The classic climate science denial line: it's cold outside, we really could use some of that global warming ... It is such a standard tactic that the Washington Post's Capital Weather gang, in association with warnings of serious (record-breaking (in many cases)) cold descending on the East Coast, warned against this.
If anyone on the US East Coast asks "where's that global warming", the rest of the world is answering: HERE!
To be clear, one moment's weather situation doesn't prove climate change ... just like a cold weather snap in part of the world doesn't prove it doesn't exist. Winter still happens, cold weather records still occur ... but winters, globally, are shorter and not as cold. And, when it comes to weather records, they should be roughly balanced between hot and cold weather records -- with human-driven climate change, high temperature records (including high lowest temperature) are blowing past cold records to the order of 10-1 globally decade to decade. This isn't 'normal' but the result of humanity putting its thumb (or 7 billion thumbs) on the climate scale.
Rational thinking, listening to experts, understanding science are far from the hallmarks of @RealDonaldTrump.
With perhaps dismay at having to wear a sweater while playing golf for something over the 100th time since he occupied the Oval Office, Trump tweeted out …
In addition to ignoring science and celebrating his science denial, its clear that Trump doesn't follow the Capital Weather Gang and didn't realize that he was providing the straight man idiot to prove their point yesterday.
From my perspective, a response to Trump:
Along with literally billions of other thinking humans around the world, as of 6 November 2016, I thought such idiocy was being relegated where it should be -- to the dustbins of history. Instead, thank you to abysmal media practices, Republican abusive practices (voter suppression), Russian interference, and ..., these anti-intellectual, anti-expert, anti-science fossil fools are occupying the US Federal government and damaging humanity's ability to set a path to tackle climate change and foster a way forward to a prosperous, climate-friendly future.
The shallow ignorance arrogantly demonstrated by Trump might have been been amusing if coming from a powerless old man sitting yelling at his TV ... sadly that is not the case and I am not amused ...
PS:
- Did not have time/energy to take on Trump's deceit re Paris Accords ("going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS") -- in short, false on so many levels. (1) other countries investing too; (2) "pay" assumes no return, when the ROI would (will) be multiple times larger than the investment cost due to multitudes of factors other than simply reduced climate risks; and (c), (d), (e), ...
- See after fold for a number of related tweets/items. Among other things, others similarly warned that deniers would make hay of cold weather ... such as climate scientist MIchael Mann.
- Of particular value, see WashPost's Dino Grandoni's After chilly forecast, Trump tweets U.S. ‘could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming’ for some history re Trump's climate science denial tweets and discussions of the idiocy of Trump's tweet today.
- While this post has different material, overlaps with two Dkos diaries:
- Trump sends idiotic tweet, Democrats pile on
- Capital Weather Gang Calls Out Donald Trump’s False Global Warming Tweet, One Day Early
See also: