Donald Trump held what was essentially a campaign rally in Louisiana this week, and his message was that he deserves credit for reversing the Obama administration’s efforts to combat climate change.
President Trump traveled to an energy state on Tuesday to boast about his administration’s reversal of Obama-era environmental policies, ticking off actions like approving oil pipelines, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and opening up Arctic drilling that he said have resulted in an “American energy revolution.”
However, back in the reality-based world, the bad news kept coming.
Over the weekend, the climate system sounded simultaneous alarms. Near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia, the temperature surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). Meanwhile, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 415 parts per million for the first time in human history.
Of course, carbon dioxide is a major driver of the greenhouse effect. It is causing global warming. It is also causing ocean acidification. Here’s a chemistry lesson:
When carbon dioxide (CO2) is absorbed by seawater, chemical reactions occur that reduce seawater pH, carbonate ion concentration, and saturation states of biologically important calcium carbonate minerals. These chemical reactions are termed “ocean acidification” or “OA” for short. Calcium carbonate minerals are the building blocks for the skeletons and shells of many marine organisms. In areas where most life now congregates in the ocean, the seawater is supersaturated with respect to calcium carbonate minerals. This means there are abundant building blocks for calcifying organisms to build their skeletons and shells. However, continued ocean acidification is causing many parts of the ocean to become undersaturated with these minerals, which is likely to affect the ability of some organisms to produce and maintain their shells.
If you want lots of seashells on the seashore (or your dinner plate), you definitely don’t want more ocean acidification. You don’t want more CO2 in the atmosphere, and the scientists are giving you new reasons everyday.
In Greenland, for example, the ice sheet’s melt season began about a month early. In Alaska, several rivers saw winter ice break up on their earliest dates on record.
Across the Arctic overall, the extent of sea ice has hovered near a record low for weeks.
Data from the Japan Meteorological Agency show April was the second warmest on record for the entire planet.
It would be difficult to tackle this problem in the best of circumstances, but the leader of the most powerful country on Earth is convinced it’s all a hoax and he’s asking people to pat him on the back for making the problem much worse.
We, and the whole world, will be feeling the effects of this administration’s policy decisions (from the environment to inequality to health care, etc.) for DECADES to come. If he gets elected again we are well and truly f**ked.
Well, Der Trumper is not the only one ignoring the ongoing alarms, the “conservative” movement and all elected members of its wholly-owned Repub party (as well as the plutocrat owners of the whole loathsome operation) are ignoring them as well, not to mention lying promiscuously about them—and have been for 30 years now. And the useless braindead denialist citizens showing up at Trumper’s rallies are fully on board, too, since they invariably obtain federal disaster relief for every climate calamity that occurs in the new man-made climate that they are willfully bringing down around their heads. Since Red Staters (like these Louisianans) are far more likely to be in the crosshairs of the upcoming climate catastrophes, it’s a nice scam for them! Anyway, the ongoing acidification of the oceans is not reversible, and it goes without saying that even the various crackpot atmosphere re-engineering schemes thrown out by will do nothing to alter acidification of the oceans.
Trumper’s energy revolution claims are all lying hype, of course, as we’ve been fracking for over a decade now and obviously it will take some time for all the new permits his polluters have obtained to be put into production. Americans (and humans generally) have essentially given up on the environment, the diversity of species and the natural climate. But the Chicken Little libs were outraged, so total victory!
I see Joe wants a middle course. Yeah that should do it right? No need to be radical like AOC and the GND fringes. We can find a few bi partisan advocates on that middle ground and do some good. Fuck those glaciers in Alaska and Greenland. What is wrong with the world? Have we all lost our minds? Time is not on our side unless you are checking out soon.
Following the idea of an earlier post, that features of collective Repugnican psychopathology seem indistinguishable from mental illness (that’s my less tactful paraphrase): as the most urgent problem we are facing, climate change is perhaps the most direct window into it.
For one, there are the Dominionists, who are in essence a death cult and are happy to precipitate the end times for everyone. Then there are those non-reality-based Repugnicans who are simply in staunch denial. (When a radically changed climate becomes undeniable even for them, I bet Faux Noise if it still around will turn on a dime and blame it on a conspiracy by The Left to destroy the whole planet with funding by Soros and the Clinton Foundation.) There must be the few Repugnicans who have enough mental clarity to see catastrophe coming, but on the basis of their conduct, I can only imagine that they fantasize that they or their spawn will somehow be prepared to survive the first big dieoffs, and if they have to fare worse than now, then at least they will fare better than the other few thousand survivors scattered here and there around the globe in the new stone age. The fantasy is risible, another kind of denial. In any case, given the choice between changing course so that everyone on the ship can be saved, they would obviously rather see the whole ship go down, condemning everybody including themselves, as long as they can drown on deck, not in steerage. And there is another signature feature of Repugnican psychopathology.
Sorry—I’ll try again to link the earlier post.
My kids are pissed off at us older folks for the world they are inheriting from us. They are afraid to have kids of their own. As saddened as I am at the prospect of not being a grandparent, I really cannot blame them.
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