Scott Pruitt, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has called for a “red team-blue team” review to challenge the science behind climate change. “The American people deserve an honest, open, transparent discussion about this supposed threat to this country,” he said on a radio show, adding he hoped to hold the exercise in the fall.

Most commonly, red team-blue team reviews are used as a mechanism to improve security of information systems or military defenses. The blue team is associated with an institution, the owner of an asset or a plan. The red team is charged with attacking the blue team, with the goal of revealing vulnerabilities.

I have participated in red team-blue team exercises and in many reviews that share characteristics with their philosophy. Whether the review is cast as a hostile intruder, a devil’s advocate or scenario planning, there is always the spirit of challenge by an antagonist.

This can take many forms. As a climate researcher, I have participated in reviews where weather and climate projects were investigated for budget reductions. Others examined the role of high-risk research and technology along the critical path of a project. I have participated in studies of management acumen and how projects fit into a national and international political and scientific context.

I have also participated in forums of scientific debate. This is where scientists provided evidence supporting competing arguments to explain unresolved observed behaviors. The arguments were testable, hence, scientific hypotheses. From my experience in both types of review, I can say confidently that red team-blue team exercises are not a mechanism for scientific debate.

They are not designed to take a testable hypothesis and then look at whether observations and theory support or refute it. They are more like Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, causing disruption, distortion and chaos.

And so, Pruitt’s call for a red team-blue team review is not designed to test the scientific robustness of our knowledge of climate change. Rather, it is part of the political strategy to continue the dissolution of the EPA’s climate change activities and to destroy President Obama’s efforts to address climate change — something Pruitt and the Trump administration have made their stated goal.

Administrator Pruitt’s call for a red team-blue team review has been discussed by a number of other scientists. In a Washington Post commentary, Ben Santer, Kerry Emanuel and Naomi Oreskes discuss peer review and its checks and balances. Former Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren, in the Boston Globe, takes on the political nature of Pruitt’s position and documents the extensive reviews of climate change science by many organizations.

read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/18/red-team-blue-team-debating-climat...

A man without shame is a man inhumane, someone for whom full fellowship with other human beings is, at best, painfully out of reach. How pitiable he is.

If I were to take Christian language for his plight, borrow it from St. Augustine of Hippo and his Confessions, I would say such a man seems incapable of repentance. To need to repent, and yet be incapable of it - truly, that is a damned soul.

One of the sadder things about this drama, if that isn't too dignified a term for the unreeling events of this Presidency, is that his most devoted followers, who have declared Trump their God's anointed, help to condemn him to a situation that, though he coveted it, brings out the worst in him.

If he had more class, he might be like Milton's Lucifer. But Lucifer had discipline. Trump can't help himself from acting out. Instead of Luciferian light, there is only Donald's gaudiness, and instability, and despair. For him, I think, there can be no tragic heroism, only damned depravity. How pitiable.

But, I confess, I don't have much pity. Apparently, it's not enough for me to do what I can to resist. I relish seeing the man ridiculed. I yearn for all those he has damaged and disparaged to have their revenge. I know there is something important and human and therapeutic about resisting through sharp satire, even through fantasies of revenge. But in the end, it needs to be resistance, not indulging my own crueller impulses.

To be clear: I don't - and don't seek to - sympathize with him. Only, in my own impenitence I pray: have pity. In the New York Times, Charles Blow writes, "Pity does not alleviate oppression; it simply assuages guilt." I think there is more to say than that. For pity may perfect a form of resistance against this vainglorious domineer.

Andrew B. Irvine is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/08/18/4720727.htm

Unfortunately, in our animalistic world, the male bulls fight it out senselessly for the cows. As our esteemed politician Gough Whitlam told us: "Only the impotent are pure...". Thus we have a difficult dilemma on our hand and religious sanctity isn't going to cut it. Pity is impotent. Resistance has to be scientifically structured while minimising violence...

The Trump administration’s decision to reverse a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles in some of America’s most famous national parks, such as the Grand Canyon shows “the corporate agenda is king and people and the environment are left behind”, campaigners have said.

The comments come after the administration ended a policy that allowed parks to ban the sale of plastic bottled water in an effort to curb pollution. 

“This policy was a win-win for everyone except the bottled water industry, which is only interested in its bottom line,” said Lauren DeRusha Florez, a campaign director for Corporate Accountability International, a group that campaigns against corporate abuses.

The change means national parks will no longer be allowed to ban plastic bottled water, after Trump administration officials ended a six-year-old policy put in place to curb pollution.

The National Parks Service, responsible for America’s most celebrated wilderness areas, announced the change in a press release that closely echoed lobbyists’ arguments against the ban.

“It should be up to our visitors to decide how best to keep themselves and their families hydrated during a visit to a national park, particularly during hot summer visitation periods,” said acting National Park Service director Michael Reynolds. He said parks would continue to encourage people to use free bottle filling stations, “as appropriate”.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/20/trumps-decision-to-allow...

Throwing plastic bottles on the lawns of the White House might become a democratic spectator sport...

The administration of US President Donald Trump has decided to dismantle the federal advisory panel for National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at assisting US policymakers with climate change analysis, local media reported.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The charter for the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment expired on Sunday, while on Friday, acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ben Friedman informed the  committee's chair that the panel would not be renewed, The Washington Post newspaper reported.

On August 4, the United States submitted a formal communication indicating that it will withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement as soon as possible, while on June 1, Trump signaled that the White House was open to renegotiate the Paris agreement if it could contain terms more favorable to the United States.

The Paris climate agreement, signed by more than 190 countries and ratified by 153, was adopted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2015 and came into force in November 2016.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201708211056634457-trump-climate-change-advis...

YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.

But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.

Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.

Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/23/climate/alaska-permafrost-thawing.html

IMPEACH

“This event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced,” the federal service said on Twitter on Sunday. “Follow orders from officials to ensure safety.”

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In Houston on Sunday morning, Mayor Sylvester Turner declared that “most major thoroughfares and their feeder roads” were now “impassible.” He urged those whose lives were not endangered to refrain from calling an overburdened 911 system, noting that officials had already received more than 2,000 rescue calls by Sunday morning.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/us/hurricane-harvey-texas.html

I do not know if the master of the universe, Donald Trump, possesses a golf course in Houston... Either way, he should be aware by now that climate change is a beast. Bush had his Katrina, now the new Prez has Harvey. 

What does Harvey tell us? When words like "unprecedented" are thrown around we need to be cautious. Texas got a bad hurricane in the 1930s so is Harvey bigger than slice cheese? As global warming (if I can mention the blither) increases, storms like Harvey become more powerful, not so much in wind but become laden with more and more water vapour. Global warming increases water vapour in the atmosphere. Get an event like a small storm and the disaster that follows can be catastrophic, and due to all that water that falls as rain when the temperature gradient become suddenly cooler and the air become fully saturated.

With global warming, often the extra water vapour becomes mostly clear instead of forming clouds, thus the weather feels humid while being bright and sunny. Comes a temperature drop and the heavens become hell water. Anyway, Pruitt and his mob of idiots in charge of the EPA will have to mop up with more denials. This time once more, for these imbeciles, "global warming is natural" which it is not. According to the scientific calculations of natural cycles we should be going towards an other ice age. According to the scientific observations of global warming, this warming is totally due to our burning of fossil fuels. CO2 is the main driver.

Is it this hard to understand that the extra CO2 we have pumped, are pumping and will pump into the atmosphere will change the climate?

No. This is easy as piss.  

Maths and sciences have never been more simple on this subject. Try to do some quantum mechanics gymnastics! Then you will know what is really complicated. Global warming is simple stuff.

Read : 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

It wasn't hard to find the culprit for Galveston's heat this winter, as the barrier island's weather is dominated by the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf has been extremely warm this year. In fact, for the first time on record according to Michael Lowry of The Weather Channel, the daily average surface temperature never fell below 73 degrees Fahrenheit during the just-concluded meteorological winter. It's enough for us to wonder, beyond the climate implications of a steamy Gulf and its impact on temperatures in the southern United States, how might the heat affect storm seasons later in the year?

read more:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/a-sizzling-gulf-of-mexico-could-...

With rivers still rising, and emergency workers still rescuing soaked and frightened people in southeast Texas who have lost nearly all they own, officials counseled patience on Tuesday, warning that conditions for many residents will not improve any time soon.

The slow-moving, record-shattering Harvey, now a tropical storm, pummeled the Houston region for a sixth straight day and began to batter southwest Louisiana. With hundreds of thousands of people under evacuation orders, shelters filled to bursting with people who craved some news about the safety of their loved ones and the state of their homes.

For now, the city’s focus “will continue to be on rescue,” and not on damage assessment — much less recovery — Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a news conference.

Here’s the latest:

• The National Weather Service said Tuesday that Harvey has now set a record for total rainfall from a single tropical cyclone in the continental United States, with two weather stations in Texas reporting total rainfall over 48 inches.

etc etc...

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/us/hurricane-harvey-storm-flooding.html

So, despite warmer (record-see above) temperatures of the sea in the Gulf of Mexico, Scientists — under pressure not to be alarming — are not sure that Harvey's damage is due to global warming. Of course 99.9 per cent of true climatologists would know that global warming would have a small exponential influence on this tropical storm, but in the "climate" of burning scientists to the stake for telling like it is, no-one is prepared to say the reality. Come on, it's simple turbulence mechanic in a heated saucepan...

While the Trump administration is dropping the mantle of leadership on climate change, American cities from coast to coast are picking it up. From small towns to metropolises and from the coasts to the heartland, Republican and Democratic mayors are united in common cause to curb emissions, shrink our carbon footprints and fight for a greener future.

Rather than accepting the White House’s wrongheaded withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, cities are redoubling our efforts to meeting the landmark accords’ benchmarks. We not only have the power to take action, but unlike Washington we have the will to get the job done.

Just days after Donald Trump’s shortsighted decision, I signed an executive order formalizing Chicago’s commitment to adopting the guidelines of the Paris agreement and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2025 (compared with 2005 levels).

Chicago has a head start in this effort. We already cut carbon emissions by 7% from 2010-15, while our economy expanded by 12%.

How did we do it?

First, in 2012 we closed Chicago’s last two remaining coal plants.

Second, we retrofitted over 54m sq ft of buildings to make them more energy efficient, earning Chicago first place in the nation for green building adoption and the distinction as the only large American city to be granted the US Environmental Protection Agency energy tar partner of the year award.

Third, to encourage alternatives to driving, Chicago is in the middle of an unprecedented $8.5bn modernization of our mass transit system. We also created the largest bike-sharing program in North America, adding 108 miles of new protected bike lanes and 47 miles of off-street public bike paths, earning Chicago the accolade of the best city in the country for cyclists from Bicycling Magazine.

Fourth, our Drive Clean Chicago initiative has supported $37m in low and emission zero vehicles, the equivalent of taking 1,700 cars off the road a year. We are now in the process of procuring Chicago’s first fleet of electric buses, charging stations and hybrid police vehicles.

These steps are just a downpayment on the work ahead to meet the benchmarks of the Paris climate agreement. Looking over the horizon, by 2025 Chicago will be the largest city in the country where every public building is powered by 100% renewable energy. Outside our buildings, we are converting all of our city streetlights to LED by 2021.

American cities have the power and the will to take action collectively and in our own communities. We control the levers of planning, land use and development – and we can use these tools to turn promises and commitments into results.

This fall, Chicago will host the first North American Climate Summit, a new forum for leaders from across the US, Canada and Mexico to exchange innovative ideas and strengthen coordination and collaboration in our common fight for a sustainable future.

The summit will build on the strength of successful existing partnerships including the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group as well as Climate Mayors, a bipartisan coalition of more than 300 municipal leaders from across the US. We are also proud to partner with America’s Pledge, a coalition made up of 227 cities and counties, nine states and more than 1,600 businesses committed to upholding the Paris climate agreement.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/29/if-donald-trump-wo...

Meanwhile in Sydney, Orstraya, the New South Wales government (liberal-KONservative-idiots) are digging tunnels everywhere for more cars, ripping off bike-lanes, removing public housing, throwing out the homeless, installing slow-going Trams in stupid locations (making the entire city look like a demolition site) and burning cash like you would not believe on silly sports stadiums, despite dwindling attendances, all this after having destroyed all the Councils opposed to a lot of this stuff (if all this does not remind you of a certain Adolph, then you are more stupid than you look).

As well they (the idiots led by a Gladys who hates the "commie councils") have the brainwaves of destroying a perfectly good museum in town that attracts lots of visitors — to sell the holy ground to their mates, the developers, and relocate all the exhibits (at an undisclosed massive cost — possibly a $2bils) in another location 20 miles away where no tourist goes. This has been part of the de-Wranisation of the lovely city. See, in the 1970s and 1980s, Neville Wran, the Labor Premier, rejuvenated Sydney with elegant constructions from the exhibition hall (which could have been in need of a tweak) to the PowerHouse museum, to harbour the unique collection of the Sydney college of Technology — now the University of Technology Sydney. Of course the New South Wales government liberal-KONservative-idiots changed the name of the PowerHouse Museum (attached to its location in an old disused power station) to the more mundane MAAS (Museum of Art and Applied Sciences) in order to severe the link to the past — in order to move it to Woop Woop Matta. 

The city, which was reasonably "green" is now a hot bed of greenhouse gases by the harbour. Add the new Packer casino being built like a giant phallus on the edge of the city and you know you're in car-doing-donuts-to-burn-tyres territory. Did I mention the word "hoon" in relation the present New South Wales government (liberal-KONservative-idiots)?