Trump and RFK Jr. Make Up Quite A Climate/Science Team. Or Not. Meanwhile Harris Climate Policy Emerging Slowly

Donald Trump and RFK Jr have some rather....
interesting thoughts on climate and science 

 Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr are not exactly science guys

Which makes the idea of a climate policy under a Trump administration a bit of a fantasy, to say the least. 

For one thing, Trump doesn't even think climate change exists, at least most of the time, as his opinion on everything under the sun is a bit of a moving target. He also has some novel thoughts on the concept.   

Trump recently said that sea level rise would be great because it would create new oceanfront property. 

As any logical person would know, the higher the sea levels, the less land would exist above the water. Continents would be a little bit smaller, which leaves less oceanfront property out there for savvy real estate investors, like Trump imagines himself to be. 

To be Captain Obvious here, if sea levels rise a lot, it will remove existing sea front property by submerging it. Land that used to have no beach would suddenly become oceanfront property.  You also have to then figure out where those people who used to live on now submerged beach front property would move.

Trump also informs us that the sea level will "rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 400 years."

Um, it's a little more than that, buddy. The sea level actually rise a full third of an inch between 2022 and 2023 and about 3.7 inches in the past 34 years.

I get it that 3.7 inches doesn't sound like much. But on flat sea coasts, it starts to make a big difference. Plus, the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. By 2050, scientists think the sea level will be up 7.9 inches compared to current levels. At that point, you're really starting to talk about the oceans headed inland.

Trump also still tilts at windmills as Kamala Harris noted the other night in the debate. He obsesses over them   probably because he's annoyed at Scotland for installling them off the coast of his golf course over there? Not sure....

 Meanwhile, back in August Robert Kennedy Jr, having decided to suspend his hapless presidential campaign and is now Donald Trump's problem.   

Kennedy went with Trump Mostly because Harris wouldn't give him the time of day, which was probably a smart move. 

Kennedy's grasp of science, to put it charitably, is tenuous, which makes the prospect of climate policy, or lack thereof under a Trump administration even worse. 

He is even one of those chemtrail nuts. You know the ones, who think those icy water vapor condensation trails from high flying jets are some nefarious plot to spray the global populace with some type of chemical to..... who knows what. 

As HuffPost reports:

"'We are going to stop this crime,' Kennedy posted on social media... in response to an X (formerly Twitter) account sharing a conspiracy theory video, which claimed that pilots use planes to secretly spray chemicals on unsuspecting populations. These pilots, according to the video are 'hardened to humanity' and 'could car less about killing off unwanted or leeching aspects of American and the world."

Whatever the hell that means. 

Harris and Climate

Kamala Harris is quite a bit less, um, eccentric in her attitudes toward  climate change. 

Her climate policy is still slowly emerging. At least so far, her ideas are not nearly as out of whack as her opponent's positions are, to say the least. 

Kamala Harris' climate positions are still an emerging 
issue, but at least she's trying to follow the science.
She's shown here speaking at the annual UN
Climate meeting in Dubai last year. 

She firmly believes climate change exists and is making weather extremes and disasters worse. So that's a refreshing difference from Trump. 

I noticed Harris was against fracking back in 2019 when she first ran for president, but now is for it, as she made clear in the debate earlier this week. 

This debate was in Pennsylvania, after all, where fracking is small but important. 

Harris in 2022 cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. Its provisions include several hundred billion dollars in government subsidies for electric vehicles and clean energy technology. 

Harris enthusiastically supported President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act which also set up a huge infusion of money into tax credits for clean energy and energy efficient home projects. 

She also is framing climate change as a pocketbook issue, citing rising insurance costs in climate disaster prone states as one good reason to combat the problem. 

Bottom line: If you're a single issue voter and your single issue is climate change, go with Harris. At least she's coherent. 

 

Glimmers Of Climate Hope, Actually, In Tragicomic Republican Debate

The usual climate silliness, but some glimmers of hope
in Wednesday's Republican Presidential debate.

 I guess it's a sign of progress among Republicans that Fox News asked a question about climate change during Wednesday's Republican presidential candidate debate. 

And one candidate was actually booed for saying climate change is in his words, a "hoax."

As HuffPost reports:

".....the moderates listed recent disasters - Hawaii's wildfires, California's rare hurricane, Florida's 101-degree seas and the Southwest's record heat  - and asked the eight Republicans onstage to raise their hands if they believed 'human behavior is causing climate change.'

The raised hands would have been sort of enlightening, at least to me, but true to form Ron DeSantis had to step in to avoid any new knowledge or facts among the public. He wanted wiggle room to avoid any kind of yes or no answer. To make it easier to backtrack in the future, I guess?

Instead, DeSantis quickly interrupted, "We're not schoolchildren. Let's have a debate," before immediately pivoting into a canned response saying Biden's disaster responses have sucked and the media is giving the president a pass on that. 

We can fact check that, but it's not worth the bother. 

The most interesting moment in the debate climate discussion came when entrepreneur and candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said, "It's a hoax....The reality is, the anti-carbon agenda is a wet blanket on our economy. More people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change."

The remarkable thing was, the audience at the debate was rabidly Republican and right-wing. And many audience members booed Ramaswamy for his remarks. I guess the Republican rank and file are ahead of some of their so-called leaders. 

Candidate Nikki Haley piped up right after that, and pretty much shut Ramaswamy down by saying, "Climate change is real. Yes, it is. If you want to change the environment, we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions."

At least Haley's comments were relatively reasonable. China and India do need to reduce their emissions, but so does the rest of the world. Give Haley credit for stating a basic fact on climate change. 

As the Associated Press reports, some conservative organizations are frustrated by candidates like Ramaswamy dismissing climate change

"'We're getting to a point where Republicans are losing winnable elections because they're alienating people that care about climate change,' Christopher Barnard, the Republican president of the American Conservation Coalition, the largest conservative environmental group in the nation,' said Thursday."

As AP also points out, there's a growing gap between younger voters - including young conservatives - and older Republicans. 

Increasingly, younger Republicans believe climate change is at least an issue that needs addressing. The GOP's older base regard climate science as a hoax conspiracy theory launched by liberals, to I don't know...

Interestingly, though, Ramaswamy is younger, only 38 years old. He's been consistently for fossil fuel development throughout his early campaign. "Human flourishing requires fossil fuel," he likes to say. 

Maybe it was, but.........

The debate was held in Milwaukee Wednesday. Also Wednesday, Milwaukee experienced a record high of 101 degrees, with a heat index as high as 116 degrees.   City officials were forced to close public schools in the city Wednesday and Thursday due to the extreme heat. 

It seems like the effects of climate change followed the Republicans to the debate, whether they liked it or not. 

 

Jimmy Carter And The White House Solar Panels

President Jimmy Carter with solar panels that were installed
on the White House roof (at least for awhile) starting
in June 1979.

Former President Jimmy Carter's recent announcement that he was entering hospice care at the age of 98 has resulted in a deluge of news stories remembering his presidency and his life. '

One story that piqued my interest was when Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. On June 20, 1979, the 32 panels were unveiled on the roof for the Washington press corp. 

Of course, those solar panels weren't nearly as spiffy and efficient as the ones on countless American roofs today. But they served a purpose, if only a symbolic one. They were essentially hot water heaters for the White House. 

When he had the solar panels installed, I don't think Carter was thinking much about climate change when he had the White House solar panels installed. Scientists knew of the danger back then, but it wasn't a Thing yet. At least not in the public discourse. 

Instead, Carter was thinking much more of our dependence on foreign oil.

In 1973 and 1979, severe gas shortages afflicted the United States, resulting in seriously spiking prices and long, long lines at gas stations. 

The first crisis, in 1973 was spurred by Arab oil exporters, pissed off at America supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War, imposed an embargo on the United States. In 1979, Iran outside the Shah, causing their exports to crash and OPEC raised prices, creating the second crisis of gas in America.

Carter figured, correctly, if the United States could make more of our energy needs homegrown, we wouldn't have to worry so much about OPEC, wars, and other geopolitical stupidity. 

Now we know much more about fossil fuel and how it causes climate change. But Carter's argument still applies, whether or not you think climate change is a Big Deal. 

As Yale Climate Connections tells us:

"Self-conscious about his idealism, or perhaps just realistic, the president gave voice to his doubts about the panels: 'A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.'"

Carter was kind of right in both ways. 

In one respect, the White House solar panels were a blip in history, quickly forgotten. They lasted a little more than halfway into the Reagan administration. 

Yale Climate Connections again:

"Seven years after the West Wing roof party, in 1986, the symbolic solar collectors met with 'roof repairs,' and they were never reinstalled. They were put in a warehouse in Virginia and forgotten. There must have been a little hue and cry at the time - enough to force a statement from the White House media shop."

Reagan's press office said it was too costly to re-install the panels after the roof repair. Anonymous sources felt like the "equipment was just a joke," reported the Washington Post at the time.

As usual with the workings of Washington, we don't know which is true. 

The good thing is, during the Obama administration, new solar panels were installed on the White House roof. The subsequent president, Donald Trump, who was and is hostile to clean energy, but the solar panels remained on the roof. Maybe nobody told him the solar panels were there?

So far, President Joe Biden, who is demonstrably concerned about climate change, seems perfectly content on leaving the solar panels where they are.