Quick thread 🧵 debunking the misinformation in @GeorgeWill's latest ignorant climate musings in @washingtonpost @PostOpinions (1/14):
The quote below is utter nonsense. The referenced "exhortations to combat climate change" are based on the authoritative @IPCC_CH report, and there have been plenty of climate policies proposed that are congruent with 'conservative agendas' like carbon pollution pricing (2/14)
The below sentence is totally irrelevant. The Earth both absorbs and re-radiates sunlight. It's the amount accumulating on Earth (equivalent to >5 atomic bombs per second) that changes its temperature and climate (3/14)
Please spare us the tired "climate has always been changing" red herring. The rate at which humans are currently changing the climate through the burning of fossil fuels is unprecedented at least in many thousands of years. *That's* the problem (4/14)
I don't even know what the below quote is supposed to suggest. Humans obviously weren't significantly altering the climate 500 years ago (with relatively small exceptions like deforestation) and there was no "global cooling of 1940-1980" (temps were flat during that period (5/14)
Again, human fossil fuel emissions are responsible for the *imbalance* or *change in* Earth's energy flows and hence for its climate change. This is basic stuff (6/14)
"Koonin says" is obviously not a valid scientific reference. The @IPCC_CH report concluded that hurricanes are becoming stronger (more Category 3–5) (7/14)
First of all, tornadoes are not hurricanes. Secondly, we don't know how/if climate change will alter the overall number of hurricanes. The problem is that it makes them stronger (8/14)
Sea level rise is accelerating (9/14)
I'd love to see the supposed "recent research" referenced here, because these claims are absolutely false 👇 (10/14)
Wow @ the cherrypicked weasel words in the quote below: "average warmest temperature across the United States has hardly changed." Last I checked we were talking about *global* warming (11/14)
Look up "Tragedy of the Commons" before reading the quote below (12/14)
The "plausible emissions scenarios" referenced below involve massive international efforts to decarbonize the global economy. That's exactly the point - that's what we need to do! (13/14)
Ah yes, the "we don't need to take climate action now because we'll be rich in the future and will all be able to build new homes on mountaintops" argument. That's my favorite 🙄 (14/14)

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More from @dana1981

17 Feb
Let's do a thread 🧵 of conservatives falsely blaming Texas' power outages on wind turbines. To start, @DanCrenshawTX (who purely coincidentally happens to be the 3rd-highest House recipient of oil & gas money):
Gov @GregAbbott_TX on @seanhannity @FoxNews, just a day after admitting that fossil gas, coal, and nuclear failures were largely to blame:
Read 24 tweets
3 Feb
The @POTUS Climate Crisis Executive Order last week was a BFD! In @CC_Yale today, I discuss how it was basically a mini #GreenNewDeal. Here's the article, and thread 🧵:
yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/bidens…
The #GreenNewDeal framework is largely a deployment of federal investments in clean technologies for lots of sectors, creating millions of jobs while cleaning up fossil fuel pollution and correcting environmental injustices. That's exactly the framework of the climate crisis EO!
On emissions reductions, the EO targets net-zero carbon from US electricity by 2035 and zero-emissions vehicles for federal, state, local fleets, including @USPS trucks. Those two sectors account for close to 60% of US carbon pollution.
Read 13 tweets
30 Nov 20
It's conservatives' favorite argument against climate solutions: "it's too expensive!"

In @CC_Yale I tried to do a definitive debunking of this myth, also available @skepticscience short URL sks.to/costs. Please read it, then this thread (1/10)
yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/11/fighti…
First, HUGE CAVEAT: we can't put a $$$ value on many climate crisis consequences like suffering, trauma, extinctions, lost biodiversity, etc., as advocates like @GretaThunberg & @sunrisemvmt remind us. Nevertheless, the economic case for climate solutions is a no-brainer (2/10)
Opponents like Trump & @NikkiHaley argue against a #GreenNewDeal by inflating its cost and ignoring its benefits. They're only doing the first half of a cost-benefit analysis, and doing it in a bad faith, bullshit way (e.g. see the thread below) (3/10)
Read 10 tweets
28 Oct 20
So, what's happening in the Arctic now is kinda crazy, but also really important to extreme weather throughout the northern hemisphere. Read my piece today on the topic, but here's a Thread:
yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/10/warmer…
First, the basics: there's a "positive feedback" (positive in the negative sense, Trump would say), like a mutually destructive relationship. Warming melts ice & snow in the Arctic, making the surface less reflective -> absorb more sunlight -> warm more -> melt more -> etc. 1/n
As a result, the Arctic is warming 3x faster than the global avg, and sea ice is disappearing fast. Half Arctic sea ice surface area and 75% of its volume disappeared in summers between 1979 and 2012.

Then 2014–2020 were the 7 hottest years on record. Guess what happened? 2/n
Read 14 tweets
1 May 20
Today @CC_Yale published my article debunking Michael Moore & Jeff Gibbs' garbage anti-clean energy film.

Fellow environmentalists, I'd like to have a word. Please read my piece and then step into my Twitter office, if you would.
yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/michae…
We've been fighting for climate action (without a lot of success) for over 30 years now. The reason we haven't won isn't that @algore or @billmckibben are secret evil villains, as Moore and Gibbs would have us believe.

It's that THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY ARE ACTUAL VILLAINS!!
Fossil fuel companies have spent billions of dollars undermining climate policy proposals, international climate negotiations, and spreading doubt about climate science among the public, even as their own scientists warned them about climate change before I was even born.
Read 9 tweets
21 Apr 20
There is soooooooo much misleading junk in this film. Most of it is focused on biomass from wood, which supplies 2% of energy in the US. And wind turbines are bad because ... they only last several decades and NIMBYs don't like them?

I yelled at the screen 3 times watching this.
The film's solution is, I guess don't use any energy because no source of energy is perfect? There's no comparison of pros and cons, no consideration of benefits at all. It only looks at the downside of every source of energy and thus basically concludes that civilization is bad.
My favorite part was when they looked at a former solar farm location in Daggett, CA, now just sand, and declared the revelation that it's become a "solar wasteland."

I pulled up Google Maps and found Daggett in the Mojave Desert. It's all sand out there!!! WTF?!
Read 8 tweets

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