alarmist who says “Nye and I are on the same team,” but nonetheless finds Nye’s program to be “patronizing,” “excruciating,” ”bombastic,” and “angry.” Even a generally positive review of Bill Nye Saves the World at the leftist-progressive Vox.com admits “his approach could use some refinement,” and dings him for “condescension,” “meanness,” and a “scathing and dismissive tone” taken toward those who disagree with his views.
Time for Trump to Fulfill Promise and Withdraw From Paris UN Climate Agreement
By Nicolas Loris & Brett Schaefer
President Donald Trump has promised to make a “big decision” in the next two weeks on the Paris climate accord after promising to “cancel” the agreement during the campaign last year.
Fundamentally, the Paris Agreement is a costly and ineffective approach to addressing global warming. There are compelling economic, environmental, and legal reasons for Trump to make good on his campaign promise, and the commonly heard arguments for remaining in the agreement do not pass muster.
The Paris Agreement, signed by more than 170 countries, aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The means of accomplishing this goal largely center on reducing carbon dioxide emissions by transitioning the global energy economy away from affordable, dependable conventional sources of energy.
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Countries involved in the agreement each submitted nationally determined contributions, setting their respective obligations for keeping temperatures in check.
As a member nation, the U.S. also submitted its goals under the Obama administration. The domestic regulations listed by the Obama administration aimed to reduce greenhouse gas levels across the entire economy by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.
The U.S. regulations alone would increase energy costs for U.S. families and businesses, causing an overall average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs and total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four by the year 2035.
Compliance with the Paris Agreement will cost the global economy trillions of dollars over the next 80 years. Yet the results will be almost zero reduction in projected warming, even if every country met their respective carbon dioxide reduction targets as promised under the agreement.…
Legislate the climate you want! Study: Laws to tackle climate change exceed 1,200 worldwide
OSLO (Reuters) – Nations around the world have adopted more than 1,200 laws to curb climate change, up from about 60 two decades ago, which is a sign of widening efforts to limit rising temperatures, a study showed on Tuesday.
“Most countries have a legal basis on which future action can be built,” Patricia Espinosa, the U.N.’s climate change chief, told a webcast news conference of the findings issued at an international meeting on climate change in Bonn, Germany.
She said the findings were “cause for optimism”, adding that laws were one yardstick for tracking action on global warming alongside others such as investment in renewable energy or backing for a 2015 climate agreement, ratified by 144 nations.
The study, by the London School of Economics (LSE), reviewed laws and executive policies in 164 nations, ranging from national cuts in greenhouse gases to curbs in emissions in sectors such as transport, power generation or industry.
Forty-seven laws had been added since world leaders adopted a Paris Agreement to combat climate change in late 2015, a slowdown from a previous peak of about 100 a year around 2009-13 when many developed nations passed laws.
U.S. President Donald Trump doubts that climate change has a human cause and is considering pulling out of the Paris Agreement but legislation is often complicated to undo.
“If you have that big body of 1,200 laws it is hard to reverse,” Samuel Fankhauser, co-director of the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, told the news conference.
The study said that developing nations were legislating more but there were many gaps. Nations including Comoros, Sudan and Somalia had no climate laws.
“We don’t want weaklings in the chain,” said Martin Chungong, Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He urged all countries to adopt laws that help limit downpours, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
(Reporting by Alister Doyle; editing by Ken Ferris)…
WHITE HOUSE CLIMATE CHANGE MEETING POSTPONED
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House has postponed a Tuesday meeting to discuss whether the United States should withdraw from the landmark international climate deal struck in Paris under the Obama administration.
The White House said late Monday that the meeting would be rescheduled. This is the second time a meeting of top aides on the issue has been delayed. Donald Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency. His top officials have appeared divided about what to do about the deal, under which the United States pledged to significantly reduce planet-warming carbon emissions in the coming decade. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive of the oil company Exxon, said at his Senate confirmation hearing in January that he supports staying in the deal. But Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has said the Paris pact “is a bad deal for America” that will cost jobs. Ivanka Trump, who serves as an adviser to her father, was supposed to meet separately Tuesday with Pruitt and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. That meeting is still expected to take place, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to discuss private talks. The Paris accord, signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, was never ratified by the Senate due to the staunch oppositions of Republicans. It therefore does not have the force of a binding treaty, and the United States could potentially withdraw from the deal without legal penalty. A senior administration official said the president’s inclination has been to leave the pact, but Ivanka Trump set up a review process to make sure he received information from experts in the public and private sector before a making a decision. The official requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. As speculation continues about how Trump will handle the agreement, Tillerson is set to travel to Alaska for an Arctic Summit council this week amid concerns from other nations that the Trump administration will undermine global efforts to address climate change in the Arctic, where rising temperatures are having a disproportionate effect. David Balton, a top U.S. diplomat who works on environmental issues, said there would be “no change” in U.S. participation even if Trump ultimately decides to pull out of the Paris pact. “The U.S. will remain engaged in |
A fool’s errand: Al Gore’s $15 trillion carbon tax to ‘re-engineer humanity’ to save us from global warming
by Fred Palmer | May 9, 2017, 5:00 AM
Al Gore wants to reverse modernity and save the world from itself through an elimination of its fossil-fuel-based energy system. During the final week of April, his newly created Energy Transitions Commission released a document setting forth a fool’s-errand pathway to “decarbonize” the world’s energy system.
If this sounds familiar, it is. Gore’s plan features a new, sophisticated, and expensive public-relations campaign, but it’s all based on his views on carbon dioxide first broached in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, which he reissued in 2000 for his failed presidential campaign. The subsequent efforts made by Gore during the past 25 years have transformed little from their genesis, and he remains as tragically wrong today as he was when he first surfaced as an opponent of everything linked to carbon-dioxide.
But, don’t worry! The all-in estimated cost to re-engineer humanity is only a mere $15 trillion—enough money to give every man, woman, and child in the United States more than $46,000.
Al Gore has been demonizing fossil fuels and attempting to marginalize all those involved in the traditional energy sector since 1988, the year the climate-change movement was rolled out in Washington, D.C., which happened to correspond with a nationwide heatwave and with Yellowstone in flames. Ever since, Gore’s pathway to political power and personal riches has been a successful one, to be sure, but his multi-trillion-dollar effort today is his most sophisticated effort to date. Unfortunately for him, it will also fail, because what he’s selling in his “new” proposal is bad for the people being asked to embrace it.…
Northern Hemisphere having a tough time shaking off winter
By Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Vencore, Inc. – vencoreweather.com
Overview
Europe had an extended period of colder-than-normal weather in April accompanied by lots of snow and now much of the US is experiencing an extended period of colder-than-normal weather as we transition from early-to-mid May. Snowfall has been running at above normal levels this winter across the Northern Hemisphere and continues at those higher-than-normal levels as we heads towards the middle of May. In addition, temperatures in the Arctic region – which have been generally running at above-normal levels in recent weeks – have actually dropped to below-normal in recent days. One of the main factors contributing to this late season cold across much of the Northern Hemisphere is a blocking pattern in the upper part of the atmosphere centered over Greenland and Iceland and this tends to contribute to cold air outbreaks into the land mass areas on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Discussion
During the month of April, Europe experienced a persistent colder-than-normal pattern and significant snow piled up in the Alps across the central part of the continent. The air was so cold, in fact, that many vineyards from England-to-Italy suffered serious losses as the battle with freezing conditions was relentless in many areas. In the US, a colder-than-normal pattern has kicked in for much of the nation and should continue into the middle of the month and there has been some accumulating snow in the western US and across portions of the Northern Plains and interior Northeast. In fact, the next ten days or so will see more in the way of accumulating snow in the western US and many ski resorts in that part of the country will have good conditions right into the month of June. The Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California, for example, will get more substantial snowfall over the next ten days or so to add to the massive totals that they received this winter.