Is Climate Change Denial An Impeachable Offense?

"President" Gas

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler was the ranking member of the committee but he didn't have a free shot at the chair when the Democrats won back the House. Pelosi ally Zoe Lofgren is the number 2 most senior Democrat on the committee and she decided to play "a woman should have this position" card. In a case like that, the House Steering and Policy decides with the guidance of the top Democrat in the House. In other words, Pelosi makes the decision. She knew it had to be Nadler. She just wanted one thing out of him: she'd call the shots, especially on impeachment. He agreed, became chair and she's not allowing impeachment to move forward. Everyone just spits out her idiotic, misleading talking point that they can't do anything until Mueller is finished with his investigation-- actually an outrageous, boldfaced lie, worthy of Trump himself. Yesterday, Nadler was on John Catsimatidis' radio show, where the takeaway was this Nadler quote:

"I view this president and his conduct as the greatest threat to the democratic system and to the constitutional government since the Civil War, whether it’s threatening the newspapers or threatening the judiciary or calling people who criticize him treasonous."

The "greatest threat," huh? "Since the Civil War?" And still no impeachment? And as horrifying as Trump's threat to democracy is-- which Nadler is supposed to protect us from-- there's an even more existential threat Trump has made himself to our families, our country, our world: his line in the sand stance that Climate Change doesn't exist. That's a big deal. The fake "president is going to kill us all.



Author Daniel Levitin isn't a Climate Scientist; his field is cognitive psychologiy and he is best know as a neuroscientist. This morning he told me that "Science has become very specialized, and scientists tend to be expert only in the narrow domains they’re trained in. You wouldn't believe what a climate scientist has to say about building a particle collider; you shouldn’t believe what biologists, engineers, and chemists have to say about climate science. And that’s exactly what’s going on here. If you look at the scientists who have come out against the idea of climate change-- I mean if you really look to see what field they were trained in, and what kinds of journals they publish in-- you’ll see that almost none of them are actually climate scientists. Nearly every climate expert agrees that (a) climate change is real, (b) it is caused by human activity, and (c) it is urgent to do something about it."



Today, just a few hours ago, Audrey Denney officially launched her 2020 congressional campaign for California's first congressional district, where the current incumbent, Trump ally Doug LaMalfa, might as well be wearing an "I'm With Stupid" t-shirt. Just before her noon launch, Audrey told us that she was "mortified when I read that article. This administration seems to be intent on systematically undermining our country’s trust in science-- all to give more money and power to their political allies. Climate change is not a partisan issue-- it is a moral issue. If we want a planet for our children to live on, we need to elect leaders at all levels of government who are committed to climate action."

Eva Putzova is running for Congress in Arizona for a seat held by an "ex"-Republican Blue Dog, Tom O'Halleran, who didn't get the message about what switching parties means. He's about as likely to embrace the Green New Deal as Trump is. "Trump's denial of climate change," Eva reminded us today, "is already costing our country lives and resources. Our President and Congress should do what we did in Flagstaff, Arizona-- adopt a climate action plan. We need urgently political courage at every level of government to take bold, meaningful climate actions, not more debates over the science of climate change." Progressive Chicagoland Democrat Marie Newman is in a similar situation-- running against a Blue Dog, Dan Lipinski, who doesn't back the Green New Deal and, in many ways, is more a Republican than a Democrat. "We need to support the Green New Deal initiative and support the development of this framework into actual programs and legislation-- we literally do not have a choice anymore. We must act," said Newman, in no uncertain terms.

Kara Eastman, the progressive Democrat running for the swingy Omaha-based Nebraska seat, has been completely clear on where she stands on Climate Change. Today she asked, "Why would an administration do this? There is overwhelming evidence of climate change, its causes, and its solutions. This is the way for Republicans to counteract the tremendous support for plans like the Green New Deal. It is a political ploy to undermine the Democrats and dupe the American public. Ensuring a new, booming economy with great paying jobs and true community development is how America can become a leader in combating climate change. There is simply no sane or moral reason anyone would be against this."

Mike Siegel, the Austin-based progressive Democrat taking on one of Trump's top allies in Texas, Michael McCaul, told us today that "Trump's announcement is one more example of the Republican Regime abusing government offices to push propaganda. Instead of developing rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific research, this will be a corporate front group designed to protect fossil fuel profits to the detriment of human life and our planet. I can only hope this panel will suffer the same fate as Kobach's election fraud commission. In the meantime, progressives will keep fighting for a Green New Deal, and winning the hearts and minds of the American people."

Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey and Brady Dennis reported that Trump is putting together a committee of scientists as fake as he is a president to discredit the science behind Climate Chance. Eilperin, Dawsey and Dennis wrote that Trump "plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter its conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials." Looks like they already reached their conclusion before they've even been formed! It sounds like a joke. Nate McMurray, who came within a handful of votes of defeating Trump-enabler Chris Collins in an area of New York between Buffalo and Rochester last year-- and plans on finishing the job next year-- told me that Trump "is a little late. In Western New York we are beyond debating the obvious, as we deal with more intense storms, higher water levels eroding land on the Great Lakes, and changing farming patterns. This President tries to reshape reality. We live in it." I think there are few regions in the country where people would disagree with Nate.

The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The group would not be subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee.

The move would represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.

The idea of a new working group, which top administration officials discussed Friday in the White House Situation Room, represents a modified version of an earlier plan to establish a federal advisory panel on climate and national security. That plan-- championed by William Happer, NSC’s senior director and a physicist who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet-- would have created an independent federal advisory committee.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act imposes several ground rules for such panels, including that they meet in public, are subject to public records requests and include a representative membership.

While the plan is not finalized, NSC officials said they would take steps to assemble a group of researchers within the government. The group will not be tasked with scrutinizing recent intelligence community assessments of climate change, according to officials familiar with the plan.

The National Security Council declined requests to comment on the matter.

During the Friday meeting, these officials said, deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman said Trump was upset that his administration had issued the National Climate Assessment, which must be published regularly under federal law. Kupperman added that congressional Democrats had seized upon the report, which is the product of more than a dozen agencies, to bolster their case for cutting carbon emissions as part of the Green New Deal.

Attendees at the session, which included acting interior secretary David Bernhardt and senior officials from across the government, debated how best to establish a group of researchers that could scrutinize recent federal climate reports.

Happer, who headed an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition before joining the administration in the fall, has challenged the scientific consensus on climate change inside and outside of government.

Public records show the coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has received money from far-right organizations and donors with fossil fuel interests.

In 2017, according to federal tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, the group received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute.

One senior administration official said the president was looking for “a mixture of opinions” and disputed a massive inter-agency report in November that described intensifying climate change as a threat to the United States.

“The president wants people to be able to decide for themselves,” the aide said.

Several scientists, however, said the federal government’s recent findings on climate change had received intense scrutiny from other researchers in the field before they became public.

Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute who served on the National Academy of Sciences review panel for the scientific report that formed the basis of last year’s climate assessment, said the committee met several times “to do a careful, page by page evaluation by the entire report.”

“The whole review process is confrontational from the very get-go, but it’s based in scientific credibility, in a traceable chain of evidence through publications,” said Field, an earth system science and biology professor.

Trump officials had weighed the idea of conducting a “red team-blue team” exercise on climate change, an idea espoused by Scott Pruitt, who was then the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, during the early months of the administration. White House aides, including then-chief of staff John F. Kelly, blocked the idea, and at one point discussed whether to “ignore” the climate research being conducted by federal scientists.

Government researchers across a range of disciplines have identified climate change as a serious threat for the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report to examine how an abrupt change in climate would affect America’s defense capabilities: Its authors concluded that it “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”

Last year, a military-funded study warned sea level rise and other climate impacts could make more than a thousand low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean “uninhabitable” by midcentury, including an atoll where a missile defense site is located.

Just last month, the national intelligence director delivered a worldwide threat assessment that “climate hazards” including extreme weather, wildfires, droughts and acidifying oceans are worsening, “threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist whom Republicans have sought to testify on climate change because she often highlights the uncertainties that remain, said in an email that she backed the idea of an independent assessment of government climate reports as long as the participants reflected a range of perspectives and are not activists on either side of the debate.

But retired Rear Adm. David Titley, who served as oceanographer of the Navy and chief operating officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the new initiative could imperil national security by clouding “truthful assessments of the risks stemming from a changing climate.”

“I never thought I would live to see the day in the United States where our own White House is attacking the very science agencies that can help the president understand and manage the climate risks to security of today and tomorrow,” said Titley, who sits on the advisory board of the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan group focused on climate-related risks. “Such attacks are un-American.”