Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning

As Australia literally burns due to climate change which its prime minister denies is real, the ever toxic Trump/Pence regime is pushing a new federal rule that would bar the consideration of climate change in planning infrastructure construction. The result would be to allow more polluting projects - e.g., pipelines for oil - and pretending that sea levels are not rising. It's true idiocy yet is mainstream Republican thinking (or lack of thinking) and does not bode well for America and the world if implemented. It is but one more reason why removing Trump from office by any means is crucial. Meanwhile, one can only hope that states will enact laws that will hinder the federal effort to destroy the environment.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this latest effort to harm Americans while enriching the fossil fuel industry and other corporate despoilers of the environment. Here are highlights: 

Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.

The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.

According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do things like discharge waste, cut trees or increase air pollution.

The new rule would no longer require agencies to consider the “cumulative” consequences of new infrastructure. In recent years courts have interpreted that requirement as a mandate to study the effects of allowing more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It also has meant understanding the impacts of rising sea levels and other results of climate change on a given project.

[T]he Trump administration has been aggressive in its efforts to roll back environmental regulations. The 50 or so pages of revisions that the Council on Environmental Quality is expected to make public on Wednesday would not amend the act itself. Rather, they would revise the rules that guide the implementation of the law.

Environmental activists and legal experts said the proposed changes would weaken critical safeguards for air, water and wildlife. The move, if it survives the expected court challenges, also could eliminate a powerful tool that climate change activists have used to stop or slow Mr. Trump’s encouragement of coal and oil development as part of its “energy dominance” policy.

In March, a federal judge found that the Obama administration did not adequately take into account the climate change impact of leasing public land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a ruling that also presented a threat to Mr. Trump’s plans for fossil fuel development.

One month later, another federal judge dealt a blow to Mr. Trump’s plan to lift an Obama-era moratorium on coal mining on public lands when he found the administration did not adequately study the environmental effects of mining as required by law.

Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said eliminating the need to consider climate change would lead to more pipelines and other projects that worsen global emissions. It could also put roads, bridges and other infrastructure at greater risk, he said, because developers would not be required, for instance, to analyze whether sea-level rise threatened to eventually submerge a project.

“It has the potential to distort infrastructure planning by making it easier to ignore predictable futures that could severely degrade the projects,” Mr. Gerrard said.

Mr. Gerrard said the environmental review requirements of New York’s state-level version of the environmental policy act had helped to defeat a golf course that Mr. Trump hoped to build in Mount Kisco, N.Y. The Seven Springs golf course would have abutted Byram Lake, a reservoir for drinking water. Mr. Gerrard, who represented opponents of the project, said environmental reviews enabled the community to show that the drinking water supply could have been endangered. Mr. Trump shelved the project in 2004, but his public comments indicate the episode still rankles.

I am old enough that I will not live to see the worse consequences of the efforts of foul individuals like Trump.  My grandchildren will not be so lucky. 

U.S. Climate Report Warns of Dire Consequences

Yesterday a damning report on climate change was released by federal agencies (the report can be found here) that paints a frightening picture for the future if serious changes are not made to strengthen environmental laws and greatly reduce carbon emissions - all things that are the opposite of the Trump/Pence agenda.  The date of the release by the White House was thought to be aimed at having the dire warnings lost in the madness of Black Friday and the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  If nothing else, the Trump/Pence regime can be counted on to be deceptive and disingenuous at all times.  But back to the report.  For those living in coastal areas, sea level rise will be a major problem.  Meanwhile Midwestern farmers - the racist, neanderthals who put Trump in office - will see major economic problems as climate change reduces harvests and endangers live stock (no doubt the red state leaches will want federal bailouts with funds derived from blue states). The report is massive and looks at the prospects for every area of the country.   Here are excerpts from the New York Times on the report:

WASHINGTON — A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.

The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

[I]n direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

[T]he report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.

Scientists who worked on the report said it did not appear that administration officials had tried to alter or suppress its findings. However, several noted that the timing of its release, at 2 p.m. the day after Thanksgiving, appeared designed to minimize its public impact.

“This report will weaken the Trump administration’s legal case for undoing climate change regulations, and it strengthens the hands of those who go to court to fight them,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.

The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which the federal government is required by law to produce every four years. . . . . The results of the 2014 report helped inform the Obama administration as it wrote a set of landmark climate change regulations. The following year, the E.P.A. finalized President Barack Obama’s signature climate change policy, known as the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to slash planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. At the end of the 2015, Mr. Obama played a lead role in brokering the Paris Agreement.

But in 2016, Republicans in general and Mr. Trump in particular campaigned against those regulations. . . . . . Since winning the election, his administration has moved decisively to roll back environmental regulations.

The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.

The authors put forth three main solutions: putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which usually means imposing taxes or fees on companies that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; establishing government regulations on how much greenhouse pollution can be emitted; and spending public money on clean-energy research.

The report covers every region of the United States and asserts that recent climate-related events are signs of things to come. No area of the country will be untouched, from the Southwest, where droughts will curb hydropower and tax already limited water supplies, to Alaska, where the loss of sea ice will cause coastal flooding and erosion and force communities to relocate, to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where saltwater will taint drinking water.

More people will die as heat waves become more common, the scientists say, and a hotter climate will also lead to more outbreaks of disease.

Two areas of impact particularly stand out: trade and agriculture.

The nation’s farm belt is likely to be among the hardest-hit regions, and farmers in particular will see their bottom lines threatened.

“Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the U.S.,” the report says. “Expect increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad.”

The report says the Midwest, as well as the Northeast, will also experience more flooding when it rains, like the 2011 Missouri River flood that inundated a nuclear power plant near Omaha, forcing it to shut down for years.

Other parts of the country, including much of the Southwest, will endure worsening droughts, further taxing limited groundwater supplies. Those droughts can lead to fires, a phenomenon that played out this fall in California as the most destructive wildfire in state history killed dozens of people.

The report predicts that frequent wildfires, long a plague of the Western United States, will also become more common in other regions, including the Southeast.

Trump and Republicans Mirror Nero on Climate Change

Myth has it that as large areas of the ancient the City of Rome burned in a major fire, Emperor Nero played his fiddle as his subjects suffered.  Fast forward to today and we see Donald Trump and much of the Republican Party doing the equivalent as one dire study after another indicates that the world is headed towards a climate Armageddon if policies are not quickly changed.  Instead of ramping up to face the coming disaster, Trump is loosening regulations to INCREASE the release of carbon into the air and allowing increased pollution.  Meanwhile, his lunatic evangelical base blames disasters on gays and abortion rather than the failed policies of their favored leaders.  The latest report on climate change suggests that the window of opportunity to take corrective action is closing.  Instead of acting on the crisis, Trump continues his Nero imitation while spreading hate and division across America.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the frightening scenario.  Here are highlights:

When a cautious, science-based and largely apolitical group like the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world must utterly transform its energy systems in the next decade or risk ecological and social disaster, attention must be paid.

The panel, created in 1988, synthesizes the findings of leading climate scientists, an undertaking for which it received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It is not in the habit of lecturing governments. But its latest report, issued near Seoul on Monday, is very different. One United Nations official described it as “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen” — an alarm aimed directly at world leaders. “Frankly, we’ve delivered a message to the governments,” said Jim Skea, a co-chairman of the panel and a professor at Imperial College, London. “It’s now their responsibility … to decide whether they can act on it.”

Unfortunately, no alarm seems loud enough to penetrate the walls of the White House or the cranium of its principal occupant. President Trump had nothing substantive to say about the report, preferring, his staff said, to focus on celebrating the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Having already announced that he would withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, having also rolled back a suite of Obama-era efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Trump thus reaffirmed his sorry role as an outlier in the global struggle against climate change — a struggle few believe can be won without the enthusiastic participation of the United States.

The report, written by 91 scientists from 40 countries, came about at the request of several small island nations that took part in the Paris talks . . . . Fearing that their countries might someday be lost to rising seas, they asked the intergovernmental panel for further study of a lower threshold, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). The panel’s report concluded that the stricter threshold should become the new target. The alternative is catastrophe — mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water.

The panel said a mammoth effort is needed, beginning now and carrying through the century, to decarbonize global energy systems. The next 10 years are absolutely crucial: Emissions will have to be on a sharp downward path by 2030 for any hope of success. Greenhouse gases must be cut nearly in half from 2010 levels. Renewable energy sources must increase from about 20 percent of the electricity mix today to as much as 67 percent. The use of coal would need to be phased out, vanishing almost entirely by midcentury.

As an early piece in the Times noted, Trump is pandering to mining interest in Appalachia and certain western states to the detriment of the nation as a whole:  

Trump, who has questioned the accepted scientific consensus on climate change, continues to praise “clean beautiful coal” and has directed his Environmental Protection Agency to reverse major strides undertaken by the Obama administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. This is unbelievably reckless. In addition to undermining the fight against climate change, the president's efforts to prop up the dirtiest of all fuels will also exact a significant toll on public health, on the hearts and lungs of ordinary Americans.

The E.P.A.’s bedrock mission is to protect public health and welfare. Its basic tools are 50 years of federal clean air and water laws meant to limit Americans’ exposure to environmental poisons and pollutants.

The latest example is a proposal his agency [EPA] sent to the White House for review and approval that would, in broadest terms, greatly devalue the public health benefits of reducing air pollution. The proposal is specifically aimed at a 2011 finding by the Obama administration that when the agency devises rules to control a particular pollutant — mercury, in this case — it must take into account not only the compliance costs to industry but the additional health benefits that arise from the reduction in other harmful gases like soot and smog that occur as a side effect. Though the health benefits of controlling mercury alone were quite small, and the costs to industry large, those costs were outweighed by savings to the country in annual health costs and lost workdays when the co-benefits were factored in. [T]he Trump administration’s laughably weak replacement plan would cause (by the Trump E.P.A.’s own calculations) as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030, as well as 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory disease and billions of dollars in new health care costs, mainly from an increase in fine particulate matter linked to heart and lung disease. What we are dealing with here, in other words, is a bit of a shell game — hard to follow, costly to the public, satisfying to those who are running it. We are also dealing with people who won’t let inconvenient forecasts about death and disease deter them from their appointed goal of satisfying Mr. Trump’s pro-coal agenda, and who also seem eager to keep such forecasts hidden.

Hurricane Florence: Welcome to the New Normal

In a post last week I noted how six years ago Republican legislators in North Carolina had rejected the reality of climate change and ignored the recommendations of a non-partisan committee concerning sea level rise and future potential flooding.  The result was more construction on the coastal plain and flood plain areas.  Now, with Hurricane Florence the idiocy of such action is all too apparent.   Meanwhile, the Trump/Pence regime has pulled America out of the Paris climate accord and is actively working to destroy restrictions that would lessen carbon emissions and at least slow down elements fueling climate change.  All pure idiocy that ignores the growing dangers that past foolishness has set in motion.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the new normal and the danger of Trump/Pence policies - the irony, of course, is that North Carolina went for Trump in 2016.  Karma has already slapped the state hard across the face.  Here are column excerpts:

Hurricane Florence has drenched eastern North Carolina with more than 30 inches of rain, an all-time record for the state. Last year, Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston and dumped more than 60 inches of rain, an all-time record for the whole country. Also last year, Hurricane Maria ravaged the island of Puerto Rico and caused, according to an independent study, nearly 3,000 deaths.

Welcome to the new normal.  Tropical cyclones are nothing new, of course. But climate scientists say that global warming should make such storms wetter, slower and more intense — which is exactly what seems to be happening. And if we fail to act, these kinds of devastating weather events will likely become even more frequent and more severe.

Climate change is a global phenomenon. Authorities in the Philippines are still trying to assess the damage and death toll from Typhoon Mangkhut, a rare Category 5-equivalent storm that struck the archipelago Saturday with sustained winds of 165 mph. Mangkhut went on to batter Hong Kong and now, as it weakens, is plowing across southern China.

Every human being on the planet has a stake in what governments do to limit and adapt to climate change, including leaders who, like President Trump, prefer to believe global warming is some kind of hoax. I doubt the citizens of Wilmington, N.C. — a lovely resort town that was turned into an island by widespread flooding from Florence — feel there is anything illusory about the hardship they’re going through.

The most ambitious attempt to quantify the link between climate and weather — a blue-chip international consortium called World Weather Attribution — has not yet made an attempt to estimate any possible effect that global warming may have had on Florence or Mangkhut. But another group of researchers, the Climate Extremes Modeling Group at the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, estimated Sept. 12 that Florence would produce 50 percent more rainfall than if human-induced global warming had not occurred.

We know from direct measurement that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by more than 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when humans started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. We know from direct observation that carbon dioxide traps heat. We know from direct measurement that both atmospheric and ocean temperatures have been rising sharply. We know from direct measurement that warmer water takes up more space than cooler water, which is the main reason ocean levels are rising.

We know that warmer water is more easily evaporated, which means there is more moisture available to fuel a storm such as Florence or Harvey — and to be released by such storms as rainfall.

If humankind suddenly stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, we would still have to adapt to the climatic changes we have already set in motion. . . . . We will be coping with massive tropical storms, tragic coastal and riverine flooding, deadly heat waves and unprecedented wildfires for the rest of our lives.

At the very least, we should be trying to reduce carbon emissions and keep global warming to a manageable level. With the landmark Paris agreement, the nations of the world agreed to try. But Trump foolishly decided to pull the United States — the world’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind only China — out of the deal.

The administration has already proposed weakening restrictions on carbon emissions from automobiles and coal-fired power plants. And last week, there were reports that the administration also wants to loosen rules governing the release of methane, which traps even more heat than carbon dioxide.

Another news item from earlier this month should be instructive: A cargo ship is presently making the journey from Vladivostok, on Russia’s Pacific coast, to the German port of Bremerhaven via the Arctic Ocean, rather than taking the usual southern route through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. Until now, the northern route has always been impassible because it was blocked by polar ice. But because of climate change, a lot of the ice has melted.

Climate change is no longer theoretical. It is real, it is all around us, and it is going to get much worse.

Climate Change: Some Effects Irreversible

As the Republican Party continues to seek to deny that climate change is happening, the scientific community is becoming more convinced that not only is climate change happening, but that some effects may already be irreversible.  Will world governments act to address the impending disaster?  Probably not.  And if the GOP captures control of the U.S. Senate, expect nothing to be accomplished in America over the next two years.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

The Earth is locked on an “irreversible” course of climatic disruption from the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the impacts will only worsen unless nations agree to dramatic cuts in pollution, an international panel of climate scientists warned Sunday.

The planet faces a future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and melting polar ice from soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases, the U.N. panel said. Only an unprecedented global effort to slash emissions within a relatively short time period will prevent temperatures from crossing a threshold that scientists say could trigger far more dangerous disruptions, the panel warned.

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts,” concluded the report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which draws on contributions from thousands of scientists from around the world.

The report said some impacts of climate change will “continue for centuries,” even if all emissions from fossil-fuel burning were to stop. . . . "The window of opportunity for acting in a cost-effective way — or in an effective way — is closing fast,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geosciences professor and contributing author to the report.

The report is the distillation of a five-year effort to assess the latest evidence on climate change and its consequences. . .

A succession of IPCC reports since the 1990s have drawn an ever-clearer connection between human activity and climate change. But Sunday’s “synthesis report” makes the case more emphatically than before, asserting that the warming trend seen on land and in the oceans since the 1950s is “unequivocal” and that it is “extremely likely” — a term that the IPCC uses to denote a 95 percent or greater probability — that humans are the main cause.

While not addressed in the previous post, in 1956 the GOP respected and believed in science.  Today's GOP does not.  Again the cause?  The ignorance embracing Christofascists/Tea Party. 

The Tea Party's Climate Change Denial

I get accused of being hard on Christofascists and those of of them who masquerade under the smoke screen moniker.  I make no apologies.  I have a hard time with those who almost joyously embrace ignorance rather than accept the possibility that they were sold a false bill of goods by the snake oil merchants in the pulpits they grew up listening to each week.  Embracing ignorance is a choice - just as religious belief is a choice - and there is no reason why those who prefer to remain stupid and/or bigoted deserve a shred of respect in my book. Yes, they are free to hold their beliefs, but they should not be allowed to force their idiocy on others or impede government action on matters where objective facts and reality are no longer in debate outside of the coven of cretins in the GOP base.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the Tea Party's blythe embrace of ignorance on the issue of climate change.  Here are excerpts:

A friend of mine worked for a small-town newspaper years ago and had to write the weather report. The county fair was approaching, but the prediction was for rain. So the editors, fearing the wrath of local merchants, ordered my friend to change “rainy” to “sunny.” That was the newspaper’s policy. It has since been adopted by much of the Republican Party.

It is a stunning thing, when you think about it: GOP conservatives adopting a position of studied ignorance or, to put it more humorously, a version of what Chico Marx said in “Duck Soup”: “Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

My own eyes show rising ocean levels. They show the Arctic ice cap shrinking. They show massive beach erosion, homes toppling into the sea and meteorological records indicating steadily increasing temperatures. The Earth, our dear little planet, just had the hottest May on record.

My eyes read projections that are even more dire — drought, stifling heat, massive and more frequent storms, parts of coastal cities underwater and, in the American Southeast, an additional 11,000 to 36,000 people dying per year from the extreme heat.

Paulson has pointed out that global warming is bad for business (also for human beings) and steps should be taken to modify it. Among other things, the United States could reduce carbon emissions (mostly from coal-fired plants) that have contributed so much to global warming. Paulson believes, purely from the evidence, that human beings have contributed to the coming crisis.

Not so, cries the tea party. Not so, echoes most of the GOP’s potential presidential candidates. The list of deniers includes Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. 

A Pew Research Center poll last November found that 67 percent of Americans think the planet is indisputably getting warmer. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, however, the figure is 84 percent, but among tea party types it’s 25 percent. Maybe more to the point, only 9 percent of tea party members think “human activity” has contributed to global warming.

What possesses the tea party on climate change? Some of it has to do with traditional anti-establishment sentiment. If the elite say it’s getting hot, then it must be getting cold. Mostly, though, its position is rooted in a raging antipathy toward (hiss!) big government.  

[R]eports will be issued and the Obama administration will pump for a reduction in carbon emissions and much of the Republican Party will deny the undeniable. But the waters will rise and the country will bake. Years from now, people gasping for air will ask how we let this happen and the GOP, sticking to its plan, will deny that anything is happening at all.

Science Tells Us Climate Change Alarm is Sounding

Among the many complaints I have with today's Republican Party is its willing embrace of ignorance and refusal to accept scientific knowledge be it on the issue of sexual orientation or climate change.  Rather than stand up to the drooling, spittle flecked party base which rejects anything that challenges its prejudices or that suggests that changes are needed in a host of ways things have been done in the past, the party leadership time and time again panders to the lowest and most ignorant common denominator.  Recently Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas demonstrated the problem when he challenged scientific knowledge on climate change and parroted the favored talking points of the idiot GOP base.  In a column in the Washington Post, two scientist rip Smith a new one and rightfully so.  Here are some column excerpts:

In a recent op-ed for The Post, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) offered up a reheated stew of isolated factoids and sweeping generalizations about climate science to defend the destructive status quo. We agree with the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology that policy should be based on sound science. But Smith presented political talking points, and none of his implied conclusions is accurate.

The two of us have spent, in total, more than seven decades studying Earth’s climate, and we have joined hundreds of top climate scientists to summarize the state of knowledge for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the World Climate Research Program and other science-based bodies. We believe that our views are representative of the 97 percent of climate scientists who agree that global warming is caused by humans. Legions of studies support the view that, left unabated, this warming will produce dangerous effects. 

Man-made heat-trapping gases are warming our planet and leading to increases in extreme weather events. Droughts are becoming longer and deeper in many areas. The risk of wildfires is increasing. The year 2012, the hottest on record for the United States, illustrated this risk with severe, widespread drought accompanied by extensive wildfires.

Last month, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million, approaching the halfway mark between preindustrial amounts and a doubling of those levels. This doubling is expected to cause a warming this century of four to seven degrees Fahrenheit. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide reached this level was more than 3 million years ago, when Arctic lands were covered with forests. The unprecedented rate of increase has been driven entirely by human-produced emissions.

[B]y the end of this century, people will be experiencing higher temperatures than any known during human civilization — temperatures that our societies, crops and ecosystems are not adapted to.  

Contrary to Smith’s assertions, there is conclusive evidence that climate change worsened the damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. Sea levels in New York City harbors have risen by more than a foot since the beginning of the 20th century. Had the storm surge not been riding on higher seas, there would have been less flooding and less damage. Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.

The combined impetus of observed trends in climate and weather extremes, and continuing discoveries in climate science, lay bare how ludicrous Smith’s suggestion is that since we know nothing, we should do nothing.

We know a lot, more than enough to recognize that the alarm bells are ringing.  Increases in heat waves and record high temperatures; record lows in Arctic sea ice; more severe rainstorms, droughts and wildfires; and coastal communities threatened by rising seas all offer a preview of the new normal in a warmer world. Smith’s policy plan amounts to “wait and see.” But the longer we wait — effectively, like him, closing our eyes to science — the more difficult and expensive the solutions become, and the more irreversible the damage will be.

The GOP base - especially the Christofascists - and the political whores who pose as the GOP leadership cling to a Neolithic world view and a  a religious fantasy world that science is destroying more ever day.  Not wanting to admit that long held views and beliefs are wrong doesn't make them any less wrong.