U.S. Politics Thread (2017 going forward)

[CrowKenobi]

With the election season finally over, let's start 2017 with a fresh, new thread.

The usual forum rules apply (be considerate of others and their opinions, no flaming or cyclical posting, try and provide sources when possible, etc), and try not to get too caught up in the political news coverage (i.e., we all know the biases of the mainstream media), so try not to create too much discussion based on how bad you perceive the individual networks are skewing the various discussions). To clarify further, you can post any clips or excerpts you feel will add to this thread (as so long as they are actual news clips and not simply talking heads), but do not get too focused on the source of the information (which is partially irrelevant to the discussion topic)...

[frivolity]

Potential effects of Trump's possible policies on climate change:
Skeptical Climate Scientists Coming In From the Cold

Spoiler for excerpt:

That sharp disagreements are real in the field may come as a shock to many people, who are regularly informed that climate science is settled and those who question this orthodoxy are akin to Holocaust deniers. Nevertheless, new organizations like the CO2 Coalition, founded in 2015, suggest the debate is more evenly matched intellectually than is commonly portrayed. In addition to Happer, the CO2 Coalition’s initial members include scholars with ties to world-class institutions like MIT, Harvard and Rockefeller University. The coalition also features members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorology Society, along with policy experts from the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute and Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

With such voices joining in, the debate over global warming might shift. Until now, it’s normally portrayed as enlightened scholars vs. anti-science simpletons. A more open debate could shift the discussion to one about global warming’s extent and root causes.

Should a scientific and research funding realignment occur, it could do more than shatter what some see as an orthodoxy stifling free inquiry. Bjorn Lomborg, who has spent years analyzing potential solutions to global warming, believes that a more expansive outlook toward research is necessary because too much government funding has become expensive and ineffective corporate welfare. Although not a natural scientist, the social scientist Lomborg considers climate change real but not cataclysmic.

“Maybe now we’ll have a smarter conversation about what actually works,” Lomborg told RealClearInvestigations. “What has been proposed costs a fortune and does very little. With more space opening up, we can invest more into research and development into green energy. We don’t need subsidies to build something. They’ve been throwing a lot of money at projects that supposedly will cut carbon emissions but actually accomplish very little. That’s not a good idea. The funding should go to universities and research institutions; you don’t need to give it to companies to do it.”

Such new opportunities might, in theory, calm a field tossed by acrimony and signal a détente in climate science. Yet most experts are skeptical that a kumbaya moment is at hand. The mutual bitterness instilled over the years, the research money at stake, and the bristling hostility toward Trump’s appointees could actually exacerbate tensions.

“I think that the vast ‘middle’ will want and seek a more collegial atmosphere,” Georgia Tech’s Curry told RealClearInvestigations. “But there will be some hardcore people (particularly on the alarmed side) whose professional reputation, funding, media exposure, influence etc. depends on cranking up the alarm.”

Michael E. Mann, another climate change veteran, is also doubtful about a rapprochement. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and author of the “hockey stick” graph, which claims a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century, believes ardently that global warming is a dire threat. He concluded a Washington Post op-ed this month with this foreboding thought: “The fate of the planet hangs in the balance.” Mann acknowledges a brutal war of words has engulfed climate science. But in an e-mail exchange with RealClearInvestigations, he blamed opponents led by “the Koch brothers” for the polarization.

Mann did hint, however, there may be some room for discussion.

“In that poisonous environment it is difficult to have the important, more nuanced and worthy debate about what to do about the problem,” he wrote. “There are Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bob Inglis and George Shultz trying to create space for that discussion, and that gives me hope. But given that Donald Trump is appointing so many outright climate deniers to key posts in this administration, I must confess that I – and many of my fellow scientists – are rather concerned.”

As the article points out, the popular narrative about client change is by no means settled, and there is evidence for both sides. What I found really unfortunate is the whole demonising of people who aren't climate change alarmists, even those whose views are along the lines of wanting to wait for more evidence before taking a view. All it does is push scientific research away from actually finding the truth and more towards following the in-crowd.

My own view is that climate change is: real; may or may not have been materially exacerbated by human actions; may or may not be catastrophic in the long run; very unlikely to be reversible using current green technology; may or may not be reversible with future green technology; and very likely to be prohibitively costly for developing countries to take any steps to address.

This video matches my views somewhat, though I currently lean more towards the view that climate change is real while the video is sceptical about it:

At this point, however, simply forcing the debate the other way by brushing off climate change as a "hoax" is not a good thing either because all it does is push the crowd the other way. Trump's cabinet selections unfortunately suggest that this is exactly what he'll end up doing. For now, The world will have to keep waiting for a candidate that will actually Make Climate Change Cool Again.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Trump's cabinet selections unfortunately suggest that this is exactly what he'll end up doing.

He already said that's what he was doing months ago, I don't know why you say it is unfortunate; you voted for him.

I know you claim you voted for what you liked of his policies. I have yet to see what those policies you liked were. He certainly didn't "drain the swamp", he even admitted that he lied about that. He filled the swamp. What exactly did you think he was going to do? Did you really expect him to do what he didn't say he would do?

[frivolity]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

He already said that's what he was doing months ago, I don't know why you say it is unfortunate; you voted for him.

I know you claim you voted for what you liked of his policies. I have yet to see what those policies you liked were. He certainly didn't "drain the swamp", he even admitted that he lied about that. He filled the swamp. What exactly did you think he was going to do? Did you really expect him to do what he didn't say he would do?

As I've already responded in the previous thread, there is no such thing as a candidate whose views match with mine 100%. Trump will do some good things as president, and he will do some bad things too. I will compliment the good things he does, such as his pick for Secretary of Education and his immediate response supporting Israel, and I will also criticise the bad things that he does. I would have done the exact same thing with Hillary had she won.

I held the view that Trump was the lesser evil compared to Hillary, and my view remains unchanged today. On the topic of climate change, had Hillary won, I would have criticised the continued demonising of scientists whose work contradicts the whole climate change alarmist narrative, as well as the continued granting of excessive power granted to the EPA. That in my opinion, would be even more unfortunate. It would of course be best for the pendulum to be swung to the middle, where scientists on both sides are given equal standing, but if that option is not available, then I would accept swinging the pendulum in the other direction. This is still unfortunate, but in my view it is less unfortunate than the status quo.

Honestly, I am very surprised that you're jumping on me for calling out what I perceive to be good and bad about Trump's policies. Do you prefer reading posts by conservatives that only cover up the problematic aspects of Trump's policies without providing any sort of criticism? Because if everyone on both sides were to do that, then I guarantee you that the whole conundrum of having to vote for the lesser evil will continue to perpetuate in subsequent electoral cycles. The only way to break the chain is for the public at large to start calling out both the good and the bad of all policies, including those of their preferred candidate. Only then will the BS artists be weeded out from both sides so that genuine candidates can be voted in.

[ChuckE]

Why liberals assume that everybody who votes for Trump are regretting it?

Originally Posted by frivolity

Do you prefer reading posts by conservatives that only cover up the problematic aspects of Trump's policies without providing any sort of criticism?

But Trump can cause only the problems no? After all only Hillary is the pigeon of peace like Obama was

[Draco Spirit]

In all honesty, it looks like the USA just dodge the bullet of a President starting WW3 with Russia.

[Key Board]

he's going to start an economic WW3 with China instead
and Russia is going backstab the US while it's preoccupied

[Akito Kinomoto]

Proclaiming denial or uncertainty to anthropogenic climate change is like doing it to gravity; there's no 2nd or 3rd pitch, it's Strike One and you're out, son

Only 20 more days until sensibility leaves office

[ChuckE]

Originally Posted by Akuma Kousaka

Proclaiming denial or uncertainty to anthropogenic climate change is like doing it to gravity; there's no 2nd or 3rd pitch, it's Strike One and you're out, son

Only 20 more days until sensibility leaves office

Pence will come and save the day, right?

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by ChuckE

Pence will come and save the day, right?

I don't see it likely than Trump would end up impeached, both chamber will be republican and it's not like Pence is that responsible (or sane) either.

[Eisdrache]

When will ChuckE actually post something of substance in this thread?

Meanwhile Trump is busy saying the opposite of Obama. Sanctions against Russia against relationships with Putin/Russia. Climate deals against hoax. Reducing nuclear arsenal against stocking up nukes until some countries "see reason".

It just sends a big 'Please don't take us serious' sign into the world.

[ChuckE]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

When will ChuckE actually post something of substance in this thread?

Should I? I mean since the election there was almost no substrance in the topic at all. You can even summarize the whole thread with "Those who voted for Trump are stupid racists, he will be impeached, USA is world class peace-deliverer, Obama is the best what happened to America"

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

Meanwhile Trump is busy saying the opposite of Obama. Sanctions against Russia against relationships with Putin/Russia. Climate deals against hoax.

He is opposing Obama's policies from the very beginning - what should you expect there?

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

Reducing nuclear arsenal against stocking up nukes until some countries "see reason".

It is rather hot topic but I would rather keep more that destroy (look what happened to USSR. USA well-played there and the government was foolish enough to believe. Guess who wanted to demilitarise and now have the biggest army?). I mean nobody in his sane mind would cut their own "defense" force just because somebody asked to live in peace. Russia learnt the lesson during 90s

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

It just sends a big 'Please don't take us serious' sign into the world.

I thought Obama made America the world-arena joke, no?

[ganbaru]

It might be a crazy question but, what would happen if in the first month of Trump presidency Putin came forward and declare with proof than his country did support Trump election (without hacking the election). What could be his best case scenario, a US president highly favorable to him or one than can not do a thing to block him ?

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

It might be a crazy question but, what would happen if in the first month of Trump presidency Putin came forward and declare with proof than his country did support Trump election (without hacking the election). What could be his best case scenario, a US president highly favorable to him or one than can not do a thing to block him ?

Proof? Since when did proof ever mattered in this election? Americans don't give a shit, they vote based on what they think is true and ignore anything they don't like. Clinton lost because she believed that proof mattered.

[frivolity]

Originally Posted by Akuma Kousaka

Proclaiming denial or uncertainty to anthropogenic climate change is like doing it to gravity; there's no 2nd or 3rd pitch, it's Strike One and you're out, son

Only 20 more days until sensibility leaves office

Great, tell that to the 31,000 US scientists who consider that:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Or do you instead prefer to believe the scientists that routinely cook the books to further their climate change alarmist agenda, which was whitewashed away even after leaked emails showed their intellectual dishonesty? [emphasis added]

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

Another example of cooking the books [emphasis added]:

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
...
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso,Nicola Scafetta,Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
...
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch—most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.

Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.

Surely we can believe NASA, right? [emphasis added]

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.
“I assume that what is there is highly damaging,” Mr. Horner said. “These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this.”

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

NOAA does it too [emphasis added, visit the link to see the graphs]:

They also claim US temperatures rose 1.5°F since the 19th century, which is what NOAA shows.

The problem with the NOAA graph is that it is fake data. NOAA creates the warming trend by altering the data. The NOAA raw data shows no warming over the past century

The adjustments being made are almost exactly 1.5°F, which is the claimed warming in the article.

The adjustments correlate almost perfectly with atmospheric CO2. NOAA is adjusting the data to match global warming theory. This is known as PBEM (Policy Based Evidence Making.)

The hockey stick of adjustments since 1970 is due almost entirely to NOAA fabricating missing station data. In 2016, more than 42% of their monthly station data was missing, so they simply made it up. This is easy to identify because they mark fabricated temperatures with an “E” in their database.

How about these headlines from the 1970s?

"Scientists See Ice Age in the Future," Washington Post, January 11

"Is Mankind Manufacturing a New Ice Age for Itself?", Los Angeles Times, January 15

"Pollution Could Cause Ice Age, Agency Reports," St. Petersburg Times, March 4

"Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century," Boston Globe, April 16

"Pollution called Ice Age Threat," St. Petersburg Times, June 26

"U.S. and Soviet Press Studies of a Colder Arctic," New York Times, July 18

"Dirt Will Bring New Ice Age," Sydney Morning Herald, October 19
...
The Popular Technology post also includes this video, titled "The Coming Ice Age," excerpted from a 1978 episode of the popular television series In Search Of ..., narrated by the late Leonard Nimoy. A scientist who appeared in the segment, Stanford University's Stephen Schneider, later became a global warming alarmist and adviser to Al Gore. (Pay no attention to my previous predictions of imminent frostbite!).

And if you want a motive for all this, as always, it's all about the Jeffersons and Benjamins available from manufacturing a crisis:

Who pays for all this bad science, and worse, news? We do, of course. And it doesn't come cheap. According to data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Public Policy Institute, the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn't count about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for "green energy."

To suggest that climate science money trickles down from government would be a gross understatement. Actually, it cascades from mountains on high, presided over by agencies and their federal and state minions we generally assume to be knowledgeable and objective. But often we might be wrong. This occurs when a particularly orthodox or partisan view becomes inculcated into government leadership and surrogate organization power structures -- yes, exactly like man-made global warming, for example. Then follow the rivers, streams and creeks as those influences spread.

Agencies get funding appropriations based upon how important they are, or more accurately, how important we are persuaded to think they are. In the case of climate and environmental issues, they appear to be a lot more important when represented to address (certainly not waste) a crisis. Climate change, a topic offering an opportunity to regulate something really dangerous, like natural air, is just too wonderful to pass up.

[Second article]
Despite claims that they are watchdogs of the establishment, media outlets such as the Times have ignored the government’s oversized role in directing research. And they have ignored millions in contributions from left-wing foundations — contributions that, like government grants, seek to tip the scales to one side of the debate.

Last summer, a minority staff report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works gave details on a “Billionaire’s Club” — a shadowy network of charitable foundations that distribute billions to advance climate alarmism. Shadowy nonprofits such as the Energy Foundation and Tides Foundation distributed billions to far-left green groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, which in turn send staff to the EPA who then direct federal grants back to the same green groups. It is incestuous. It is opaque. Major media ignored the report.

Media outlets have also discriminated in their reporting on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Times trumpeted Greenpeace FOIA requests revealing Soon’s benefactors, yet it has ignored the government’s refusal of FOIA filings requesting transparency in pro-warming scientists’ funding.

[Akito Kinomoto]

Originally Posted by frivolity

Great, tell that to the 31,000 US scientists who consider that:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Or do you instead prefer to believe the scientists that routinely cook the books to further their climate change alarmist agenda, which was whitewashed away even after leaked emails showed their intellectual dishonesty? [emphasis added]

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

Another example of cooking the books [emphasis added]:

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
...
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso,Nicola Scafetta,Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
...
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch—most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.

Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.

Surely we can believe NASA, right? [emphasis added]

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.
“I assume that what is there is highly damaging,” Mr. Horner said. “These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this.”

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

NOAA does it too [emphasis added, visit the link to see the graphs]:

They also claim US temperatures rose 1.5°F since the 19th century, which is what NOAA shows.

The problem with the NOAA graph is that it is fake data. NOAA creates the warming trend by altering the data. The NOAA raw data shows no warming over the past century

The adjustments being made are almost exactly 1.5°F, which is the claimed warming in the article.

The adjustments correlate almost perfectly with atmospheric CO2. NOAA is adjusting the data to match global warming theory. This is known as PBEM (Policy Based Evidence Making.)

The hockey stick of adjustments since 1970 is due almost entirely to NOAA fabricating missing station data. In 2016, more than 42% of their monthly station data was missing, so they simply made it up. This is easy to identify because they mark fabricated temperatures with an “E” in their database.

How about these headlines from the 1970s?

"Scientists See Ice Age in the Future," Washington Post, January 11

"Is Mankind Manufacturing a New Ice Age for Itself?", Los Angeles Times, January 15

"Pollution Could Cause Ice Age, Agency Reports," St. Petersburg Times, March 4

"Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century," Boston Globe, April 16

"Pollution called Ice Age Threat," St. Petersburg Times, June 26

"U.S. and Soviet Press Studies of a Colder Arctic," New York Times, July 18

"Dirt Will Bring New Ice Age," Sydney Morning Herald, October 19
...
The Popular Technology post also includes this video, titled "The Coming Ice Age," excerpted from a 1978 episode of the popular television series In Search Of ..., narrated by the late Leonard Nimoy. A scientist who appeared in the segment, Stanford University's Stephen Schneider, later became a global warming alarmist and adviser to Al Gore. (Pay no attention to my previous predictions of imminent frostbite!).

And if you want a motive for all this, as always, it's all about the Jeffersons and Benjamins available from manufacturing a crisis:

Who pays for all this bad science, and worse, news? We do, of course. And it doesn't come cheap. According to data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Public Policy Institute, the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn't count about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for "green energy."

To suggest that climate science money trickles down from government would be a gross understatement. Actually, it cascades from mountains on high, presided over by agencies and their federal and state minions we generally assume to be knowledgeable and objective. But often we might be wrong. This occurs when a particularly orthodox or partisan view becomes inculcated into government leadership and surrogate organization power structures -- yes, exactly like man-made global warming, for example. Then follow the rivers, streams and creeks as those influences spread.

Agencies get funding appropriations based upon how important they are, or more accurately, how important we are persuaded to think they are. In the case of climate and environmental issues, they appear to be a lot more important when represented to address (certainly not waste) a crisis. Climate change, a topic offering an opportunity to regulate something really dangerous, like natural air, is just too wonderful to pass up.

[Second article]
Despite claims that they are watchdogs of the establishment, media outlets such as the Times have ignored the government’s oversized role in directing research. And they have ignored millions in contributions from left-wing foundations — contributions that, like government grants, seek to tip the scales to one side of the debate.

Last summer, a minority staff report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works gave details on a “Billionaire’s Club” — a shadowy network of charitable foundations that distribute billions to advance climate alarmism. Shadowy nonprofits such as the Energy Foundation and Tides Foundation distributed billions to far-left green groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, which in turn send staff to the EPA who then direct federal grants back to the same green groups. It is incestuous. It is opaque. Major media ignored the report.

Media outlets have also discriminated in their reporting on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Times trumpeted Greenpeace FOIA requests revealing Soon’s benefactors, yet it has ignored the government’s refusal of FOIA filings requesting transparency in pro-warming scientists’ funding.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Proof? Since when did proof ever mattered in this election? Americans don't give a shit, they vote based on what they think is true and ignore anything they don't like. Clinton lost because she believed that proof mattered.

I thought she lost because she ran the worst campaign in American history. How did nobody from her campaign not come up with actual things to attack an orange clown on that nearly anybody could point out?

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Akuma Kousaka

I thought she lost because she ran the worst campaign in American history. How did nobody from her campaign not come up with actual things to attack an orange clown on that nearly anybody could point out?

Because all she did was to point out facts. Facts were boring and no one cared. Trump lied about everything in pretty ways and America believes him because he speaks like a con artist. I said "America", because this is clearly beyond just Left or Right. This is a problem with Americans as a whole.

[Serovectra]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Because all she did was to point out facts. Facts were boring and no one cared. Trump lied about everything in pretty ways and America believes him because he speaks like a con artist. I said "America", because this is clearly beyond just Left or Right. This is a problem with Americans as a whole.

"facts"
http://www.politifact.com/personalit...yruling/false/

They're both liars. Perhaps Trump has lied more on the whole, but to say Hillary only speaks in facts is grossly overstated and isn't the way to get the point across.

[frivolity]

Originally Posted by Akuma Kousaka

Please actually read posts that you're replying to.

Originally Posted by frivolity

Great, tell that to the 31,000 US scientists who consider that:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Or do you instead prefer to believe the scientists that routinely cook the books to further their climate change alarmist agenda, which was whitewashed away even after leaked emails showed their intellectual dishonesty? [emphasis added]

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

Another example of cooking the books [emphasis added]:

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
...
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso,Nicola Scafetta,Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
...
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch—most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.

Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.

Surely we can believe NASA, right? [emphasis added]

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.
“I assume that what is there is highly damaging,” Mr. Horner said. “These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this.”

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

NOAA does it too [emphasis added, visit the link to see the graphs]:

They also claim US temperatures rose 1.5°F since the 19th century, which is what NOAA shows.

The problem with the NOAA graph is that it is fake data. NOAA creates the warming trend by altering the data. The NOAA raw data shows no warming over the past century

The adjustments being made are almost exactly 1.5°F, which is the claimed warming in the article.

The adjustments correlate almost perfectly with atmospheric CO2. NOAA is adjusting the data to match global warming theory. This is known as PBEM (Policy Based Evidence Making.)

The hockey stick of adjustments since 1970 is due almost entirely to NOAA fabricating missing station data. In 2016, more than 42% of their monthly station data was missing, so they simply made it up. This is easy to identify because they mark fabricated temperatures with an “E” in their database.

How about these headlines from the 1970s?

"Scientists See Ice Age in the Future," Washington Post, January 11

"Is Mankind Manufacturing a New Ice Age for Itself?", Los Angeles Times, January 15

"Pollution Could Cause Ice Age, Agency Reports," St. Petersburg Times, March 4

"Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century," Boston Globe, April 16

"Pollution called Ice Age Threat," St. Petersburg Times, June 26

"U.S. and Soviet Press Studies of a Colder Arctic," New York Times, July 18

"Dirt Will Bring New Ice Age," Sydney Morning Herald, October 19
...
The Popular Technology post also includes this video, titled "The Coming Ice Age," excerpted from a 1978 episode of the popular television series In Search Of ..., narrated by the late Leonard Nimoy. A scientist who appeared in the segment, Stanford University's Stephen Schneider, later became a global warming alarmist and adviser to Al Gore. (Pay no attention to my previous predictions of imminent frostbite!).

And if you want a motive for all this, as always, it's all about the Jeffersons and Benjamins available from manufacturing a crisis:

Who pays for all this bad science, and worse, news? We do, of course. And it doesn't come cheap. According to data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Public Policy Institute, the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn't count about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for "green energy."

To suggest that climate science money trickles down from government would be a gross understatement. Actually, it cascades from mountains on high, presided over by agencies and their federal and state minions we generally assume to be knowledgeable and objective. But often we might be wrong. This occurs when a particularly orthodox or partisan view becomes inculcated into government leadership and surrogate organization power structures -- yes, exactly like man-made global warming, for example. Then follow the rivers, streams and creeks as those influences spread.

Agencies get funding appropriations based upon how important they are, or more accurately, how important we are persuaded to think they are. In the case of climate and environmental issues, they appear to be a lot more important when represented to address (certainly not waste) a crisis. Climate change, a topic offering an opportunity to regulate something really dangerous, like natural air, is just too wonderful to pass up.

[Second article]
Despite claims that they are watchdogs of the establishment, media outlets such as the Times have ignored the government’s oversized role in directing research. And they have ignored millions in contributions from left-wing foundations — contributions that, like government grants, seek to tip the scales to one side of the debate.

Last summer, a minority staff report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works gave details on a “Billionaire’s Club” — a shadowy network of charitable foundations that distribute billions to advance climate alarmism. Shadowy nonprofits such as the Energy Foundation and Tides Foundation distributed billions to far-left green groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, which in turn send staff to the EPA who then direct federal grants back to the same green groups. It is incestuous. It is opaque. Major media ignored the report.

Media outlets have also discriminated in their reporting on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Times trumpeted Greenpeace FOIA requests revealing Soon’s benefactors, yet it has ignored the government’s refusal of FOIA filings requesting transparency in pro-warming scientists’ funding.

[OH&S]

Quote

Originally Posted by frivolity

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Quote

Originally Posted by Akuma Kousaka

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

You know, frivolity and Akuma Kousaka, you both kinda suck at arguing about science.

Akuma's image response to frivolity's post was basically akin to someone covering their ears and shouting "I can't hear you". Not helpful. What gets me about that 97% statistic is that I don't how they got this number. I would love it if there was an actual source for this. Specifically for climate scientists.

As for frivolity's vomit (I call it that as I actually took the time to read it (and links) and deduced that it was vomit),

TL;DR…

my small vomit response

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

In short, this is a politics thread. Don't bother trying to argue science here.

For what its worth, I'm more than convinced about the reseach done on climate change.

It's fairly simple to grasp once you start with the base facts that the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycle are things that exist and how they have been distorted by human activity. (this is max 10th grade level science).

What's not simple is how this global warming (read as increase in total energy in the planet: not increase in temperature) will definitely affect the planet; the actual climate change part. You have to juggle rising temperatures, drought, ecosystem destruction, polar ice melting, sea levels rising, low frequency but powerful hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons and the fact that different parts of the planet will react to the increase in energy vastly differently. And to make things even more confusing, theres actually a strong chance that global warming might trigger an ice age; its so f*cking counter-intuitive at times. But thats because planet Earth is so complex with so many variables.

That's why its important that we move on from the "is there actually climate change" and "whats causing it" debate and go into disaster mitigation mode.

It should be embarrassing if China is making more progress towards dealing with this than the US. But that's what you get when your election system is surprisingly crap to begin with leading to 2 crap choices for president.

But then again, down here in Australia with our much better election system, we still have 2 crap choices for Prime Minister. So I guess that's a reality of politics.

.
.
.

lazy attempt at trying to bring things back on topic.