While Trump Fiddles, the Planet is Burning

PRESIDENT TRUMP LIKES TO refer to journalists, at least those who do unflattering stories about him, as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”

Now the folks at the National Geographic Society have joined the brutal attack on our poor aggrieved President, by pushing more of damned science! In fact, if you watch a lot of Fox News, you might believe the Society has been peddling fake news since its founding in Washington, D.C., on January 27, 1888.

In other words, the swamp needed draining as far back as the first administration of Grover Cleveland.

Seriously—and this is serious—National Geographic magazine has run several stunning articles about climate change. Crisis on Ice can be found in the July 2017 issue. It’s well worth your time to read; especially in view of the news from Antarctica yesterday.

A 1 trillion ton iceberg, composed of enough water to fill Lake Erie twice, and roughly the size of Delaware, just separated from Larsen Ice Shelf (far left, gray, on the map below). 

In other words, as National Geographic has been trying to make clear in recent years, news from the region is grim. It’s likely to grow grimmer while Trump fiddles, a la´ Nero, as the planet burns.

THE ARTICLE IN QUESTION OPENS with a focus on the Pine Island Ice Shelf, bordering the Amundsen Sea (above, lower left). By Antarctic standards, Pine Island is tiny. But in 2015 and 2016 a chunk of shelf shattered and a 225-square-mile piece floated out to sea. That’s a large iceberg, roughly the size of Manhattan, but not what worries scientists most. 

Shelves of floating ice in the Antarctic hold back massive glaciers, almost like brakes on giant frozen 18-wheelers. Behind Pine Island you have the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, twice the size of Texas and two-and-a-half miles thick. Ice shelves act like floating dams, braced against isolated mountains and resting on ridges of rock just below the ocean’s surface and, reports National Geographic, these dams “are starting to fail.” Scientists worry—because they have ample evidence to worry about—because the Pine Island Ice Shelf, “about 1,300 feet thick over most of its area” thinned “by an average of 150 feet from 1994 to 2012.”

“These are the fastest retreating glaciers on the face of the Earth,” says Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. And to make the “fake news” even “faker”, National Geographic notes that Dr. Rignot “has studied the region for more than two decades.”

Unfortunately, President Trump has surely never heard of Rignot, or bothered to read National Geographic. He isn’t much of a reader and he’s proud of that fact. As for science, he gets all he needs straight from Ainsley Earhardt on his favorite show, Fox and Friends. Rignot? In Trump World, and for viewers of Fox News, he’s a schmuck, an elitist egghead. Ainsley? Now, Ainsley, you can trust! 

Before she graduated from the University of South Carolina, she married the star quarterback and was a member of the Homecoming Court.

So take that, loser scientists!

Who are you going to believe? Some leggy blonde, like Earhardt (right), or a glaciologist?

IF WATCHING FOX NEWS hasn’t already melted your brains (pun intentional) and you still believe in measurable facts, Rignot says the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is only a matter of time. It might not happen for 500 years. That would give humanity time to adapt. Or, it might occur in less than a century. “We have to get these numbers right,” he warns. “But we have to be careful not to waste too much time doing that.”

Rignot is backed up by the work of other scientists with “fake” Ph.D.’s in other “fake” fields of research. In 2012 a team led by glaciologist Martin Tuffer of the University of Alaska landed on the Pine Island Ice Shelf and set up camp for several weeks. Pine Island is an unstable place and no one had ever dared camp there before. Tuffer’s team “wanted to bore holes all the way through the ice shelf, so they could measure the heat eating at it from the seawater below.”

Again, the right wing might answer: Hey, we’ve got Alex Jones on our side! Jones doesn’t buy climate science crap, insists 9/11 was an inside job, and says no kids were gunned down at Sandy Hook. 

President Trump is a big, big fan.

Jones aside, what did Tuffer and his team discover while camped for weeks on the ice, with all their drills and their ice cores and their faith in science? In a little more than a month “the ice under their boots thinned by another seven feet.”

Most of us surely failed to notice, but interest in the region picked up in 1994 after the U.S. icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer reached the front of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, perhaps only the second vessel ever to manage. The Palmer remained for only twelve hours, when floating ice began to hem the vessel in. During that narrow window instruments lowered into the sea located a current streaming out from under the ice, water slightly less salty, as ice above created by thousands of years of snow falling and compacting and never melting began slowly melting away. 

Even worse, members of the expedition found evidence of salty, warmer water flowing down a canyon on the sea floor 3,000 feet below. This warm flow, sinking to the bottom because high salt content made it denser than less salty, fresher water flowing out, was undercutting the glacier itself.

Many miles inland, the warmer water, which originated in the South Pacific, was striking the “grounding line” where the massive glacier rests on the seafloor. According to yet another glaciologist, Adrian Jenkins, back in Cambridge, England after sailing on Palmer, the melt rates they found “were just crazy.” 

According to his calculations, the ice under the sheet was losing the equivalent of 13 cubic miles per year and near the grounding line, thinning by 300 feet annually. “It was just beyond our concept that a glacier would melt that fast,” he told National Geographic.

Jenkins and Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer aboard the Palmer, tried three times to return for further study. Not till January 2009 did they manage. This time they found melt rates had increased by 50 percent. They brought along a robotic submarine and unleashed it. Sonar images revealed an ice sheet slashed by upside-down channels, one 600 feet deep, all “carved, like rock canyons on land, by flowing water.”

IF ALL OF THIS SOUNDS OMINOUS, Trump—who can’t tell the difference between weather and climate—might counter once more. He might turn for support to the Koch brothers, who made their pile of loot by peddling coal and oil. According to Scientific American magazine, Charles and David Koch have been hard at work for years, funding scientists who leave no stone unturned to uncover “proof” that the planet’s climate has never been better. And we all know business leaders would never lie or pay others to lie for them merely to keep the cash flowing into their coffers!

(See: GlaxoSmithKline, Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen, Enron, Bernie Madoff, Martin Shekreli, Don Blankenship.)

Meanwhile, scientists keep tabulating and worrying. According to National Geographic, “Large swaths of West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice these days.” Average annual temperatures on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula have risen five degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. Winters “have warmed an astonishing nine degrees. Sea ice now forms only four months a year instead of seven.” As sea ice breaks up, glaciers in the area have accelerated “two, five, even nine times their original speed. They’re relatively small glaciers and won’t raise sea levels much—but their acceleration has reinforced concerns that the same thing might happen to much larger glaciers along the Amundsen Sea.”

Ian Howit of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center explains how warmer water, only 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above freezing, flows under the ice. It doesn’t sound like much. But the 3,000 cubic miles of warmer water each year release “an amount of heat that exceeds the output of a hundred nuclear power plants, operating 24/7.” Crumbling ice shelves, says Helen Fricker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “are the canary in the coal mine. It’s time for us scientists to stop being so cautious,” and sound the alarm. 

“Maybe you don’t care much about that [rising sea levels] for 30 to 40 years,” Rignot adds, “but from 2050 to 2100 things could get really bad, and at that point listening to scientists is irrelevant.”

“For now,” National Geographic warns, “the best estimates suggest that Antarctica will sweat off enough ice to raise global sea levels by 1.5 to 3.5 feet by 2100, depending on how quickly humans continue to pump out greenhouse gases. Throw in Greenland and other rapidly melting glaciers round the world, and sea level could plausibly rise three to seven feet by 2100.” And it could be worse.

(Stop and think about that a moment: How old will your children or their children be in 2050 or 2100?)

SO, LET’S GIVE THE LAST WORD to Don Blankenship—not Don Blankenship, the crooked coal mine operator (linked above)—but another glaciologist working at the University of Texas. He and a team are studying threats to the massive Totten Glacier, larger in area than the State of California. Totten sits on high ground along the east Antarctic coast, and so until recently was believed secure. The Australian ice breaker Aurora Australis reached the front of Totten for the first time in 2015. Already, there was evidence of powerful currents of warm water undermining the ice. If Totten collapsed it might raise sea levels round the world as much as 13 more feet.

“The fuse is lit,” Blankenship grimly explained. “We’re just running around mapping where all the bombs are.”

As for our President? He doesn’t seem to care. As far as most of us can tell, he probably spends his mornings in the White House glued to Fox and Friends, checking out Ainsley Earnhardt’s very shapely legs.

Donald Trump in Kindergarten

THE YOUNG TYKE SEATED BEFORE HER was unlike any kindergartner Mrs. Nixon, a veteran of 35 years in the classroom, had ever tried to deal with. Once again, Donald was accused of causing trouble among peers. Sometimes problems exploded in the lunchroom. He tripped, shoved and insulted other children on playground. 

In class the boy was often disruptive and disrespectful.

She had seen and heard him insult and bully others during math, science and reading. Yet, when cautioned about his behavior, it was never his fault. He said those who complained about him were “liars” and “losers.”

“Donald,” she now addressed the boy, “Juan says you called him a wetback at lunch yesterday.”

“Who are you going to believe,” the little fellow responded. “Me? Or that Mexican? You know all Mexicans are criminals. His mother probably sells drugs.”

The teacher took a deep breathe. “Donald, you know it isn’t nice to mock anyone. Remember the time you made Carli cry?”

Donald shrugged. “I told the truth. Can you imagine looking at that face of hers in the mirror every morning?” Then he shuddered in theatrical fashion. Apparently, he thought he was being cute.

“Donald…You know, several students say yesterday at recess you grabbed Brandi in a place where no little boy should ever grab a little girl.”

“One hundred percent fabricated! That’s a word my Daddy taught me. Besides, we’re rich. That means I can do whatever I want. Daddy says I can get away with anything I do. Because, we are really, really rich!”

 “I’ve also been told you made fun of Serge during art class,” Mrs. Nixon tried. “You know Serge has a serious handicap.”

“He’s a spastic. He can’t finger paint! Sad!” Donald laughed, mimicking Serge’s flailing hand gestures. “Pretty good imitation, huh?” he asked with a smirk.

FOR A MOMENT, MRS. NIXON RUBBED HER FOREHEAD gently with one hand. She had been trying for months to help Donald see how cruel his behavior was. She thought back to the day he tripped Megyn on the playground and she tore up her skirt and both knees. When accosted by the playground monitor, Donald replied, “She tripped me first. And if someone trips me, I trip them back ten times harder. He laughed at the monitor’s concern, saying of Megyn: “You could see blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever…”

The playground lady simply pointed out that several children said they watched Donald attack Megyn without provocation. James watched him push her. “He’s a liar,” Donald said, “and a nut job.” Ted also told the monitor Megyn was the innocent victim. “Lyin’ Ted,” the Trump boy had replied.

Now, Mrs. Nixon found herself at a loss for words. “Donald,” she offered, “how about if I mention some of your classmates by name and you think of something nice to say about each one? Could you try?”

The boy narrowed his eyes and a scowl formed.

“Barack,” Mrs. Nixon began.

“Not even born in this country! He’s a Muslim. And all Muslims are bad. And we should torture them. After 9/11, I saw a tape of thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey when this country was attacked.”

An observer might have noticed that Mrs. Nixon blanched. “Donald,” she replied calmly, “no one else has ever seen the tape you claim you saw…”

She stopped short. She tried again: “Mika?”

“Dumb as a box of rocks.”

“Joe?”

“He’s a psycho.”

“Arianna?”

“She’s a dog,” Donald sneered. “She’s ugly inside and out.”

“Rosie?”

“A fat pig.”

“Frank?”

“A total clown. Low-class slob.”

“John?”

“He’s no hero.”

“Donald,” Mrs. Nixon felt compelled to interject, “you know he told you not to insult the lunch lady when you mocked her after her son was killed in an accident. You backed down and wouldn’t fight. You said you couldn’t because your feet hurt.”

“He’s still no hero,” Donald fumed. He hated to be reminded of his cowardly actions.

 “Mitt?”

“A total joke.”

“Meryl?”

“Overrated. The other kids think she was so great in the Christmas play! She’ll never be a real actress.”

“Oh my,” Mrs. Nixon said softly. “Donald,” she tried again, “you have insulted almost the entire kindergarten class. You said we needed a wall around the playground to keep immigrants out. You said the other children would have to give up their lunch money to pay for it. Or you hoped they’d be deported.”

“I never cause trouble,” Donald whined. “Everyone hates me. They’re jealous. The other kids are losers. Scum. Animals. Thugs. They’re sick, biased, stupid, pathetic and sad! They are weak. They are weak and sad!!! I don’t need to apologize for anything.”

Mrs. Nixon groaned. 

She wasn’t sure what to do—except maybe retire as soon as possible. She couldn’t be sure what would become of Donald in years to come but she worried about what he’d be like as an adult. If he didn’t change his ways, he’d be an insufferable bully and buffoon. She blinked once, twice, then told him he could go outside for the remainder of recess.

Just as he reached the door, little fellow wheeled and said, “You know, you’re not a very good teacher. You’re old and your hair is unstylish. My father is rich. He can get you fired and you’ll lose your crappy job. You’re a loser.”

AND WITH THAT the little shit vanished down the hall. 

Donald Trump Explained in Quotes

I WAS GOING THROUGH a list of quotes from past readings when it struck me a handful might help us grapple with President Trump and understand the daily tweet storms blowing out of the Oval Office.

What makes Dear Orange Leader tick?

Christopher Logue, writing about the Trojan War, might have had him in mind when he described Agamemnon, the grasping Greek king:

   “Behold his cause:

Me first, me second—

And if by chance there is a little left—me third.”                      

It’s unfortunate Trump gets all his best ideas from watching Fox and Friends every morning. Far better, before tweeting or talking (to Lester Holt about why he fired James Comey), if he recalled Sophocles:

“Second thoughts are wisest.”

It might also benefit the Chief Executive—who hates Mexicans, Muslims and F.B.I. investigators—if he learned to temper his bowel-impacted, septuagenarian, morning fury. He and many of his most avid supporters might well keep in mind what James Russell Lowell said in 1848:

“Folks never understand the folks they hate.”

How about the false argument that we should forgive Trump a rash of sins, since he’s not really a politician? Mark Sullivan, writing about America after World War I, described politics this way:

“Politics is merely the name for the process by which whatever force or group is at any time dominant in society achieves its will in government.”

In an era where the Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions to prop up GOP lawmakers and influence decisions, where Jared Kushner sucks up to bankers tied directly to Vladimir Putin, and billionaire brigands turn Marxist ideology upside down in China and rake in even more billions, those with vast wealth are clearly the “greatest” politicians.

In terms of Trump and the other mercenaries who make up his family, historian John Fiske clearly offered pertinent comment a century ago: 

“Devices for appropriating the fruits of other people’s labor have in all countries been multifarious, from tomahawks to tariffs.”

Conservatives will always focus on “taxes” as their least favorite form of appropriation. Those of us of liberal bent will counter with: Trump University! Bailouts for Wall Street! Big Pharma spending hundreds of millions to lobby (bribe) Congress, reaping a hundred times as much in profit!  

Based on the sophomoric level of vocabulary we see in Trump’s tweets, we may be in trouble. Lowell, again, provides a perfect summary:

“Language is the soil of thought.”

Alas, the mind of President Trump is apparently a barren wasteland, where empathy and human decency wither and die.

When it comes to wisdom, Mark Twain nailed it perfectly when he said of someone much like our current Commander-in-Chief:

“As for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie, and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie.”

Speaking of leadership—and this one bodes ill for Trump and all of us—Harry Truman once said:

“Readers of good books, particularly books of biography and history, are preparing themselves for leadership. Not all readers become leaders. But all leaders must be readers.”

Trump has been called many things, but no one has ever dared call him a “reader.” Sarah Palin is a bibliophile by comparison.

For those struggling to come to grips with the man in the Oval Office, General Winfield Scott perfectly described the current resident of the White House, a century ago, when he said of a fellow officer, that the man was: 

“The only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood.”

ON THE OTHER HAND, those of us who love this nation and believe Trump is a menace to core American values may find consolation in the past. In 1837, Justice Joseph Story of the U.S. Supreme Court, studied the world round him, shuddered at the condition of our young nation, and offered grim assessment:

“The Republic is daily sinking. I have lost my confidence in the practical administration of our government. I am in utter despair. I can see little or no ground of hope for our country.”  

Yet there was hope.  The country recovered from the Panic of 1837.  We weathered a Civil War, overcame a century of Jim Crow prejudice, battled through the Great Depression, survived two World Wars, granted women equal rights, handled the challenges of Watergate and fought terror in the wake of 9/11.

We can survive four years of Trump.

To do so we must rest on the bedrock of our values. When Trump attacks the free press and leading right-wing voices applaud body-slamming reporters, the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson applies:

“ The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

When GOP lawmakers howl about raising taxes for health care—but swoon at adding $50 billion in defense spending—a liberal may rightly quote President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

THE LAST WORD GOES to Sherman Alexie, a Native American author. As far as any prejudice aimed at Mexicans, Muslims, liberals, or loyal Donald J. Trump supporters by supporters from our liberal side—it pays not to generalize. Alexie is correct:

“The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not.”

Sadly, it seems clear where the President belongs in that categorization.

When Does the GOP Stop Whining about Obamacare and Do Something?

OH, FOR GOD’S SAKES! When are Republicans “snowflakes”—a term the right loves to throw in liberal faces—going to quit crying about Obamacare? It’s a bat shit crazy blizzard! Once again, they’re in a tax-slashing tizzy because Anthem is pulling out of the Ohio insurance market.

You just figured out Obamacare was “failing?” You’ve been parroting that line for seven years. You giant pack of assholes! You voted fifty times to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. You warned, even before it became law, there would be “death panels” for granny if it passed. You scared dimwits across America with that line of preexisting manure. You promised you were going to repeal and replace Obamacare as soon as you had a chance. You only needed a Republican president.

You have him. 

True, he’s a tweeting nitwit, but even a tweeting nitwit could sign any bill your GOP-controlled Congress managed to slap on his desk in the Oval Office. You can get it done tomorrow. You can kick 24 million people off insurance under GOP Plan #1, or 23 million under GOP Plan #2, any time the Senate moves to grant approval. 

President Obama can’t stop you.

You know who else can’t stop you? President Truman! He’s dead. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR—all long, long gone. 

They have the same power to stop you as Mr. Obama.

GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR collective asses. Louie Gohmert, you and your Tea Party pals shut down the government in 2013 in a vain effort to destroy Obamacare. What’s wrong, you fair weather fanatic! Shut everything down now if you want to do something “constructive” in regard to denying health care to your fellow citizens. You shouldn’t need to. Your party has 52 votes in the U.S. Senate. Mitch McConnell jimmied the rules. You need 50 “ayes” and a tie-breaker from the Vice President to get a plan through the Senate.

You control the levers of power. Pull them, you candy-ass cowards.

If you want to eliminate the 3.8% tax on incomes above $250,000 that helped make it possible to cover people with preexisting conditions, do the deed and live with the political and moral consequences. You can’t cut taxes and cover everyone Obamacare covered. You can’t repeal and replace basic addition and subtraction. If you want to take a chance on letting kids with cancer die or let families go bankrupt because sons or daughters were unlucky, make the bold call. But don’t forget, in 2010, 62% of all bankruptcies in this country were a result of catastrophic medical bills. Obamacare didn’t fix that problem; but it helped. It absolutely didn’t cause it. 

The real dilemma is the high cost of health care. The United States is the most expensive place in the world to get sick and seek care.

Maybe that’s the fundamental problem—and you can’t solve it by slinging typical right-wing bullshit.

Repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act isn't going to address the main problem.

Maybe a good place to start with cuts would involve taking a look at salaries for top health care executives. According to Bloomberg, “Among the 200 top-paid U.S. executives at public companies, those in health care and pharmaceutical businesses were awarded average pay packages of $37 million in their most recent fiscal year.” No other business sector had executives who did better. Why, you have to wonder, how Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson and Johnson does it! Gorsky had to pinch pennies annually, under Obamacare, earning only $103 million between 2012 and 2016.

Starvation wages!

How do these poor health care executives manage!

What about those poor drug companies! Pfizer had a 42% profit in 2014! Sure, they dipped to 14.2% in 2016. Then again, Gilead Science made a 55% profit that year, Biogene Idec 33%, Amgen 32%. Johnson and Johnson, leader in the field with $70 billion in revenue, made a paltry $16.54 billion in profit in 2016. 

Who can live with that lousy 22% return!

TRUE, PROFITS WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER if the Justice Department under Obama had quit suing them for illegal business practices and slapping them on their greedy wrists for defrauding Medicare. Ten top settlements between 2009 and 2014 forced Big Pharma to cough up $13 billion in penalties.

You can look it up if you don’t believe me. But, nooooooooooooooooo, don’t dare regulate these pirates!

You don’t need to worry about kindergartners who develop type-1 diabetes or babies born with heart defects. You need to give tax cuts to the Koch brothers! Those billionaires, Charles and David, are headed for the poorhouse with only $41 billion a piece. That’s why they decided to donate $889 million to GOP candidates in 2016.

They can’t survive under their tax burden.

You want to run on your “accomplishments,” you political poltroons? You want to say you repealed health care and gave huge tax cuts to the richest among us? 

Democrats can’t stop you.

You had seven years in opposition to work out a plan. You voted to repeal and replace again and again. Now your base is counting on you—well, not counting the significant portion that will wake up soon, if you pass your plan, and realize they too lost their coverage.

IF OBAMACARE IS TERRIBLE, if it’s failing, if insurers are pulling out (and by the way, Anthem pulled out of Ohio because the company said it has no way of knowing what you boneheads are planning, particularly in regard to subsidies), you are in charge. The buck doesn’t stop with Obama. 

The buck stops with Donald J. Trump.

You bitched about Obamacare for the best part of a decade. You ran nonstop against it in 2016. You’ve had control of both required branches of government to repeal and replace, for months now.

Dry you crying eyes. 

Get something, anything, passed, no matter how terrible, and place it on President Trump’s desk pronto.

OR, ARE YOU LIKE THE DOG that chased the car? Only you caught the ambulance. Don’t blame our side because you have no clue what to do with it.

Woof, you fools.

Woof!

President Trump and the Coal Miner's Granddaughter

At a March 2016 campaign rally, Hillary Clinton told her audience what was going to happen if she won. “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she said. 

At that point, it was already clear that Donald Trump was the most loathsome man ever to run for the nation’s highest office. I knew Secretary Clinton meant she was going to focus on clean energy. Still, it was a tone deaf comment and I thought to myself, If I was a coal miner, I’d probably vote for Trump too.

I was reminded of that incident again one recent morning. I was driving over to my son’s house because I watch my three-year-old granddaughter on Fridays. On the radio NPR was doing an interview with an Ohio miner. He said Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord gave him a “sense of security.” He had “bills to pay.” He only wanted to provide for his family.

I thought he sounded like any good family man. He cared about his wife and children, just as the rest of us care about ours. And that’s a fundamental element in this story. The problem is this tale doesn’t terminate with one coal miner, or one generation, or one snowball (as we shall see).

This story encompasses one planet.

The decision this week by President Trump, who has no better grip on climate science than my granddaughter—and she can be excused because she’s three!—ignores that final element, that one planet. In my mind, if you don’t sympathize with that Ohio miner something is wrong with you. If he loses his place in the mines, or a thousand peers lose theirs, you should hope he wins the lottery and they all get hired by some good company that will still go ahead and pay them $25 or $30 per hour.

(As a card-carrying liberal, I’m for higher wages for the average worker.)

Unfortunately, our country finds itself saddled with an intellectual dwarf in the White House, a man who thinks not in terms of planets but snowballs. 

That means the coal miner’s granddaughter, and Trump’s grandchildren, and yours, and mine, are all going to pay for his gross stupidity.

Mark Twain once joked that everybody complained about the weather but nobody ever did anything about it. There’s a difference, though between climate and weather which Trump seems incapable of processing, despite his constant complaining.

Suppose you went outside one day and the temperature was twelve degrees above normal. Would that be proof global warming and/or climate change was occurring? You would be a fool to argue a position based on a single day’s weather. Yet that has been the level of sophistication Trump has brought to the topic. Sadly, the man in the Oval Office believes in James Inhofe’s snowball.

If you are not familiar with Inhofe, or his snowball, you can be sure, together, they represented complete and willful ignorance. In the winter of 2015, during a cold snap following a blizzard in the nation’s capital, Inhofe carried a snowball into the U.S. Senate. This was not a random snowball, packed by a lawmaker from Oklahoma, where snow is rare and (according to scientists) earthquakes related to fracking are common.

No. This was a proof.

Inhofe stepped to the podium on a cold January day and offered up juvenile analysis: “In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, do you know what this is?” Inhofe directed his remarks to Sen. Bill Cassidy, presiding over a mostly empty Senate chamber. A good guess at that moment might have been: A moron about to offer up a stunt to fool other morons? Alas, Cassidy, a fellow Republican, was not prepared to comment. In dramatic fashion Inhofe pulled out a plastic bag. He opened it. Inside was a snowball. Inhofe removed it. “It’s a snowball,” he explained, pretty much stating the obvious, even for any morons listening at the time. “And it’s just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonable.”

“We hear the perpetual headline that 2014 has been the warmest year on record,” Inhofe continued. He was referring to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). “But now the script has flipped,” he insisted.

Only the script hadn’t flipped.

It still hasn’t.

NASA and NOAA were relying on global data, the kind of data Trump has routinely ignored. According to their records 2014 was the hottest year on record. Not one day. Not one city. Not one fool with one snowball.

One planet.

You could go to the NASA website. You could pull it up on the internet. It’s as easy as packing a bit of snow.

For years, however, Trump has been too lazy or too busy grabbing women to bother with any science. He started seeing snowballs in 2011 when he first plunked down in the camp of the willfully ignorant. That fall he tweeted: “It snowed over 4 inches this past weekend in New York City. It is still October. So much for Global Warming.”

No, sir. 

That would be weather.

In the winter of 2012 he looked outside and spotted Frosty the Snowman, still not melting. “It’s freezing and snowing in New York—we need global warming!”

Again: that would be weather.

In 2013 he used slightly better evidence, mentioning trends for an entire month and an entire country: “Looks like the U.S. will be having the coldest March since 1996—global warming anyone?????????”

Only that still wasn’t climate. The year, itself, globally, proved one of the hottest on record.

Trump’s tiny toes turned blue again in December and it was back to complaining about weather, but not doing anything about it. “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee—I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” he tweeted.

In 2014 he offered up another nugget of Trumpian wisdom: “Baltimore just set a record for the coldest day in March in a long recorded history -4 degrees. Other places likewise. Global warming con!”

He even backed up Inhofe in January 2015 with this fact-deprived, flailing stab at scientific thinking: “It’s record cold all over the country and world—where the hell is global warming, we need some fast!”

So, was it a hoax? Was 2014 the hottest year ever? 

NASA said it was.

What happened in 2015, the year that began in promising fashion, with James Inhofe’s snowball? Again, relying of worldwide data, from all four seasons, five oceans and seven continents, scientists said it was the new hottest year on record.

NASA reported.

The year did end on a hopeful note when the Paris Climate Accord was ratified and signed by 195 nations. It wasn’t a perfect document, because no human document is. But because the danger was clear, nations united.

By chance, six months before, Trump had opened his campaign for president. As one might have expected, he continued to display a complete lack of understanding of simplest science. At one point he sat down with loyalists at Fox News and said: “Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax.” People who studied it were probably only in it to make “a lot of money.”

Then the numbers were tabulated again—by dedicated men and women at NASA and NOAA. Once more, 2016 turned out to be the new hottest year on record. In fact, sixteen of the hottest seventeen had occurred in this young century. That’s why 194 nations still support the Paris agreement.

As for the United States, we now link arms in solidarity only with rogue nations Nicaragua and Syria.

In the end, we should sympathize with the coal miner and his plight. We should do what we can to help all workers in a similar predicament. But if we blow this battle, as President Trump seems intent on doing, we must surely fear for the coal miner’s granddaughter. 

I know I fear for my grandchildren. 

You should fear for yours.