Posted on 02/06/2017 11:25:48 AM PST by MichCapCon
Unnamed employees at the Badlands National Park in South Dakota were lifted to hero status by the mainstream media recently when they defied a presidential blackout on social media by using the park’s Twitter account to tweet climate change facts.
After President Donald Trump issued a ban on social media use by the Department of the Interior, which runs the park system, someone from the national park went to Twitter to warn people about the dangers of the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years” was tweeted along with the hashtag “#climate.”
The tweet has since been deleted.
The incident caused a new flare-up in the ongoing debate over climate change policy. While they get less mainstream media coverage, some climate experts say posts like those from federal park staffers set off false alarms.
“Rising CO2 in the atmosphere will benefit the Earth,” said William Happer, a Princeton physics professor, in an email.
The nonprofit CO2 Coalition states that higher levels of carbon dioxide are helping make green plants more drought-resistant and have led to a significant greening of the planet over the last few decades.
The carbon dioxide levels “during the past tens of millions of years have been much closer to starvation levels … when many plants die, than to the much higher levels that most plants prefer,” according to a 2015 report released by the CO2 Coalition.
What’s the significance of rising levels of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere?
“That's like asking, what's the significance of having more humans on Earth than ever before?” said Roy Spencer, a climatologist, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and former NASA scientist. “Increasing atmospheric CO2 might well be good for life on Earth. It has caused global greening, increased crop productivity, and probably some portion of the relatively benign warming we've experienced. It cannot be demonstrated to have caused any significant change in severe weather of any kind.”
John Christy, a climate scientist and professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, said carbon dioxide is a natural component of the atmosphere and the building block of life on Earth. Christy said in past times, carbon dioxide levels were up to 10 times higher than they are today.
“The question is whether this returned CO2 might affect the climate in a way that is a problem,” Christy said in an email. “Our research indicates the rising CO2 concentrations are not having much impact on the global temperature and no impact on weather events such as droughts/floods/tornadoes/hurricanes etc.”
Fire them, or maybe even prosecute them for illegal use of government property.
:... climate change facts ....” Facts? According to whom?
I want to know who measured the CO2 content of the atmosphere 650,000 years ago. For that matter, who measured it 650 years ago?
Absolute nonsense.
You have a good point. But the person writing the headline did not consider or jumped to the conclusion that these were tweets from fakes trying to pass themselves off as federal park employees.
Facts about CO2 levels are readily available to anyone that wants to do the research. Federal park employees don’t need to think that the public needs them to inform about CO2 levels and they probably don’t have a role in measuring atmospheric CO2 to begin with.
So if we put ourselves in the shoes of federal park employees, it makes no sense whatsoever to do what the headline describes.
So your point has a high probability of being true and the person that wrote this needs to know people are reading and they are not stupid.
IIRC, shortly after this story came out, it was discovered that the tweet was from an official account, but was made by a former employee that still had the password to the twitter account.
What’s so funny about these idiots is that plant life strives on Carbon-Dioxide. Plants “breathe” CO2 and expel Oxygen. An abundance of CO2 is good for the environment.
Tells you about the writer adding more to the growing view that today’s journalism is sloppy, lazy, and politically motivated.
Before writing, data need to be checked as factual, unless one doesn’t care about facts but is more interested in a politicized narrative.
If the writer had dug deeper, his headline would read “Former Obama employee illegally posts official tweet”. The story could then add detail that the former employee is former because dadada, and is anti-Trump (if found), and was known to rant about President Trump (if found), and was able to tweet in defiance of the President’s orders to go silent on social media, and was able to tweet because he/she had a previous twitter account with a password that was still good, etc.
The research could then go in the direction of contacting the PR Officer if not the former employee’s supervisor to ask if they were aware that this former employee was able to tweet on an official twitter account and hear their story, then ask what is being done about it, etc.
That would be a story. But we see little of that basic kind of research and reporting today.
No one, of course. But the beauty of science is that we can, today, look back into the past, by a multitude of methods (ice cores etc.). The future, not at all, by the very definition of the scientific method. Don't blame science, blame rogue "scientists".
I think they get the data from ice core samples that haven’t been disturbed for 1000’s of years. That said, I’m not sure the assertion is true. It’s my understanding that there’s been (relatively recent) periods where the earth has had higher CO2 and temperature levels but this was before the industrial revolution. This attitude that higher CO2 levels CAN ONLY BE a bad thing can only be political, it’s not supported by science.
So what if it is?
No smoking hot spot David Evans - THE AUSTRALIAN July 18, 20081. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
True, and in *very much* past times, a couple of billion years ago, pre-life-on-earth, pre-the-wicked-industrialized-western-nations, CO2 levels were about 99% versus appr. 0.04% today. That is a lot more than "10 times"... anyway, with rising CO2 levels we are dodging a very lethal bullet. Buy another SUV and save humanity!
Who knew the park service had monitors out 650,000 years ago?
You're fired!
Last time I heard, disobeying a directive, or direct order was grounds for misbehavior charges, and dismissal. Hope you enjoy unemployment morons.
There is no debate over "climate change policy". The Trump Administration's policy is that human caused "global warming" aka "climate change" is nonsense and will not be promoted by the federal government. Doesn't matter what opinion is held by federal employees, that is the policy.
Any federal employee officially defying that policy should be fired immediately.
Speaking of “climate change” .. I noticed early this morning that Fox Business was talking about the whistle blower at the climate conference - how the data was fixed to appear as if the planet was warming when it really was NOT.
Rush talked about it today, but he never mentioned the time FOX Business spent on the item. It was good - because nobody else in the MSM was even mentioning it.
“The agency knows who they are, fire them and their immediate superiors to show you mean business.”
The upper echelon within the NPS likely knows who is doing it, and probably before it’s even done. They will never be fired unless forced to do so.
The NPS is a total green outfit. The day and age of the tourist friendly ranger packing a chainsaw on horseback is gone. The Clinton administration started hiring greenies, and that batch is now high enough on the ladder to be running the Badlands park.
The info in the latter paragraph I know for fact.
Compared to typical state parks, the NPS is a disaster in terms of facilities. I say turn over all federal parks to their respective states for management with existing federal dollars and hire all new help.
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a giant nuclear furnace that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
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