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Asked About Climate Risks, Trump is on to Cincinnati

Donald Trump sat down with the Washington Post editorial board and revealed in 2016's Republican Party, you can win the presidential nomination without knowing anything about anything.

Trump talked about how "double sanctions" work better than sanctions, that infrastructure is all about luxury airports, went on a 738-word rant about his hands, and rambled incoherently about Iraqi oil. The full transcript is worth reading to really soak in how much, in terms of chance of winning, it doesn't matter whether Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders - either will mop the floor with Trump, who sounds way over his head the minute he can't shout his way out of a jam.

For climate activists, the section on global warming is the must-read. There are science deniers who know how to sound like they can talk smart, like Ted Cruz's made-up speech about satellite data. And then there are people like Trump who don't know anything at all about climate science (other than they're supposed to be against it) but can't help themselves from blabbling anyway:

HIATT: Last one: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?

TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.

STROMBERG: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?

TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.

RYAN: Thank you for joining us.

In this answer, nuclear weapons seems to be Trump's version of we're on to Cincinnati. Don't like the question or any of the possible answers? Answer a different question!

Meanwhile, January and February shattered global heat records and climate scientists are now warning the climate crisis may be much worse and happening much faster than we thought. Thank you for joining us!

NBD, Just a Tropical Storm Heading for Alaska

Just after South Carolina was hit with biblical flooding, breaking monthly rainfall records in a matter of days, post-Tropical Storm Oho is now heading for Alaska. You know things are bad when the media is openly talking about how climate change is influencing Oho.

"Although tropical systems do, on occasion, move to the northeast in the central Pacific, since 1949, no late season (October or later) system has formed south of Hawaii and moved to the northeast," reports Weather.com's Chris Dolce.

Not only has Alaska been baking in record-shattering heat, but as the AP's Becky Bohrer reports, it's flooding and burning as well:

Eight of the 10 wettest summers in Juneau have occurred since 2000, he said. Records for the site date to the early 1940s. The frequency of wildfire seasons where at least a million acres have been burned has roughly doubled since the early 1990s, he said.

Better drill the last of the oil out of there before it becomes completely uninhabitable.

Ignoring Climate Change Fails to Make It Go Away, 2015 Edition

With a few outliers like Germany, nations aren't taking aggressive action on climate change. President Obama is taking a two steps forward, one step back approach. Congress is doing absolutely nothing.

So what are we left with?

"The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit," writes David Roberts in a must-read at Vox.

In DC, Corrupt Values of Polluter Lobbyists Taken For Granted

E&E TV today interviews Peter Glaser, a lawyer for Troutman Sanders, who argues states should simply ignore federal limits on climate-disrupting carbon pollution. I understand that not every interview can be a deep dive into the morality of changing the climate, but do polluter lobbyists always have to get such a free pass for profiting from the damage they're doing to our children's future?

The host never even mentions who Glaser represents, but his website tells us he works for "electric utility, mining and other energy industry companies and associations." More specifically, OpenSecrets.org shows Southern Company, a huge coal-fired power company and currently ranked as America's 3rd-biggest polluter, has been Troutman Sanders' number one lobbying client for the last two years and has given them millions in business over the last 15 years.

I understand the show is focused on inside-the-Beltway maneuvers & mechanics, and "aren't you history's greatest monster?" could be a little out of place. But shouldn't Glaser have to say something about whether cashing in by selling a slogan of "just say no to cutting carbon pollution" might be just a tad morally irresponsible?

@coleenjose for @everydayclimatechange | Children played in a suffocating fog of mosquito repellent in the outskirts of Tacloban City, Philippines. Volunteers sprayed the repellent along rows of bunkhouses in a shelter site, a break from the monotony inside the camp where hundreds of people displaced by Typhoon Haiyan lived in temporary shelters. Thousands of Filipinos are still displaced because of Haiyan and typhoons in 2014. The Global Climate Risk Index of 2015 ranked the Philippines as the country most affected by weather-related disasters including intensifying storms, floods and heatwaves. #everydayclimatechange #everydayeverywhere #philippines #typhoonhaiyan #globalwarming #displacement #cop21 #reportage #coleenjose #aftermath

A photo posted by Everyday Climate Change (@everydayclimatechange) on Jan 30, 2015 at 5:36am PST

Interstellar: Climate Chaos May Not Mean Scientific Enlightenment

Interstellar spoiler alert: Ignoring climate change fails to make it go away.

My wife and I saw Interstellar in Imax 70mm last night and you should too. It's flat-out the best theater experience ever, a 2001 for the digital effects era.

Interstellar is cli fi (climate fiction), seeing a not-too-distant future - maybe late in this century - in which the climate crisis has spiraled out of control. Humanity is reduced to subsistence farming, eating mostly corn, the last thing left that will grow in the heat, drought and extreme storms. The fate of people in coastal areas and big cities is left unsaid, with only passing references to crumbling militaries and failed governments. Crops fail and soil blows away in super-sized Dust Bowl storms, making air pollution a daily, lethal threat. Our choice is life in the stars or life underground.

Climate activists often express hope that increasing evidence of climate impacts, such as superstorm Sandy, will awaken the apathetic and the deniers to the need for action. But the movie hints that dealing with a climate crisis wouldn't necessarily translate to instant, universal scientific acceptance.

To keep Americans focused on the desperate fight to grow food, students are told the Apollo missions were faked. Director Christopher Nolan hints the move isn't strictly practical, but also a political adaptation to the chaos, tinging the scene with Tea Party fervor:


"We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars," laments Matthew McConaughey's Coop. "Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt."

It's a fantastic film, but I'd rather count on solar panels and wind turbines to save us from industrial carbon pollution now than wait for the wormhole to appear.

New Data: Climate Crisis Accelerating Faster Than Anyone Expected

Public statements about climate change, whether from scientists, journalists or politicians, are always tempered by an element of "surely at some point reasonable people will decide to act."

But it's 2014 and the world has yet to collectively act, and now the data is screaming at scientists that the climate crisis could be much worse than anyone predicted.

And tomorrow Congress will again fail to act, but no one will freak out because at some point, I'm sure someone will have to fix it, right? Right. Glad we settled that so we can go back to enjoying low-cost-today coal, oil and fracked gas, comforted by the knowledge that future reasonable people will pay the horrible bill that comes due.

Erick Erickson: Screw Our Children, I Want Cheap Coal Now

"Let the seas rise. Let the wind blow." That's top Republican commentator Erick Erickson's position on climate change. I would say he's a "conservative" commentator, but there's absolutely nothing conservative about gas up your SUV cheaply now and leave the bill for future generations to pay. It's pure selfishness - "I've got mine so screw you" presented as profound political philosophy.

Erickson may just be one blogger, but here he gets to the core motivations of today's Congressional Republican leadership - America isn't worth investing in. Energy? Just give me what's cheapest today, if we need alternatives tomorrow, someone else can spend the money on it. Education? If my family needs that, I can pay to send my children to private school, but I won't volunteer a dime in additional taxes to improve our community. The environment? I can buy home air filters and bottled water - if you can't, too bad for you & yours.

"We are all going to die," Erickson cynically concludes. "Just not today." And by then, it'll be up to our children and grandchildren to build massive hurricane barriers outside every East Coast city to keep out the rising seas and monster storms as the bill comes due for all that cheap coal, oil and fracked gas.

Ignoring Climate Change Enters 26th Year of Failing to Stop Climate Change

Since climate scientist Michael Mann warned Congress of the emerging climate crisis in 1988, Congress has wholeheartedly embraced the strategy of ignoring climate change in hopes it goes away.

As Eric Holthaus reports at Slate today, ignoring climate change just had its strongest quarter ever of failing to stop climate change, with April to June 2014 going into the books as Earth's warmest three months on record.

But switching to solar and wind power might cost you an extra dollar a month on your electricity bill. Best to stick to ignorance! /hits self in head with hammer

Walter Cronkite Warned of Climate Change 34 Years Ago Today

Walter Cronkite introduced this report on climate change on April 3, 1980 and with the benefit of hindsight the only thing that seems inaccurate is the time-frame. While the reporter warns a climate crisis could be upon us in "50 to 70 years," just 34 years later a new IPCC report documents how we're already seeing rapid climate changes threatening our water & food supplies and worsening extreme weather.


Via Climate Crocks & D.R. Tucker

Hottest November Ever

Just in from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center: November was the hottest on record and January-November 2013 has been the fourth-hottest ever, more than a full degree above the 20th century average.

Climate Deniers, Super Typhoon Haiyan Is Looking At You

One year after superstorm Sandy became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Super Typhoon Haiyan just became the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone on record, hitting the Philippines with sustained winds of 190-195mph and gusts to 235mph. That's as strong as a top-of-the-scale EF-5 tornado ... except Haiyan's eye is eight miles wide.

Why is the storm so historically strong? NOAA blames warm deep water. When climate science deniers claim a global warming "pause," the heat isn't missing - it's right there lurking in the ocean, waiting to put super typhoons on steroids.

Better burn all the coal and oil while we still can.

What's in the New UN IPCC Climate Report?

Check out some good recaps from Chris Mooney at Mother Jones and Jason Samenow at the Washington Post.

Another Inconvenient Truth: Sometimes American Politics Kill People

As the carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere rocket past 400 parts per million this week, what's more evident than ever is the inability of our political systems to respond to this crisis that's killing Americans right now and growing worse by the day.

Politicians and the reporters who cover them do NOT like hearing that. They absolutely hate being told that the American political system isn't responding fast enough to a crisis and that people might die as a result. This is how we do things! How dare you ask us to change just for your issue? The folks in industry don't tell us that we're accomplices in mass death and they throw really killer parties.

But we knew that cigarettes killed tens of millions of people and tobacco companies covered it up ... and Washington took decades to respond. We knew lack of health insurance killed millions of people and bankrupted millions of other families ... and Washington took decades to respond.

The climate crisis cannot be solved by horse trading. It cannot be solved by trying to say yes to everyone - to cutting carbon pollution AND to whatever Big Oil and Big Coal are demanding. And it cannot be solved by We'll Have to Leave It There journalism that tells viewers, "Scientists say this, polluter front groups say that, who can say what's true?"

We need what Grist's David Roberts calls wartime mobilization - an all of the above approach to cutting carbon emissions. Can Washington answer that call to action?

Couldn't Make DC Climate Rally? Watch This

Gore: Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather "Like a Nature Hike Through the Book of Revelation"

Former Vice President Al Gore appeared on NBC's The Today Show this morning talking about how the climate crisis is fueling extreme weather:

Hurricane Sandy and other recent weather-related disasters, like this week’s intense flooding and monstrous sea foam levels in Australia, are a direct result of climate change, former vice president Al Gore said Tuesday.

“These storms – it’s like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation on the news every day now,” he told TODAY’s Matt Lauer. “People are connecting the dots.”

Watch it below and check out a bonus clip of Gore meeting actress Melissa McCarthy.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

2012: The Year the Climate Crisis Got Medieval on America

2012 wasn't just America's hottest year on record - it left every previous year in the dust. If you're in the Midwest or Plains, where 2012's historic drought now stretches into 2013, you can take that literally.

Check out that graphic of NOAA data from ClimateCentral.org. 1998 beat 2006 by just a hundredth of a degree and 5th-place 1921 by only half a degree. But 2012 beat 1998 by nearly a full degree. Amazing.

And our climate inaction comes with a huge pricetag. Thanks in large part to Superstorm Sandy, Evan Lehmann of E&E News reports most of the global economic burden of the climate crisis fell on America:

Nearly all the world's economic damage from storms, drought, fire and earthquakes was centered in the United States as it experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded, according to Munich Re, a global reinsurance company. More than 90 percent of insured losses worldwide occurred in the United States, well above the 30-year average of 65 percent.

ClimateCrocks.com says 2012 was the year climate change got real for Americans:



So far in 2013, Australia has been ground zero for the climate crisis. The heat wave there has been so unprecedented, forecasters have had to invent new colors for the temperature map.

Climate Change Fueled Wild Weather in New England in 2012. Will 2013 be Worse?

While NOAA and NASA haven't made official pronouncements yet, 2012 is looking like a climate change-fueled record-smasher for America's hottest year ever. As you'd expect, cities across the country broke local records for hottest year ever, with MetroWest Daily News' Rob Haneisen detailing 2012's extreme weather in Massachusetts - not only on record temperatures, but drought and strong storms:

For Boston, statistical highlights were that it was the second warmest winter on record and the warmest spring on record. These records go back to 1878. The average mean temperature for the year was 2.8 degrees above normal; rainfall was 7.04 inches below normal and snowfall - not surprisingly - was 31.7 inches below normal. Winter and spring also had average mean temperatures of 5.4 and 5.3 degrees above normal.

For Worcester, statistical highlights were that it was the second warmest winter and the warmest spring on record. The average mean temperature for the year was 3.4 degrees above normal; rainfall was 4.19 inches below normal and snowfall was 14.4 inches below normal. Winter and spring also had average mean temperatures of 6.0 and 5.6 degrees above normal.

2012 was also an above-normal season for tropical storms with 19 named storms (average is 12) and 10 hurricanes (average is 6). Here's a link to a wrap-up of the Atlantic tropical season from NOAA. Our most notably entry is post-tropical cyclone Sandy this year - the second consecutive year of a devatasting cyclone affecting New England (Irene was 2011's entry).

Hartford also broke its record for warmest year on record, with Providence coming in at 2nd-warmest. But as Elizabeth Harball of E&E News reports, The Queen City takes the cake: "The biggest record jump occurred in Burlington, Vt., which had an average temperature of 50 degrees in 2012, exceeding the site's previous high, set in 1998, by 1.6 degrees." That's not 1.6 degrees above average, or breaking a single-day's record by 1.6 degrees - the average temperature for an entire year was nearly two degrees higher than any previous year on record. Amazing.

And New Scientist warns that because global warming is melting Arctic sea ice, 2013 could see even more extreme weather:

Predictions that a major El Niño warming event - and the coming solar maximum - would help make next year the warmest on record now seem wide of the mark. All eyes will probably be on the Arctic instead. Some say the record loss of sea ice in summer 2012 was a one-off, others that it was the start of a runaway collapse. If the latter, summer sea ice could virtually disappear as early as 2016. What is certain is that the ice reforming now will be the thinnest on record, priming it for destruction next summer. [...]

Research in 2012 implicated the fast-warming Arctic in a slowing of the jet stream. This is bringing extreme weather to mid-latitudes, including prolonged cold spells in Europe, Russia's 2010 heatwave, and record droughts in the US in 2011 and 2012. Watch out for more weird weather in 2013.

Learn more about how global warming is fueling extreme weather.

U.S. Temperatures Went Off the Charts in 2012

The US didn't just have a hot year. It blew past every record of the past 117 years. ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-preci… …. twitter.com/PeterGleick/st…
— Peter Gleick (@PeterGleick) January 1, 2013

Ignoring the Climate Crisis, Fixating on Phony Ones

When our children are wondering why we didn't solve the climate crisis when we had the chance, I'm sure they'll be thankful we took the time to try to gut their retirement benefits.

This morning I watched +Meet The Press host David Gregory and his panel not only agree Social Security and Medicare must be cut, but to brainstorm aloud strategy for making it happen. This very same panel had just gotten done unanimously agreeing that objective journalists are not allowed to say that Republicans are the problem in Washington. But they were now designing their very own political campaign.

Despite massive public opposition to social safety net cuts, why did these champions of objectivity assume gutting the social safety net is as American as apple pie? Because people in the insular, wealthy world of Beltway politics will never need to put off a trip to the grocery store until their Social Security check arrives. The threat of going hungry could never compare to the alleged threat of the budget deficit.

Except the same people who push deficit hysteria in public tip their hand at the negotiating table. They don't care about deficits - what they're really after is tax cuts for the wealthy:

In a tremendous irony, Republican requests for lower tax rates, a high estate tax threshold, and a permanent AMT fix; combined with Democratic requests to delay the sequester, include a “doc fix” for Medicare physicians, and extend emergency unemployment benefits; have left the parties negotiating toward a plan that would result in no net deficit reduction over 10 years, according to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin.

Republicans know it's all a charade - Social Security is solvent through 2038 and Medicare is solvent through 2024. And even then - at least a decade from now - the programs face not crippling bankruptcy but the need for a bit more funding. Considering effective federal tax rates have never been lower, this is not an insurmountable problem.

Meanwhile, James Hansen warned of looming climate insolvency in 1988 and the crisis went full-blown ten years later when we shattered the record for Earth's hottest year. Congress did nothing. After 14 more years of unlimited carbon pollution, 2012 has seen what will likely be America's hottest year on record, record drought and wildfires, and a climate-fueled Superstorm Sandy.

Less than two months later, global warming is once again off the radar in DC - even though just as many Americans recognize global warming is a serious problem as oppose social safety net cuts. This actual crisis, battering America right now, is rarely mentioned on television news and wasn't mentioned in any of this year's presidential debates.

Instead, pundits focus on imaginary social safety net problems and addressing the fiscal cliff austerity crisis that Congress voluntarily created, while ignoring the climate cliff we're already tumbling down. When The Onion gets it and Meet the Press doesn't, we're in big trouble.