To form such a committee smells of confirmation bias
Trump and co are setting up a panel to “discover” that climate change is no problem.
According to a document obtained by The Washington Post, the Trump administration intends to use an executive order to create a panel tasked with assessing the potential harm of climate change.
Citing a memo dated February 14, The New York Times reported the committee, called the the Presidential Committee on Climate Security, will consist of 12 individuals, including William Happer, who is slated to head the team. Appointed to the National Security Council as the senior director for emerging technologies, the Princeton physicist is a known climate change denier, who once compared the “demonization of carbon dioxide” to the “demonization of poor Jews under Hitler.”
Except for the whole having a brain and feelings part, the comparison is a close one.
The formation of the committee has sparked concern among climate change experts. Marshall Shepherd, Georgia Athletic Association distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences and geography, told Newsweek: “Study after study from the military, bipartisan and nonpartisan organizations and the National Academy of Sciences have confirmed that climate change is a threat to national security.
“I actually served on one of the National Academy studies commissioned by the U.S. Navy, and the findings were crystal clear. To form such a committee smells of confirmation bias and contradicts military generals and admirals that have spoken clearly on this topic.”
Well that’s Trump. Remember the story McCabe tells? Intel people told Trump North Korea was a threat and he said no it’s not, Putin told me so. They said but sir all the evidence – and he said “I don’t care, I believe Putin.” That’s who’s running this. He wants his “committee” to contradict the generals and admirals.
Jan Selby, a professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, U.K., told Newsweek: “This seems to be just another attempt by President Trump to obscure the reality of climate change, and the weight of scientific evidence on it.
“But the idea that a panel on the security implications of climate change could be headed by someone who doesn’t believe in climate change is patently ridiculous. You don’t need to have an A grade in logic to realize what its conclusions will be.”
Patently ridiculous is what he’s going for.
By all means let’s not demonize CO2. Or H2O. Both are benign in the right amount, lethal in the wrong amount or the wrong place. I suppose for his next trick Happer will explain that we don’t need flood prevention.
Actually, David, we can go further than that. Both of them are not only benign, they are essential. We can’t live without them. But…
…we can’t live without salt in our diets, either, but it wouldn’t be wise to over-do it.
AoS, exactly. Same with things like selenium and fluorine. Lots of things we can’t live without, and we can’t live with too much of.
Trump, on the other hand, we can live without. Even one Trump is too much Trump for life to thrive.
The dose makes the poison.
I’m afraid that with Trump, there’s no safe minimum amount. Any is too much.
So is he playing to his base? Playing to the energy sector? Triggering libs? Just being stubbornly, determinedly contrarian? When the military takes something like climate change seriously, it seems deeply perverse to claim it’s not happening. But then he’s gone against his own intelligence services; why should he not also ignore the military?