February 26, 2019: One Chance in a Million that Climate Change Is Not Human-Caused

 

2/26/19: The president is getting settled in Vietnam, in preparation for the summit with Kim Jong-un.

 

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Five-sigma level certainty on climate change.

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Meanwhile, scientists report that evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty. As Reuters explains, scientists, “said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a ‘five-sigma’ level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.” 

So, you can say, like Trump’s new pick for U.N. ambassador, that there is “good science” on both sides of the issue. You have one chance that human-caused climate change is not really occurring. 

And let’s burn more coal! (See: 2/23-24/19.)

 

Or you have 999,999 chances that human-caused climate change is occurring and talking about cow gas means you’re an ignoramus. See, for example: Sean Hannity’s show. Writing in the journal Nature, a U.S.-led team studying the matter warned, “Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals.” 

Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.

 

“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”

 

It might not be clear what must be done to address the threat, or what sacrifices will be required and by whom. Of this much, scientists are clear. Burning fossil fuels has led to more floods, more droughts, more heat waves, and rising sea levels. 

In this case, experts from the United States, Canada and Scotland studied satellite data in drawing up conclusions. 

For his part, President Trump serves up what precious little he knows in simplistic tweets.

 

In a July 2018 poll, 90 percent of Democrats (going with the 999,999 chances) said they believed there is solid evidence of global climate change. For Republicans (banking on the other chance), it was 50 percent. 

In fact, as recently as 2014, the United States led the world in climate deniers and led by a wide margin.

  

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SINCE OUR TOPIC TODAY is lack of understanding, let’s go with what clueless Presidential Assistant Ivanka Trump said during an interview today. 

Asked about her father’s plans for the next two years, she said dad was a genius, whereas Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a nincompoop, and all wrong with her socialist, handouts-for-all plans for struggling Americans. 

(I am paraphrasing.) 

Referring to the congresswoman, who grew up in a middle class neighborhood in New York City, and worked as a bartender to pay bills after college, Ivanka explained, “I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get.” 

Just as she did as the struggling daughter of a self-proclaimed billionaire – who then worked her way to the top, and landed a White House position by virtue of her DNA matching her father’s.