Evangelical leaders rally around Trump after Christianity Today op-ed

A group of nearly 200 conservative evangelical church leaders are rallying around President Donald Trump following a scathing op-ed in Christianity Today, which called for his removal from office. CNN’s Brianna Keilar discusses with author Sarah Posner and Father Edward Beck. #CNN #News

Christian Leaders Pray Over Trump During Launch Of Evangelicals For Trump Coalition | NBC News

NBC News

Published on Jan 3, 2020

President Trump launched his Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami, Fla., following a scathing editorial denouncing his presidency in Christianity Today. At the start of the event, faith leaders prayed over the president on stage. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews

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Reflections on Abrupt Climate Change

For many years, myself and colleagues at AMEG (Arctic Methane Emergency Group; founded by John Nissen in the UK) have brainstormed on how risky our rapidly accelerating climate destabilization is to all ecosystems on Earth, including humanities, and what we need to do about it.

In this first of a series of videos, I chat on abrupt climate changes in the past, what is happening now, and what we can expect in the near future.

The Truth About Climate Change

John Stossel

Published on Jan 2, 2017

Are We Doomed?

John Stossel

Published on Nov 19, 2019

Climate alarmists spread myths and declare impending doom.

The Foundation of Climate Science

HouseResourceOrg

Apr 17, 2011

[Excerpt from:] The Foundation of Climate Science – Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming – 2010-05-06 – Even after months of personal attacks against climate scientists stemming from a manufactured scandal over stolen emails, the underlying science behind the need to stem the tide of heat-trapping emissions remains solid. To explain what we know about climate change, and why and how we know it, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hosted top-level American climate scientists at a congressional hearing on Thursday, May 6, 2010.

The scientists addressed the claims of deniers head-on. Thursday’s panel featured a member of the investigative panel convened by the University of East Anglia and led by Lord Ron Oxburgh to review the stolen emails from that school’s Climactic Research Unit. The “Oxburgh Inquiry” exonerated the scientists who were attacked following the emails, saying they “saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work.” The hearing also included three scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, which have also been attacked by climate science deniers.

The Republican witness on the panel was Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

WITNESSES: Dr. Lisa Graumlich, Director, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, and member of the “Oxburgh Inquiry” panel;

Dr. Chris Field, Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of new IPCC report due in 2014;

Dr. James McCarthy, Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University, past President and Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of IPCC report published in 2001;

Dr. James Hurrell, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, contributor to IPCC reports;

Lord Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Adviser, Science and Public Policy Institute. Video provided by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Tyler Environmental Prize winner James J. McCarthy has hope for the future

James J. McCarthy is a Harvard professor who co-chaired a working group for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Now he’s the winner of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

Credit:

James J. McCarthy is a Harvard professor who co-chaired a working group for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Now he’s the winner of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

Credit: P. Raven
The prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has been awarded to Paul Falkowski and James J. McCarthy, distinguished oceanographers who focus on climate change.

McCarthy is a Harvard professor who co-chaired a working group for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“I’m really pleased to be a recipient of this prize,” McCarthy says. “It came as a great surprise to me and as I look back over the list of recipients for the past four decades, I realize that many of them had been my heroes and my mentors. So, it’s really quite an honor to be joining their company.”

McCarthy says he became interested in science “like any kid growing up in a small town, a rural area, interested in the outdoors. It seemed to be what we did as kids. We played outside, we hiked, we fished, we looked for bugs, we looked for birds.”

As McCarthy began to think about an area of science in which he could pursue a career, he found he was inclined toward something that involved fieldwork, rather than something totally lab-based. “The ocean was the one I chose, and it wasn’t a crazy passion for the ocean; it was really the opportunity to do a science that I thought would work,” he says.

The prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has been awarded to Paul Falkowski and James J. McCarthy, distinguished oceanographers who focus on climate change.

McCarthy is a Harvard professor who co-chaired a working group for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“I’m really pleased to be a recipient of this prize,” McCarthy says. “It came as a great surprise to me and as I look back over the list of recipients for the past four decades, I realize that many of them had been my heroes and my mentors. So, it’s really quite an honor to be joining their company.”

McCarthy says he became interested in science “like any kid growing up in a small town, a rural area, interested in the outdoors. It seemed to be what we did as kids. We played outside, we hiked, we fished, we looked for bugs, we looked for birds.”

As McCarthy began to think about an area of science in which he could pursue a career, he found he was inclined toward something that involved fieldwork, rather than something totally lab-based. “The ocean was the one I chose, and it wasn’t a crazy passion for the ocean; it was really the opportunity to do a science that I thought would work,” he says.

In the year 2000, the New York Times ran a picture of McCarthy on a ship at the North Pole, surrounded by open water instead of the usual meters-thick ice. The story got a lot of attention, both good and bad.

“There were people who said, ‘Absolute nonsense,’ that we had somehow fabricated the whole thing,” McCarthy explains. “But, as it turns out, nobody could have imagined at that point that the ice was thinning at the rate it was. People said, ‘That’s impossible. There should be two or three meters of ice there.’ And, of course, we know today, that ice isn’t there.”

McCarthy has experienced similar pushback on the question of climate disruption. “It has largely just been the stable of regulars who seem prepared to try and diminish every bit of new understanding in climate science as being irrelevant or exaggerated, but we’re used to that,” he says. “Fortunately, a lot of them are older than me, so they won’t be as much of a bother to future generations as they were to my generation.”

McCarthy says he is “extremely concerned about the loss of momentum on the extraordinary international agreement that was struck with the Paris Accord. … I’m worried that the international resolve could be diminished without the US in a position of leadership,” he says. “What was extraordinary about the Paris Accord was that for the first time you had the United States, China and India all at the table and all agreeing to not only participate but to really take leadership roles.”

The good news, McCarthy adds, is that many cities and states have not only expressed their resolve to continue working to curtail emissions, but have even upped their game. “We’ve known all along that’s an important place where the action has to occur,” he notes.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement cannot become effective until after the next presidential election in 2020, so “he can express his intent, but it can’t be finalized,” McCarthy notes. “Maybe he will change his mind or if someone else is elected, there could be a different future.”

“What I think is not easily communicated to the public is that if you lose a day working on this problem now, it’s not like you can work an extra day later and catch up,” McCarthy adds. “A portion of the carbon dioxide we’re putting into the atmosphere now will be in the atmosphere hundreds and thousands of years from now. So, everything we can do to slow it today makes tomorrow easier.”

More than anything, what gives McCarthy hope for the future is the attitude of the younger generation toward climate change.

“Whether they go into business or into the public sector — any position, in any career — they’re carrying with them an understanding the early generation didn’t have, the importance of this problem,” he says. “When I interact with these students, I see a passion to be involved in the solution side of this question. I think that’s a very, very hopeful indication that, as we move through this bottleneck, we will emerge much stronger on the other side.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI’s Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

Qasem Soleimani: Strike was to ‘stop war’, says Trump – BBC News

BBC News

Jan 4, 2020

President Donald Trump said the US killed Iran’s top military commander Qasem Soleimani “to stop a war, not to start one”.

Mr Trump said Soleimani’s “reign of terror” was “over” following a strike at Iraq’s Baghdad airport on Friday.

Soleimani spearheaded Iran’s Middle East operations as leader of the country’s Quds Force. Iran vowed to take “severe revenge” over his death.

The killing marked a major escalation in tensions between Iran and the US.

US officials said 3,000 additional troops would be sent to the Middle East as a precaution.

Bill Gates-Backed Carbon Capture Plant Does The Work Of 40 Million Trees

CNBC

Jun 22, 2019

In Squamish, British Columbia, there’s a company that wants to stop climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

It’s called Carbon Engineering, and it uses a combination of giant fans and complex chemical processes to remove carbon dioxide from the air in a procedure known as Direct Air Capture.

Direct Air Capture isn’t new, but Carbon Engineering says its technology has advanced enough for it to finally make financial sense.

The company is backed by Bill Gates — but also by the oil giants Chevron, BHP, and Occidental. These partnerships will bring Carbon Engineering’s tech to market by using the captured carbon to make synthetic fuels and and help extract more oil from the ground.

Will Carbon Engineering’s technology decrease the amount of CO2 in the air, or is it going to prolong our dependence on fossil fuels?

Why Bill Gates Is Funding Solar Geoengineering Research

CNBC

Sep 7, 2019
Fires burning across the Amazon rainforest have renewed the debate about solutions to climate change. Bill Gates is backing the first high-altitude experiment of one radical approach called solar geoengineering. It’s meant to mimic the effects of a giant volcanic eruption. Thousands of planes would fly at high altitudes, spraying millions of tons of particles around the planet to create a massive chemical cloud that would cool the surface.

“Modeling studies have found that it could reduce the intensity of heat waves, for instance, apparently it could reduce the rate of sea level rise. It could reduce the intensity of tropical storms,” said Andy Parker, project director at the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative.

The technology is not far from being ready and it’s affordable, but it could cause massive changes in regional weather patterns and eradicate blue sky.

“These consequences might be horrific. They might involve things like mass famine, mass flooding, drought of kinds that will affect very large populations,” said Stephen Gardiner, author of “A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change.”

Watch the video to learn how it would work and hear the debate around the ethics and efficacy of solar geoengineering.