Enviros Worry Election Shows Climate Movement Could Be Waning
…GOP Senator On Climate Change: ‘Mankind Has Actually Flourished In Warmer Temperatures’
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday said he doesn’t think people should worry about finding solutions to climate change ― because historically, “civilization thrives” in warmer temperatures.
“Climate has already changed, always will. I’m just not an alarmist. We will adapt,” Johnson told Wisconsin radio station WHBY. “How many people are moving up toward the Antarctica, or the Arctic? Most people move down to Texas or Florida, where it’s a little bit warmer.”
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Johnson made a similarly dubious argument in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday, when asked about his claim that sunspots cause climate change.
“I’ve never denied climate change. It has always changed, always will,” he said. “The sun has the primary effect on weather and climate on planet Earth, so I’m just not a climate change alarmist.”
“Mankind has actually flourished in warmer temperatures,” he continued. “I just think the question always is what is the cost versus the benefit of anything we do to try and clean up our environment … I’m highly concerned about the climate alarmists that are going to spend a lot of money and have no impact whatsoever on the climate but have a great deal of harm on our economy.”
Johnson also claimed that “the jury’s out” on climate change, even though virtually the entire scientific community is in agreement about the cause, the nature and the seriousness of the problem. In fact, many groups of scientists have said their models actually underestimate the magnitude and impact of climate change.
“The jury’s out,” Johnson said. “The models have not been predictive. They were predicting much higher temperatures, and that hasn’t panned out yet.”
When pressed, he admitted that he is a climate change skeptic, but added that “it’s not the right question.”…
Kerry Praises Obama: ‘He Has Been Able to Circumvent Congress’ on Climate Change
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/kerry-praises-obama-he-has-been-able-circumvent-congress-climate-change
Brittany M. Hughes | 3 hours ago
In between waxing poetic about the coming climate apocalypse and exchanging no less than two dozen self-congratulatory praises for being such an awesome guardian of Planet Earth, Secretary of State John Kerry rejoicedduring a panel discussion on climate change that a great American industry responsible for supporting hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs is “now bankrupt.”
At a screening of Leonardo diCaprio’s new global warming film, “Before the Flood,” Kerry lamented that it took this long for coal companies to go out of business – a fate brought on largely by President Obama’s aggressive environmental regulations – saying that it would have happened earlier if “big coal” hadn’t been so busy buying political support during Kerry’s time in the Senate.
“Big coal – which now, by the way, is bankrupt – spent enormous sums of money against other colleagues, scaring them and making it clear to them that they were going to have a very difficult re-election because of the funding mechanisms we have in America for our elections, and that’s why people backed off. We never got to that critical mass,” Kerry said of his past efforts on climate change.
“We were deprived of the opportunity to ever get a vote because not enough people felt compelled to move by this,” he whined. “They were compelled to move by fear.”…
Pew Survey: ‘Climate skeptics aren’t generally more science illiterate than everyone else’
These were all findings of the Pew Research Center’s 1,100-person poll of Americans on their feelings not just about climate change but on the whole bundle of climate and energy issues. The poll’s headline number is that 48 percent of Americans correctly understand the Earth to be warming due to human activity. This number has recovered to 2006 levels, when it stood at 50 percent. It fell below 40 percent following the election of Barack Obama.
The report also confirms that Republicans and Democrats—especially on the parties’ respective right and left wings—hold differing views on climate change. But it finds that, especially on the left, these views are modestly moderated by someone’s understanding of general science. In other words, a Democrat with a high amount of science knowledge (including on health and biological concepts) is more likely to correctly state that humans are causing climate change than a Democrat with low science knowledge. Whereas being highly educated or having a high amount of science knowledge doesn’t make Republicans any more likely to say the same.…
DiCaprio: Climate Deniers ‘Should Not Be Allowed to Hold Public Office’
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio sat on the White House lawn on Oct. 3, and proclaimed that anyone who doesn’t not believe in climate change “should not be allowed to hold public office.”
“The scientific consensus is in and the argument is now over, if you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts or in science or empirical truths and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office,” DiCaprio stated at the livestreamed White House South By South Lawn (SXSL) event.
The invited crowd responded with cheers.
South By South Lawn, or SXSL, was an all-day,Obama White House event hosting various liberal panel discussions about issues like food, sustainability and climate change as well as musical guests — inspired by the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas.
DiCaprio was on hand to moderate a one-sided conversation about the threat of manmade climate change featuring President Barack Obama and Dr. Katharine Hayhoe (VIDEO). Obama and Hayhoe took turns arguing the urgency of the climate problem to a friendly crowd, discussing alternative energy, promoting fossil fuel regulations or carbon taxation and warning about worsening “extreme weather.”
Following the talk, his latest climate documentary, Before the Flood, made its U.S. premiere to all those attending. The film will air on National Geographic channel on Oct. 30 — conveniently just eight days before the presidential election.…
DiCaprio: Climate deniers ‘should not be allowed to hold public office’
Politicians who don’t believe in climate change should not hold public office, said actor Leonardo DiCaprio Monday at the White House before the screening of his new climate documentary.
“The scientific consensus is in and the argument is now over,” DiCaprio said at the White House’s South By South Lawn event.
“If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts, or in science or empirical truths and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office.”
DiCaprio screened his film “Before the Flood,” a documentary about climate change. Ahead of the screening, he spoke on a panel with President Obama.
“Climate change is almost perversely designed to be really hard to solve politically. It is a problem that creeps up on you,” Obama said.
“The political system in every country is not well designed to do something tough now to solve a problem that people will really feel the impact of in the future.”
In the film, DeCaprio travels to Greenland, the Pacific Islands, Sumatra and industrial regions of China to show the impacts of climate change.
DiCaprio, and the film’s director, Fisher Stevens, hope to use it in the run-up to next month’s presidential and Senate elections, according to The Guardian.
They plan to show it on college campuses and across swing states. It will be released via National Geographic later this month.…
Leo DiCaprio’s Using His Global Warming Film To Go After Republicans
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s new global warming film is set to debut in several swing states before the election, but not before its director went on an unhinged rant against Republicans in a recent interview.
Fisher Stevens, the director of DiCaprio’s film “Before the Flood,” told Politico’s Morning Energy they plan screenings in Florida Tuesday, followed by showings in swing states, like Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Stevens said in Florida they’d “highlight that Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott are both climate skeptics, despite the state being on the frontlines of climate change,” reports Politico. Stevens thinks DiCaprio’s voice on global warming can move Americans to action.
“I’m not going to be so bold as to say we can do much – we’re just a little documentary – but [DiCaprio] has a big voice,” Stevens said of the film, which is set to premier on National Geographic channel at the end of October.
Stevens took aim at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who he sees as the biggest threat to civilization.
“If he wins, it’s not just climate change that I’m so terrified of, it’s the entire world civilization as we know it,” Stevens said. “I’m scared for world order. Period.”
Stevens credited Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with “definitely taking it seriously” and noted DiCaprio has spoken to her several times about global warming.
Stevens also went on an unhinged rant against Republican lawmakers he saw as jeopardizing the future of the planet.
“He, personally, is responsible for putting his grandchildren’s futures in jeopardy,” Stevens said of Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
“I don’t know if we can ever change James Inhofe and make him understand, and that’s sad because it’s amazing his position of power,” Stevens said before shifting his attack to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Republicans Demand PROOF From Obama That Global Warming Is A National Security Threat
Republicans Demand PROOF From Obama That Global Warming Is A National Security Threat
‘There is not enough evidence at present…’
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‘Trump Is Right on Climate Change. Dems and GOP Must Follow Him’
Trump Is Right on Climate Change. Dems and GOP Must Follow Him
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2016/09/trump-is-right-on-climate-change-dems.html
Tom HarrisICSC Executive DirectorOriginally published on PJ MediaNever before has a presidential election seen a greater contrast in the attitudes of the major candidates towards climate change.Hillary Clinton told delegates at July’s Democratic National Convention that man-made climate change is “an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.” Yet Donald Trump calls Clinton’s approach an “extreme, reckless anti-energy agenda,” and he told Fox News on July 26 that man-made climate change “could have a minor impact, but nothing, nothing [comparable] to what they’re talking about.”To determine which position is most reasonable, and what — if any — climate change mitigation policy is needed, we need a way of properly assessing the overall risk of man-made climate change. It is not enough to simply say that the consequences of catastrophic climate change would be so dire that any and all actions to avert it are justified. We need to actually take into account the probability of such events occurring in the foreseeable future.We conduct risk assessment in everyday life, of course. Yet for some reason, we don’t conduct it on this issue.When we go for a walk, we risk being hit by a truck, a falling tree, or lightning, events that would obviously be personally catastrophic if they actually came about. But we judge that — if normal safety precautions are taken — the likelihood of these things happening is so low that we have no qualms about leaving home.The same approach should obviously apply to public policy formulation. If risk assessment only involved responding to possible outcomes, then the nations of the world would be building an asteroid defense system. After all, a large asteroid impact could destroy all life on Earth, perhaps even shatter the planet itself, a far worse scenario than even the most extreme global warming forecasts.But scientists judge that the likelihood of a significant impact in the foreseeable future is far too small to justify spending trillions of dollars on the issue.So — while we do watch the skies for possible cosmic threats — we dedicate the majority our security dollars to dealing with known, more immediate problems such as crime, terrorism, and local pollution.Dealing with the possibility of catastrophic human-caused climate change should result in a similar analysis as that of a possible asteroid strike. Here’s why: The portion of climate change that is …
Analysis: ‘Climate Exaggeration is Backfiring’ – ‘Equating Third Reich with free society’s fossil-fuel reliance, & charging GOP with climate destruction, is theater of the absurd’
Green activists are at war with the greatest American foe since the Axis Powers—or so they say. The latest Democratic Party platform compares the fight against global warming to World War II.
Using terms such as “battlefield,” “siege,” and “front,” those opposed this “war effort” have been labeled anything from Nazis to Holocaust deniers. (I personally have been called a sociopath by climate activist Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress, another story.)
The upcoming election has inspired dire concern. Don’t “vote for climate catastrophe” warned a Washington Post editorialist. “At this point,” stated Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security at Hampshire College, “electing green-minded leaders, stopping climate deniers (or ignorers) from capturing high office, and opposing fossil FOSL -1.78%-fueled ultranationalism is the only realistic path to a habitable planet.”
Equating the Third Reich with the free society’s fossil-fuel reliance, and charging Republicans with climate destruction, is from the theater of the absurd. Americans care greatly about the future; to say otherwise is to deny their very humanity. It is right and fair that critics of climate catastrophism reject calls for bigger government, tax-wise and regulation-wise.…