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prove we are smart at 09:25 AM on 17 March 2026The 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
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Eric (skeptic) at 08:00 AM on 17 March 2026Why 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.
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Eric (skeptic) at 07:34 AM on 17 March 2026Why 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.
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Just Dean at 20:14 PM on 16 March 2026Why 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
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Just Dean at 20:01 PM on 16 March 2026Why 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.
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Eric (skeptic) at 09:23 AM on 16 March 2026Why 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?
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Just Dean at 22:17 PM on 15 March 2026Why 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
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Just Dean at 22:12 PM on 15 March 2026Why 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
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Eric (skeptic) at 09:19 AM on 15 March 2026Why 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.
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prove we are smart at 08:01 AM on 13 March 2026The 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:31 AM on 13 March 2026After 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’.
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Just Dean at 23:11 PM on 12 March 2026Why 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.
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Eclectic at 22:05 PM on 12 March 2026Why 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.)
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Just Dean at 01:17 AM on 12 March 2026Why 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]
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Bob Loblaw at 00:09 AM on 12 March 2026Why 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.
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RedRoseAndy at 22:00 PM on 11 March 2026Fact 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.
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John Hartz at 02:19 AM on 11 March 2026After 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 -
Just Dean at 19:47 PM on 10 March 2026Why 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]
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nigelj at 06:09 AM on 10 March 2026After 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 10:11 AM on 9 March 2026After 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’.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:04 AM on 9 March 2026After 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.
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John Hartz at 06:49 AM on 9 March 2026After 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:
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John Hartz at 21:33 PM on 4 March 2026After 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:
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:09 PM on 4 March 2026After 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:47 PM on 4 March 2026Trump 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:32 AM on 4 March 2026Trump 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.
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John Hartz at 22:20 PM on 3 March 2026After 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 -
nigelj at 14:22 PM on 3 March 2026Trump 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:41 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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.)
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John Hartz at 08:21 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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, 1016https://newrepublic.com/article/207000/trump-climate-science-funding
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:00 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:56 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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’.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:18 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:05 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 01:43 AM on 3 March 2026Trump 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".
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nigelj at 10:48 AM on 2 March 2026Trump 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:52 AM on 2 March 2026Trump 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.
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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).
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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.
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SummaryThe 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.
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prove we are smart at 06:37 AM on 2 March 2026Trump 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.
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John Hartz at 01:42 AM on 2 March 2026Trump 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:
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prove we are smart at 10:22 AM on 1 March 2026Trump 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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prove we are smart at 08:14 AM on 1 March 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
"Yes the system relies on honour, honesty, civility, balance, good intent - all those unspoken ethical values. And unfortunately The Trump Administration seems intent on undermining all this. I can only hope the wider population revolt against this and claim back honour."
Well said Nigelj, but really, the "seems" is only for those with blinkers on. The corrupt system in the USA has had its mask well and truly ripped off by this administration- will the people unite, maybe. Meanwhile another illegal war has started- what the fuck is wrong with their congress and media.
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nigelj at 06:23 AM on 1 March 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
Bob@37, registration and accreditation of professionals is probably also an economic and philosophical issue. Generally the more restrictions you have on who can call themselves a particular expert or work in a profession, the more barriers to entry one creates and more you create a sort of entrenched privilege. So the idea seems to be reserve things like registration and accreditation for professions where safety and health implications are huge like engineering, electricians, and doctors. I think that does make some sense. Scientists work generally doesn't have massive health and safety implications for the public, at least tangible immediate ones.
The public regard scientists as experts and mostly still hold them in high esteem. Despite lawyers requiring some form of registration, they are not held in hugely high esteem by the public.
The problem if I read you right is scientists talking out of their area of expertise. But the guys that do this seem to be in a minority and its generally a youtube thing. It really annoys me, but its a hard one to solve. Even if scientists were accredited in their particular field, its probably not going to stop them pontificating on other fields, and many of these physicists who think they are self appointed experts on everything are retired guys so can do what they like. The only solution that seems viable to me is to teach the public better critical thinking skills, to recognise the fake experts or experts that are getting outside of their area.
BL: "When it comes to pollution controls and regulations, we already have a process where the regulators are supposed to consult with a variety of stakeholders: independent scientists, industry (with their own scientists), etc. These system must work, at least in part, on some sort of an honour system. Will The Powers That Be do an honest job of looking after the public interest, searching out a balanced and practical solution? Can we establish a practical system that will prevent the take-over by unscrupulous "special interests"? Can we create a system that most people will trust? (For the current EPA, the answers to those questions appear to be no, no, and hell no.)"
Yes the system relies on honour, honesty, civility, balance, good intent - all those unspoken ethical values. And unfortunately The Trump Administration seems intent on undermining all this. I can only hope the wider population revolt against this and claim back honour.
It is mystifying how an organisation like the EPA gets run by ex oil industry hacks and people of that sort. It makes no sense at all. You want bodies like that run by people with environmental or at least neutral business qualifications. If there is a concern about the organisation being over zealous environmentally then have some checks and balances against that. Have a watchdog committee or something. Scrutinise appointments to head such organsations to ensure they are not extremists environmentally.
Anyway you have touched on a whole range of issues I find interesting, but please feel free to ignore my rant if you are busy.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:48 AM on 1 March 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
nigel:
i agree that trying to create a formal accreditation process for scientists would be impractical. Just look at how difficult it is in academia to properly assess an academic career. Toss in a little "academic freedom" to encourage out-of-the-box thinking, and formalizing effective rules for accreditation becomes a snipe hunt. Peer review exerts some control, but it is not perfect. In the general science world, the person with repeat failures eventually gets ignored - by the science world. But they can often develop a successful career (success defined by making money and getting attention) by expanding their target audience to anyone with money or power that likes the message they are selling.
But the issue of how do we identify "experts" remains. In addition to engineers, we do have formal processes for lawyers, doctors (and other medical professions), pilots, etc. When I worked in Alberta, their engineering group covered engineers, geologists, and geophysicists. To a large extent, these professional organizations are granted an oversight duty by government, and become somewhat self-regulating.
When it comes to pollution controls and regulations, we already have a process where the regulators are supposed to consult with a variety of stakeholders: independent scientists, industry (with their own scientists), etc. These system must work, at least in part, on some sort of an honour system. Will The Powers That Be do an honest job of looking after the public interest, searching out a balanced and practical solution? Can we establish a practical system that will prevent the take-over by unscrupulous "special interests"? Can we create a system that most people will trust? (For the current EPA, the answers to those questions appear to be no, no, and hell no.)
Unfortunately, the current trend (especially in the US) is towards a combative, winner-take-all system, where anyone who's axe does not get ground accuses everyone else of being an unscrupulous special interest. And when an unscrupulous special interest group gets its hands on the reins of power, as is the case in the US, all heck breaks loose. The last resort there is probably the legal system, as ineffective as it can be in examining scientific questions. (Their voting system is on the verge of breaking down, too.)
I've seen the news stories over at RealClimate, and read some of the reports written by people such as Dessler. I rarely read any of the comments over there any more, as certain individuals have transformed the RC comment stream into a cesspool.
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One Planet Only Forever at 10:21 AM on 28 February 2026Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
This is an update on my previous comments regarding the Trump-led government efforts to speed-up and reduce the costs of 'New small scale nuclear power plants'.
There is a new news item: Secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules are made public, NPR, Geoff Brumfiel, Feb 26, 2026.
The following quote reinforces the understanding that 'compromising safety - increasing harm done or risk of harm' is to be expected from the Trump-led government-of-the-moment ... as long as the right people benefit and the people the likes of Trump don't care about are most likely to be harmed.
The rule changes came about after President Trump signed an executive order calling for three or more of the experimental reactors to come online by July 4 of this year — an incredibly tight deadline in the world of nuclear power [likely to result in more harm and more risk of harm]. The order led to the creation of a new Reactor Pilot Program at the Department of Energy.
People who made bad bets on developing new nuclear power plants should not be 'rewarded'. But rewarding harmful bad-bet-makers is at the core of Trump's "Art of the Deal".
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nigelj at 05:53 AM on 28 February 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
Bob @ 35, totally get your point about the problem of scientists pontificating freely well outside their area of expertise and often getting things hopelessly wrong. Freemon Dyson comes to mind.
However I suppose the reason engineers are registered and accredited, is so the public can easily identify them as genuinely trained engineers, and because they are accountable for bridges that fall over etc,etc.
Scientists services are not used daily by the general public, and it would be absurd to hold them accountable for coming up with a theory that is later disproven. That would kill off the entire science profession. (Im not suggestig you would be proposing that, just raising one of the issues). So its probably something we are stuck with, unless perhaps scientists who are working in an advisory capacity, are required to have some sort of registration or accreditation. That would make sense. And that would help make them wise up and not talk complete nonsense like the gang of 5 producing the CWG report.
My understanding is the DOE / CWG report was dumped as a reason to get rid of the endangerment finding because it wasn't put out for proper consultation, and didnt include enough balance in the group and because there were so many scientific criticisms of the report it may not have worked to help overturn the endangerment finding. Theres been much discussion of all this over at realclimate.org. You can find the articles easily enough they are still near the top of the pile.
Some guy (or woman) called Data argued the entire DOE / CWG report was just a red herring to distract everyones attention from the allegedly more powerful general legal arguments against the endangerment but its just speculation. The report still had to be demolished both scientifically and on its process, because it alone could have overturned the endangerment finding.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:13 AM on 28 February 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
nigel @ 32:
Prescriptive rules only work for known problems. Setting objectives and performance criteria also requires some knowledge of the types of problems that might occur: the "known unknowns".
...but I want to respond to your statement at the end of paragraph 1: "...sometimes it can be done by an independent engineer or other expert."
The question then becomes "how do you identify an 'expert' in such a situation?" And this can bring us back to the question of the EPA or similar agencies and questions of pollution (and climate change). Who gets to be an expert, and how do we agree that such individuals are groups have actual expertise in the question at hand?
In the case of building structures, it's easy to say "an engineer". But how do we identify "engineer"? Many countries (Canada included) rely on two stages of accreditation: taking the required courses at an accredited school of engineering, followed by some on-the-job experience and eventual registration in the identified engineering association. That then leads to the status of "Professional Engineer" (P.Eng.) and a stamp you can apply to your work. That stamp tells everyone "this is a recognized expert". And when you screw up, you can lose that accreditation (similar to a lawyer being disbarred) - because all your work is accompanied by that stamp identifying you as the "expert" involved. And part of the professional ethics require that you restrict the use of your stamp to work that you actually are trained to do.
Science in general has no such formal professional designation. Anyone can claim to be a scientist. Yes, you can look at their academic training. Yes, you can look at their post-graduation activities to see what relevant experience they have. But there is no formal review of those qualifications. As a result, you can have atomic physicists or economists (to pull a couple of hypothetical examples out of a hat) claiming that they are more of an expert in climate science than someone who has spent decades training and researching in climate work.
That's not to say that people can't learn new things after they finish school - but we don't have any formal accreditation process where we can independently determine that they actually have learned what they claim to have learned. And when they screw up and get things horribly wrong, there is no "Professional Scientist" stamp that we can take away and tell them "you're not allowed to call yourself a P.Sci. any more". They are free to testify before congressional committees, write "reports" for sympathetic political hacks running government agencies that ignore the vast majority of the actual science, and continue to claim "we're the only scientists that understand this".
...which is why the process of developing and reviewing regulations and such needs to be well-designed to make sure that "experts" really are experts, and there is proper inclusion of the full range of reasonable opinions. The EPA had to pretty much bypass the "climate" report by the gang of five for some of those reasons: the legislation that governs the EPA specifies aspects of the process that were largely ignored by current EPA management in creating and guiding the gang of five's report.
In your closing paragraph, you say "...but if we listen to experts and base decisions on evidence we can get that balance right." That is the best scientific practise, where open discussion and being willing to change one's mind in response to a complete examination of the evidence. But when you get into what is called "lawyers' science", where people take an adversarial approach, only want the decision-maker to listen to their evidence and not the opponent's, etc., that won't happen. (My guess is that this is where Eric is thinking about the failures of the legal system to come to good scientific decisions, on the other US Climate regulations thread.)
...but people need to elect politicians that want the system to work that way. The US system has become toxically tribal.
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prove we are smart at 14:35 PM on 27 February 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
"but hes inescapable", I'll add exhausting too. Australias most trusted tv network the ABC has an interview with its american editor John Lyons on an aussies perspective living in Washington DC. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljRSDUp5CqM
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nigelj at 11:54 AM on 27 February 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
And as for putting someone like Robert Kenedy Jnr in charge of the health system. Words fail me.
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nigelj at 11:47 AM on 27 February 2026Trump just torched the basis for federal climate regulations. Here’s what it means.
Bob @31
Yes systems that rely purely on prescriptive rules are too restrictive and discourage innovation. That's one reason NZ moved away from local council prescriptive rules, and adopted The NZ building code. The NZBC is an objectives and performance criteria model, and allows for design form first principles for just about everything, with the design and calcs needing council approval, or sometimes it can be done by an independent engineer or other expert.
As I stated we can still use the NZ standards which are essentially prescriptive rules. They are generally applicable to small buildings only. People mostly design houses using the NZ Standards. Very few people design a house or part of a house from first principles because its too expensive and time consuming getting approvals. The exception is when you need some steel structure within a house, as this is outside the scope of The NZ Standards. But you would be brave to do it for the plumbing system. So innovation tends to be driven with large buildings where design from fist principles is more common.
And one of the ironies is even when one uses design from first principles, Council are very tough scrutinising this to protect their own backsides I suppose. There's no magic building regulations system, but NZs approach combines prescriptive rules and performance criteria, and is certainly ok, and probably as good as it gets, and yours sounds similar.
Yes Oceangate seemed like the designer was very arrogant and contemptuous of the rules and need for approvals. Reminds me of myself at a young age but most people grow up.
And yes I've also noticed Trump is destroying process and wants total power for himself. I think we are better off having checks and balances. The political decision making process in America and to a lesser extent in NZ, does seem to have been in a sort of grid lock in recent years but IMHO that's not so much due to a bad process, and checks and balances, as a very divided country not sure which way to go. Its like society is at some sort of tipping point. But I don't think we should be solving that problem by electing power mad tyrants and mad men.
New Zealands current right wing government is cutting regulations. Some of this looks ideologically driven. Some of its allegedly on wasteful regulations. Except the government hasn't found any significant examples. The government has also fired thousands of public servants. The excuses are waste, but they have never provided hard evidence. And another reason has been to cut government deficits, but government debt is really quite low as a % gdp, so it just looks ideologically driven.
Of course I fully acknowledge its possible to over regulate and have over staffed bureaucracies, but the government hasn't really provided great proof of either. If you want to see genuine over regulation parts of Europe might be examples. But really I'm not a fan of the very small government self regulation ideology, because it just doesn't work. History has repeatedly shown that. And theres plenty of evidence that regulations drive innovation.
I suppose its ultimately a balancing act between under and over regulation, but if we listen to experts and base decisions on evidence we can get that balance right. Its so sad watching Trumps America turn its back on experts, and on a need for regulations. That is never going to end well.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:47 AM on 27 February 2026After a major blow to U.S. climate regulations, what comes next?
Eric @ 15:
Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I think the last sentence in the OP is a little vague. It could mean "Oh, Gawd. The states and Congress will muck this up and never do anything." Or it could mean "We have an opening for the states and Congress to take action."
The downside of action at the individual state level is patchwork of regulations that makes interstate commerce difficult and/or expensive. And it makes for "that's not my problem" decisions if Ohio decides they love coal and hate New York. Canada was also a recipient of acidic winds from places in the US. Canada and the US did agree to bilateral action on the issue (both reduction and monitoring).
And interstate patchworks are even more difficult at the international level. Too many times I've heard the argument "Canada only produces 2% of the world's CO2. It won't make any difference if we cut it all." My response is "Yes, and the rest of the world consists of 49 other regions that also only contribute 2% of the total. They can make the same excuse, and then nothing happens." It's the poster child for tragedy of the commons.
Controlling emissions also can't be done pragmatically on a patchwork basis. Everyone has an excuse why their industry should not be limited, or should get extra credits. Carbon taxes (or "fee and dividend"), carbon credits and cap-and-trade systems. All will fail when only applied locally. Taxes are avoided by relocating production to low- or no-tax jurisdictions. Cap-and-trade requires a market large enough to provide sufficient flexibility.
Going slowly is better than not going at all, but going too slowly won't get us where we need to go. (When I was a grad student, we were at the pub one Friday evening. My office-mate was supposed to meet his girlfriend at 7pm, but as 7pm approached he decided to stay for another beer or two. He said "I'm late already; it won't matter if I'm even later." On Monday morning, when I arrived at the office, his first words were "Remember when I said Friday night it didn't matter if I was even later? I was wrong.")
