I didn’t want this British video gem (see below) on our climate crisis denying President to go unnoticed here in the states. Feel free to share the video widely.
Trump sat down with Piers Morgan for an interview with Trump on Good Morning Britain and was asked about Prince Charles and his pleas to him for action on the existential threat that is climate change.
H/T to Grist for the find.
Molly Enking writes:
In the middle of President Trump’s controversial U.K. visit, he and Prince Charles were supposed to have a 15-minute sit-down for tea on Tuesday. Ninety minutes later, Trump left the meeting, reportedly after getting something between a lecture and a plea on the climate crisis.
Trump discussed the meeting with British media personality Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Thursday. Prince Charles has been famous for his environmental advocacy for decades. He has been warning about plastic pollution since at least 1970, and his efforts to raise awareness and funds for the environment have raised millions in funds and helped elevate the issue. (Harmony anyone?) Of the prince’s passion for the environment, Trump said, “I think it’s great, I want that.”
Molly continues:
Trump appears unconvinced that the U.S. is part of the problem. “I did say, ‘Well, the United States right now has among the cleanest climates there are based on all statistics.’ And it’s even getting better because I agree with that we want the best water, the cleanest water. Crystal clean, has to be crystal clean air.”
The president really likes this “crystal clean” line. Last year, at a rally in coal country in Charleston, West Virginia, he said: “I want clean air. I want crystal clean water. And we’ve got it. We’ve got the cleanest country in the planet right now. There’s nobody cleaner than us, and it’s getting better and better.”
Politifact checked out these claims and called them “mostly false.” No environmental ranking places the United States at the top of the list for cleanliness. We rank 29th in the world for water quality and 88th for air particulate matter, according to Politifact.
“Crystal Clean”. Expect to hear that line often as the GOP and their corporate overlords unleash their climate propaganda for 2020.
Speaking of propaganda This article from E&E News is definitely worth the read.
White House might make federal scientists debate skeptics
A White House plan to debate the accuracy of climate science has hit a snag: Mainstream scientists are unlikely to participate.
Without a credible team of researchers who accept established climate science, the idea would fall flat, according to two people involved in the discussions. To get around that challenge, top officials planning the "red team" debate have floated the idea of requiring scientists at NASA or NOAA to participate, the sources said.
Another idea would be to require the National Academy of Sciences to review and respond to the work of the team in charge of highlighting uncertainties in the research that underlies the National Climate Assessment. While the sources said the exercise could debut in the coming weeks, they also cautioned that the current state of discussions is fluid.
snip
It appears that those have been sidelined after facing pressure from within the administration, according to sources.
Among the plan's critics are deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell; Kevin Hassett, the outgoing chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council; and Kelvin Droegemeier, the president's science adviser. Happer has been consulting with researchers and think tank analysts about his plan. He has conducted at least two briefings with Trump about his views of climate science, the sources said.
Happer has also briefed Jared Kushner, who is supportive of the plan, according to sources. Another White House official who has gotten behind the idea is Brooke Rollins, who served as an assistant to Trump in the Office of American Innovation and was the former head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has a history of questioning climate science.
The scaled-back goal of the current plan is to provide a back-and-forth examination of climate science in which researchers who question mainstream conclusions about warming would perform equivalently with scientists representing the vast majority of experts who accept that human activity is raising temperatures. The exercise could produce a series of white papers from both sides, essentially establishing a formal record of climate contrarianism.