faulker083

As I write, the worst possible candidate to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just got installed . It is terrible because it is via the EPA we get our legal authority to address Climate Change on a scale that will matter. States can do much, but it’s the feds that create a level playing field. So, Pruitt’s political (not scientific) confirmation could be a serious problem for our life support system. #ScienceMatters Climate Change is affected by our politics in the sense that politics can affect humanity’s collective response to this crisis. But, at the end of the day, it is climate indicators, climate feedback mechanisms in our environment, that will determine whether we are making progress or not. Basically, climate change indicators are things like: “ Greenhouse Gas Emissions ,  Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions ,  Atmospheric Concentrations of Greenhouse Gases ,  Climate Forcing ,  U.S. and Global Temperature ,  High and Low Temperatures ,  U.S. ...

Feeling a compulsion to continually acknowledge the fact that human-caused Climate Change is happening? It’s understandable. Our last US election has resurrected the pathetic chimera of climate denial. It’s a tragedy. Our attention to the problem at hand, that our climate is warming quickly, has been hijacked. Now we worry for our latest immigrants. For we are all are immigrants. I’m Famine Irish, myself, and only differ from those misaligned today by the trumped-up Travel Ban but for the vagaries of time. At a recent rally in Rochester against the so-called ban, I felt compelled to read before a gathering of hundreds the entire poem, " The New Colossus ", whose lines "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” everyone knows.   Now we worry for indigenous peoples whose temporary victory at the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), following fire-hosing of our fellow Americans in freezing weather, captured the nation’s and world’s attentio...

Fears that Trump’s anti-environmental harangues would turn out to be reality once he got installed as President have come to pass. His spate of executive orders challenging known science and prudent care of our environment threatens to disrupt decades of national and international efforts to address Climate Change. A national frenzy, whether orchestrated purposely or not, is now in play in the form of the disturbing dazzle of the Donald’ antics, designed to steal away the public’s and the media’s attention. From this point on, one of the unknown unknowns (things we didn’t even know we didn’t know) confounding the planning for Climate Change is now unfolding, a tipping point of sorts that might be called the Trump Effect on Climate Change. The excrement has collided with the rotary oscillator:  Since the inauguration: ·          EPA airbrushes climate webpage as Pruitt nears confirmation  US federal environment agency has quietly removed ...