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Scientists just ran the numbers on how much Trump could damage the planet by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Dec 27, 2016

nigelj at 08:17 AM on 28 December 2016

Facts matter, and on climate change, Trump's picks get them wrong

Trump has indeed gone from acceptance to denial. In fact he signed an open letter supporting Obamas efforts to combat climate change as below.

thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/282782-trump-asked-for-meaningful-climate-change-policy-in-2009

However Trump has changed his position. Maybe some sceptic has got to Trump, or maybe its just he has given in to short term business interests, as opposed to thinking about future generations, or a combination of both seems likely.

One problem capitalism has is it tends to favour the short term, and also is not good at dealing with environmenatal issues in a self regulating sort of way. Economists call this a market failure or negative externality and its well recognised in any course on economics.

It would be great if we could change this short term mindset, and also recognise that governments do sometimes have a philosophically justified role to ensure environments are protected, but yet we must also preserve the core strengths and features of capitalism in the process. Where there is a will there is a way. I actually dont think we have a choice, because physical reality will eventually force some ideological change anyway. Socialism is not the answer but a modified capitalism is at least possible in theory.

You have outlined a number of denialist arguments, that stem from people with associations with vested interests, or certain lobby or ideological groups. Vested interests are clearly significant. There is evidence that a small number of powerful and wealthy people are climate sceptics, like the Koch brothers.

They are clearly doing this while being quite agressive business people and hard line in various ideological views that emphasise individual rights to a very strong degree, and they have a view that future generations should look after themselves from what I read. Their wealth means they have a disproportionate influence on the debate. What is even more concerning is climate denialists in general often seem quite happy to make outrageous claims and game the system, when climate scientists are often held by their training and professional bodies to very high standards of integrity and properly so.

I think many things contribute to global warming science denialism. At the base simple dislike of cold weather could be a subconcious part, but vested interests and selfish interests have obviously been a big factor in spreading doubts about the science.

However Trump is a proud person. If he could be shown that the denialist arguments are really just cheap tricks, he might take notice. He wouldnt like being taken for a sucker.

nigelj at 05:52 AM on 28 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

And Michael Sweet, given you have just taliked about the importance of facts, dont jump to conclusions about what other teachers teach on climate change. I would be interesting to see some hard data. My guess (in the absence of such data) is it would follow general trends so at least the majority would teach something sensible.

Its frustrating if even one teacher teaches nonsense, man I can sympathise, but dont let it get you down. In the end we can only calmly but very firmly promote what we believe is solid science on the weight of evidence,and rational good sense. At least we can sleep well at nights if we do that.

nigelj at 05:32 AM on 28 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Michael Sweet @26, your comment stung because normally I make a considerable effort to get facts right. I can tell you from memory unemployment under Obama dropped from approximately 12% to 5%. I just got trapped by the Clinton Sanders issue.

A very good website on economic data and trends is tradingeconomics.com which is basically a financial database for business, but covers a vast range of material including data and also graphical trends in data.

I know you want to forget the history. Maybe so, but I make this comment to anyone reading: the Democrat Party promoted a candidate with a criminal investigation hanging over her head, and I thought it was a dumb strategy from day one! I hope the Democrats take a lesson from this. There must have been other people besides Clinton or Sanders.

I have nothjing against Clinton. She had a fine set of sensible policies, and her heart and mind is mostly in the right place, but the email thing meant all this became buried, and most of what we saw in our media was about the email issue.

Everyone has to take some care to not become an easy target,me included, scientists included, everyone.

One Planet Only Forever at 03:42 AM on 28 December 2016

Facts matter, and on climate change, Trump's picks get them wrong

An addition to, or development of, my previous comment (a seemingly never-ending work in progress with new related relevant material evidence being created almost daily) is that other terms that deserve to be used along with 'creating impressions' are creating illusions and creating delusions of grandeur - something that the likes of Trump clearly focus on.

Jeff18 at 03:37 AM on 28 December 2016

There's no empirical evidence

I thank you all for your response. I didn't consider my comment to be off topic as I am concerned with the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere and was just using Venus as an example. Apparently not a very good example so scratch that one. From what Tom said, the increase in temperature from CO2 going from .04% to .05% would be less than what we have seen from the CO2 going from .03% to .04%. But what are the actual number? What is the temperature change due to CO2 alone and how do we know it's CO2 and not some other factor? I'm sure you are familiar with the show Mythbusters. In one episode they filled a tank with CO2, put in a block of ice, shined a light on it and compared that to a similar tank filled with air. The ice in the CO2 thank melted faster. No big surprise there. But no actual numbers either. I would like to have seen a tanks with 100% CO2, 10%, 1%, .1%, .01%, and zero and compared the melting rate in each. Then I would have a better idea of the effect of CO2. Anyone have some actual numbers?

One Planet Only Forever at 03:10 AM on 28 December 2016

Facts matter, and on climate change, Trump's picks get them wrong

This is another part of the OP I owe SkS and am still trying to organize into a concise presentation of thoughts/perspective.

It appears that Trump is simply continuing his efforts to succeed through the creation of unjustified impressions.

A business mind-set can be a very dangerous thing. Many business leaders focus on striving to succeed by prolonging their ability to "win" through a lack of public awareness and better understanding of how their actions are contrary to the advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all of humanity.

The act of impressing people - especially the development of perceptions of popularity, profitability, or prosperity - can be understood to be the unjustified deliberate creation of impressions in the minds of people, or “fooling them”. A key related action is the need to mask or hide or diminish the awareness and better understanding in the audience (the magicians tricks or diversion and misleading the attention awareness and understanding.

Creating unjustified impressions and hiding what is really being done is the antithesis of “Raising awareness and Better understanding of what is actually going on”. And those who succeed at it can clearly be very detrimental to the advancement of humanity until awareness and better understanding become so pervasive that their “Deliberately Deceptive Marketing Tricks” fail to impress enough for success”.

Trump's waffling on climate science could be a carefully developed ploy, performed to create the appearance of being thoughtful and considerate. However the best awareness and understanding is clearly that Trump and his likes give little thought, consideration, care or desire to advancing humanity to a lasting better future for all. They are focused on maximizing personal short term success any way they can get away with for as long as they can get away with.

That awareness and better understanding of the likes of Trump needs to grow rapidly in the USA, and many other places, or the future of humanity will suffer severely. It is undeniable that the current developed economies have been built, to different degrees, on unjustified perceptions of success and prosperity. And the more that that type of “Magic” is involved in creating the perceptions of wealth and prosperity the less of a future there is for it.

Trump is not the first 'Unjustified Celebrity Winner of undeserved wealth and power' in human history. And like the others who pursued celebrity success for reasons other than advancing humanity to a lasting better future, the amount of damage he will do depends on how rapidly 'raised awareness and better understanding and the desire to advance humanity to a lasting better future for all' grows in the USA (and around this amazing planet).

True development and advancement requires a deliberate nurturing of the development of responsible thoughtful considerate adults focused on advancing humanity to a lasting better future as a healthy helpful diversity of humans among the robust diversity of life on this amazing planet.

Current day 'so called advanced developed and developing societies/economies' clearly suffer to different degrees from a penchant for the unjustified belief that “Everyone free to believe as they wish and do as they please is the best way for things to be”. That is clearly fairy tale magical nonsense. And Trump is clearly creating a Group-Think Echo-Chamber Deceptive Marketing Machine to try to create and maintain believers of Fairy Tales and non-common sense. That group potentially hope to magically succeed at creating unjustified impressions to get away with personally beneficial but understandably damaging actions as much as possible for as long as possible, by impression creation to mask what they are actually trying to do and the likely results of their actions, and deliberately deceptive impression creation to try to manage what they cannot hide.

Hopefully there will be a rapid increased awareness and understanding of the truly unacceptable nature of the likes of Trump as a result of their attempts to create unjustified impressions regarding climate science and climate change (and all their other unjustified attempts to create impressions).

michael sweet at 23:12 PM on 27 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Nigelj,

I am mostly letting this topic go by. I think it is not productive to cry over spilt milk. I did not mean to pick on you. Where do you live that the media was so uinformed? Hillary was ahead in the popular vote by a lot the entire election.

Acording to the Daily Kos, 43% of voters think unemployment increased under Obama and 32% think the stock market has gone down. The stock market is money!! How can we hope to get people behind climate action when the media are so biased and under the control of conservatives that these things are believed?

I teach High School science. If you are hoping that teachers will inform young people that AGW is a big problem you need to move out of the USA. I do what I can in my class but I hear that other teachers teach AGW is a scam.

Tom Curtis at 11:18 AM on 27 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

william @21:

1) On May 4th, when Trump became presumptive nominee of the Republican party to June 7th (the last major Democrat primary), Hilary Clinton's lead in the polls over Donald Trump dropped from 6.5% to 2%, a fact attributable to her being attacked from two sides: from a Donald Trump no longer needing to concentrate on Republican opponents, and from Bernie Sanders continuing to push for a nomination it was already clear he would loose. Arguably had Sanders withdrawn his candidacy when it was clear it was hopeless, Clinton would have started the election proper in a much better position, from which she would have won.

2) While Sander's poll results vs Trump were much better than Clinton's towards the end of the primary race, that is at least in part due to his not having been attacked by the Republicans. Certainly based on conventional wisdom, the US would never elect a President as left leaning as Sanders; and it is more than likely Sanders poll lead would have quickly evaporated. Of course, conventional wisdom was a poor guide in this election, and may also have been on this point - but that is just pure speculation.

3) As michael sweet notes, Sanders got less primary votes than Clinton, and always trailed her in the polls. That, however, is from results for Democrat voters, and not responsive to your actual point @21.

4) Your point about the DNC emails simply ignores the whole argument in the OP. In particular, the damaging emails are from a very few (<50) from >19,000 emails released and hence are not evidence of systematic bias. Further, they mostly come from after a period when it was clear Sanders was going to loose in any event. Several of the more damaging emails have a specific context which, if taken into account, show they are not evidence of bias. More importantly, no emails show the DNC taking any actions that disadvantaged the Sander's campaign, or were designed to do so. At least one suggestion that such action be taken was vetoed because "...the Chair has been advised not to engage".

nigelj at 08:50 AM on 27 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Michael Sweet @23

"If you checked before you posted you would find out that Clinton had 3.8 million more votes than Saunders. Claims that Saunders got more votes are untrue. "

1. William is the person primarily claiming that Sanders had more votes, "in all polls". Why are you having a go at me, and not him as well?

2. The issue of how many votes they got is clearly beside the point of the comments I made.

3. I accept we should strive for accuracy, and provide sources of information, and your link appears authoritative, however Media in my country consistently stated that Sanders was getting more votes. I took them in good faith.

4. I generally back up what I say with links or stated sources, at least better than most people. Thats absolutely indisputable. Remember we are entitled to opinions, and should be able to explore issues with some freedom, and can't be expected to have a link beside every sentence like an entry in wikipedia! I think its a case of providing sources for critical aspects of things.

Nothing personal. We appear to agree on a lot of things!

michael sweet at 06:59 AM on 27 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Nigelj,

At Skeptical Sciece we are expected to reference our claims. If you checked before you posted you would find out that Clinton had 3.8 million more votes than Saunders. Claims that Saunders got more votes are untrue. You need to start to support more of your claims. People can speculate now that Saunders would have done better against Trump because so many voters wanted change, which Saunders stood for, but that is just speculation. Republicans thought Trump woud do better against Saunders before the nomination.

nigelj at 06:10 AM on 27 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

William @21

I agree with your comments at least to the extent that the Democratic Congress obviously favoured Clinton over Sanders despite the fact he had a higher popular vote. But I wouldn't speculate too much about what was in Clintons emails. Like we have all said you could probably trawl through any organisations emails and find "issues" that are either genuinely problematic, or could be quoted out of context. There are therefore several reasons for deleting things. We just dont know and need to be careful before making accusations of serious wrong doing.

I think the preference for Clinton probably relates more to campaign donations. The democrats supporters include business interests who would almost certainly prefer Clinton to Sanders due to perceived policy positions. It's this campaign donation issue and lobbying in general that is the significant issue.

I'm not making excuses for Clinton. I personally prefer Sanders, then Clinton, then Trump ( a distant third).

However the result of all this is the Democrats ended up with Clinton, who had this ongoing email problem. This was a huge gamble which didn't pay off and lost her the election, along with other things in her performance.

The real issue is more general, namely peoples private correspondence. Surely it should remain private? The only case I can see otherwise for publishing someones hacked emails is if there is absolutely clear evidence of illegal behaviour at a level that would have major public interest. However then surely the first course of action of hacker with the interests of the public genuinely at heart (and not just making money out of the issue) should be to go to the police. Only if the police ignore an obvious problem, or would have vested interests in ignoring it, would publication be justified. To be fair this does sometimes happen.

There was no public interest justification for either the Clinton hack or CRU hack because nothing of consequnce was found. The hackers could easily have established that the "hide the decline" issue was not what it seemed. The hackers went ahead and leaked material and its hard not to conclude they simply wanted to discredit the CRU climate scientists.

william5331 at 03:24 AM on 27 December 2016

The Perfect Tide: Sea Level and the Future of South Florida

More digging into why the insurance companies would insure such properties is needed. If they alone were carrying the risk, I bet they would completely stop issuing new policies and not renew old policies. Obviously they think this is a good investment. How does it work and who is really carrying the can.

william5331 at 03:11 AM on 27 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

The supposedly Russian hacked e-mails is one thing but the e-mails which were subpoenaed were first sanitized by the Clinton staff. They simply wiped out a large tranche of them. Do you think there might have been a reason for this??
As for the hacked e-mails, I understood (possibly mistakenly) that they showed a high level of corruption in the Democratic National Congress in spinning the ball toward Hillary and away from Bernie. This was supported later when Debbie Wasserman Shultz had to resign (to be hired almost immediately by Hillary). Since all polls showed that Bernie would have beaten Donald by a huge margin while the chances of Hillary were touch and go, the CF we find ourselves in at present is directly attributable to the DNC. If this isn't the crime of the century, I don't know what is.

elreventon at 03:10 AM on 27 December 2016

A Glimpse at Our Possible Future Climate, Best to Worst Case Scenarios

Excellent analysis. The thing that troubles me most about scientists' predictions is that there is ONE variable crucial to which scenario turns out to be the real one that the scientists always get wrong: the political one.... they assume that AT SOME POINT in the next 60 years, we WILL decide to go all out to stop global warming. Thus the scientists factor in a point at which emissions start to decline.

I believe that they make a big mistake in doing that. I think it's likely that the strangle hold the energy polluters have on the American government, and the minds of manhy of the superstitious American people mean that the USA will as a nation prevent any meaningful action being taken to stop global warming until AFTER the most catastrophic consequences of global warming have struck the USA. Around 2065, with Miami going under water, Texas turning into the new Sahara, carbon dioxide at 750 to 1000 ppm, and the future already irretrievably lost, THEN the American people and government will graciously consent to let the rest of humanity begin a futile effort to try to survive.

Tom Curtis at 22:34 PM on 26 December 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

Glenn Tamblyn @4, it may indicate that 97% aren't "skeptical", but it does not tell us how many accept the science of climate change. Many may be merely agnostic, and some may be "skeptical" but not have said so publicly. So we should not read too much into it. On the other hand, an AGW "skeptic" trying to find consolation from the fact that "many astronauts" support their position clearly needs to start looking at denominators.

Glenn Tamblyn at 21:37 PM on 26 December 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

Thanks for that Tom. Rounded off that says that 97% of ex-Astronauts aren't skeptical. :-)

And an interesting observation. Those few were all from the generation of steely-eyed rocketmen.

Also maybe the experience of the space-station generation had an important difference. They spent a lot of time looking at the Earth, in detail. Whereas the lunar-race generation, for them it was the blue-marble, in the distance. Perhaps rather idealised. They didn't get to spend weeks on end looking at night lights, pollution hazes, fires in the Arctic etc. They may have only got a more superficial, rose-colored-glasses look at the Earth.

Tom Curtis at 11:35 AM on 26 December 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

chriskoz @2, I think you may be giving astronauts a bad rap. Specifically, NASA lists 45 active and 294 former astronauts. Of those, eight signed the letter from 49 NASA employees, and Buzz Aldrin (who did not sign) has also expressed "skepticism" about AGW. That makes a total of just 9 out of 339, or 2.65% of current or former astronauts who are AGW "skeptics".

They do, however, all appear to come from Skylab missions, or earlier. That is, the most recent experience as an astronaut of a person I know to have signed or made a statement indicating "skepticism" about AGW was in 1979.

chriskoz at 10:55 AM on 26 December 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

Piers changed my mind about the astronauts. I think his legacy is representative of latest generation (1990s and 2000s) of astronauts: explorers and scientists who not only do not deny basic laws of physics but came to apreciate the beauty of said laws that came about to create such unique beautiful planet as Eartth.

That vision contrasts starkly with a legacy of an average astroanut of Apollo era (up to 1980s); mainly military pilots - "heroes" and "warriors" whose "gravity defying" acts entitled them in their mind to defy all laws of physics and science in general. Recall that many former astronauts have been the signatories of infamous Oregon petition, and some smaller similar anti-science petition singed by veteran NASA astronauts. Never mind that that science (starting from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky) was essential in constructing a survivable vessel on top of a firy missile, their role was objectively just of experimental rabbits, even if they like to view themselves as "heroes". Never mind their total disregard to the intergenerational ethics by boasting their "hero" statuses while degrading the planet for future generations. What a pitiful chapter of human history they are!

Piers, you've done a tremendous service to us scientists not only with your contribution to climate science but, with your personal example, you've reversed the negative image of astronauts. Let's hope the other astronauts (if there is a need for manned flights in future) do follow your ethics.

nigelj at 13:15 PM on 25 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

The terms trick and also hide the decline were a bit unfortunate in their wording and impression created, but of course had totally innocent meanings, as was established in at least 5 separate enquiries. Sadly this was probably not emphasised enough in the media.

Digby Scorgie at 13:05 PM on 25 December 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

Please fix the typo: It's "in memoriam".

Moderator Response:

[JH] Done. Thank you.

nigelj at 12:58 PM on 25 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Tom Curtis @18, I agree there's no evidence that the Russian government as such was involved in the CRU hack. I should have been clear on that.

However theres evidence the hack originated in Russia and remember Gazprom, the Russian oil and gas agency is state owned. The government or alternatively the Gazprom directorship (which is independent of government) would certainly have motivation in theory to discredit climate science. Or as you appear to imply interests in the western world could have used Russian hackers to discredit the CRU to make it look like it was Russian, or because they were available for hire. This is of course a distinct possibility.

The point I was really making to the other poster was just because Russia has been excessively and hypocritically demonised at times by America, not all criticism of Russia is wrong or "scaremongering". I say this from my perspective as a person living in another country observing, and I mean it respectfully. No country is perfect by a long way.

Yes it's possible to hack someones correspondence and find a small number of problems and blow them out of proportion, or alternatively quote things out of context, or subtly distort what was really said, or imply its more than it is with rhetorical questions etc. This happened with the CRU hack. The people trying to discredit the CRU used every tactic possible to make it look as bad as possible, when there was nothing of genuinely huge significance there in the documents.

The same could be done with the emails of any organisation. In fact the lack of anything of real problems in the CRU emails should have been if anything reassuring that science was being done properly, with the various enquiries just making a couple of minor criticisms. This became lost in the general hype about the whole thing, yet maybe a lot of people did notice this fact.

The media (or some media I can think of) carry some responsibility for the resultant shambles, with various shallow screaming headlines that stirred it up, and not much in the way of explanation of what was really going on.

There is also an element of just bad luck. I knew what the term 'trick' really meant from an article I had previously read on tree ring issues, but this word unfortuanately left a bad impression with the public, and I can see it from their perspective. Its an unfortunate term really. Unfortunately the course of human events are sometimes shaped by oddities like this.

However the physical reality of climate change such as last years record temperatures, and sea level issues in Florida etc may hopefully make things like the CRU issue fade from memory and significance.

Tom Curtis at 09:29 AM on 25 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

nigelj @17, while both the DNC and CRU hacks were sourced from Russia, it does not follow that both were sourced from the Russian government. Specifically, as I understand organized crime is very active in Russia, and among their activities are hacking to directly exploit sensitive information, or for hire. In addition, Russia serves as a haven for rerouted attacks used to disguise the actual country of origin. Until the article above, I have heard no suggestion that the CRU hack was anything but one of the last two (ie, a hack by a gun for hire, or a hack from some third country rerouted through Russia). I have certainly seen no evidence that it was a Russian government associated hack, such as is available for the hack of the DNC.

This in no way obviates against the point made in the OP that the hacking of large volumes of private emails followed by publicly drawing attention to a few, out of context samples biases the discussion. Whether or not Richlieu actually said it, the principle that "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him" is valid. That certainly happened with regard to the CRU hack, and may have happened with regard to the DNC hack. (More likely with regard to the DNC hack, IMO, is that a small number of genuinely objectionable acts were revealed, but were beat up to look like overwhelming pattern of corruption rather than a selection of a few isolated incidents from among many unobjectionable acts. It is also likely, IMO, that had the similar data from the Republicans been released, it would have looked as bad or worse.)

nigelj at 06:14 AM on 25 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Come on you "hacking sceptics" and see the big picture on this. Russia relies very strongly on oil and gas exports. They therefore have enormous motivation to undermine climate science, support Trump, attack Clinton and Obama etc. I would therefore not be remotely surprised if Russia is implicated in the email hacks of both clinton and climategate.

This doesnt mean Russia is an evil empire and America is allways pure and innocent. When you look at politics, foreign policy, etc,etc, there is often fault on both sides.

However right now Putin does not appear to be the quality of leader Gorbachev was. Human rights are under threat. Russias economy is in trouble and Putin is maintaining public popularity by finding as many scapegoats to blame as possible, and America is an easy target.

nigelj at 05:29 AM on 25 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Stevecarsonr @8, Im going to agree with you on one thing.The CIA have a certain history of activities that are rather dubious and questionable, if I can put it that way. A related book is "Confessions of an economic hit man".

But the point I'm making is you need to avoid a total over reaction or total lack of trust in anything the CIA say. Some of the activities they have engaged in would have been pushed on them by certain presidents. I just dont believe they are totally corrupt or incompetent on every issue.

As I pointed out other sources have found a connection between the hacks and Russia, like the FBI. Tom Curtis has listed a whole lot more, and these sources are not known to be corrupt and its unlikely they would "all" be corrupt. You are fixated on the CIA (although I do understand why) and as a result are ignoring the weight of evidence from numerous other sources.

This is what interests me more. I believe the CIA did have weak and mistaken evidence on Iraqs weapons of mass destruction. But the point is it was obvious at a glance that the evidence was weak and the CIA never claimed it was strong evidence. It was Bush and Blair that decided to go with such weak evidence, so its unreasonable to entirely blame the CIA. The Iraq war was arguably a mistake, but thats another issue.

I believe (just my opinion here) the net result of the Iraq War was ordinary Americans including both Democrats and even Republicans have lost faith or trust in politicians and agencies of the state. Other leaks have found solid evidence that the other American spy agency the NSA exceeded its surveillance powers. This has added to the problem of trust.

Americans have over reacted to all this, and lost all trust in government and "all" its agencies. This is a step way too far, and a dangerous situation where facts and truth now become elusive and truth is whatever you want to believe.

This history has undoubtably reinforced scepticism about climate change and agencies like NASA who do the research. They have probably been labelled just another lying government agency, all because a couple of problems emerged with the CIA. But its totally irrational to deduce all agencies of the state are somehow corrupt, because of the intelligence services. I'm not saying you are doing this, but many appear to be.

Climate change scepticism increased after the Iraq war blunder and again after climategate. Its an unfortunate over reaction.

william5331 at 04:53 AM on 25 December 2016

Infographic: climate change and 2015’s year of wild weather

In the vernacular, "You ain't seen nothing yet". When the Arctic ocean is open for significant periods in the summer, it becomes a giant solar collector. Instead of prevailing sinking air over the Arctic, we will have rising air, especially in the fall when the land rapidly cools off. We will have a typical off-shore wind going on for longer and longer periods and sucking climate zones nothward with it. This added transfer of heat from the south will ensure more melting and the perpetuation of the situation whether or not we knock carbon pollution on the head. In other words a tipping point or light switch phenomenon. I wonder how low we would have go get atmospheric Carbon dioxide before we would cause a flip back to the former situration and then how harsh that flip would be for a world that has started to adapt to the new situation.

michael sweet at 00:42 AM on 25 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Richard,

Please provide a reference for your claim that the West engineered a coup in Ukraine, it is different that I recall.

As for proof that Russia invaded Ukraine perhaps this WIkipedia reference documenting extensive Russian military involvement in the "Ukrainian revolution" is adequate. Since the leader of the Ukrainian insurgents was a Russian officier it stands to reason that Russia was involved. There was no problem in Crimea before th e RUssian invasion.

You need to provide references for your claims.

Richard13699 at 21:27 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Just a correction that I think is important to make..

I think you will find that it was the West that engineered a coup in Kiev/Ukraine (Nuland openly boasted of it) replacing a corrupt but elected government with one that was much closer to the West ie would do their bidding, even though Russia had offered some very attractive financial incentives to help the Ukrainians pay of a huge gas bill.

There is NO proof that Russia invaded the Ukraine. They did enter the Crimea to protect the people in the East who were being threatend (and later attacked repeatedly) by forces of the coup, including fascists/Neonazi elements of Right Sector/Svoboda. The Crimean population held a referendum and voted to stay closer to Russia. No surprise considering the majority are ethnic Russians and Kiev coup leaders/West wanted to take control of them and the Black Sea port of Sevastopol..

The significance of Trump perhaps being closer to President Putin and Russia (if that be so, although recent events make that hard to believe) is that there is probably less chance now of a Nuclear Winter, but more chance of ongoing climate heating. Either will be ultimately catastrophic for life as we like it but at least climate change is somewhat slower than a nuclear exchange and gives surviving sentients more chance, perhaps to prepare for further changes.

Tom Curtis at 20:22 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

stevecarsonr @8, the key premise of your theory is that the CIA is the only source on the claim that Russian, security agency aligned hackers were responsible for the hacking of the Democrat National Committee. That key premise is false. In particular, the private internet security firm, CrowdStrike has published its analysis of the DNC hack, revealing some of the evidence involved, and stating in the update,

"CrowdStrike stands fully by its analysis and findings identifying two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network in May 2016."

This analysis has been independently confirmed by Fidelisecurity, who state:

"Based on our comparative analysis we agree with CrowdStrike and believe that the COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR APT groups were involved in successful intrusions at the DNC. The malware samples contain data and programing elements that are similar to malware that we have encountered in past incident response investigations and are linked to similar threat actors.
In addition to CrowdStrike, several other security firms have analyzed and published findings on malware samples that were similar and in some cases nearly identical to those used in the DNC incident. Many of these firms attributed the malware to Russian APT groups."

What is more, according to Time Magazine (who does not share an owner with the Washington Post):

"The private firms admit their open source evidence is not conclusive, but say in the world of cyber-attribution, this is close to as good as it gets. Those familiar with the classified evidence say there is even more convincing information that has not been released."

That this was reported by Time Magazine undercuts the second premise of your wild claims, ie, that the reporting is through the Washington Post who are compromised by financial entanglements with the CIA.

In short, your conspiracy theory, like most such theories, is only sustainable by the careful neglect of contrary facts.

stevecarsonr at 18:21 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

nigelj,

"Stevecasnr @10, well at least you now admit you dont endorse Putin, because your other post certainly lacked clarity on that."

It lacked clarity on 1,000,000 other points that have no relationship to the question.

"Theres no reason to doubt the CIA have information that Russia was involved in a hack."

Their record of making stuff up? What I wrote in my earlier comment is the reason to doubt.

"You are sounding like a conspiracy theorist!"

Got me. I think the CIA helped foreign overthrow governments, and testified on the record to what turned out to be lies. Must be that I'm a conspiracy theorist. Perfect, that's that then.

nigelj at 18:11 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Stevecasnr @10, well at least you now admit you dont endorse Putin, because your other post certainly lacked clarity on that.

It's not a fake news story. Theres no reason to doubt the CIA have information that Russia was involved in a hack. They have said the have very clear evidence, and have released a small part of it already. Just because their evidence on Iraq was weak, doesnt mean you can dismiss them for all eternity. Thats childish thinking. .

The FBI have also stated they have evidence Russia was involved. Are they making it up as well?

You are sounding like a conspiracy theorist! However I do agree with some of your cynicism in general terms, but dont let it overtake your assessment of Putin. He is running Russia almost like a police state, so its not a huge step to believe he or possibly his subordinates have been involved in this hack.

People in America have started to believe everything is lies, which is just absurd. The G W Bush blunder over Iraq has destroyed trust. Trump is adding petrol to this fire. Unfortunately it is also undermining trust in science.

stevecarsonr at 17:24 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

nigelj @9:

What have I said to endorse Vladimir Putin? Nothing. But let's throw that into the mix to somehow support our non-argument.

Anyone not endorsing the fake news story reported by the Washington Post that was allegedly produced by the highly ethical CIA must, logically, be a fan of Vladimir Putin?

Or is this a parody article and I'm the dummy that didn't get the joke?

nigelj at 16:35 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Stevecarsnr @8, it's true past presidents scaremongered about Russia and the cia have a dubious history, and Chomsky is about right, but so what? Vladimir Putin is still not a good leader. read the history. Even Chomsky would probably agree.

stevecarsonr at 14:30 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

I love the "Russians are Coming" ploy. You think it's played out and no one will fall for it again, but no..

JFK running for president in 1960, outflanked Nixon with it. Reagan and the "evil empire" in the 80s. And now Clinton in 2016. And of course, in the meantime, countless lower level politicians showing their tough credentials.

At least this time around we have an organization with the highest ethical standards inspiring news stories.

Who would need evidence when the CIA is allegedly the off-the-record source?

Apart from a few minor ethical blemishes like overthrowing foreign governments, attempting to overthrow other foreign governments, running domestic psyops campaigns through favorable media sources, manufacturing evidence favorable to an incumbent government so they can invade a foreign country, lying on the record about torture, lying on the record about spying on oversight committees - apart from those minor pranks (I probably missed a few) - absolutely an unimpeachable source.

And the conduit for this unimpeachable off the record uninvestigable evidence - the Washington Post. Owned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owner of around 17% of Amazon, and luckily, not in hock to the CIA at all. Well, apart from Amazon's $600M contract for IT resources with the CIA. But let's not get picky.

I don't even know why I wrote these comments.

The Russians are Coming. Let's get serious. We will fight them on the beaches..

[Notes for students of pointless-level picky detail - read Noam Chomsky (if you prefer left-leaning commentary), Andrew J. Bacevich Washington Rules (if you prefer right-leaning commentary), or The Intercept if you want current commentary on CIA scoops from a left perspective and also appreciate Glenn Greenwald and Hero Snowden].

jdeutsch at 14:26 PM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Interesting. If the climate hack of 2009 had Russian fingerprints, they certainly got punished in 2010 with the record heat and massive fires. Anyone know if they saw the connection?

One Planet Only Forever at 10:49 AM on 24 December 2016

Infographic: climate change and 2015’s year of wild weather

There is a new CBC News article related to this topic "Arctic temperatures soar to 30 C above normal".

One Planet Only Forever at 10:41 AM on 24 December 2016

Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy

swampfoxh@6,

Like you, I have followed SkS for many years.

A minor point about what has been posted on SkS regarding Republican voter support for action on climate change.

I recall many postings on SkS mentioning facts similar to the Yale/George Mason study. Admittedly some may have been in articles listed in the Weekly Updates rather than as separate postings.

A recent one (14Nov2016) was "On Trump and climate, America is split in two by these demographics" which includes a reference and link to the NY Times article "Most Republicans Say They Back Climate Action, Poll Finds".

Other postings have been clearer about pointing out that nearly half of Republican voters accepting climate science and the need for action is a far lower percentage than among Democrat voters.

It has also been pointed out that nearly half of the Republican voters continue to fight against having to accept the actual common sense understanding of what is going on regarding climate science.

Several studies presented or referenced in SkS have clearly shown that far more than 90% of the people who dedicate their thoughts and efforts to the understanding of climate science have established a common sense understanding of what is going on. My version is:

human burning of fossil fuels is rapidly increasing CO2 levels
leading to a rapidly warming of the planet (and other impacts particularly in the oceans)
and rapid climate change (that is regionally very difficult to forecast - so it will be difficult for future generations to plan for and adapt successully to)
and the climate changes and the other damaging consequences of the efforts to most profitably exhaust the easiest to access buried hydrocarbon resources will not be beneficial to future generations of humanity (in addition to future generations have less access to resouces, riskier and more damaging is always cheaper and quicker - more profitable - if it can be gotten away with) .

I understand the challenge of getting people to accept that 'developed perceptions of prosperity and opportunity for more personal benefit are undeserved if the actions Trumping-up those perceptions are not advancing humanity to a lasting better future for all'.

Hopefully you are able to reach and disrupt the thinking of some of those who appear determined to be the type of people Nigel Farage infamously referred to when Brexit debate facts were presented contrary to his desired misleading messaging, people fed up with having experts/elites (the best of a group) explain the best understanding of what is actually going on.

It would be good to see that recalcitrant half of Republican voters (the term deplorable could be applied to them but its use clearly rubbed people the wrong way) change their minds and better understand climate science, along with the smaller portion of Democrat voters who also deplorably choose to misunderstand the subject.

Eclectic at 08:18 AM on 24 December 2016

So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…

My apologies to moderators.

My post was a response to two posts [one now snipped] where the "author" was being obnoxiously disingenuous and "gish-gallopingly" time-wasting.

Humorous quips seemed the only worthy response to them — and his persistent and frequent spelling errors counted as "icing on the cack".

nigelj at 08:12 AM on 24 December 2016

Infographic: climate change and 2015’s year of wild weather

More extreme weather will indeed impact the third world harder. These people live day to day where a single problem is very challenging, and will find climate change hard to cope with. They will want massive financial help, or to immigrate to other countries less affected, or with more wealth.

We should obviously help, out of compassion, but it will be a lot for western countries to deal with. It's in our interests to reduce this problem occuring in the first place, by reducing emissions. You could call that enlightened self interest. You would think political interests that promote self interest would understand this, but they often can't seem to connect the dots.

The arctic is warming at quite a rate. This surely has to alter the basic circulatory system that moves heat from the equator to the poles. This could in theory impact on things like the monsoon, in unexpected and unfortunate ways, and entire countries of huge size are adapted (just barely) to this event following a certain pattern. It affects many millions of subsistence or near subsistence farmers. Even a small change in the monsoon system will have serious impact.

nigelj at 07:04 AM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

One planet only @4, I agree with all your comments. I regretted using the term populist the second I pressed submit, because it means different things to different people. But I stand by the rest of what I said.

Personally I think populist is an idea with good and bad connotations. Popular policies are often genuinely good, and I like binding public referedums on policies, and proper consideration given to the concerns of ordinary people, and majority sentiment.

But populism can sometimes be used to unfairly oppress minorities, and Trump plays to the dark side of populism.

nigelj at 06:56 AM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

PaulD @3, I agree that climate scepticism is primarily a war by vested interests to divide and confuse, but the email hacks discussed do seem to relate to Russia, and almost certainly have a range of motives. I was just sticking to the content of the article.

Dugan is another figure on the "alternate right" and a very concerning sort of person. Scientists just doing their jobs with integrity are up against people like Dugan, and political and business interests who sometimes want to win at all costs, and who recognise no sense of fair play. Its a most uneven playing field.

One Planet Only Forever at 06:09 AM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

nigelj@1,

Populist does not really mean what you are using the term for. The Populists were a political movement that included socialist objectives like graduated taxation and state ownership of railways for the public good (to improve the circumstances of the less fortunate at the expense of the more fortunate).

Even using a term like popularist may not be helpful since my 1988 Canadian Edition of Webster's Dictionary indicates that is a person who seeks wide public support (and my older Oxford Dictionary does not even include that term). The likes of Putin and Trump do not seek wide support, they seek just enough support at the right time in the right place. And the thrive on misunderstanding that leads peoples thoughts awary from understanding and supporting what is required to advance humanity to a lasting better future for all (since the actions required for that advancement are clearly contrary to many of their selfish interests).

My description of Putin attempting to not use terms that could be twisted is: 'A greedy selfish person who deliberately and willingly appeals for popular support by promoting selfishness, intolerance and many other special interest groups that would be considered deplorable by Main Stream aspects of humanity that pursue the advancement of humanity through raised awareness, new learning and better understanding'. Trump and so many other powerful wealthy people are just like Putin.

Use of 'terms' can be subject to misunderstanding, especially when the meaning of a term can be subverted the way "Sustainable" has been subverted by proponents of the burning of fossil fuels to label efforts to "Prolong" the activity that is fundamanetally not sustainable (if sustain means continue to do indefinitely - which it did and always should), and that udeniabley needs to be curtailed far before the 'Freer choices of people in an industrialized consumerism midsleading marketing ruled economy of popularity and profitability' would end it.

soo doh nim at 01:28 AM on 24 December 2016

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50

What do you guys make of the refutation(?) of this that appeared in the Telegraph?

Paul D at 01:07 AM on 24 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

Come on guys and girls.
You need to stop over analysing what 'Russia' is doing or even individuals in Russia.

It is simple propaganda. The same goes for climate skeptics (in any country) etc.

There is NO interest in science. It is purely a war of intelligence and propaganda.

The idea is to confuse and destabilise the enemy. Hence you still get climate change skeptics deliberately regurgitating old lies and myths about ice, polar bears, volcanoes etc. There is no interest in science, it's purely to confuse, thereby maintaining the policy status quo or to reverse it to some previous state.

Hacking emails, denial of service attacks etc. It's all about causing disruption.

Remember, this is all during peace time. Basically if war broke out, nowhere online would be safe!
We made our bed...

chriskoz at 21:02 PM on 23 December 2016

Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools

People in US as well as the rest of English-speaking world may not know who is standing behind that russian efforts to hijack western political system: Aleksandr Dugin. Specialising in propaganda and information war, employing social media, Dugin is the likely mastermind behind all latest russian hacking efforts. Consider for example this analysis. Based on this information, Dugin can be characterised as present day's Joseph Goebbels.

The same cannot be said of 2009 climate gate because there is no evidence of Dugin involvement. I don't think such nazi extremist as Dugin even cares about climate science: his motivation is purely political and not anti-scientific, and fossil fuel interests do not seem to influence him.

I'm mentioning Dugin here to remind the SkS readers how vulnerable western political systems are to such attacks: more vulnerable than we do realise. Dugin is now celebrating his big success in US and no doubt preparing for next polls in Europe: France and Germany. Unless we (western world where I also belong) find a way to stop post-truth propaganda influencing people via social media, we will continue losing that information war.

But there is no point discussing this subject here any further because it has nothing to do with climate sicence. This whole op is in fact unrelated to climate science. The link - that the 2009 climate gate hacks and 2016 election hacks that gave rise to post-truth politics of trumpism, both originated in Russia - appears incidental and perpetrators were likely different groups representing different special interests.

Eclectic at 16:15 PM on 23 December 2016

So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…

Andrew1776, paleologically speaking, it is difficult to determine which of your alternatives is the correct one.

From a purely teleological analysis, it seems appropriate that volcanism would spew iridium, but commet impact would disperse irridium.

Andrew, you have frequently mentioned the crestaceous period — but not defined when it occurred. The very name suggests it was the period when the cockatoo evolved — and when there was a high level of sulphur in the air?

Or were you meaning the cretinaceous period? — being the new (post-Holocene) period, when the climate-science denier evolved.

Moderator Response:

[PS] Attacks on grammar and spelling are not conducive to a constructive discussion and you run perilously close to ad hominem and inflammatory tone.

A constructive response would answer the question with appropriate references to back the answer.

nigelj at 12:31 PM on 23 December 2016

Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science

Michael sweet @10, I totally accept what you say, and that study seems very plausible to me.

I just picked numbers from less flattering studies, (Forbes etc) so that I'm not accused of cherrypicking the most flattering study (even though it may well be the most accurate). Even the numbers I quoted create a persuasive case for renewables.

Costs of solar and wind are all going in one direction, down, much like microprocessors did, following "Moores law". Maybe something similar is happening with renewable energy.

Andrew1776 at 12:29 PM on 23 December 2016

So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…

Question for a geologist: Is it possible that the irridium layer was formed from volcanism? It seems to me that the most likely way irridium would cover the earth is if a commet hit the earth billions of years ago and was incorporated into the earth's crust and then melted and spewed out through volcanism that spewed the irridum into the atmosphere. Has anyone proposed this? Is there anything in the geological record that would distinguish between irridium upon impact and irridium through volcanism?

Moderator Response:

[RH] I would suggest you use google scholar to do a little bit of research so that you can form intelligent questions. After that, if you have a question that pertains specifically to a topic on SkS, post it there.

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