EPA head Scott Pruitt
Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has dismissed a basic scientific understanding of climate change by denying that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming.
Pruitt said on Thursday that he did not believe that the release of CO2, a heat-trapping gas, was pushing global temperatures upwards.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” he told CNBC. (emphasis added)
“But we don’t know that yet … We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
This stance puts Pruitt at odds with his own agency, which states on its website that carbon dioxide is the […]
It doesn’t take much research to find out how polluted the air and water of China is.
The idea that they will take the lead on climate change is silly at best. Obama’s climate treaty with them gave them 50 years to START reducing their output of CO2.
It also doesn’t take much research to find that many people with good scientific credentials doubt that mankind is the only cause of climate change.
Science that is “settled” is not science. It is religious dogma.
skhovland, rightwing websites are not a friend to facts or objective information. Seriously, find new ‘talking points’.
#1: The Chinese governments NEW climate directive ramps up in 2030, per the Agreement, That is THIRTEEN years, not “50”, to cap its global warming pollution. Additionally, in 2013 more new clean energy sources were added to the grid in China than fossil fuel-fired power. China is already the world leader in new nuclear and new renewable energy sources
They have already added several hundred gigawatts-worth of clean energy—the Three Gorges Dam alone pumps out 22 gigawatts— but hopes to add as much as 1,000 gigawatts of these low-carbon emitting sources by 2030. That would constitute 20 percent of its energy—and roughly the total amount of all electricity produced in the U.S. or all the coal-fired power plants China has built in the last few decades. It’s also double what the Chinese committed to achieve by 2015 in their current Five-Year Plan.
#2: “…that many people with good scientific credentials doubt that mankind is the only cause of climate change:.
I can only guess here that you are vaguely referring to (as most deniers do) the 1998 OISM Petition Project which has been thoroughly debunked dozens of times. The ONLY requirement to signing that “petition” is an undergraduate degree in ANY science or science-related field which includes, but is not limited to, medical doctors, mechanical engineers, and computer scientists. In fact, Snopes found, based on the group’s OWN numbers, only 12% of the signers have degrees (of any kind) in earth, environmental, or atmospheric science. Of those, nearly all have been discovered to be paid hacks of energy lobbyists or similar organizations with vested interests.
The group itself is founded by a biochemist (not a climate scientists), and the opening cover letter for the petition was written by a lobbyist who worked for the tobacco industry and wholeheartedly campaigned that tobacco smoke inhalation was not a threat to health. The whole thing was a manufactured con job by a non-peer-reviewed study formatted to look as if it were published in a National Academy of Sciences.
My suggestion is that you turn that “dogma” claim around to yourself, put as much time into actual research as you do parroting, and realize how you are being played as a gullible pawn.
I do not think the climate question is even necessary at all. The climate change debate is a waste of time and divides people..perhaps this is its intended function for some. Pollution is bad for all, we have the technology to produce power from abundant sources such as water, wind and sun as well as more innovations on the way. Decentralization allows people to make their own choices not to rely on outdated, legacy fossil fuel technology in favor of cheaper, cleaner more abundant energy sources. Stop subsidizing fossil fuels and allow better choices to be made at the individual home, business or community microgrid level.
Imagine if all the resources wasted on subsidizing and extracting fossil fuel were directed into creating practical energy storage solutions for mass scale and individual use. Corporate controlled government needs to get out of the way sooner than later. Technology is going to make them irrelevant anyway..how quickly this happens is not as clear.
I think we will soon find ourselves scrambling to deal with the consequences of the climate chaos we are experiencing right now.
We already know of places where food crops have been damaged, and this will cause prices to rise as the year goes on.
One of the main problems for the Warmist Religion has always been that they have talked about things that might happen in the distance future.
Maybe they will, but there are no facts about the future.
It would be foolish of us to disrupt our whole economy for the sake of projections that are little more than fantasies.
The climate projections would come true if the trend over the past 100 years continued.
However, trends only continue until they change, and they always change.
Some people say there is data indicating that the trend has been changing for more than a decade.
To see if this is true you could plot the temperature data since 1950 against a 5 year moving average.
Steve —
You have got to stop reading your rightwing sites and start reading actual science reports.
Temperature rise comes first and increased CO2 follows. Why, because increased temperature causes increased release of CO2. Major causes, are deforestation so less CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. Also increased burning of petroleum and, to a lesser extent natural gas, adds CO2. The global monthly average exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in March 2015.
To demonstrate that the atmospheric CO2 increase is man-made is a simple accounting approach ( Cawley 2011). The equation for the change in atmospheric CO2 (ΔCatm) is:
ΔCatm = emissions – absorption