There are books about impeachment that are relevant today. I’ve already suggested that you have a look at Impeachment: An American History by Jon Meacham, Peter Baker, Tim Naftali, and Jefrey Engel. I also noted that the newest edition of “Impeachment: A Handbook” is out.
And now, there is a new volume:
High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump
For the third time in forty-five years, America is talking about impeaching a president, but the impeachment provisions of the American constitution are widely misunderstood. In High Crimes and Misdemeanors, constitutional scholar Frank O. Bowman, III offers unprecedented clarity to the question of impeachment, tracing its roots to medieval England through its adoption in the Constitution and 250 years of American experience. By examining the human and political history of those who have faced impeachment, Bowman demonstrates that the Framers intended impeachment to be a flexible tool, adaptable to the needs of any age. Written in a lively, engaging style, the book combines a deep historical and constitutional analysis of the impeachment clauses, a coherent theory of when impeachment should be used to protect constitutional order against presidential misconduct, and a comprehensive presentation of the case for and against impeachment of President Trump. It is an indispensable work for the present moment.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
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I’d also recommend The Case for Impeaching Trump by Elizabeth Holtzman. It’s a relatively short volume (162 pages) but comprehensive. Ms. Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate.
I watched the Senate trial last night until the rule was adopted (about 12:50 am).
I was amazed at the House Manager strategy of highlighting what a bad job the House did, by arguing that all the witnesses the House didn’t pursue, should now be pursued for the Senate trial.
In each motion the House Managers made, they did an excellent job of pointing out how important it was that the House pursue the relevant documents and testimony.
Except the house didn’t pursue the documents and testimony!
If I were the President’s counsel, I would argue waiver (at the appropriate time).
By withdrawing a subpoena and choosing not to even subpoena several witnesses and categories of documents, the House waived their right to ask for them at trial. That is the way it would work in a real trial.
Nobody gets to ask the jury to do discovery on the opening day of trial – I have never seen such a dumb strategy!
It was the job of the house to finish the investigation and then present their case to the Senate – and instead they stood there and showed the world how much of their case they failed to investigate.
Truly amazing.
Major fail on the part of the democrats.
They must think this will somehow help them win the election, but I think it will backfire in a major way.
Trump will be acquitted and then I guess the house will start a new impeachment inquiry.
It will be interesting to see if double jeopardy applies to impeachment trials. I would argue it does. You cannot just keep impeaching the president over the same set of operative facts. Which means the democrats will have to find something else other than Ukraine to pursue for their next impeachment investigation. They have blown the right to pursue the subject matter of their motions in the future because the acquittal will prevent impeachment over the same articles (in my legal opinion). They really should have pursued it during their investigation, and argued for expedited treatment in court (which they would very likely have received had they asked for it). Another fail!
Trump is going to win more electoral votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, because of the bungling of the democrats.
Very entertaining to watch reality slap the house managers in the face.
Good lying spin rickA — you’re showing how well you’ve learned to keep your nose in the asses of the republicans and spew out the crap they give.
The reality that will come out is simple: the republicans took marching orders from trump and mcconnel and will refuse to listen to any evidence. They’ll continue to claim that Joe Biden did something illegal and that there was a good reason for Trump’s interference (which we know there wasn’t, despite the lies you and they repeat), and that instead of doing their job as the Constitution says they should they’ll acquit Trump in order to keep the racists and nazi lovers (like you) who support them happy.
In other news: Trump admitted he’s withholding evidence.
dean:
If democrats wanted the material they had to go to court for it, but they decided not to. Worst decision ever. Total fail. Post acquittal they have waived their right to the material (in my opinion).
In the Nixon case the courts were used.
In the Clinton case courts were used (both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton testified pursuant to court subpoena).
There are no short cuts just because of an approaching election – and the decision not to use the courts was shockingly stupid.
The dems accused Trump of being in the pocket of Russia. But when Trump wants to investigate if Biden could potentially be in the pocket of Russia and/or Ukraine, that is “cheating” in the 2020 election. Of course checking to see if a future potential President is a blackmail risk is a valid purpose of investigation.
Meanwhile, this impeachment gambit is the biggest cheat ever and is trying to interfere in the 2020 election. Total fail (again). This gambit will help Trump win bigger than in 2016.
What a joke (but entertaining to watch).
Rick, you have it backwards. The purpose of impeaching is to strengthen the case for winning in court for documents and witnesses. They argued in court earlier this month that they need to get McGahn’s testimony and Mueller grand jury material. The reason they had to move quickly was to help win these cases.
They can then use the material gathered and release or leak to damage Trump’s re-election.
So you base your decisions on emotion, and not on empirical evidence.
I am not surprised.
Let’s get this straight, RickA. You support a serial lying sexist, misogynist, bigot, right wing POTUS whose administration is gutting laws protecting people and the environment. In fact, Trump’s regime is arguably the most anti-environmental in US history. It is stacked with bankers and corporate lobbyists who are eviscerating laws and regulations protecting habitats and endangered species.
Any you support them. MikeN appears to as well. Both of you are nuts.
“Any you support them”
Of course they do. trump is white, isn’t a woman, and knows the correct places for non-whites and women, just as the two locals do: out of sight and out of rights.
Jeffh:
Yes – I do support Trump.
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but do plan to vote for Trump in 2020.
The constant unfair attacks on Trump have caused me to shift to full support.
I didn’t think there was any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia – and there wasn’t.
Now, I do not believe Trump asking for Ukraine to investigate Biden’s getting the prosecutor fired merits removal from office. I do not believe the House proved the only reason Trump did it was to help himself in the 2020 election – in fact I don’t believe the House offered any evidence on motive at all, just naked speculation and confirmation bias. I think Trump was investigating 2016 (what happened) and there is nothing wrong with that. I predict the Senate will agree with me.
I think the whole impeachment attack is politically motivated – that Schiff helped the whistle-blower write his complaint, and orchestrated matters to create this impeachment fiasco we are going through. To me this impeachment looks like election interference. I think this whole impeachment fiasco will backfire and actually help Trump win reelection. I think the decision not to go to court to compel testimony and witnesses is fatal to both articles I and II, and it was a terrible stupid decision which will guarantee acquittal.
I look forward to watching Trumps defense and the questions the Senator’s ask next week (and the answers). I have been carefully watching the impeachment trial and will continue to watch.
I don’t think there will be any witnesses and Trump will be acquitted on both articles of impeachment.
It is your right to think I am nuts. I do not think you are nuts – just wrong. I think calling names is counterproductive.
But I am sharing my opinion of what I think, because about 1/2 the country agrees with me and I think you should hear it and be aware of it. I am aware of your opinion because I read this site and recommend getting outside your bubble once in a while.
In addition to reading your usual news and opinion, you should occasionally check out some right wing stuff. I like Ben Shapiro and Scott Adams (real coffee with Scott Adams). Check them out for the other side once in a while. There are two sides to every story and you should be aware of the best arguments of both sides.
p.s. I am also pro-nuclear power, pro 2nd amendment and I think the constitutional rights of the unborn need to be taken into consideration along with the constitutional rights of the mother, the father and the State.
httpcagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-trump-recording-yovanovitch-20200125-wdavwpxmdjeedei72yz6vxjige-story.htmls://www.chi
NPC Dean at it again. The recording actually reveals that Trump was interested in removing the ambassador long before summer 2019, thus having nothing to do with Biden.
nice try at spin mikeN — but your comments don’t mesh with the timeline or facts. (As usual)
“I like Ben Shapiro and Scott Adams (real coffee with Scott Adams”
A low IQ bigot (Shapiro) and a science-denying cartoonist (Adams). What a surprise you like them — they’re right up your extremist creek.
” rights of the unborn need to be taken into consideration along with the constitutional rights of the mother, the father and the State.”
a) If the unborn were a person you’d have a point — but neither of those things is true
b) We know your view of the “rights” women are to be accorded is that they should shut up and do what they’re told
RickA, let me correct that. Nuts is too simple. Imo you are actually stupid, selfish and naive. You didn’t even respond to my main point, probably because of an element of self-humiliation it involved. Trump and his goons are essentially taking apart every regulatory agency in the government because regulations impede the ability of corporations to maximize profit. Essentially, under this narcissist idiot and his corporate death squad, wildlife conservation is irrelevant. Biodiversity is expendable, so he and the shits he has tasked with heading the EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service and Public Lands are doing whatever they can to speed up the destruction and looting of wildlands. Trump also is doing everything he can to ensure that concentrations of chemical poisons used in agriculture increase in wetlands and terrestrial ecosystems. He is making his best effort to ensure that songbird populations, already declining at an alarming rate over the past 50 years, decline even faster. He wants to remove any impediments to the elimination of endangered species, because, heck, they get in the way of corporate plunder.
Saying that ‘half the country’ might vote for this lying, self-righteous orange narcissist says more about their mental state, and yours, than anything else. Trump and his administration are not only shafting the environment, but 90% of those who vote for him. Given that our global ecological life-support systems are already going to hell, you just want a President to speed it up. How utterly pathetic.
Then have Congress pass the regulations into law.
Watched the Trump defense today. Plenty of ammunition to vote against both articles of impeachment. It is over. I thought all the presentations were very good, but really liked Ken Starr’s and Alan Dershowitz’s.
I suspect some Democrats will even vote against the Obstruction of Congress article. I bet 3 dems (or more) will vote against.
Note how RickA continually dodges and avoids inconvenient facts. His beloved POTUS is relaxing or eliminating restrictions on the use of highly toxic pesticides, while eviscerating regulations on water quality, wildlife protection, endangered species and their habitats. Confronted with these facts he puts his hands over his eyes and plugs his ears and shuts out the world. “It isn’t true”! he opines. But of course it is true. Trump and his goons would make Teddy Roosevelt turn in his grave. For this administration, nature is nothing more than a commodity, and its protection an impediment to the profits of the GOPs donors.
Then he swoons at the words of repugnant scum like Starr and Dershowitz. RickA apparently wants to see biodiversity destroyed. Or else, like most Trump voters, he doesn’t give a damn. Which begs the question, why does he write comments on progressive blogs like this where there are people who truly care about the future? He ritually embarrasses himself on other progressive blogs as well. What is his point?
Jeffh:
My point is to simply put my point of view out there for others to read and think about.
I am glad that you are worried about my ritual embarrassment – but I myself am not concerned. I am not embarrassed by my point of view.
I also enjoy arguing (I am a lawyer after all). It is a hobby and a form of entertainment.
I enjoy sharing my honestly held views with progressives on this blog and enjoy the back and forth. I let the name calling slide off my back, while pointing out how ineffective a form of argument name calling actually is, and recommend that others not engage in it. Many ignore my advise, and that is ok with me. I have no control over what others say or think, and simply respond with my thoughts and opinions.
I enjoy arguing about climate change, nuclear power, the 2nd amendment, constitutional law, some legal issues (the defamation case by Mann for example), some political issues (the Mueller investigation for example) and now impeachment.
I feel a certain duty to come into a progressive bubble and inject my point of view into the conversation. Why Greg Laden’s? Because we both live in Minnesota – it is as simple as that. I also blog occasionally at Climate etc. (which I do not really consider a progressive blog), ATTP’s blog (which I do consider progressive) and Lucia’s blog (The Blacklist – which I do not really consider a progressive blog). I used to really enjoy blogging at collide-a-scape (Keith Kloor’s blog), but it is no longer active. Lots of fun and interesting discussions at collide-a-scape.
I ignore your opinions on environmental issues because they have nothing to do with impeachment. I simply ignore your attempt to read my mind and your strawman attempt to put words into my mouth.
You are entitled to your opinions and you come here to share them. I also am entitled to my opinions and I come here to share them.
That is my point.
I hope that helps you better understand a person with a different point of view than your own (which can be a valuable exercise).
“I enjoy arguing about climate change”
You spelled “lying” incorrectly.
“I hope that helps you better understand a person with a different point of view than your own (which can be a valuable exercise).”
Yes, you are an admitted libertarian boldly proclaiming the main tenets of that “philosopy”, might makes right and screw everyone else I got mine, opposing environmental protections, safety nets for the poor and disadvantged, pushing your racist and bigoted views, claiming antifa is a terrorist group because they oppose the things you support — we understand you well. There’s nothing decent about you.
dean:
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
I will leave it to the other readers to decide if I am trying to intentionally deceive others (i.e. lying), or whether I express my honest opinions here. Since nobody can read minds, everybody will have to read my comments and your comments and come to their own opinion on whether I am lying or sharing my honestly held opinions, and whether I am right or wrong.
Well, we’ve been here a few times before. On the one hand you could be lying. On the other, you could be so stupid that you fail to understand the explanations you had – hundreds of times – that show why your ‘opinions’ are wrong.
Or perhaps you are just another rightwing fuckwit who lives in a fantasy world of ‘alternative facts’ because you are unable to deal with reality.
As ever, you pick.
BBD:
Your worldview doesn’t even permit you to see any other option other than that I am lying or wrong.
Yes. As ever, I pick that I am honest and right (you forgot that option).
I was right about the Trump collusion with Russia issue.
I honestly believe I am right that ECS will turn out to be less than 2.0 C. We will have to wait for that prediction to either be shown right or wrong.
I think what irritates you most is that on an issue like ECS, which is still unknown and range bound, I refuse to agree with you and the consensus. But here is the issue. Everybody has an opinion, but the science has not yet spoken. There is no definitive answer yet. The consensus is just a bunch of opinions. The answer could still be anywhere from 1.5C to 4.5C, which is where we have been stuck since 1990. Sure, the middle of the bell curve sits on 3C, but that doesn’t mean that we know that ECS is 3C – it still COULD be 1.8C (or 3.2C). So I have my opinion and I wait for science to cough up the definitive answer.
Meanwhile, you want me to agree that I am lying just because my opinion is different than yours and you keep giving me your opinion and pretending that giving me your opinion over and over about an uncertain future value of ECS means I am lying just because I refuse to agree with your opinion.
My main point is that you say I am wrong (about some issue) – but that doesn’t mean I am wrong. Your saying ECS is 3C or higher doesn’t mean ECS is 3C or higher. My saying ECS is less than 2C doesn’t mean ECS is 2C or less. Nobody knows what the value of ECS is today, only that there is a 95% chance it falls within the range of 1.5C to 4.5C. When nobody knows the answer, and I have evaluated the facts and the science and have reached an opinion, I am not changing it unless someone can convince me I am wrong – which has not happened yet. I personally consider the observationally constrained value of ECS to be the best science, and much better than the proxy based evaluation method.
Now I am not asking you to agree that I am write or change your own opinion. I simply refuse to change my opinion based on your opinion. If you think about it – that is what you do as well. I am just more honest about it.
Bottom line – you don’t know what ECS is and neither do I. So you are entitled to your evidence based guess just as I am entitled to my evidence based guess. We will have to await further developments from science to show us if one of us is right or both wrong or whatever.
Ditto for impeachment and removal. I don’t believe that articles I or II in this case rise to the level of impeachable offenses. That is my opinion. Based on that opinion I would vote to acquit (if I were a Senator). I predict that the Senate will acquit Trump. We will see if that prediction turns out to be correct.
I also predict that there will be no witnesses (still). My reason for that prediction is that Trump will assert executive privileged and it would takes months to litigate and I don’t think the Senate will want to delay things for that long. That, and given that we don’t need any evidence, assuming 51 Senators agree that neither article makes out a claim for an impeachable offense – I predict they will vote on that threshold issue and then acquit without Bolton testimony (or anybody else).
Once again – we will simply have to wait until the future happens to see if my prediction is right or wrong.
I am pretty happy with my track record.
So we will see.
To summarize – your saying I am wrong over and over doesn’t make me wrong.
I gave you three options, not two.
Only option three allows you to be honest. It does not also allow you to be correct.
This is why most people here think you are a liar. Trump was NOT exonerated by Muller – we’ve been through this enough times now. For you to claim that you were ‘right’ is dishonest. So as per, you can fuck off with that.
Any honest review of the scientific evidence leaves no doubt at all that ECS is >2C and very likely at least 3C.
So your ‘honesty’ isn’t honest at all.
So you can fuck off with that as well.
You don’t have to wait.
We know that since 1750 CE the temperature of the planet has increased by ~1.2 °C, and as of a couple of years ago the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ has increased in the same period from 280 ppm to 400 ppm (the round numbers make calculation simple). We know that there is a logarithmic response of temperature to CO₂. From these pieces of information you should be able to estimate a very crude value for a hybrid between transient climate response and equilibrium climate sensitivity. It’s the work of a minute or so… what is the result, and what do it say about your “belief”? For bonus points you could list the interfering positive and negative forcings on top of CO₂, and discuss how these might alter the calculated value…
Alternatively, you can use Rahmstorf’s equation:
S = ΔT x F[2xCO₂]/(ΔF – H)
to calculate sensitivity, and get another value. How does this compare to you “belief” and how do you justify you belief over the science?
RickA, slither around it all you like but you are supporting a President whose administration is wrecking laws protecting nature and biodiversity. He is doing everything to support legislation permitting the use of highly toxic pesticides that are obliterating populations of bees and other important pollinators as well as insects in general. He is gutting the Endangered Species Act and weakening or eliminating laws protecting wetland and terrestrial habitats. You are obsessed with the impeachment proceedings but bury your head in the ground when it comes to the environment. You said that you will vote for this monstrosity of a President in 2020. This proves that destruction of the environment means absolutely nothing to you. Why not just come out and say it and spare us all here the pedantics?
As just one example of how repugnant the Trump regime is, in 2017 Trump stopped funding the Chesapeake Bay clean-up program under the auspices of the EPA that was yielding results. The bay once had huge shoals of fish and was teeming with mussels and other invertebrates, but over several decades agricultural runoff and industrial pollution had accumulated to such an extent that the bay was literally dying. It had supported a thriving fishery at one time. The clean-up program was so successful that fisherman were beginning to return and prospects for a full recovery looked promising. The annual budget for the clean-up was around 70 million dollars; Trump stopped it dead. Bang. Over. No more funds, just like that.
Yup, I have to hand it to you Rick. You are blinkered. Or else you don’t care about America’s wonderful natural heritage. Either way, Trump and his corporate goons appear to be just for you (cue muted applause). MAPA: Make America Polluted Again. Great motto for the liar-in-chief.
” I pick that I am honest and right I pick that I am honest and right ”
Your posting and commenting history shows you are never right and you have never been honest.
“I will leave it to the other readers to decide if I am trying to intentionally deceive others (i.e. lying), …”
All they have to do is review your comments and compare them to facts (and, in the case of climate change, compare your comments to how many times it’s been explained that your takes on published articles are 100% wrong). For the racism — again, they need only review your comments.
Waiting to hear from Senator Alexander, but it sure sounds like no witnesses.
I am also hearing that the mixed motives argument by Dershowitz is going to carry the day.
I said very much the same thing in earlier comments when I said the democrats had to show that the ONLY reason Trump asked for the favors was to help with the 2020 election, and any other reason (like investigating 2016) would mean no impeachment.
I suspect that will be the case.
It also looks like several democrats will vote to acquit Trump.
I hope so and look forward eagerly to tomorrows events.
Very entertaining.
You are on the brink of creating King Donald the First of America.
There will be no stopping him now.
Very entertaining.
Except for the small matter of arses, Constitution and wiping.
But well done all you rightwing nutters. You’ve got a tyrant now, just like you always wanted. Apparently.
I keep waiting to hear the waiver argument – but it has not been raised yet.
Puzzling.
Were I counsel for the President I would be arguing that the House waived its right to call witnesses the House had the opportunity to call and pursue, but waived.
Not going to court, or withdrawing a subpoena once it went to court, or not even issuing a subpoena in the first instance – the House has waived the right to ask for those witnesses testimony in the Senate. That would be one of my arguments. Odd not to hear the waiver argument.
I did hear the argument that the Senate shouldn’t have to do the Houses job – which I agree with. But I would add on the layer of waiver on top of the arguments I heard.
I would also argue that it is not constitutional for the Senate to do investigative work, during an impeachment trial – because that job falls to the house. It is not constitutional for the Senate to conduct an impeachment investigation – period. Only try the impeachment investigations charged out of the House.
I heard the House managers say numerous times – we should hear this relevant testimony and it is your choice as to whether it will be heard.
The House also had the choice to hear that testimony – but they waived it by not going to court to enforce their subpoenas, or not even subpoenaing it in the first instance.
I hear Schiff arguing that not having witnesses is like arguing you had witnesses in the grand jury – so the prosecution doesn’t get witnesses at trial.
No – it is like arguing that we (the prosecution) choose not to call witness X during the grand jury, and then on the first day of trial asking the Judge and jury to stop the trial and do discovery to obtain documents and deposition testimony of a witness the prosecution waived hearing from prior to trial. That is the better analogy.
The Judge and jury do not do discovery during trial – that has to be done by the prosecution prior to trial (i.e. in the House).
So the House’s case is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. A total failure.
I believe history will judge the House very harshly for failing to pursue the witnesses and documents they now complain they need to make their case – and their failure to do so in the House, prior to the vote on the articles of Impeachment.
This impeachment has been defective from the start and a total failure.
Time to end it and put it to bed.
But entertaining!
Well – back to watching Schiff argue his last few minutes of rebuttal.
All hail King Donald!
“But well done all you rightwing nutters. You’ve got a tyrant now,”
Bitter? Yea, bit him too!
Rick, you forgot to factor in the next ‘bombshell’ to drop over the weekend.
I’m sure NYT already has it planned.
They could have reported the whole Bolton book at once, but instead they are doing dribs and drabs to keep the media cycle going.
Or perhaps someone is leaking to them in pieces, and the Times is just serving as a parrot.
This is the same as with Kavanaugh, but this time Murkowski is not doing her part. That’s what happens when the House managers insult her to her face.
You bit yourself in the arse but unfortunately, we all get to feel the pain.
How does it feel to be part of the process that traduced the Constitution and installed a tyranny in the White House?
Seriously Mike. Do you really not understand what you are all doing here?
If this is a tyranny, why is the whistleblower still working for the government?
For how much longer?
And why did he get outed by Republicans when the First Amendment protects free speech from government suppression? But now we know that if you speak out against the nascent tyranny, it will try to destroy you. This will inhibit future potential whistle blowers, as it was intended to do.
So – suppression of free speech by government – the hallmark of a tyranny in the making.
And you are helping and endorsing this obscenity.
Do you really not understand what you are doing?
Of course ricka’s opinions are no more useful than reading turkey shit at midnight would be. The only thing they demonstrate is his lack of integrity and concern for the country, two things we already knew about him.
Why do you read them? And then comment on them?
Hmmmm
Bullshit should never pass unchallenged.
RickA, why do you comment on here when most of us loathe everything you write? And why do you cherry-pick your responses to challenges? Or is this just what right wing bots do?
As an aside, Trump and his goon squad continue their assault on human rights and the environment. They are overturning laws banning the use of land mines and are tearing up more environmental regulations. Hereafter corporations will no longer be fined if the toxic wastes they spew out into the environment and which kill wildlife are deemed to be ‘accidental’ rather than ‘intentional’. And how is this division to be interpreted? No doubt by some of the corporate lobbyists Trump has installed to head bodies like the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The National Audubon Society was blunt in responding to Trump and his fascist administration by describing the new arcane regulations as ‘bird killers’. And RickA and his sidekick MikeN support this GOP scum. No doubt RickA will avoid directly responding to this as he usually does because he literally hates the truth and prefers to live in his bubble.
Why do I comment here? I already explained that.
Cherry-picking? If I feel like responding to a comment I respond. If I don’t feel like responding I don’t. Maybe that is cherry-picking?
As to your environmental issues – you are not asking me anything. You are just expressing your reasons for not liking Trump. I have no issue with you not liking Trump, and so there is nothing to respond to.
“Do you really not understand what you are doing?”
Remember that mikeN defended the murder of Trayvon Martin (who was a black teen so, by definition, a ‘thug’) as well as the Nazi who intentionally drove his car into a crowd and killed a woman in Charlotesville.
It isn’t that he doesn’t understand what he’s doing: he doesn’t care.
“Why do you read them? And then comment on them?”
If you don’t keep up on what some of the worst people in the country say you can never prepare yourself. Since you reflect everything the worst people have to say, the shit you spew has to be slogged through.
Thank you for the honest answer.
All I ask is that you do read my comments – and then think about them.
That’s not how NPCs operate.
RickA, I’ve read your comments for years. And in the whole time I’ve seen nothing but ideological assertion that ignores science and empirically-supported fact.
In my undergraduate degree I studied chemistry (including physical chemistry) physics, geology, biology, and mathematics. Since then I’ve worked as a researcher in oncology, immunology, pharmacology, and ecology, as well as teaching people from age 2 to 62. As I’ve watched your comments and never have I seen you provide anything that resembles a reasoned analysis. I’ve never seen you compile a list of peer reviewed papers that support your refusals to accept the science of climate change. I’ve never seen you construct an argument from fact and logic and evidence.
As an ecologist I’ve witnessed first-hand the consequences of the decades of predictions pertaining to human-caused climate change. I’ve watched forests die, species disappear, ecosystems shift. I’ve seen the land and the oceans change, to never return to what they were 20, 30, 40 years ago.
You say above that “I honestly believe I am right that ECS will turn out to be less than 2.0 C.” Why? How? On what reasonable analysis do you predicate that stance? I’ll reply directly to that post, but it’s an example of how you pull from your colon exactly the material for which it was evolved to produce…
Bernard:
My basis for less than 2.0C for ECS is found in the body of observationally constrained ECS research, such as:
Lewis, Nicholas, and Judith Curry. “The impact of recent forcing and ocean heat uptake data on estimates of climate sensitivity.” Journal of Climate 31.15 (2018): 6051-6071.
I happen to think using actual temperature data is a good idea.
I think if you reviewed your decades of predictions, you would find that they are all wrong. Every prediction I have ever heard related to global warming has turned out to be wrong. So you should think about that.
It also doesn’t matter to me whether you think LC18 is “reasonable” or not. That is still my basis for my opinion. I am sure you have a basis for your opinion. So we will wait and see who turns out to be right.
It should be to long before we hit 560 ppm, which will give us a real world opportunity to measure the temperature increase from an actual CO2 doubling (from 280 to 560 ppm). That real world measurement will no doubt be used by science to constrain both TCR and ECS and maybe we will have a better answer for ECS that 1.5C to 4.5C. We will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, my solution to the potential problems of climate change is to try to generate 60 to 80% of energy using nuclear power. I suspect as people get more educated on the problems with renewable energy production the support for nuclear will grow and grow. Again, we will see.
If you had even the ghost of a fucking clue you would know not to base your position on a single study. And you would understand the methodological limitations in that study which result in its outlier estimates.
It’s not as if this has not been pointed out – it has, many, many times. But you dishonestly ignore the issues with L&Cs toy model approach and continue to dismiss the totality of the scientific evidence because it all conflicts with your ideologically-motivated need for S to be low.
And I gave you actual temperature data here:
https://gregladen.com/blog/2019/07/18/a-history-of-impeachment/#comment-844048
You have yet to explain how an increase in the temperature of the planet by ~1.2 °C since 1750 CE, with a concomittent increase in the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ over the same period from 280 ppm to 400 ppm, indictates that equlibrium climate sensitivity is less than 2 °C.
Especially when a lot of that CO₂ emission has only occurred in the last few decades and the committed warming from those emissions has yet to be realised…
Bernard:
First, peer reviewed estimates of the temperature increase from 1750 to present range from .9C to 1.2C.
Second, read the LC18 paper I cited – as that explains how the observed temperature increase can result in an ECS of about 1.8C.
Third – I just saw a paper which found that of the increase of 113 ppm (from 280 to 393) through 2016, that only about 15% was due to humans.
Again – science has not spoken yet on a firm value of ECS, so we will have to wait for further clarification. In the meantime, I have my opinion of less than 2C and others are entitled to their opinion. As long as they fall within the IPCC range of 1.5C to 4.5C I don’t see much cause to complain, as any value within that range is not ruled out by science yet.
List your sources. Berkeley Earth (the project hailed by climate change deniers themselves as the most accurate assessment of temperature trajectory…) indicates ~1.2 °C since 1750 CE based on central values for contemporaneous temperatures. I walk the corridors with climatologists and they say the same thing. Eelco Rohling noted the same magnitude of increase in a seminar about three years ago, and the planet’s not been cooling since then, so I’m curious to see on which outliers you’re relying in order to get down to a mere 0.9 °C increase since the beginning of the Industrial revolution.
Hundreds of other papers from more credible researchers give a range up to 4.5 °C, with a central tendency around 3.0 °C or slightly above. Do you understand the strength of central tendency in statistical summary…? You’re cherry picking your references as well as ignoring the implied rate of warming reflected by the empirical evidence.
And thus far we’ve skirted a larger elephant in the room – Earth system sensitivity…
Which paper? And how do you reconcile its claim with the work of hundreds of atmospheric chemists who have demonstrated from isotope analyses that the increase over pre-Industrial equilibrium is entirely due to fossil carbon emissions?
And by the way, even if your ludicrous claim that only 15% of the increase in CO₂ is anthropogenic was correct, it doesn’t change the magnitude of the actual increase of atmospheric CO₂. It’s still an increase from 280 ppm to 400 ppm, with an attendant 1.2 °C increase in temperature. The equilibrium climate sensitivity isn’t changed by the source of CO₂. And those numbers infer something about the temperature resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ – I’m asking you to do the back-of-envelope calculation to give a value, and to comment on the positive and negative forcings that may modify the value.
If you can’t do this just say so.
You don’t understand science, and the strength of central tendency as well as of empirical evidence – both paleo evidenc and the implications of current realised warming.
Your opinion isn’t based on parsimonious and scientifically-defensible analysis. It’s based on an ideological desire to minimise the value as much as you possibly can, for purely political purposes.
And if you don’t see the invalidity in cherry-picking a mimimum extremity of EQS then you have no standing to criticise those who “complain” about your biased choice. You are eschewing the 95% (and greater) of the probability density distribution on which informed policy response should be based, and in so doing you are contributing to the imperiling of the habitabilty of our planet by giving undue support to those who don’t want to act because it goes against their selfish interests.
RickA, thanks for your troll-like non-answer. Of course there is a lot to answer for – the current administration is annihilating laws protecting nature and biodiversity – and you keep your mouth closed. No administration in US history has so brazenly disregarded nature conservation as this bullshitting POTUS and his goons do. Water quality regulations: gutted. Pollution regulations: gutted. Endangered species and population regulations: gutted. Programs protecting wild lands and areas of high biodiversity: gutted. When a leading conservative nature conservation organization like the National Audubon Society describes the latest assault by the liar-in-chief on environmental laws as ‘killing birds’, this should be a clarion call if any were needed that Trump and the GOP are running amok in their subservience to the corporations that own them. So you agree that Trump and his regime are right to eviscerate laws and programs protecting the environment?
You find refuge in blogs because you can pick and choose which comments you reply to. In a face-to-face debate you would not be able to squirm out of inconvenient facts. Dean and BBD know exactly what kind of a person you are. You clearly don’t give a damn about nature, wildlife or the poor. That is abundantly clear.
As an aside, over on Counterpunch Paul Street obliterates the piffle you and MikeN have been writing about the impeachment proceedings. It is refreshing to read the comments of an honest pundit who actually knows what is happening as opposed to the shallow gibberish from a couple of blinkered right wing ideologues on here.
Jeffh asks “So you agree that Trump and his regime are right to eviscerate laws and programs protecting the environment?”
Yes. The pendulum had swung to far in one direction, and it now swinging back. Calling CO2 pollution is a bridge to far for me. It is one of the major components of the atmosphere. You might as well define Nitrogen (78%), or Oxygen (21%), or Argon (.93%) as pollutants, and try and regulate the levels in the atmosphere. We produce CO2 just by breathing. To my way of thinking, a pollutant has to cause harm to humans and be toxic in the levels it is regulated at. For example, lead and mercury. While CO2 in the atmosphere can insulate and is warming the Earth (although not as much per doubling of CO2 as the concensus thinks, in my opinion), it is not by itself dangerous to human health. If it were, there would be regulations requiring wearing breathing gear in greenhouses (and there is not).
CO2 is just a gas which has varied in its amount in the atmosphere over the course of Earth’s history. Over most of its history it was at a much higher level than now. True, humans have injected CO2 into the atmosphere over the last couple centuries, and it would be nice if we could invent a way to produce energy without generating CO2. Well actually we have but it is rejected.
In my opinion, the real environmentalists should embrace nuclear power. That technology can produce all the energy we need, while vastly lowering the amount of CO2 we generate. You (and people like you) simply are unable to grapple with the fact that the vast majority of all energy worldwide is produced using fossil fuels, and cannot admit it is totally completely unfeasible to produce all the energy humans need with just hydro, solar and wind.
80% of the world energy was produced by fossil fuels. 80%.
If you were willing to massively build nuclear power you could probably switch over from 80% to less than 30% over a short period of time, say 10 to 20 years.
But environmentalists are standing in the way of the only technology we have which can solve the problem. Solar and wind cannot do it, although I support further research to make wind and solar better and cheaper. I also support fusion research and space based solar. But nuclear power is here now and we could build it out and solve the global warming issue. The waste from nuclear is a much smaller problem than the worst case of fossil fuel usage – but environmentalists won’t embrace it. We can actually use the waste to generate more power.
You should check out this TED talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables?language=en
Sorry for the rant – but I think you and your crowd are the real problem. Not me.
I have never heard of counterpunch or Paul Street. I will have to check that site out.
Pure denialism.
Childishly specious.
You are flatly denying that climate impacts already are life-endangering and will become increasingly dangerous the more CO2 pollution occurs.
Since palaeoclimate behaviour is essentially incompatible with low sensitivity to radiative forcing, it is dishonest to pretend that there is any real likelihood of low sensitivity somehow saving us from our / your stupidity.
“Lewis, Nicholas, and Judith Curry.”
You defend yourself with them? Not a surprise, but still pitiful. Why don’t you reference real scientists?
“NPC”
I have no idea what that is. I will assume, since it comes from mikeN, it is some stupid right wing attempt at an insult.
Yes, because while you are scientifically ignorant you still deny what scientists say.
We also note you avoid commenting on rollbacks on protection for clean water, protection of endangered wildlife, etc. Just part of how fundamentally despicable and dishonest you are.
Indeed it is. More here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/npc-meme-right-wing-trolls-liberals-donald-trump-twitter-insults-republicans-a8588036.html
So RickA thinks that dumping highly toxic chemical wastes into wetlands and streams, killing beneficial insects like pollinators in industrial numbers and removing all protection for endangered species, sub-species and populations is perfectly fine, since he has avoided responding to my remarks about them repeatedly.
Got it. RickA thinks that nature is expendable and worthless if it gets in the way of corporate profit maximization. Slash and burn baby! Destroy! Destroy!
Actually, RickA, I need to ask you if you are able to read properly. Hello? Knock-knock? Is anyone in there? Your response to my post ignored every point I made and swung straight to CO2 (which of course is a pollutant at high concentrations as anyone with half a brain knows). Climate change is a massive threat to nature and human well-being but it is far from the only threat. The current POTUS is eviscerating regulations protecting wetlands, coastal and marine ecosystems, forests, biodiversity and human health. To a moron like him a golf course is ‘wild nature’; anything else is expendable. What your responses have proved to me beyond any shadow of a doubt is that are as thick as a pile of bricks. You have not got a clue what is going on in your blinkered world. Sheesh. And you claim to be a lawyer? For what!? Do you not read anything outside of a few conservative rags? Have you ever read anything about laws protecting the environment or biodiversity? Were you even aware of the Chesapeake Bay clean-up program that Trump and his goons stopped?
Being naive is one thing; being ignorant and wallowing in it as a badge of honor is quite another. I give up. You might as well be a wall.
“Indeed it is. More here:”
Thanks. Wow, that notion seems to represent a new low in thought effort, even for the already low efforts the right-wingers exercise on a daily basis. Stupidity truly is the only thing they do well.
Credit where credit is due: they are doing a pretty good job of traducing the Constitution and abetting a nascent tyranny. I’m sure the Framers would have been suitably impressed by the way in which their work has been undone.
Yeah, I never thought I’d see Nixon’s classic line where he said (essentially) “If the president does it it isn’t illegal” ever used again, but there was Dershowitz spitting it out without a flinch during his time in the Senate. And now we know that another lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is on the skeezy end of an arrangement with a “charity” that has paid him big bucks.
You have to admit, these Republican professional grifters (and supporters like the two local republican butt-boys) have waited a long time for a political athmosphere in which their levels of dishonesty are benefits, and they’re making the most of it.
They don’t even admit, or maybe they don’t realize, their levels of hypocrisy: think of all the imaginary things they accuse Obama and the Clintons of, and how worked up they were over their own falsehoods, and now they and theirs are doing far worse without a bit of concern.
Next time you see any of trump’s kids speaking in the White House think about their false concern over Biden’s kid and his job (and remember the investigation showed no wrong-doing there while there hasn’t been any investigation of trump’s crotch fruit).
But if the King does it… no dissenting voice is permitted. Because, well, you know, he’s the King. Above the law. Okay, now we snap back from the Bad Old Days to the present, and oh my.
As a republican*, I have great respect for America’s hard-fought and justly won independence from British colonial grasp and its subsequent self-creation.
So to see this great unraveling is genuinely painful.
*Small ‘r’ for a flat no to inherited formal social rank.
There is some good news. It seems the daily stormer, a nazi-loving site favorite of republicans, is having serious financial trouble. A report states that their “leader”, some scumbag named andrew anglin, posted a tweet crying about the fact that despite asking followers for money they don’t have enough to meet expenses and so they’ll lay off staff.
Not sure where rickA and others will go for their “news” and “facts” now.
dean:
Thank you for your concern.
Not to worry – I have never even heard of the daily stormer and have never been to the site.
I get most of my news from the google news selections – the AP, Reuters and a bunch of channels and newspapers (I don’t have cable tv – I cut the cord a number of years ago).
I just read that the New York Times circulation has dropped to 14th in the country (from 3rd I believe). I think all news outlets are having trouble today.
I still get the Star Tribune, but I hear their circulation is down also.
I hope I have allayed your concern.
“Not to worry – I have never even heard of the daily stormer and have never been to the site.”
There is no more reason to believe that than there is to believe anything else you say — that is, none at all.
The closing arguments are over.
Now we wait until Wed. for the vote to acquit.
The only question remaining is how many democrats will vote to acquit.
My money is on 3.
But the Presidents lawyers arguments were so good, it could be more!
We will see.
“But the Presidents lawyers arguments were so good”
Yup, when you say things like “if the president does it it isn’t illegal” and remind the spineless leaders on the right that trump paid their campains shit-tons of money, it isn’t hard to convince a bunch of old racists to agree. You younger racist-loving bigots just go along because this president is white and as authoritarian as you are.
RickA, stop bullshitting. The only reason a scientifically illiterate person like you ‘believes’ that BAU will generate ‘only’ 2 degrees of warming in the coming century is because this fits in with your warped, right wing anti-environmental pro-corporate ideology. Stop spewing out nonsense about science. The vast majority of qualified experts say three degrees at a minimum under BAU, and many say far more than that. You are an annoying flea. Your views are worthless. The shallowness of some of your comments on blogs staggers the imagination. I really get the impression from some of your comments that you are in Grade 3. Seriously. You dodged everything I said about Trump’s recent assaults on environmental regulations. Clearly, this is proof, if any were needed, that we are demolishing your screeds.
The paper RickA ‘touted’ is a classic example of cherry-picking. Ignore 999 papers out of 1000 that don’t conform with his pre-determined worldview and focus on only one that does. This is not how science works, except among deniers. They are master cherry-pickers. RickA exhibits the hallmark symptoms of a denier, but as I said, this has nix to do with science and everything to do with ideology. I wish he would stop with the semantics. The weight of evidence suggests that it will warm by at least 3 degrees under BAU in this century. The biosphere will be warmer by that point than in 50 million years. The current rate of warming exceeds that at the Permian-Triassic boundary by over 10 times. That event coincided with the extinction of 75% of terrestrial and 95% of marine species. It was an extinction event of catastrophic proportions. At three degrees, perhaps 80% of ecosystems across the biosphere will be very severely damaged and barely function. Humans will suffer terribly as our life-support systems collapse around us. We are facing a calamity of epic proportions. There is no way to sugar coat it. That a troll like RickA even tries is infuriating.
Jeffh:
I find your outrage so amusing.
Bernard asked for a paper to support my view (he asked me to cherry-pick).
I cite one (as requested) and you cry foul.
Your chicken little view of the future is also amusing.
I will wait for ocean front property values to start going down and for the Obama’s to sell their newly purchased 25 million mansion, which is only 10 feet or so above sea level.
Until then, your predictions of the future are like most alarmists – proven wrong in the past, so entitled to very little deference for the future.
When did I ask you to “cherry-pick?” Please provide a link.
You are engaging in several logical fallacies, not the least of which it to falsely atrtibute to me a meaning or a motive which is incorrect.
Of course, the fallacy of your confabulation of “[providing] a paper to support [your] view” with a request to “cherry-pick” does not preclude the likelihood that said confabulation is an inadvertent and unconscious admission on your part that cherry-picking is in fact exactly what you are doing…
Bernard:
Above you asked me “On what reasonable analysis do you predicate that stance?”
I took that to mean you wanted me to cite a paper.
Obviously any paper I cite to support my opinion would be cherry-picked, as I picked it to support my opinion.
I am not asking anybody here to accept that the paper I cite is right. It is just a paper which supports my opinion and which I think sets out a reasonable basis upon which ECS could be 1.8C (i.e. less than 2.0C).
Jeffh doesn’t like the paper I cite – but that doesn’t really matter because it is just a paper which supports my opinion (which is what I interpreted your request to be).
Hope that helps.
There’s a difference between me asking you to reference your work and asking you to cherry-pick. The former requires an evidenced and reasoned rebuttal with reliable science. Your approach – which I did not request – involves selectively exercising your bias to choose something that reinforces your ideology, without any supportable scientific argument behind it.
That’s the thing – you’ve provided no “reasonable basis” for any reasonable definition of reasonable.
Nothing that you’ve provided, now or in the extensive past, has helped to construct a rebuttal of the science. You’re simply repetitively asserting your desire for a certain reality, which is not evidenced in empirical reality.
RickA
“I get most of my news from the google news selections – the AP, Reuters and a bunch of channels and newspapers”
Well here are some suggestions to keep abreast of the many environmental concerns and how damaging the sick POS in the Whitehouse is with his many environmental protection roll backs:
https://www.desmogblog.com/
https://www.carbonbrief.org/
to not engage with the discussions there is to engage in wilful ignorance.
Maybe you like being thought of as a primitive, one who’s brain has not evolved as far as it might thus not beyond the palaeolithic hunter gatherer mode of thought.
“Bernard asked for a paper to support my view (he asked me to cherry-pick).”
He knew better than to ask you for a valid paper since you don’t read them.
“… 25 million mansion,.”
Which isn’t a thing. It will be interesting to see whether you have the integrity to fact check yourself. I’m guessing you’ll stick with the lie you have.
dean:
I checked, and see it was 15 million.
I was wrong and I admit it.
Thanks for making me fact check that fact.
The point remains – 15 million is a lot of money.
The Obama’s cannot be to worried about sea level rise.
Neither am I.
1) You don’t know what the Obamas worry about.
2) The Obamas can move. Hundreds of millions of people cannot, especially on the time scales involved, and nor can a significant proportion of species or just about every last ecosystem on the planet.
“The Obama’s cannot be to worried about sea level rise.”
Consider, SLR will not be the same along all coastlines.
“Until then, your predictions of the future are like most alarmists – proven wrong in the past, so entitled to very little deference for the future.”
Predictions v projections – check it out.
Whatever, once again demonstrating your arrogant ignorance for it will not take many dominoes like this Video: Glacier collapse would trigger eventual loss of West Antarctic Ice Sheet to fall for SLR to rise much faster that projected just ten years ago.
Projections have been wrong but mostly underestimating the speed and impact of climate change. Australia is a new poster child for extreme weather climate related events.
What is the matter with you RickA, your epistemic bubble window fogged again?
RickA, I find your ignorance nauseating. As a scientist, it pains me to read the sophomoric level of most of your right wing musings. You know very little about politics and virtually nothing about science. Chicken Little? Australia is a vision of that? Amazonia? Or a searing heatwave that hit Europe last summer which one Dutch climate scientist claimed should happen “once every 20,000 years” but which will now happen with regularity? Or the fact that over 60% of genetic diversity has been lost from biodiversity since 1970? That populations of insects, amphibians, birds and other taxa are collapsing across the biosphere? That marine dead zones are pandemic?
Your vision is based on your warped political ideology, as I said before. I will add ignorance. The people who dredge up the “Chicken Little” comment have their heads shoved up their butts for the most part. They are blinded to the state of the current predicament, shrouded in ignorance. They wish it away. You are just one of many. Your problem is that you somehow think that you know what you are talking about and feel confident to express your pitiful ignorance on blogs. Frankly, you don’t have a clue. You really ought to desist from your ritual self-humiliation.
Jeffh:
I hope you manage to keep your stomach contents in place.
To measure my ignorance you should keep track of my predictions and use them as a gauge.
I was right on Mueller, I was right on Kavanaugh and I will be right on Impeachment later today. So I think I am doing pretty good on politics.
Outstanding predictions (that I recall):
1. I predicted Mann would lose his defamation suit – which isn’t over yet.
2. I predicted 3 or more democrats will vote to acquit Trump today. We can measure that one later today.
3. I predict ECS will turn out to be 2.0C or less. We have to wait on that prediction, as nobody knows the actual value of ECS yet.
Non sequitur of the week.
Unlike the venal shits whose behaviour you tirelessly endorse, physics isn’t influenced by rightwing ‘thought’. So based on the totality of the scientific evidence, which indicates that ECS will at least 3C, you will be flat-out wrong.
BBD says “So based on the totality of the scientific evidence, which indicates that ECS will at least 3C, you will be flat-out wrong.”
Oh poor BBD.
You are mistaken.
The IPCC summarizes the totality of science and clearly states that ECS will fall into a range of 1.5C to 4.5C. The totality of science does not claim ECS will be “at least 3C”. You don’t get to modify the IPCC summary of the state of climate science just because you disagree with me.
1) You “don’t get to modify the IPCC summary of the state of climate science” either by selecting the very minimum outliers as your choice of reality.
2) You ignore the fact that the phenomenon of central tendency dictates that parsimony would reflect the phenomenon, and expect median values of the totality of estimations to be those that best describe reality.
3) You ignore the fact that paleoclimatic sensitivities are reliably nailed to ~3.0 °C, taking into account the positive and negative forcings milieux.
4) You ignore the fact that modellings/projections of warming are validated by the unfolding trajectory of realised warming:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/models/
In light of this unfolding support of the models the parsimonious conclusion is that they are supporting the models’ assumptions of forcings and sensitivity: ergo the median/most expected values for sensitivity are likely to be closest to reality.
It’s not difficult to think scientifically if you leave your ideology at the door. You should consider trying it some time.
No I’m not.
Bernard J has already explained why. Read his comment closely.
Remember that I’ve already pointed out many times – including on this thread – that palaeoclimate behaviour is incompatible with ECS <2C. A value around 3C gives the best fit.
The bottom end of the old IPCC range is now understood to be too low because of the lowball estimates from the toy climate model stuff (eg. L&C). If you were honest in your assessment of the scientific evidence you would admit this.
But you don't admit it, which is evidence of your ongoing dishonesty.
Actually, it does.
“I was right on Mueller, I was right on Kavanaugh and I will be right on Impeachment later today. ”
– You were “right” on Mueller only because you chose to ignore the evidence and lie about what he wrote
– You were “right” on Kavanaugh for the same reasons — it’s easy for people like you to say women are liars because you view them as unimportant
– Nobody disagreed with you on the acquital because the republicans said before anything started that they wouldn’t pay attention to evidence and would vote to acquit no matter what
Your track record isn’t based on any facts other than the complete absence of integrity and honesty you and the people you support put on display every day
RickA, puh-lease. Keep your predictions to yourself. It is depressing enough reading the piffle you write up on here. What is harder is that you write it elsewhere, too. That you worship a vulgar, sexist, misogynist, childish, narcissist is bad enough. That he is the POTUS is beyond parody. It reveals the depths to which alleged democracy has sunk. Trump and his Party are shafting 90% of those who support them like a cult. If the orange buffoon has any talent, it is his ability to sell his corporate kleptocracy to the working classes who somehow think he is one of them. The Republican Party is morally and politically bankrupt from top to bottom and their sole agenda is to further enrich the 1% and to stick it to the remaining 99%. But of course, to get elected, they need around 50% of the remaining 99% to support their brand of fascism. Not an easy sell but Trump and the GOP succeed using racism to get the southern (white) vote, anti-abortion to get the evangelical and northern Catholic vote, and unlimited access to guns to get the western pro-militia vote. Once they have these in the bag, they can begin taking apart government for the benefit of a tiny wealthy elite. They can eviscerate regulations protecting the environment and the poor. The fact that around 70% of Americans cannot come up with 1000 dollars for an immediate emergency reveals how divided the country is. Neoliberal capitalism is the culprit, and to be honest neither Party since Reagan has done a thing to rein in in. The only hope now as far as I am concerned is Bernie Sanders, but I would vote for any Democrat to get the current liar out of office asap. Trump wants to turn the world into a searing greenhouse gas chamber, and given his complete disregard for nature and climate, the planet just does not have time for this moron to be in power for another 4 years.
US democracy is a farce anyway. Trump lost be 3.5 million votes in 2016. The Senate was created by a bunch of bigoted founding fathers to ensure that the heartland had a disproportionate share of power. It beggars belief that a state like Wyoming, with under 600,000 people, has as much representation in the Senate as California, with 39 million. Technically it is possible to have a Senate majority with under 18% of the population represented. Some democracy.
As for RickA’s feeble defense of Trump and against impeachment, Paul Street demolishes it in this piece for Counterpunch:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/31/two-wings-four-despotisms/
Remember, Trump is white, a racist, a bigot, a serial abuser of women, a man whose comments don’t reflect reality, only the things the right want to hear — and to folks like rickA all of those things are the traits to be honored. Integrity and fairness are for the have-nots, and they don’t count. Remember, he’s the guy who couldn’t tell the truth about “devil’s night” in Detroit (truth being he didn’t like being reminded that non-whites lived around him).
Bernard:
You wanted to know what my support was for the range of 0.9C to 1.2C for warming since 1750.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2018/09/07/exactly-how-much-has-the-earth-warmed-and-does-it-matter/#4fbf00da5c22
More specifically, from the article:
“The Earth is generally regarded as having warmed about about 1° C (1.8° F) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, around 1750. In 2017, two professional papers generated much debate in both the popular press and professional literature about whether this figure is correct. Schurer, et al. argued the rise is 1.2° C (2.2° F) and Millar, et al. claimed the rise is 0.9° C (1.6° F).”
So the two papers Schurer and Millar supply the range.
Millar et al note in the first sentence of their abstract that “warming of about 0.9 °C from the mid-nineteenth century to the present decade” has occurred. In the first sentence of their second introductory paragraph they say “Human-induced warming reached an estimated 0.93 °C (± 0.13 °C; 5-95 percentile range) above mid-nineteenth-century conditions in 2015…” They are not reporting warming in the first century of the Industrial Revolution.
As I said, if one goes to the best source of warming over the last several centuries one will likely go to the Berkeley Earth data, and those data indicate ~1.2 °C warming from 1750 to about 2016/17. This is not inconsistent with Millar et al, and it shows that the Forbes piece was insufficiently researched: they certainly didn’t go back to Otto et al 2015 which was Millar’s et al original reference.
But it’s more interesting than that. I’ve been working off data I downloaded several year ago, and completely missed this…
http://berkeleyearth.org/volcanoes/
It tells a slightly more interesting story… I’ll note as a caveat that this dataset is for land only, but there’s also the point that we live on the land…
And a final point: The first 100 years of the Industrial Revolution warming is superimposed over a background of orbitally-forced cooling. Going by Marcott et al 2013 that cooling is about 0.05 °C per century: one can infer from that what the cooling would have been that’s otherwise masked by the Industrial Revolution. And there’s another forcing in the first 100 years of the Industrial revolution that may very slightly mask warming, pollution, but I’d ascribe so little significance to this cooling effect over that time that it’s probably able to be discounted without much impact on the reconstructed temperature trajectory.
The take home message is that however one slices and dices the last two and a half centuries, there is no supportable evidence that warming was only around 0.9 °C over that time.
Bernard:
You asked for a cite for the 15% human contribution of warming since 280 ppm to 393 ppm.
The paper is Harde (2019):
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b8df/649a03be474a3d0b87e3a0b6a3be65cc52f1.pdf
From the conclusion:
“At equilibrium this contribution is given by the
fraction of human to native impacts. As an average over the
period 2007-2016 the anthropogenic emissions (FFE&LUC
together) donated not more than 4.3% to the total concentration of 393 ppm, and their fraction to the atmospheric increase
since 1750 of 113 ppm is not more than 17 ppm or 15%.”
The journal ‘Earth Sciences’ is a rubbish journal, and Beall certainly identifies it as such. It’s not listed by Ulrichsweb as being appropriately peer reviewed, and it is so poorly regarded by the Australian Research Council that it is omitted from its Excellence in Research for Australia journal list.
Further, the paper is by a single author whose other work demonstrates that he’s a climate science denier. In addition, he has form in finding dubious ways to publish his tripe:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/04/harde-times/
It’s worth noting that Harde’s paper was pinged almost as soon as it was published:
https://twitter.com/theresphysics/status/1142027873659891712?lang=en
And Brere Eli predicted your use of it:
https://twitter.com/EthonRaptor/status/1142028463265603584
You’re not relying on science, you’re relying on the Diagon Alley of pseudo-scientific nutters and ideologues who’ll lie through their teeth to make their claims.
Well my prediction of 3 or more democrats voting to acquit Trump was wrong.
RickA
Oh, from Forbes, really, be WUWT next.
Whatever
Schurer, et al. and Millar
Late here now but you still don’t get it.
RickA and climate sensitivity.
“The jury is still out, but it is worrying,” said Rockström. “Climate sensitivity has been in the range of 1.5°C to 4.5°C for more than 30 years. If it is now moving to between 3°C and 7°C, that would be tremendously dangerous.”
Context
But also be aware that, The 9 limits of our planet … and how we’ve raced past 4 of them
Your material world view of free choice without responsibility is already killing people and the environment that supports life.
RickA, the more you write the worse you look. Desist, please. You cherry-pick the most rotten fruit. You are searching under every slimy rock to find a few studies that support your pre-determined worldview. If you did this at a scientific conference, you would be eaten alive. Stop it.
No.
I will not stop expressing my opinion.
This is America and we are all entitled to free speech here.
He’s telling you to stop lying rickA. Was that too simple for you to grasp or is the concept of being an honest player so alien to you it didnt’ register?
What a dishonest dickhead you are, RickA.
dean:
I never lie.
Although I am occasionally wrong.
RickA
Maybe but not to offer opinion based upon fallacy that can cause harm or get in the way of protecting people from harmful effects. Your ‘free speech’ is nothing but exercising freedom without responsibility, words have consequences and those from such as you are highly dangerous given the issues humanity faces.
Naturally I disagree.
Holy crap.
—–> didn’t register
“I never lie.”
Add another lie to the list.
RickA was finally honest. “I always lie” he opined, and “I am always wrong” he also said.
At least he knows himself well.
RickA
Of course, you always have the best truth, the biggest truth, the cleanest truth etc, etc.
Meanwhile the following could be a report card on Trump’s dastardly environmental record:
Donald Trump’s Record on Climate Change
Anybody supporting Trump is aiding and abetting environmental felony and should in time be subject to an international trial.
Lionel, Donald Trump and his neofascist regime have an abominable record on every aspect of the environment. Not only on climate change, but on water quality and pollution, pesticide regulations, safeguarding of public lands and protection of endangered species. I highlighted some of these areas above. RickA, like other right wing bots, doesn’t seem to care at all about the environment and even appears to suggest that Trump’s evisceration of environmental regulations is a good thing. For him, the extinction of red-cockaded woodpeckers, black-capped vireos, black-footed ferrets, florida mountain lions, and many other species or populations teetering on the brink is apparently no big deal. They are expendable if they impede corporate profit maximization. The tragic thing is how many people appear to think like this. A Yahoo! piece several months ago described Trump pulling the plug on habitat protection for an endangered species of western grouse. People commenting on the story showed little sympathy for the species; many suggested that the grouse was worthless because its meat was tasteless. Seriously. These people are Trump’s ‘base’.
And the type of people that RickA gets his ‘news’ from, which makes him a bottom feeder, are at it again with some of the usual suspects:
The ever erudite John Mashey reveals that the lying deniers are still at it, now trying to confuse people by using an organisation with the initials NAS in this case National Association of Scholars which could be confounded with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences a very different organisation.
People and organisations involved in this multi-level deception are Will Happer, Patrick Michaels, Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Global Warming Policy Foundation (UK).
Dark-Moneyed Denialists Are Running ‘Fixing Science’ Symposium of Doubt
Also beware of rickA (or anyone) referencing the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a decidely non-science based group of quacks trying to give the impression that they are a reliable source. They
– are a fountain of anti-vaccination crap, including the “vaccines cause autism” line
– had an article by Wakefield himself in their “journal” — full of his usual wretchedness
– deny the HIV/Aids link
– push “abortions are a major cause of breast cancer” crap
– claim that shaken baby syndrome is fictional, and that it was made up as a cover for the “fact” (their words) that vaccines directly caused the child’s death
and much more. It’s clearly not anything that a sane or honest person would buy into, but we are discussing rickA here, so you never know what might happen. (And again, so far no evidence he buys any of this.)