19 October 2017, HiffPost, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Climate Change Remarks Sure Seem To Be Aimed At Trump. As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to unravel legislation designed to fight climate change, Chinese President Xi Jinping is promoting his own country as a climate change leader. At the opening of the Communist Party congress in Beijing on Wednesday, Xi said China has taken a “driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change.” “No country alone can address the many challenges facing mankind. No country can afford to retreat into self-isolation,” Xi said. “Only by observing the laws of nature can mankind avoid costly blunders in its exploitation. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. This is a reality we have to face.” While he didn’t mention Trump by name in the address, some observers are interpreting Xi’s words as part of a campaign to present himself as a strong and responsible world leader while Trump takes aim at environmental protections and alienates U.S. allies. The Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement in June, and proposed repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan earlier this month. Trump also has a personal history of denying climate change, describing global warming as “mythical” and a “hoax” in past tweets. Read More here
Tag Archives: Deniers
18 October 2017, Media Matters, California newspaper editorials connect the dots between climate change and wildfires. When hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the U.S. earlier this year, conservatives including Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt and Fox News personalities argued that it wasn’t the right time to talk about climate change. But a number of local leaders and journalists in the storm-hit states of Texas and Floridadisagreed. They called for attention to the fact that climate change is making disasters worse, even as they worked to address and report on the immediate needs of their affected communities. Now many political leaders and newspapers in California are following the lead of those in Texas and Florida — demanding that we recognize the threat of climate change and how it’s exacerbating weather events like the wildfires that have been blazing through parts of Northern California for the last week and a half, the most deadly and destructive fires in the state’s history. Many scientists have pointed to climate change as a significant factor that’s intensifying fires like those in California. Columbia University bioclimatologist Park Williams, who co-authored a study last year that foundclimate change was markedly worsening wildfires in the American West, talked to McClatchy about the California fires last week: “The fingerprint is definitely there,” Williams said. “The connection between temperatures and fire is one we see again and again in the correlation analyses we do.” California Gov. Jerry Brown emphasized the connection last week: “With a warming climate, dry weather and reducing moisture, these kinds of catastrophes have happened and will continue to happen,” he said. Read More here
4 October 2017, The Conversation, Australia’s $1 billion loan to Adani is ripe for a High Court challenge. Indian mining giant Adani’s proposal to build Australia’s largest coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin has been the source of sharp national controversy, because of its potential economic, health, evironmental and cultural risks. These concerns were amplified this week when India’s former environment minister Jairam Ramesh told the ABC’s Four Corners: My message to the Australian government would certainly be: please demonstrate that you have done more homework than has been the case so far. It’s a valid warning, considering that a Commonwealth investment board is considering loaning Adani A$1 billion in federal money to assist the development of mining infrastructure. The loan, expected to be announced any day now, will no doubt agitate further political controversy. It is also likely to pave the way for yet more court challenges against Adani’s proposal. Read More here
2 October 2017, Think Progress, Courts back climate scientists, but right-wing attacks are disrupting research. Right-wing groups inappropriately using open records requests has had a chilling effect on scientific inquiry. People play dirty when they can’t win by playing fair. This is, more or less, the story of climate change denial in the United States. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans are altering the climate, reaping changes with potentially catastrophic consequences. Climate deniers can’t dispute the data. They can’t win on facts. Instead, they impugn the credibility of scientists, a tactic which has proved both ugly and effective. Right-wing groups are using open records laws to obtain scientists’ emails — and then misrepresenting the content of those emails to question the integrity of researchers and cast doubt on their findings, all of which has a chilling effect on scientific inquiry. But scientists have earned powerful allies in the fight to protect their research — including, by a strange set of circumstances, the Trump administration. Read More here