Tag: GOP climate change denial

Unearthed video reveals GOP’s Ron Johnson’s profane and conspiratorial rant at GOP lunch

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On Tuesday, CNN’s KFILE unearthed comments made by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) at a meeting with the Republican Women of Greater Wisconsin luncheon in Wauwatosa, in which he spun profanity-laced conspiracy theories denying climate science.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is — as Lord Monckton said — bullsh*t,” the Wisconsin Republican said, referring to British conservative climate change denier Lord Christopher Monckton. “By the way, it is!”

Johnson went onto lament that “we’re killing ourselves” with measures to address climate change, and went on to call them “a self-inflicted wound.” Continue reading.

The western U.S. is locked in the grips of the first human-caused megadrought, study finds

Washington Post logoOnly one drought in the past 1,200 years comes close to the ongoing, global warming-driven event

A vast region of the western United States, extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years, a study shows. The finding means the phenomenon is no longer a threat for millions to worry about in the future, but is already here.

The megadrought has emerged while thirsty, expanding cities are on a collision course with the water demands of farmers and with environmental interests, posing nightmare scenarios for water managers in fast-growing states.

A megadrought is broadly defined as a severe drought that occurs across a broad region for a long duration, typically multiple decades. Continue reading.

Pelosi warns of ‘existential’ climate threat, vows bold action

The Hill logoDemocrats on Friday warned of the “existential threat” posed by climate change, hammering President Trump‘s inaction on the topic while vowing to move aggressively next year on legislation designed to tackle the global issue.

“The reality of the crisis has to be met with the actuality of action that we take,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters in the Capitol, calling it “the existential threat to this generation.”

Pelosi was joined by a group of Democrats who also participated this week in a climate summit in Madrid, where world leaders, scientists, businesses and environmental activists gathered for talks aimed at boosting the 2015 Paris climate accord, the Obama-era pact forged to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Continue reading

Climate Change Threatens the Stability of the Financial System

Center for American Progress logoAccording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), humans have already caused the planet to warm by 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels.1 Catastrophic floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms are becoming all-too-regular occurrences, and there is overwhelming scientific evidence that paints a clear and devastating picture of the changing climate.2 Under current projections, the overall social, environmental, and economic impacts of climate change could rise to catastrophic levels.3 One estimate suggests that if temperatures rise to 4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels over the next 80 years, global economic losses could mount to $23 trillion per year—permanent damage that would far eclipse the scale of the 2007-2008 financial crisis.4 The speed and magnitude of actions taken to limit carbon emissions will determine how much these impacts can be mitigated over the coming decades. Continue reading “Climate Change Threatens the Stability of the Financial System”

California and nearly two dozen other states sue Trump administration for the right to set fuel-efficiency standards

Washington Post logoLawsuit marks the latest in an escalating fight over one of the nation’s biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

California and 22 other states sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from stripping the nation’s most populous state of its long-standing authority to set its own fuel-efficiency standards on cars and trucks.

“We’ve said it before, and we will say it again: California will not back down when it comes to protecting our people and our environment from preventable pollution,” the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said in a statement announcing the action. “No matter how many times the Trump administration attempts to sabotage our environmental progress, we will fight for clean air.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, marks the latest round in an escalating fight between the White House and California officials over how quickly the nation’s auto fleet must increase its fuel-efficiency. Already, the feud has led to several legal skirmishes, a divided automotive industry and uncertainty in the nation’s car market.

View the complete November 15 article by Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin on The Washington Post website here.

Amid flooding and rising sea levels, residents of one barrier island wonder if it’s time to retreat

OCRACOKE, N.Washington Post logoC. — On any normal late-fall day, the ferries that ply the 30 miles between Swan Quarter and this barrier island might carry vacationing retirees, sports fishermen and residents enjoying mainland getaways after the busy summer tourist season.

But two months ago, Hurricane Dorian washed away all signs of normalcy here. After buzz-cutting the Bahamas, the giant storm rolled overhead, raising a seven-foot wall of water in its wake that sloshed back through the harbor, invading century-old homes that have never before taken in water and sending islanders such as post office head Celeste Brooks and her two grandchildren scrambling into their attics.

Ocracoke has been closed to visitors ever since. Island-bound ferries carry yawning container trucks to haul back the sodden detritus of destroyed homes. And O’cockers — proud descendants of the pilots and pirates who navigated these treacherous shores — are faced with a reckoning: whether this sliver of sand, crouched three feet above sea level between the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound, can survive the threats of extreme weather and rising sea levels. And if it can’t, why rebuild?

View the complete November 9 article by Frances Stead Sellers on The Washington Post website here.

Farmers Don’t Need to Read the Science. We Are Living It.

New York Times logoA new report is another dire warning on climate change.

FIREBAUGH, CALIFORNIA — Many farmers probably haven’t read the new report from the United Nations warning of threats to the global food supply from climate change and land misuse. But we don’t need to read the science — we’re living it.

Here in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, there’s not much debate anymore that the climate is changing. The drought of recent years made it hard to ignore; we had limited surface water for irrigation, and the groundwater was so depleted that land sank right under our feet.

Temperatures in nearby Fresno rose to 100 degrees or above on 15 days last month, which was the hottest month worldwide on record, following the hottest June ever. (The previous July, temperatures reached at least 100 degrees on 26 consecutive days, surpassing the record of 22 days in 2005.) The heat is hard to ignore when you and your crew are trying to fix a broken tractor or harvest tomatoes under a blazing sun. As the world heats up, so do our soils, making it harder to get thirsty plants the water they need.

View the complete August 9 commentary by U.S. farmer Alan Sano on The New York Times website here.

Economic and environmental cost of Trump’s auto rollback could be staggering, new research shows

The administration’s war with California could cost the U.S. economy $400 billion by mid-century.

The Trump administration’s plan to freeze fuel efficiency standards in defiance of California’s stricter, more environmentally friendly rules is set to have dire ramifications for emissions levels and the economy, according to new research out Wednesday.

Rolling back California’s robust vehicle emissions requirements will cost the U.S. economy $400 billion through 2050, an analysis from the environmental policy group Energy Innovation found. President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo Obama-era rules will also increase U.S. gasoline consumption by up to 7.6 billion barrels, subsequently increasing U.S. transport emissions up to 10% by 2035.

Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have been engaged in a bitter feud with California over emissions standards.

View the complete August 7 article by E.A. Crunden on the ThinkProgress website here.

The Greenland ice sheet poured 197 billion tons of water into the North Atlantic in July alone

Washington Post logoOngoing extreme melt event continues, with more than half the ice sheet experiencing melting on July 31.

When one thinks of Greenland, images of an icebound, harsh and forbidding landscape probably come to mind, not a landscape of ice pocked with melt ponds and streams transformed into raging rivers. And almost certainly not one that features wildfires.

Yet the latter description is exactly what Greenland looks like today, according to imagery shared on social media, scientists on the ground and data from satellites.

An extraordinary melt event that began earlier this week continues on Thursday on the Greenland ice sheet, and there are signs that about 60 percent of the expansive ice cover has seen detectable surface melting, including at higher elevations that only rarely see temperatures climb above freezing.

View the complete August 1 article by Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow on The Washington Post website here.

Global warming led to scorching heat in Europe. Leaders must take it seriously.

Washington Post logoWHEN THE Red Sox and Yankees faced off in London Stadium this past Saturday, the players no doubt expected something different. Instead of a typically dreary and cool British summer day, they got a 93-degree scorcher. Pitchers struggled to keep the ball in the park.

But busted ERAs were the least of the concerns as record temperatures swept across Western Europe, where previous heat waves had been surprisingly deadly. France recorded its highest temperature ever — nearly 115 degrees in Gallargues-le-Montueux, near Montpellier — on June 28. Temperatures in the country were 28 degrees above normal. Major school exams were postponed. In Germany, authorities sprayed down trees to keep them cool. Heat damaged Swiss train tracks. Wildfires blazed in Spain. Experts warn that the final toll will take weeks to determine.

What is already clear, however, is the heat wave’s potential connections to human-caused global warming. We do not say this simply because climate change makes heat waves in general more likely, though that is true. It is also because an international consortium of scientists released on Tuesday a report seeking to quantify how global warming may have played into last week’s highs in particular.

View the complete July 5 commentary Editorial Board on The Washington Post website here.