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1. One Planet Only Forever at 05:46 AM on 23 March 2026
   Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
   

   Additional points regarding one of my points @476:

   When I was a field engineer every alteration, change, of the issued design that I was involved in was rigorously recorded including the record that I was taking responsibility for the ‘change’. I made sure that the record was complete clear and accurate. And I expected the same from others who were ‘field engineers’ for items I was responsible for the original detailed design of.

   Also, I was involved in investigating the failure of parts of a civil/structural system to perform adequately, including out-right failures. In some cases there was evidence that the item had not been ‘constructed in accordance with the design’ but there was no record of who was responsible for the ‘change’.

   Some people thrive on ‘plausible deniability’ to get away with unacceptable behavior. Reduced regulation is a gateway to ‘increased plausible deniability’.

2. One Planet Only Forever at 03:24 AM on 23 March 2026
   Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
   

   Additional points regarding my @475 response to PollutiionMonster:

   The following points are based upon my expertise as a Professional Structural Engineer knowledgeable regarding dynamic design requirements such as seismic design, design for vibrating forces, and design for blast forces and missile penetration.

   The IFP article (Institute for Progress) is a ‘questionable presentation of opinions’ by people who lack expertise. Their statements may ‘sound reasonable’ but are not.

   An example of the ‘questionable presentation of opinions’ is the following part of the quotes I included in my previous comment:

   Some regulatory increase wasn’t necessarily unreasonable.

   I bolded the word Some for a reason. Using the word Some at this point in the article implies that later presented opinions would be examples of regulations that are not reasonable. Later in the article the following ‘questionable presentations of opinion’ get made:

   Quote 1

   In addition to generating substantial increases in labor costs, regulations also influence the direct costs of nuclear plant construction via QA/QC requirements. Plant components require extensive testing and verification to ensure they’ll continue to function even after extreme accidents. This often takes the form of carefully recording what happens to every component at each step of the manufacturing and construction process, to ensure the correct part with precise performance characteristics is put in the right place.

   This sort of documentation can be extremely burdensome to create. For example, here’s a description of QA requirements during the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, via Komonoff again:

   “Simple field changes to avoid physical interference between components (which would be made in a conventional plant in the normal course of work) had to be documented as an interference, referred to the engineer for evaluation, prepared on a drawing, approved, and then released to the field before the change could be made. Furthermore, the conflict had to be tagged, identified and records maintained during the change process. These change processes took time (days or weeks) and there were thousands of them. In the interim the construction crew must move off of this piece of work, set up on another and then move back and set up on the original piece of work again when the nonconformance was resolved…

   The incorrect implication is that the people doing the construction are intimately familiar with the design to the point of being experts at determining what are ‘simple changes they can make and how they can make them’. And the statement “(which would be made in a conventional plant in the normal course of work)” is a potentially dangerously misleading “opinion”. I have worked as a ‘construction engineer’. In that role I did indeed design and approve ‘field changes’. But I always contacted the original designers when I was, as a ‘knowledgeable expert’, not absolutely certain that I understood and could determine the acceptability of the ‘field change’.

   Quote 2

   Nuclear-grade components don’t necessarily have higher performance requirements than conventional components. Reinforcing steel in nuclear-grade concrete, for instance, is the same material used in conventional concrete. Instead, the additional cost often comes from the additional documentation and testing required.

   There actually are important differences in the available reinforcing steel for concrete structures. An important difference is that reinforcing bars with the same ‘yield strength’ can be ‘more brittle’ or ‘more ductile’. And seismic, vibrating, and blast resistant structure performance requires the reinforcing to be ‘certain to be the ‘more ductile’ type. Also, the more ductile reinforcing is less likely to have micro-cracks formed when it is being bent into the shapes required. And micro-cracks increase the likelihood of corrosion failure. Note that the more ductile and more brittle reinforcing bars look almost identical. And in some cases there are producers, and buyers/constructors, who would attempt to get away with misleadingly selling/buying/installing the ‘more brittle’ bars including false documentation claiming the material is ‘more ductile’ bars. This problem also applies to seismic steel structures, not just nuclear plants, where the ‘more ductile steel and fastening bolts’ is critical to the performance.

   Quote 3. The article includes the following questionable statement:

   Some experts think these QA/QC requirements and their downstream market effects are the prime reason for high nuclear construction costs:

   This is potentially a very questionable use of “Some” “experts” and “think” to imply that the “QA/QC requirements” are excessive or unnecessary.

   It is like the claims that: Some experts think climate science is incorrect and that the ‘implied’ restrictions of freedoms and forced changes to developed desired ways of living are ‘fraudulent - all a Big Lie – a communist plot’.

3. One Planet Only Forever at 04:30 AM on 21 March 2026
   Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
   

   PollutionMonster @471,

   The end quote from the abstract of the peer reviewed article in your “nuclear energy decarboninzation.” link (the quote above the link), correctly indicates the need to maintain and improve safety, equity and environmental protection.

   As indicated by the series of NPR articles I pointed to in my comments @ 460, 468 and 470 the US leadership-of-the-moment has likely reduced the safety, equity, and environmental protection related to nuclear power systems.

   Your brief statement comparing safety of different energy systems ending with “...Nuclear killed zero people in contrast in 2025.” is an absurdly simplistic comparison of harms and risk of harm.

   The IFP article (Institute for Progress) you linked to with the rather bizarre wording ‘Red tape nuclear power construction cost and time’ does not say what you seem to believe it says. Did you read the entire article? The opening statements of IFP article are misleading. You have to read quite far into the article to see important details that are not mentioned in the opening statements.

   The opening statements are:

   Nuclear plant construction is often characterized as exhibiting “negative learning.” That is, instead of getting better at building plants over time, we’re getting worse. Plants have gotten radically more expensive, even as technology has improved and we understand the underlying science better. [This statement is made in spite of the detailed content of the article explaining that many reasonable factors, including important updating of safety requirements, are the reason for the cost increase.]

   Nuclear power currently makes up slightly less than 20% of the total electricity produced in the U.S., largely from plants built in the 1970s and 80s. People are often enthusiastic about nuclear power because of its potential to decarbonize electricity production, produce electricity extremely cheaply [that is a blatant misleading statement] and reduce the risk of grid disruption from weather events [this ignores the reality that designing and constructing nuclear power systems for the potential risks of weather events is part of the ‘high cost of nuclear power’, unless regulations do not require those concerns to be investigated and addressed]

   But U.S. nuclear power has been hampered by steady and dramatic increases in plant construction costs, frequently over the life of a single project [later explained to be due to new understandings of safety problems that had not been identified and adequately addressed before construction of the system had begun].

   …
   Constructing cooling systems that can continue to operate in a damaged plant contributes heavily to nuclear construction costs.

   Also buried later is the following: “Rising labor costs are the bulk of increased construction costs”.

   Much further into the article is the following:

   “One key indicator of regulatory standards, the number of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) “regulatory guides” stipulating acceptable design and construction practices for reactor systems and equipment, grew almost seven-fold, from 21 in 1971 to 143 in 1978. Professional engineering societies developed new nuclear standards at an even faster rate (often in anticipation of AEC and NRC). These led to more stringent (and costly) manufacturing, testing, and performance criteria for structural materials such as concrete and steel, and for basic components such as valves, pumps, and cables. [sounds like the original plans were inadequate and unsafe]

   Requirements such as these had a profound effect on nuclear plants during the 1970s. Major structures were strengthened and pipe restraints added to absorb seismic shocks and other postulated “loads” identified in accident analyses. Barriers were installed and distances increased to prevent fires, flooding, and other “common-mode” accidents from incapacitating both primary and back-up groups of vital equipment. Similar measures were taken to shield equipment from high-speed missile fragments that might be loosed from rotating machinery or from the pressure and fluid effects of possible pipe ruptures. Instrumentation, control, and power systems were expanded to monitor more plant factors under a broadened range of operating situations and to improve the reliability of safety systems. Components deemed important to safety were “qualified” to perform under more demanding conditions, requiring more rigorous fabrication, testing, and documentation of their manufacturing history. [all this is justified ‘increased costs’ that raise valid questions about pushes to get cheaper ‘new nuclear now’]

   Over the course of the 1970s, these changes approximately doubled the amounts of materials, equipment, and labor and tripled the design engineering effort required per unit of nuclear capacity, according to the Atomic Industrial Forum.”

   … [still much later in the article]

   Some regulatory increase wasn’t necessarily unreasonable. Early safety requirements for nuclear plants often overlooked critical risks. For instance, prior to the proposed power plant at Bodega Bay near the San Andreas fault, seismic activity had not been considered in the design of nuclear plants. Subsequent analysis revealed that the potential for severe seismic events was much more widespread than had previously been thought. Similarly, tornado design requirements weren’t created until an application to construct a plant in a high tornado area revealed that tornado risk was much more widespread than had been assumed. When accident risk was considered, it was often analyzed incorrectly. A reactor meltdown was thought to be an astonishingly unlikely accident, yet Three Mile Island experienced one after relatively few reactor-years of operation.

   Regulations constantly change

   In response to learning more about how nuclear reactors could fail, the NRC’s regulatory stance became a deterministic, defense-in-depth approach – the NRC imagined specific failure modes, and specific ways of preventing them, and then tried to layer several redundant systems atop each other to compensate for uncertainty. Whenever something new was learned about potential failure modes, the regulations were changed.

   These changes applied not only to future plants, but often to plants under construction. In some cases existing work had to be removed, requiring intervention and oversight from design engineers, managers, field inspectors, and other expensive personnel. This became another major source of increased costs.

   ... [a little further along]

   To minimize the likelihood of cost overrun, plants should be built using mature designs that don’t need to be changed during the construction process. In construction of the French reactor fleet, for instance, the CEO of the French utility company EDF noted that during plant construction “Whenever an engineer had an interesting or even genius [improvement] idea either in-house or at Framatome, we said: OK, put it on file, this will be for the next series, but right now, we change nothing.” [however, if an engineer raises a new safety related concern it should be rigorously evaluated and adequately addressed]

   By building multiple reactors using an unchanging design, the benefits of learning-by-doing can be unlocked. In the French reactor fleet, though costs increased whenever a new reactor type was introduced, later plants using a given reactor design tended to be cheaper than earlier plants. Similarly, the 4th unit built at the UAE’s Barakah plant was 50% cheaper than the 1st unit.
   …
   However, it’s not impossible to deliver nuclear plants in reasonable amounts of time for a reasonable budget. We have a playbook for improving this process. By using mature plant designs that can be built repeatedly, learning-by-doing gains can be achieved, making each plant built cheaper than the last. By developing and maintaining a robust nuclear supply chain with the necessary expertise and experience, we can ensure we don’t lose the ability to deliver plants in the future. By stabilizing regulations, making them clear, and making changes to them predictable, we can prevent cost overruns associated with expensive and time-consuming on-site rework.

   But we should be realistic about what this playbook might achieve. Public concern about nuclear accidents likely makes any significant reduction in plant safety requirements untenable. Experience with the Navy’s nuclear program suggests that even by following the above playbook, building a nuclear plant to the level of safety required is a fundamentally expensive undertaking. Truly moving the needle on nuclear power might require a ground-up rethinking of how we build plants, towards things like small modular reactors or nuclear plants built in shipyards in large numbers and floated into position along the coast.

   Note that the key understanding to avoid cost increases regarding nuclear power plants is having a ‘mature design’. That means having thorough updating to be confident of safety systems and environmental protection. That means ‘lots of time required before embarking on the building of a new nuclear system and the understanding that any newly identified safety concerns need to be properly evaluated and addressed even if that delays or increases the cost of construction or requires a shut-down of operations if the safety concern is discovered after the item is in operation.

   Also note that a modular nuclear system design would need to be adequately safe in all possible worst conditions of all possible installation locations.

   The prerequisites for success of small modular reactors is acceptance of the reality that they will be higher cost, potentially higher cost per unit of generated and delivered electricity than renewables with battery back-up. That revises the question for discussion to be “Why is effort being wasted on the promotion and development of more expensive electricity generating alternatives?”

   And the lack of transparency by the Trump administration suggests that reduced safety, increased harmfulness and increased risk of harm, is being secretly pursued because it will reward the people who made bad bets on ‘developing small modular reactors’.

   Things will indeed be quicker and cheaper if the harmfulness or the risk of harm is allowed to be increased. But that only proves the unacceptability of allowing potential benefits for a few people to justify increased harm or risk of harm to Others. This would only be OK if the only people negatively affected by the reduced safety would be the people who profit from the less safe item.

4. John Hartz at 14:00 PM on 20 March 2026
   Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
   

   @Pollution Monster #471:

   You state: "The problem with nuclear is not a technological problem, but a regulatorary problem."

   Do you regard the proper disposition of the nuclear waste to be a regulatory problem? If so, should this particular problem be resolved prior to the "go-ahead" for the construction of a new nuclear power plant?

5. michael sweet at 06:18 AM on 20 March 2026
   Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
   

   Pollution Monster:

   Your reference Nuclear Energy Decarbonization seems to me to be simply a regurgitation of nuclear industry propaganda.  It has too many false claims for me to begin to list them all.  For example it claims:

   "For example, in hybrid systems for island economies such as the Canary Islands, SMRs have proven to be a viable solution, achieving competitive levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) ranging from EUR 46 to EUR 84/MWh when integrated with renewables and hydrogen production." my emphasis

   How can they possibly have "proven" that SMRs can do anything when no designs for non military SMRs have been approved and none have been built? This is just accepting industry propaganda.  Renewable energy costs less that EUR 40 today.  

   Later they say:

   "Finally, there are structural and economic limitations that challenge the sustainability of nuclear energy. The inherent risk of nuclear safety is so high that coverage in free markets is unfeasible without state subsidies, which undermines the principles of just sustainability and intergenerational responsibility. Moreover, the full life cycle of the technology (from uranium mining to plant decommissioning and waste management) entails an emissions footprint and environmental impacts that contradict its claimed climate benefits. In the face of increasingly competitive and safer renewable technologies, the continued relevance of the nuclear sector demands radical transformations in its governance and a structural reduction in risk in order for it to be considered a truly sustainable option." my emphasis

   So I should accept an industry that is so risky they cannot provide insurance for their accidents and taxpayers will have to pay to clean up their mistakes?  While they take all the profits?

   They cite an economic analysis that claims nuclear is cost and materials effective compared to solar and wind that was published in 2007 (their ref 110)?  Do you realize that the cost and materials of solar and wind have declined immensely since 2007 while nuclear has increased in cost?  It is dishonest to use completely outdated information when up to date information is readily available.

   The journal Processes does not seem to me to be a good place for an analysis of energy when many other more suitable journals exist.

   You are selectively quoting Abbott 2012.  He says "It can also be argued" not that he supports that opinion.  Obviously your cite makes that argument.    In Abbott's conclusion he states:

   "There are fundamental engineering and resource limits that make the notion of a nuclear utopia impractical. It can be argued [Abbott does not agree with this argument] that a nuclear nirvana supplemented by renewables may mitigate the need to reach 15 terawatts by nuclear alone (Manheimer, 2006). However, a reduced goal of several terawatts of nuclear power would still run into many of the limitations described above. Even for a more modest goal of 1 terawatt, one only has to divide the numbers above by 15 to see that a single terawatt still stretches resources and risks considerably." my emphasis

   Nuclear supporters have never responded to Abbott.  They cannot now claim that his objections are null because they have not countered them.

   Keep reading about renewable power.  In the last day more renewable energy was installed than nuclear in the last year.  Don't believe all the nuclear propaganda that nuclear supporters accept as gospel.  Remember that SMR developers promised in 2006 that they would have running reactors by 2020.  It is impossible for them to manufacture significant numbers of reactors before 2040.   Renewable energy will generate all current electricity and transportation by then.  Nuclear cannot compete on price.

   With the war in Iran showing how economically risky fossil fuels are many countries are increasiing their uptake of renewables to protect their economies.

   Nuclear power is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

6. Eclectic at 03:30 AM on 20 March 2026
   Climate Adam - The Epstein Files & Climate Denial
   

   Lynnvinc @1 :

   Similarly, I had heard that the northern Siberian soils would be poorly suited to our standard agriculture.  The picture is somewhat patchy ~ but a tendency to acid and/or sandy soils and low phosphate levels.

   As you say, a great amount of time and effort needed to rehabilitate the soil.  Also the high cost of establishing all the necessary infrastructure.

   With greater warmth, though, the soil would suit extensive grazing herds.  But using the land for meat production would be very inefficient, in a world of 8 billion humans.  Probably cheaper, simply to take measures to counter AGW !

7. lynnvinc at 01:44 AM on 20 March 2026
   Climate Adam - The Epstein Files & Climate Denial
   

   Good video, esp how it is the rich and powerful denying CC in their efforts to hold onto wealth/power even by abusing others or allowing their harm/abuse. Also the circular firing squad thing - arguing against CC and also for it.

          RE warming Canada, esp in the Arctic region. I heard from someone up there that the permafrost soil is too poor for agriculture (without the centuries and millennia of organic matter decomposing), to support the idea that we can just move north as the climate warms and permafrost melts. It is not a solution that will work, aside from the melting permafrost releasing massive amounts of methane.

8. scaddenp at 08:02 AM on 19 March 2026
   Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
   

   Eric, you seem to basing your premise on a paper from 1910?? You dont think maybe our understanding of climate has moved a bit since then? Not to mention geology eg we have since discovered plate tectonics. The paper argues "The great ocean basins are permanent features of the earth's surface and they have existed, where they now are, with moderate changes of outline, since the waters first gathered" - splorff! Periodic diastrophism? Not to mention being at least a decade before Milankovich did his calculations.

9. PollutionMonster at 15:21 PM on 17 March 2026
   Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
   

   Sorry broken link for first link, no way to edit.  

   Nuclear energy decarboninzation.

   Moderator Response:

   [BL] The site does not provide any editing features for regular users once you submit a comment. Typos, spelling errors, grammar, broken links, etc. are preserved in perpetuity. It's up to the user to check before clicking on "Submit".

10. PollutionMonster at 15:19 PM on 17 March 2026
    Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
    

    My last link in 469 was an editorial. I have done some more research. I think nuclear versus renewable has taken too much of the front stage.  We should focus on decaboninzation. 

    "Overall, the findings support the role of nuclear energy in achieving global decarbonization targets, provided that safety, equity, and environmental responsibility are upheld."

    nuclear energy decarboninzation.

    This is a peer reviewed article from 2025 that explicity says nuclear can helpo us meet emissions targets, Abott 2012 is a bit dated and the author admits that nuclear can arguably be used to address climate change.

    Each energy source has its own strengths and weakness. For example, wind is low during heatwaves. Wind turbines are also dangerous to fix and workers have died from falling. Hydroelectric dams can break causing many deaths, take for example the Banqiao Dam failure. Nuclear killed zero people in contrast in 2025.

    As for the cost of nuclear there is red tape driving up consturction cost and time. Like renenwables most of the cost for nuclear is in the construction.

    Red tape nuclear power construction cost and time

    The problem with nuclear is not a technological problem, but a regulatorary problem.  We shouldn't be arguing we should be trying to phase out fossil fuels which kill many via air pollution.

     

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] Link fixed, as per following comment

11. prove we are smart at 09:25 AM on 17 March 2026
    The war in Iran shows us another cost of our fossil-fuel economy
    

    The moral and capitalistic rot in the USA is changing the world, thank goodness the corporations don't own sunlight and the wind. www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_q741QO_m0&t=183s

12. Eric (skeptic) at 08:00 AM on 17 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Geography has long been recognized as the primary control knob for the earth's climate: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1635493.pdf  CO2 is an important but sporadically exogenous factor, but mostly an amplifier of geographic or solar or other forcing.

13. Eric (skeptic) at 07:34 AM on 17 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Just Dean, at the risk of beating the dead horse a bit more, may I ask if you agree that radiative physics plus projected manmade CO2 produces the red dashed line in the diagram?  If your answer is yes, then how do we reach the  black dashed line, even if that requires millenia?  My answer is yes dashed red line exrended linearly is where we end up, and reaching the black dashed line requires Pangea.  Others will probably disagree with that, and note that other models show the dashed red line bending upwards in the long run.

    I disagree with the control knob characterization.  Sometimes exogenous CO2 is the cause of warming, like Siberian traps, PETM, and manmade today.  Occasionally exogenous CO2 drawdown is the cause of cooling.  An example is enhanced silicate weathering from tectonic uplift.

    The rest of the time, CO2 is "merely" an amplifier of temperature changes by causes other than CO2 in both directions as the fast and slow feedbacks kick in.

14. Just Dean at 20:14 PM on 16 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Eric and everone, Here is the link to the news release article refered to in  Comment 10, Study: Over nearly half a billion years, Earth's temperature has changed drastically, driven by carbon dioxide

15. Just Dean at 20:01 PM on 16 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    The issue is straightforward. You're treating CO₂ as a dependent variable from various sources and sinks, rather than as the forcing function that drives temperature. The radiative physics doesn't care how CO₂ got into the atmosphere. A molecule from volcanoes or the ocean and a molecule from a coal plant have identical greenhouse properties.

    
    The ice age data illustrate this precisely. During glacial cycles, orbital forcing, ice-albedo feedback, and ocean circulation drove CO₂ and temperature through completely different cycles than today — yet those data points land on exactly the same CO₂-temperature relationship as the deep-time Cenozoic record. Different mechanisms, same curve. That's not a coincidence. That's the physics.

    
    In this news release about the Science article, Tierney states this directly:
    "Carbon dioxide is the dominant control on global temperatures across geological time. When CO₂ is low, the temperature is cold; when CO₂ is high, the temperature is warm.”
    “We found that carbon dioxide and temperature are not only really closely related but related in the same way across 485 million years."

    The slope of the modern instrumental record is much shallower than the Judd curve — not because the physics is different, but because the ocean's enormous thermal inertia means it absorbs heat slowly over decades to centuries. Nature moved CO₂ over millennia. We've done the equivalent in 175 years. The lag between the green trajectory and the equilibrium curve in the diagram is that difference in rates made visible.

16. Eric (skeptic) at 09:23 AM on 16 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Just Dean, thanks for the explanation and updated version of your essay.  I signed up for a Science account and read through Judd 2024.  They explain geography thusly:

    the change in the proportion of land to ocean area relative to today (29, 84). The impact of these paleogeographic changes on planetary energy balance can be treated as a forcing (ΔFgeog) (29, 81). In the Ordovician, subaerially exposed continents constituted only ~15% of the total surface area of the planet (compared to ~30% today), with the value increasing quasi-linearly across the Paleozoic (fig. S12). This results in an overall lower surface albedo for the Paleozoic and thus a positive forcing.

    My question to you is are they claiming that geography, which they simplify to a forcing, is solely a temperature effect in the context of equilibrium?  We agree that geography drives the CO2 and temperature to different sections of the curve, but the key question is how.  I may be mistaken but I believe your main claim is that ocean circulation and temperarture changes affecting CO2 are a key determinant of equilibrium, minus current manmade CO2 which you would consider similar to examples in Judd such as Siberian traps and PETM.

    Do you believe that current ocean circulation is unimportant (or perhaps I should say non-consequential) for long term equilibrium given present day geography?  Or perhaps as some suggest, deepwater formation will slow with global warming?  If so then we can perhaps reach a point close to the Judd curve as the long term feedbacks add more sequestered CO2 to atmosphere overwhelming the  slowing uptake.

    However I believe we are currently in a cold geography evidenced by the million year ice age, reaching CO2 starvation levels during full glaciation.  The primary measurement of cold geography is ocean temperature sustained by cold deepwater formation but warmed from above by manmade warming.  AI tells me the ocean's warming rate is 2.2 mC per year or 0.22C per century.  This affects sea level of course but also CO2 absorption modulated by vertical ocean temperature profile.

    In short, it appears that Judd's simplified (perhaps oversimplified) view of geographic forcing treats that forcing as negative with present day geography.  Do you believe that would preclude reaching the corresponding temperature on the Judd curve?

17. Just Dean at 22:17 PM on 15 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Everyone, Here is the link to my updated essay, Today’s Combination of CO₂ and Temperature Is Unprecedented in 66 Million Years

18. Just Dean at 22:12 PM on 15 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Eric, thanks for a substantive comment — worth addressing carefully.

    On the Judd curve and geography: The Drake Passage and Isthmus of Panama are real Cenozoic climate drivers, but they worked through changes in ocean circulation and CO₂ — moving the system along the CO₂-temperature relationship, not around it. The Judd curve is an empirical regression across all those drivers. Geography explains what drove the system to different positions on the curve, not why the curve doesn't exist.

    On the Pleistocene slope: We agree. The essay says exactly what you said.

    On CO₂ persistence: Your 0.77%/year figure uses current ocean uptake rates, which reflect today's disequilibrium under active emissions. After net-zero, two things change: the ocean warms, reducing its CO₂ absorption capacity; and as atmospheric CO₂ drops, the concentration gradient driving uptake weakens. The Zickfeld multi-century simulations account for these nonlinear dynamics explicitly — a constant-rate calculation is precisely what those models improve on. And even if CO₂ dropped faster than Zickfeld suggests, temperature would lag further behind due to ocean thermal inertia. CO₂ removal and temperature recovery are not the same timescale.

    I've just published a substantially revised and expanded version of the essay that addresses these questions in more detail: justdean.substack.com/p/how-one-diagram-reveals-the-climate

19. Eric (skeptic) at 09:19 AM on 15 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Just Dean, the dashed black line in the diagram in justdean.substack.com/p/how-one-diagram-reveals-the-climate comes from geographic changes that drive both temperatuire and CO2.  CO2 is an amplifier of temperature and temperature is an amplifier of CO2, but geography dictates global temperature. Prominent examples are Antarctica cooling with opening of Drake Passage www.researchgate.net/publication/256822123_Influence_of_the_opening_of_the_Drake_Passage_on_the_Cenozoic_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet_A_modeling_approach  Arctic glaciation with closing of Isthmus of Panama: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X05004048  There are others.

    The steepness of the purple dots is due to the combination of CO2 and temperature mutual feedback added to albedo feedback from the forming and retreat of the continental ice sheets.

    So we are left with the green and red lines.  In the text they assert that CO2 stays high centuries after net zero (" even 700 years after emissions cease, roughly 85–99 percent of peak warming persists. Atmospheric CO₂ remains at more than half its peak value")  I beat up the AI to get current numbers:

    "Thus, the ocean absorbs ~9.2 Gt of CO₂ per year from the ~1,191 Gt excess currently in the atmosphere."   or 0.77%  per year.  That 0.77% per year will drop as the excess atmospheric CO2 drops and the ocean saturates, but it suggests less than a century to drop to half, not multiple centuries.  All hypothetical of course, but it also suggests we can start to see a drop before net zero.

20. prove we are smart at 08:01 AM on 13 March 2026
    The climate scientist who refuses to stay objective
    

    I like the idea behind this book, any new angle to inform or activate people to our ever worstening climate change catastrophe is welcome.

    Watching the current world events, I would add the chapters- Contempt, Disgust and a multitude of emotions when I think of manufactured distraction.

21. One Planet Only Forever at 03:31 AM on 13 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    nigelj @23,

    I agree that the roots of the problem have always been there. Too many people want to develop or conserve perceptions of superiority relative to Others. And I agree that new developments like social media amplify and accelerate the spread of harmful misunderstanding.

    Another significant factor was the disastrous 2010 US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC (see Brennan Center for Justice – Citizens United, Explained). Without Citizens United there would likely be far less marketing of politically motivated misunderstandings.

    There is a more basic, simpler, explanation. People who harmfully unjustifiably, but legally, become powerful fight to ‘develop and maintain perceptions of superiority relative to others’ as viciously as they are able to. And the potentially most damaging and dangerous fundamentals of power are ‘wealth’ and ‘religion’.

    The coupling of the Powerful drive for financial inequity (economic competition) with the Powerful drive for social control (nationalist religious competition) can produce undeniably disastrous authoritarian and fascist results. The coupling of religious extremists like US Christian Evangelicals or Middle East Islamic fundamentalists with ‘pursuers of fossil fuel wealth’ has undeniably produced many destructive results.

    That ‘simple explanation’ has been reinforced by my rereading of Don Gillmor’s 2025 book, On Oil ( well summarized in this link to a review in the Literary Review of Canada). It is a fact-based story about the history of oil taking over economies and governments that contains a significant amount of the Alberta, Canada, history of oil. The opening chapter is called Babylon. It starts with the following explanation that the origins of Alberta oil power, not just the tar sands - oil sands – bituminous sands, was a collaboration between rich and influential fundamentalist Christian pursuers of wealth and power:

    In 1967, John Howard Pew, the eight-five-year-old chair of Sun Oil, and Earnest Manning, premier of Alberta, attended the opening of the bitumen upgrading plant near Fort McMurray. It was part of the Great Canadian Oil Sands development, a subsidiary of Sun Oil. Both men were evangelical Christians. In 1930 Manning began preaching on a radio program, Back to the Bible Hour, [Alberta’s current Premier Smith was a radio talk show host before winning the leadership of the United Conservative Party and the Leadership of Alberta – taking over from the previous, less extremist who was pushed out by a powerful group of nationalist religious group pursuing control of the ‘conservative’ party in Alberta], and continued to preach as premier, encouraging Christians to live in the light of Jesus’s return. Pew was on the board of the magazine Christianity Today, which he helped finance, though critics said the magazine was merely a “tool of the oil interests.” He saw faith and oil as intertwined, and conflated both with freedom. “Without Christian freedom no freedom is possible,” he said.

    Manning saw both progress and redemption in the oil sands. “We should be anxious,” he wrote, “for people to know about the oil which in the lamp of God’s Word produces a light that shines across the darkness of this world in order that men may find their way to Jesus Christ, the one who alone can save and who can solve their problems, whatever they may be.” Both men saw the oil sands as a gift from God.

    I moved to Calgary four years after this baptism, in September 1971, …

    The author worked his way through university in Alberta doing dangerous hard jobs in the Alberta oil fields in the 1970s.

    The final chapter is called Rapture. It includes the following:

    Sixty years before Trump courted oil and evangelicals, Barry Goldwater did the same, though he came to regret it. In 1964, Goldwater, a blunt, deeply conservative Southerner and, like Trump, an outsider, became the Republican candidate for president. He got the nomination in part due to the support of the oil industry and white evangelicals. Yet decades after his failed presidential bid (he lost by the largest margin in presidential history), Goldwater had misgivings about the creeping influence of white Christian nationalists. “Mark my word,” he said in 1994, “if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re trying to do so, it’s going to be a damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise [hopefully all parties compromising their positions to get to a shared well-reasoned common-sense sustainable understanding]. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God so they can’t and won’t compromise.

    A simple explanation is that the co-joining of religious nationalist extremists (anti-immigrant and anti-any-other-religion) with unjustifiably harmful pursuers of oil, and other, wealth has continued to find ways to ‘legally gain illegitimate influence and control (and defy the existing law and find ways to delay or cancel the penalties of law being applied to them)’ by developing and spreading misunderstandings that they can benefit from. Note that both the US and Iranian leadership are co-joined religious nationalist wealthy groups claiming/believing that they will benefit from what is happening in the Middle East right now and have spread significant misunderstandings regarding what is happening.

    A key understanding is that it costs wealthy people very little to support the social inequities and misunderstandings desired by religious nationalist groups. And the religious nationalists are willing to support and excuse the inequities of the pursuits of the wealthy as long as those wealthy people support powerful action on the desired social misunderstandings.

    I would argue that the only viable future for humanity is as a collaborative, not combative, robust diversity of people competing to develop sustainable improvements of ways of living as part of a robust diversity of life on this amazing planet.

    That better future will require more people, but not everyone (like John Cook states regarding how many people need to properly understand climate science in the interview presented in SkS item "Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation"), to care to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. And that tough, but important, work of increasing the number of people who learn to be less harmful and more helpful will be harder if Artificial Intelligence is ‘freer’ ‘less regulated’.

22. Just Dean at 23:11 PM on 12 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Eclectic@4: 

    Thank you for the thoughtful comment. You're right that the whack-a-mole dynamic is real and exhausting. My approach tries a different kind of end run — rather than arguing the science point by point, the diagram places three completely independent datasets on common axes and lets the convergence speak for itself. The goal is to make cherry-picking structurally difficult rather than rhetorically difficult. Whether it works is for readers to judge. I'd welcome your reaction if you have a chance to look at the full post.

23. Eclectic at 22:05 PM on 12 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Just Dean :

    All very well, lining up the scientific evidence  ~ but you know that the deniers/contrarians are not actually interested in it.  They prefer you to become exhausted playing whack-a-mole against them as they churn & recycle their insincere objections.

    You could instead do an "end run" around their fake, pseudo-science objections.  Provide a useful distraction !   My favorite is to say that the Global Warming topic is like a coin ~ it has two sides.  One side of the coin is the climate science, against which no-one has found any really  serious criticisms or objections.

    [And then quickly say :- ]  But the other, much more important  side of the coin is the political side ~ being the decision on what practical measures should be used or not used in order to tackle the Warming problem which is facing us in the longer run.  Should we do nothing at all about the rising temperatures?  Should we all go and live in caves?  Should we slowly bring in more solar & wind energy ~ or do it as fast as we can?  Or put more research into nuclear fission or fusion [etcetera]?

    Get them away from the science, and distract them onto the practicalities & solutions.  (After all, they are really only interested in the politics.)

24. Just Dean at 01:17 AM on 12 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Bob,

    I appreciate you engaging.  

    However, I would really value specific reviews and comments of my efforts to tell the climate change story with one diagram.   My diagram overlays the deep-time equilibrium relationship with glacial–interglacial data from the past 800,000 years and instrumental observations from the industrial era, along with a representative future scenario. Viewed together, these datasets place contemporary climate change within a broader Earth-system context. Skeptics and contrarians often cherrypick individual plots of CO2 or temperature or individual lines of evidence. It is harder when they are all plotted together on a common axes.

    I have not seen this combination of datasets anywhere before and so I would really value reviews and feedback from the skeptical science community. 

    Here's the link again to my Substack post: [Link]

25. Bob Loblaw at 00:09 AM on 12 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    Dean:

    One of the tremendous strengths of the contrarian position is the ability to engage in compartmentalization. The ability to almost completely isolate individual lines of evidence allows one to believe several conflicting and incompatible ideas. My favourite is global temperatures: completely unreliable and incapable of telling us anything - until a contrarian thinks the record shows cooling that "disproves global warming".

    From the wisdom of Alice in Wonderland:

    “Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

    I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

    As you state, in science the stronger explanations are the ones that combine multiple lines of evidence and provide a small number of factors that explain a large number of observations. That requires looking at and combining multiple observations.

    One example of reviewing many factors related to climate change is an old post here by Tom Curtis - Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2. By approaching the question like a murder mystery (the game Cluedo, or Clue), Tom brings together a series of lines of evidence ("clues") that tell us who the killer is.

26. RedRoseAndy at 22:00 PM on 11 March 2026
    Fact brief - Can shadow flicker from wind turbines trigger seizures in people with epilepsy?
    

    The Kadir-Buxton Method can cure the scourge of mental illness in thirty seconds, which would save the UK alone £300 billion a year, enough for free solar panels and heat pumps for all. It also cures epilepsy.

    [snip]

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] This appears to be nothing more than an attempt at self-promotion, and has nothing to do with the topic of the post.

    Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right.  This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

    Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.  Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.

27. John Hartz at 02:19 AM on 11 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    Here's yet another example of Trump's inane war on science. Thank god the researchers preserved it on their own.

    Nature Report, Killed by Trump, Is Released Independently A draft assessment of the health of nature in the United States is grim but shot through with bright spots and possibility. by Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times, Mar 5, 2026

    Excerpt:
    "Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind assessment of the health of nature in the United States when President Trump returned to the White House.

    He canceled the report.

    The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their own. This week, they released a 868-page draft for public comment and scientific review." [ https://naturerecord.org/chapters ]

    To access the entire article, go to:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/climate/trump-nature-assessment.html

28. Just Dean at 19:47 PM on 10 March 2026
    Why Science Communication Fails: How to Break Down Misleading Arguments and Inoculate Against Misinformation
    

    John's discussion of cherrypicking — one of the five FLICC techniques — resonated with me in a specific way. One of the most effective forms of cherrypicking in climate communication isn't the deliberate kind; it's the inadvertent kind. When we present the modern instrumental record of CO₂ and temperature in isolation — as most data visualizations do — we're unintentionally handing skeptics an opening. The data is hanging out in parameter space with no reference point, vulnerable to the response: "the climate has always been changing."

    As an engineer and former experimental physicist, my instinct when evaluating any measurement is to overlay independent diagnostics. If they converge, you have something real. Applied to climate, that means placing three completely independent datasets on the same CO₂–temperature axes: the deep-time equilibrium relationship from Cenozoic reconstructions spanning 66 million years (Judd et al., Science 2024), glacial–interglacial variability from Antarctic ice cores covering the past 800,000 years, and the modern instrumental record since 1850. These datasets were developed by different scientific communities, using different methods, to answer different questions. When plotted together, they don't just approximately agree. They land on top of each other.

    What this ensemble makes structurally harder is cherrypicking. To dismiss the composite, a skeptic must simultaneously discredit three independent lines of evidence — geological proxies, ice cores, and direct measurement — each developed without reference to the others. More importantly, the composite provides a direct visual answer to the "climate has always been changing" myth. Yes — and here are 66 million years of it on one plot. What it shows is that nowhere in that entire record does Earth evidence the specific combination of CO₂ concentration and global temperature that exists today. It is not the individual values that are unprecedented. It is the combination.

    At the end of the episode, Nate asked John what individuals can do. His answer — that we each bring something different to the table — struck me as both honest and important. I'm not a climate scientist. But the instinct to overlay independent diagnostics, standard practice in experimental physics, turned out to be useful here.

    For anyone interested, the most recent post developing these arguments is here: [link]

29. nigelj at 06:09 AM on 10 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    OPOF @22, regarding the BBC article and quotes. Sounds right to me. I've started to notice all this myself in recent years. I think there are two key things driving this:

    1) Firstly there is a political polarisation gaining huge force essentially between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives react very badly to some liberal ideas, especially socially liberal ideas, even although the ideas are rational. And conservatives are taking a very firm stand. You see this all through discussion forums.

    2) Secondly the internet is probably amplifying all this by enabling huge often unmoderated global discussion platforms where people can post comments using anonymous names. Its leading to very abusive tone which of course causes people to harden their positions further.

    I think that the things OPOF talks about with respect to the monied and leadership classes contribute as well, but they have always been there, and don't seem to explain the acceleration in the tribal conflicts.

    Its important to look for the simplest possible explanation for whats going on, remembering the Occams Razor principle, and I think it might come down to the two points I made. A forcing and a feedback mechanism, in this case socio - economic ones.

    Not sure what the solution is. Its a very challenging situation with regard to the internet because its hard to moderate behaviour without excessively restraining free speech. But some commonsense moderation seems desirable to me.

30. One Planet Only Forever at 10:11 AM on 9 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    John Hartz (and others),

    After my comment @21 I did my afternoon browsing of the BBC News and came across the following very relevant article:

    How I've learned that certainty is the thing to really fear, BBC In Depth, Nicky Campbell

    Here are a few quotes to spark your curiosity and encourage you to read the full article:

    Certainty is a curse of our age. It is a pandemic. And I've never been more certain about anything. [Opening Declaration]

    I've been presenting television debates and radio phone-ins over five decades.

    ... in recent years it seems to me like opinion has ossified, weaponised, and tribalised. There's a growing fear (among political scientists and others) that in our modern, social media-driven world, every issue is reduced to a zero-sum game and shoved into a political tick box. ... Causes and positions are embraced uncritically. Nuance and understanding are viewed as signs of weakness.
    …
    Since 1997, I've had extraordinary experience after extraordinary experience of hosting "the Nations Phone-in" on Radio 5Live. I've also presented numerous TV debates and documentaries over the years … The callers opine on anything …. Don't get me wrong, the tone of these discussions has always been quarrelsome and combative … But to me at least, recently it's become a wailing cacophony of polarisation and mutual demonisation. Simplicity is elevated, subtlety is trashed, and complexity decried.
    …
    Complexity phobia [bold header in the article]
    …
    "People are increasingly disliking each other," says Prof Sander van der Linden, who researches social psychology at the University of Cambridge. "People are less willing to work with people from the other side, to engage in romantic relationships with people from the other side, and to even cohabitate with people from the other side.

    "That sort of affective polarisation has seen a sharp increase."

    And there's another phenomenon that has been termed "complexity phobia": the aversion to recognising incontrovertible evidence and facts if they challenge a more comfortable and comforting narrative.
    …
    Radio epiphanies [bold header in the article]
    Of course, elements of this fractiousness have always existed. For TV producers, it's long been tempting to invite two self-righteous zealots into a studio to bellow at each other. In the business it's called a "good row".
    …
    I remember and now cherish the spine-tingling moments in debates where someone changed their mind before my very eyes. … as the arguments played out, I saw her position softening in real time. She absorbed the opposing arguments and thought her own reasoning through. She seemed to decide that her priorities had been ever so slightly misplaced. The look of uncomfortable epiphany was powerful and deeply moving. She listened. She understood. And eventually, she changed her mind.

    It still happens. The crucial point, though, is that these flashes of insight happen far less than they used to.
    ...
    Angry comments [bold header in the article]

    What's driving this increased stridency among the public?

    Social media certainly seems to be playing its part. The science now suggests that it makes people more polarised and angry, says Linden.

    He and his colleagues used a computer model in 2020 to analyse more than two million posts by American politicians and major media outlets that had been published on Facebook and on X (then known as Twitter). They found that negative language did a good job of riling up readers online, and by far the strongest predictor of engagement were words that demonised some sort of "out-group".
    ...
    These apps seem to make people more angry and divided - and in turn, more certain about their own opinions.

    My trade isn't totally blame-free, of course. Linden points out that traditional media - TV, radio and the like - has long had a "negativity bias". But apps like Facebook and X have amplified it hugely. "The balance is off much more on social media," he says.

    My concluding thought is ‘certainty’ that the world will only become a better place if an increasing number of people pursue learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others … even if that ruins the profitability of already developed activities … even if that makes some ‘high status people’ ‘lower status people’.

31. One Planet Only Forever at 09:04 AM on 9 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    John Hartz @20,

    Maybe whenever caring sensible rational people temporarily win the power to dictate requirements they should:

    Demand that every pursuer of profit must diligently ensure the harmlessness of their pursuit. If any 3rd party discovers a harm that the pursuer of profit failed to discover/find and effectively mitigate/neutralize, the 3rd party would get a major financial reward from the pursuer of profit and the government, as well as the pursuer of profit being penalized by the courts.

32. John Hartz at 06:49 AM on 9 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    The Evil Empire continues its relentless war on environmental regulations in the US at all three levels of government, i.e., federal, state and local. This article details some recent developments in four states. It ain't pretty. It's damned disheartening.

    ‘Sound Science’ Bills Limiting State Environmental Regulations Set ‘Insurmountable Burden of Proof,’ Scientists Say Bills in four states require state environmental regulations to show “direct causal link” to “manifest bodily harm,” not just increased risk of disease. Scientists say that’s all but impossible. by Dennis Pillion, Inside Climate News, Mar 7, 2026

    Excerpt:

    "A series of Republican state legislatures are advancing, or have already passed, laws severely limiting the ability of state agencies to set environmental regulations, despite warnings from the scientific community that such measures could increase risk of serious health problems, including cancers.

    Versions of a 'Sound Science' bill, proffered by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and supported by other business trade groups, have been signed into law in Alabama and Tennessee, and nearly identical bills are moving through state legislatures in Utah and Kentucky.

    The bills require state environmental regulations to rely on the 'best available science,' borrowing language from, but going even further than, an executive order President Donald Trump issued last year.

    The bills bar state agencies from issuing environmental regulations that are more strict than federal standards, or setting limits for contaminants not regulated at the federal level, unless the state shows a 'direct causal link' between a potential contaminant and 'manifest bodily harm' in individuals."

    To access the entire article, go to:

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07032026/alabama-sound-science-bill-limits-environmental-regulations/

33. John Hartz at 21:33 PM on 4 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    Here's another in a series of recent commentaries about the repeal of the Endangerment Finding authored by academicians with extensive experience in environmental law and policy making. The author of this analysis, Jody Freeman, is the Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program. She previously served as counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama White House.

    Beyond ‘Endangerment’: Finding a Way Forward for U.S. on Climate Environmentalists are challenging the EPA’s repeal of the “endangerment finding,” which empowered it to regulate greenhouse gases. Whether or not the action holds up in court, now is the time to develop climate strategies that can be pursued when the political balance shifts., Opinion by Jody Freeman, Yale Environment 360, Mar 3, 2026

    Excerpt:

    "The Clean Air Act is the bedrock of U.S. climate regulation, but it cannot do the job alone. Addressing climate change requires tools to mitigate emissions, spur clean energy adoption, and manage the impacts already underway. The EPA’s effort to repeal the endangerment finding is unlikely to survive legal challenge. But regardless, we should be planning, developing, and building bipartisan support now for effective climate strategies that Congress and the states can take up when a window opens."

    To access the entire article, go to:

    https://e360.yale.edu/features/endangerment-finding

34. One Planet Only Forever at 14:09 PM on 4 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    John Hartz @17,

    Another helpful reference link. Thank you.

    Regarding the statement “A group of Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to the center on Jan. 29, claiming that the climate chapter was biased and demanding its retraction.” (my emphasis on biased):

    Decision-making that is based on fuller investigation, understanding, and awareness with the objective of limiting harm done and requiring amends to be made for harm done – undeniably the fundamentals of a helpful rather than harmful legal system - is biased against people who want to benefit from unjustifiable harmful beliefs and actions. Judges learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.

    Here are some other examples of that bias (deliberately repetitive):

    • Helpful Engineers and Engineering associations learn to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
    • Helpful Medical practitioners and Medical associations learn to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
    • Helpful Scientists and Science organizations learn to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
    • Helpful Journalists and Journalism organizations learn to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
    • Helpful Politicians and Political associations learn to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
    • Helpful Store Clerks and Retail organizations learn to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
    • Anyone or Group that is Helpful learns to make judgments and present understandings that are biased against people who would try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful to others.
35. One Planet Only Forever at 12:47 PM on 4 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    Bob Loblaw @53,

    It is important to understand that there can be some degree of hereditary predisposition to lack empathy. However, regardless of a person’s hereditary predisposition, most people, and potentially everyone though this could not be proven by a study, can ‘learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others’. They just have to want to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others.

36. Bob Loblaw at 02:32 AM on 4 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    OPOF @ 48: "I think it is more likely to be differences of upbringing (the nurture side)..."

    I'm not sure that TV sitcoms are the gold standard for intellectual thought, but the US sitcom Ghosts has a character, Thorfinn, who is a 1000-year-old Viking ghost. Removing virtually all context, there is one episode where he says (visualize this in an ancient Norse accent):

    Children not born with hate in their heart, they must be taught it...

    Yes, a lot of people's attitudes are the result of their upbringing.

37. John Hartz at 22:20 PM on 3 March 2026
    After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
    

    The battle has been joined! 

    Scientists Decry ‘Political Attack’ on Reference Manual for Judges More than two dozen contributors to the manual criticized the deletion of a chapter on climate science by the Federal Judicial Center by Karen Zraick, The New York Times, Mar 2026

    Excerpt:
    "More than two dozen contributors to a widely used reference manual for judges are raising alarm bells about political interference after the deletion of a chapter on climate science.

    The uproar is over the latest edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which has been published since 1994 by the Federal Judicial Center, an agency that provides resources to judges. A group of Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to the center on Jan. 29, claiming that the climate chapter was biased and demanding its retraction. About a week later, the center deleted the chapter from its online edition of the nearly 1,700-page manual.

    A new letter posted on Monday, signed by 28 experts in science, technology and law who had written other chapters of the manual, strongly criticized the move. The topics they had written about included engineering, neuroscience and toxicology. Their letter was posted online by Science Politics, a publication of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service."

    To access the entire article, go to:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/climate/climate-science-judges-manual.html

38. nigelj at 14:22 PM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    A book that made an impression on me is Sapiens a Brief History of Humankind by Y N Harari. It helps make sense of ideas being discussed here. Another good book is the Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopian an environmental history of planet earth. Very comprehensive. Natural and human impacts.

39. Bob Loblaw at 11:41 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    OPOF @ 49:

    Yes, Snyder's On Tyranny is also good.

    Incidentally, he left Yale University last year, and took up a position at the University of Toronto, in Canada. (Not because of Trump, according to his Wikipedia page.)

40. John Hartz at 08:21 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    This long-read assessment of Trump's ongoing attack on climate science is one you will want to bookmark for future reference.

    This "pull-no-punches" analysis is authored by Robert Kopp, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University. He is the co-author of Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus and a contributor to the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report.

    Trump Is Attacking Climate Science. Scientists Are Fighting Back
    It’s easy, looking at the past year, to see the damage the administration has done. But researchers are also stepping up, trying to fill the gaps.by Robert Kopp, The New Republic (TNR), Mar 1, 1016

    https://newrepublic.com/article/207000/trump-climate-science-funding

41. One Planet Only Forever at 07:00 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    Bob Loblaw @46,

    I have read, and would encourage others to read, Timothy Snyder's books ... not just On Freedom.

42. One Planet Only Forever at 06:56 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    Responding to nigelj’s comment @44, and Bob Loblaw's @46 and 47,

    Regarding the statement that “...some of us are more reactive to distant future events that others, for some reason that seems deeply seated. Like personality differences.”

    My way of saying it would be:

    Some people give more consideration to distant future events that others. For some reason some people are powerfully motivated against being concerned for the future. It may be because of genetic predisposition, like personality differences (the nature side of nature vs nurture).

    I think it is more likely to be differences of upbringing (the nurture side), the culture people grow up in, encouraging or discouraging primal instinctive drives for self-interest, what they developed a liking for.

    Lots of research indicates that altruistic tendencies are innate in humans and can be seen when they are young (Do an internet search for “research on altruism in young children”).

    A key understanding is that the success of humans is most likely due to the ability of humans to learn about what is harmful and what is helpful and thoughtfully evaluate how alternative actions would produce different future outcomes with the following important distinctions made between possible future outcomes:

    • Lasting collective benefit. More sustainable, less harmful:
    • Proactive, Improvement, Progress
    • Temporary benefit for some people. But more harmful to Others:
    • Reactive, Deterioration, Regression

    The long-term success, survival, of a group or individual understandably requires governing by proactive learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. This learning is more challenging than regression into primal instinctive anxiety. It is more challenging when misleading marketers can benefit from triggering primal instinctive anxiety.

    Any individual or group that fails to self-govern that way likely has no future regardless of temporary perceptions-of-the-moment of success, superiority or Winning.

    Opposition to reducing the many understandable harms and risk of harm due to fossil fuel burning caused global warming and climate change is potentially the greatest ‘Future threats’ to humanity. Undeniably the people who want to maintain and increase perceptions of superiority developed because of the harmful use of fossil fuels consider any action to limit that ‘future threat to humanity’ to be an ‘immediate threat to them’.

43. Bob Loblaw at 02:18 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    nigel @ 44:

    More grist for the reading list....   Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. It covers the two modes of thinking - quick, but often unreliable, reaction to immediate dangers (handy when running away from that rustling in the bushes might save you from getting eaten), versus slow, analytical thinking that is needed to accurately deal with distant dangers. Much the same story as that interview you quote.

    Certain politicians excel at triggering that fast, emotional response. Unfortunately, they have also learned how to use that to manipulate people.

44. Bob Loblaw at 02:05 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    OPOF @ 43:

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is worth reading in its entirety. Article 29 includes:

    Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

    Too many people think that freedom does not include any duty or responsibility towards others.

    Timothy Snyder's book On Freedom is also worth reading, and discusses at length how an individual's freedom is tied to the actions of the community they live in. Snyder distinguishes between "freedom to" and "freedom from". Freedom is not just the absence of things such as regulation, occupation, oppression, or government. To be free, you also have to have an environment/community that enables you to do things. In the preface of the book (p xiv), Snyder says:

    We are told that we are "born free": untrue. We are born squalling, attached to an umbilical cord, covered in a woman's blood. Whether we become free depends upon the actions of others, upon the structures that enable those actions, upon the values that enliven those structures - and only then upon a flicker of spontaneity and the courage of our own choices.

    In other words, we are in this together.

45. Bob Loblaw at 01:43 AM on 3 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    nigel @ 38:

    Going back in history, many trades operated guilds that helped identify skilled craftsmen. But as you point out, there is a fine line between controlling entry to the association to ensure that the people in it are truly skilled versus controlling entry to maintain some sort of privilege and exclusivity (and economic advantage). When it comes to regulation, the equivalent to the latter is regulatory capture (which I mentioned in #10). Someone has to watch the watchers, to make sure that the system is kept honest.

    Even for something like engineering, where a person is accredited to design structures, there is a dependency on other accreditation processes. An engineer designing a building does not design and test the beam that will be used - they buy one "off the rack" from a company that makes them and provides specifications of the load it can handle. And that company will need to test their beams according to some sort of independent methodology developed by an accredited standards association.

    I would argue that climate change is indeed a topic that has massive health and safety implications for the public, but as you say it is a much less tangible and immediate than things such as health outcomes, electrical safety, etc. The current EPA has codified this by barring the use of any indirect costs in the economic analysis of regulations.

    The implications that can arise from climate change are also influenced by many other factors, which makes it easy for the contrarians to engage in a variation of whataboutism - assigning blame of any observed bad outcomes on something else. The tobacco industry perfected this technique in delaying actions against tobacco's health impacts.

    Another issue with something like climate change is that is it not a well-defined target zone of study. Atmospheric science will help you understand why a region's climate is what it is, and how it might change, but to understand sea level rise you need to know oceanography. And to know food production implications, you need to know agricultural science. And to know flooding risks, you need to know hydrology. And to know ecosystem stresses, you need to know ecology. Thus "climate change" is by its nature an extremely multidisciplinary subject. You need a lot of people cooperating to put it all together. No single person can do it all alone, and the fake skeptics that act as if they know it all are clearly working outside their area of expertise. The width of the “climate change” net can be seen by the tremendous variety of references listed in things like the IPCC reports. The shallowness of the contrarians' analysis can be seen in the highly-selective and self-referential lists of publications they include in their reports.

    In the current Trump administration, the phrase "conflict of interest" takes on new meaning - "Only my interests matter, and the only conflict is how others dare to challenge me".

46. nigelj at 10:48 AM on 2 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    OPOF was talking about people who ignore the best interests of future generations. The expert interview below is relevant and important and does it related to climate change. Its a long read but worth it. Its from NPR. Ive made a few of my own comments at the end. The article:

    Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert argues that humans are exquisitely adapted to respond to immediate problems, such as terrorism, but not so good at more probable, but distant dangers, like global warming. He talks about his op-ed piece which appeared in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.

    The interview:

    NEAL CONAN, host:

    In an op-ed in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues that human brains are adapted to respond to some threats more than to others. For example, he says, we take alarm at terrorism, but much less to global warming, even though the odds of a disgruntled shoe bomber attacking our plane are, he claims, far longer than the chances of the ocean swallowing parts of Manhattan.

    And the reason is biology, the human brain evolved to respond to immediate threats but may completely miss more gradual warning signs. If you have questions about how and why our brains got wired this way or about its implications, 800-989-8255, or e-mail us, talk@npr.org.

    Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University, author of the book Stumbling On Happiness. You can link to his op-ed and to all previous Opinion Pages at the TALK OF THE NATION page at npr.org.

    Daniel Gilbert joins us now from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nice to have you on the program today.

    Professor DANIEL GILBERT (Psychology, Harvard University): Thanks so much for having me.

    CONAN: Now, you say that we need to put a threat, a face on a threat, in order to truly perceive it.

    Prof. GILBERT: Well, that’s true. I mean, you know, look, if alien scientists were trying to design something to exterminate our race, they would know that the best offense is one that does not trigger any defense. And so they would never send little green men in spaceships. Instead, they would invent climate change, because climate change has four properties that allow it to get in under the brain’s radar, if you will.

    There are four things about it that fail to trigger the defensive system that so many other threats in our environment do trigger.

    CONAN: As you point out in your piece, our brains are exquisitely tuned to, if we see a baseball coming at our head, get out of the way.

    Prof. GILBERT: Exactly so. So that’s one of the features of climate change that makes it such an insidious threat, is that it’s long-term. It’s not something that threatens us this afternoon, but rather something that threatens us in the ensuing decades. Human beings are very good at getting out of the way of a speeding baseball. Godzilla comes running down the street, we know to run the other way. We’re very good at clear and present danger, like every mammal is. That’s why we’ve survived as long as we have.

    But we’ve learned a new trick in the last couple of million years – at least we’ve kind of learned it. Our brains, unlike the brains of almost every other species, are prepared to treat the future as if it were the present. We can look ahead to our retirements or to a dental appointment, and we can take action today to save for retirement or to floss so that we don’t get bad news six months down the line. But we’re just learning this trick. It’s really a very new adaptation in the animal kingdom and we don’t do it all that well. We don’t respond to long-term threats with nearly as much vigor and venom as we do to clear and present dangers.

    CONAN: So a lot of us thought evolution would reduce us to four toes or maybe four fingers. You say what it in fact has meant is that we’ve developed delayed gratification.

    Prof. GILBERT: Well, yes indeed. I mean, evolution has optimized our brain for the Pleistocene. I mean, you’d be, you know, if we put you back three million years, you’re going to be the most adapted animal walking the earth. The problem is that our environment has changed so rapidly because we’ve got this great big brain so we could navigate our ancestral environment, and lo and behold, what did we do? We created an entirely new environment to which our brain is not perfectly adapted.

    CONAN: We’re talking with Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard University, on the TALK OF THE NATION Opinion Page. If you’d like to join us, 800-989-8255, e-mail, talk@npr.org. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

    Another requirement for that human response, that triggered response, is some sort of moral outrage, you say.

    Prof. GILBERT: You’re right. And so I started by saying there were four, and then I talked about one, so what are the other three? The other three are, A) the source of the threat should be human rather than inanimate; B) there should be a moral component; C) as we just talked about, it should be short-term rather than long-term; and D) if you want the human brain to respond, you really want to make sure that the threat is sudden rather than gradual.

    So you asked about the moral component. There’s a lot of energy these days in our Congress, and indeed in our nation, devoted to what really our strictly moral issues. There’s very little doubt that many people will be injured by burning flags or gay sex, and yet we are up in arms about flag burning and gay marriage. And the reason is that these offend many people at the moral level. We’re very good at taking umbrage. We’re just not very good at taking action against things that don’t create – that don’t arouse moral emotions. And you know, climate change just doesn’t.

    As I say in my essay, if, you know, if eating, if the practice of eating kittens were the thing responsible for climate change, we’d have people massing in the street in protest right now, because eating kittens is such a morally reprehensible action.

    CONAN: Yet we see things like, obviously a terrorist attack, a human action, really centers everybody’s attention. Tens of thousands of people die on American highways every year and nobody notices.

    Prof. GILBERT: Well, you’re exactly right. I mean, one of the things that the human brain is specialized for is other human beings. They are the greatest source of reward and punishment in most of our environments. We’re a highly social mammal, and our brains are awfully good at looking for, thinking about, and remembering any sign of other people and their plans and their intentions. That’s why we see faces in the clouds but we never see clouds in peoples’ faces. If you play people white noise for long enough, they begin to hear voices in it. But they never hear white noise in voices.

    So we’re looking. It’s as if the brain is tuned in to the signal of other human action. And that’s why when other people do things to us, we’re very, very quick to respond. We respond to terrorism with unrestrained venom and with great force, just as our ancestors would have responded to, you know, a man with a big stick. The problem is climate change doesn’t have a human face. It’s not an Iraqi with a big mustache. It’s not somebody we can villainize. It’s not a man with a box cutter. And so if there’s no one to vilify, there’s no face to put it to, it’s hard for human beings to get very excited about it.

    CONAN: Let’s get a call in from Guillermo, Guillermo calling from Raleigh, North Carolina.

    GUILLERMO (Caller): Hi.

    CONAN: Hi.

    GUILLERMO: I guess my point is similar along the lines – somewhere along the way in school I heard a story basically along the lines of more complex issues humans don’t process that well yet. So, for example, if a person had to hear all of the news events that occurred on the planet earth in a single day, your brain wouldn’t be able to take it. And I just wanted him to see if there’s any truth in this, or…

    CONAN: Does quality relate to our quality of alarm?

    Prof. GILBERT: Well, you bet it does. I mean, climate change in some ways is a very simple issue. But those who profit from not taking action against global warming have turned it into a complicated issue. Why have the opponents – and believe it or not, there are opponents of action against global warming – why are the opponents turning it into a complicated issue? Well, as our caller well knows, if we can make this complicated, enough people will throw up their hands and say, you know, scientists, they all disagree. Who knows what we can really do about this?

    You know what? Scientists don’t disagree about this, and what we can do is very, very clear.

    CONAN: Scientists don’t necessarily agree on the cause of it. They do agree that it’s happening. Anyway, Guillermo, thanks very much for the call.

    GUILLERMO: Thank you very much.

    Prof. GILBERT: Well, scientists agree to an enormous extent on the cause of it. You know, it’s interesting, when you look at scientific articles on global warming, there’s enormous consensus. When you look at news articles on global warming, about half of them mention that there isn’t much consensus. It really just isn’t so. Scientists are in vast agreement about the causes of global warming, as much as they’re in agreement about the dangers of cigarette smoking. You could say scientists don’t all agree, and I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’s still saying it doesn’t cause cancer, but by and large…

    CONAN: So there you have an evil human face you can put on this. Those who are dastardly working towards profit 50 years hence.

    Prof. GILBERT: You see, that’s how I’m getting myself to respond.

    CONAN: Thanks very much for being with us, Daniel Gilbert. We appreciate your time today.

    Prof. GILBERT: My pleasure. Thanks.

    CONAN: Daniel Gilbert’s op-ed was this week in the Los Angeles Times. It’s Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Threats.

    Again, if you’d like to read the piece, there’s a link to it at our webpage. Just go to npr.org and go to the TALK OF THE NATION page. Also there, all of the other previous Opinion Pages on TALK OF THE NATION.

    I’m Neal Conan. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News, in Washington.

    Copyright © 2006 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.

    https://www.npr.org/2006/07/03/5530483/humans-wired-to-respond-to-short-term-problems

    My comment: I’m not a doomer. I dont think such findings mean we are locked into inaction, or that we are doomed. Perhaps we can overcome these impediments, and renewable energy is gaining traction on its merits and low costs anyway. But its just something we need to understand. And I think some of us are more reactive to distant future events that others, for some reason that seems deeply seated. Like personality differences.

47. One Planet Only Forever at 07:52 AM on 2 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    Responding first to Bob Loblaw @27, adding to Bob and Nigel’s discussion, and adding to Other comments like prove we are smart:

    My perspective can definitely be considered to be “...one where nobody has the right to force harm on others….a call to Freedom - each person needs to be free from others causing them harm.” It is aligned with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and related understandings like the Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 13 is Climate Action), the Planetary Boundaries, and key related understandings based on climate science like the Paris Agreement.

    Note that the UDHR ‘tells people, especially leaders, that there are justified limits and expectations regarding how they act’ – they need to be governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. If they won’t responsibly self-govern that way they should expect to be limited by responsible leadership. That is what self-governing professional bodies, like professional engineers and medical professions, do. As a Professional Engineer one of my responsibilities was to be willing to ‘Say No, and explain way’ in response to a client’s unacceptable desire or demand.

    I often sense that people want the freedom to believe and do as they please. And they want ‘a better present for themselves’ rather than ‘caring to develop the gift of a better future for others’. They are not interested in Inter-generational Equity (see the Wikipedia page). They discount the future (see Why environmental policy struggles to value the future earth.com, Eric Ralls, Jan 25, 2026. part of the listing of the 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05). They try to argue that they are harmed if others govern them in ways that limit the harm they can do, often arguing that they do not accept the understanding that what they want the freedom to do is harmful.

    Telling people that ‘future generations will have to live without using fossil fuels because burning non-renewable resources cannot be continued indefinitely and that, in addition to fossil fuel use being unsustainable, it is harmful’ seems to really enrage some people. They often try to claim that the marketplace of business and politics should govern who gets to be harmful. I agree with them as long as the marketplaces are effectively governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others rather than being compromised by harmful misleading competition for perceptions of superiority. That seems to make them angrier.

    As a result I agree with the need for comprehensive consideration of all ‘stakeholders’ on an issue. I would add that ‘all future people’ need to be considered. And I would clarify that the evaluation of everyone’s potential for harm does not mean compromising harm reduction because of some stakeholders wanting to benefit from the harm.
    ____________
    Related to prove we are smart’s comments,

    it is becoming undeniable that the US is a failing state. It is failing to make its leaders face consequences for deliberately misleadingly pursuing benefit from causing more harm to Others, especially future generations.

    The likes of Trump seem to act based on a world-view of negative-sum competition, harm is the major motivation for everyone. They believe everyone pursues personal benefit any way they can get away with. Their game-perspective is to benefit more from harming Others than Others harm them.

    That is fundamentally contrary to being governed by the UDHR which is a positive-sum game world-view with the understanding that collective action based on learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others will result in sustainable improvements for everyone … except for those people who benefited from harmful behaviour in the past who may lose some developed perceptions of higher status (and deserve that loss of status).
    _____________
    Regarding Inter-generational Equity.

    The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Diversity Equity Inclusion (see this Oxford Review item on Inter-generational Equity) are parts of the diversity of continuing to improve evidence-based understandings.

    The SDGs are based on understanding that ‘future humans need to have equality of Rights and Freedom from harm’.

    That exposes the harmful limitation of developed legal thinking, especially thoughts that ‘threat of legal consequences is all that is needed to ensure better, less harmful and more helpful, behaviour’. Legal remedy often requires ‘proof of actual harm done prior to (as the basis for) making the legal claim’. The threat of ‘Harms discovered later’ resulting in negative consequences for the people who benefited from the harm done in the past, or from actions that had higher risk of future harm, is a tragically weak deterrent.

    The legal validity of Inter-generational Equity, especially regarding CO2 emissions pollution, is increasing, much to the chagrin of people who want the freedom to maximize their benefit from actions that harm Others. Legal implications of Inter-generational Equity are that leaders would be subject to consequences if they fail to act to equitably protect future generations from human caused climate change harms.
    _______________
    Summary

    The US has developed the ability to have the most helpful or most harmful leadership on this planet. Tragically, the voting population of the US has repeatedly proven that it likes its leadership to be Harmful To Others, including future generations of global humanity.

    Clearly, the ‘Fix’ will require systemic changes to significantly increase the evidence-based justified Freedom of future generations of humanity from harm done by the unsustainable pursuits of benefit by current generations and their predecessors. The most harmful in the current generation need to most rapidly change their ways of living and profiting, even if it reduces their status relative to Others. And the biggest current day beneficiaries of the history of CO2 pollution harm owe the most towards repairing the damage done and helping Others adapt to the harmful changes that have already been caused.

    One helpful action would be effective penalties for elected representatives and appointed representatives who are discovered to be misleading.

    • Read the comments regarding new Welsh government rules to penalize misleading representatives made on SKS item “New Book - Climate Obstruction: A global Assessment”
    • Refer to CBC article “He was hired to fight for Wales's future generations. Does Canada need a job like that?’

    It is no surprise that people wanting to benefit from being harmful dislike increased awareness and understanding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Inter-generational Equity; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Sustainable Development Goals; Planetary Boundaries; and Climate Science and so much more. All that pesky Wokeness is likely to result in ‘Less Freedom for them to do what they want to do … from their perspective … the End Times are Coming.

48. prove we are smart at 06:37 AM on 2 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    First,thanks for that link JH,I believe protest marches by a countries citizens are the BEST form of action when dire changes are needed.They say "action speaks louder than words" and this  Stand Up For Science protest is a needed inclusive march for all.

    My first protest march was the School Strike 4 Climate here in Australia  "the strikers are increasingly attracting the involvement of people who have never been involved in climate activism before and a diversity of young people from different geographic and ethnic backgrounds."  Good luck with achieving your needed goals, Col.

49. John Hartz at 01:42 AM on 2 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

    One year after the movement-defining Stand Up For Science protest, organizers are returning to the streets on SATURDAY MARCH 7th, 2026 to save science, protect health, and defend democracy! This year, we are excited to officially endorse the Stand Up for Science National Day of Action and we encourage YOU to attend a rally or hold your own Pop-Up Protest.

    Details of events, volunteer sign-up, and Pop-Up Protest information can be found on the Stand Up for Science website:

    https://www.standupforscience.net/march7

50. prove we are smart at 10:22 AM on 1 March 2026
    Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
    

    Look I get it, this is a science based blog site specifically for climate news,facts,explanations and more. The critical thinking discussions are enlightening and my own knowledge and questioning radar is usually always up and running now,especially now I have the time to research and reflect.

    But our fight with denniers, with inequality, with corruption, with justice, encompasses all in one related struggle. Caring for our biosphere and everything in it means, I can't put my head in the sand anymore-maybe the older you get,the more empathy you get,I don't know.

    "this nation is morally bankrupt and that's the most gentle way I can put it". My Australia has many echoes of what this man is explaining is our world now.www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUY6FzzRO6c

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