Today our accidental President — the joker who has repeatedly referred climate change as a “hoax,” despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that it is real and most certainly caused by mankind’s actions — will gut any and all of the actions taken by President Obama to fight that globe-toasting scourge, and will then begin tearing down the our country’s participation in global Paris climate accords.
May I take this opportunity to write him a quick note? Thanks.
Dear President Trump:
If you are so certain that man-made climate change is a "hoax," you shouldn't have any problem in answering three simple questions:
First, disprove the physics behind the blockage, absorption, and re-radiation of long-wave (IR) radiation by large, active molecules such as CO2, CH4, N2O, and the like, and how that blockage and re-radiation warms the troposphere in quite easily measurable and quantifiable amounts while concomitantly and measurably cooling the stratosphere, as has been well-demonstrated for many decades.
Second, please explain how it's meaningless that that warming not only correlates quite smoothly with the steep increase in radiative-forcing CO2 in the troposphere in, say, the last century, as well as being mathematically and demonstrably well-fitted through multiple well-sourced and peer-reviewed analyses to prove that such other forcings as volcanoes, solar activity, aerosols, and other niceties can't account for the same global temperature rises.
Third, challenge and refute all of the easily correlated temperature measurements from a wide range of independent global sources, such as those by NOAA, NASA, UK Met Office, BEST, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and others over the past half-century or more.
We'll wait. Thanks.
Yours truly,
America
C’mon, fellow Americans, let’s grow a pair. The simple fact is that anthropogenically generated climate change is heating the earth’s surface and troposphere, acidifying the ocean, transferring heat into the deep ocean, decreasing the arctic albedo, and destabilizing glaciers and ice sheets. It's no longer arguable. It's a fact. It’s also a problem — a big problem, but not an insurmountable one. It does, however, need all of us — including our elected representatives — to face facts and come up with solutions.
However, climate denialists such as Trump, EPA “Director” Scott Pruitt, and the rest of the Trumpistas would simply prefer to ignore the well-vetted and carefully analyzed science created — and thoroughly argued over, trust me — by thousands of researchers from a broad range of countries. Many go as far as to imply that all of their work is somehow an insanely complex and conspiratorial fraud — which would be insulting if it weren’t so patently silly.
As an attendee at American Geophysical Union’s annual Fall Meeting and other conferences, it appalls me that Trump, his minions, and his “It’s cold outside so climate change must be a hoax!” followers not only ignore decent science, but trash decent, honest, concerned, careful, honest scientists, pelting them with silly ad hominem attacks based on assertions of “greed”, “careerism”, and “grant seeking”. And then there deniers who simply hide behind ludicrous “lib’ruls wanna steal our freedoms ’n‘ guns” arguments, latch onto crazy ’n‘ unprovable solar-variability theories, or simply rub their hands over their ears while chanting "La-la-la-la-la, I can't HEAR you!"
Folks, human-generated climate change — and those who want us to ignore it — is a problem. Luckily, it’s a solvable problem. We’re smart Americans with smart allies all over the globe. We’re inventive. We’re innovative. We can fix it.
As long as we get our political leaders’ heads out of their denialist asses.