The suzerain Trump

[Animavore]

Oh, I just noticed that article is from Breitbart. A fake news publication which looks set to become Trump's personal propaganda mill.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, it's starting up the propaganda mill.

[Animavore]

Outcry after Republicans vote to dismantle independent ethics body

House Republicans have gutted an independent ethics watchdog, putting it under their own control, in a secret ballot hours before the new Congress convened for the first time.

The unheralded vote severely weakens the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which was set up after a lobbying scandal in 2008 to investigate corruption allegations against members of Congress. The move, led by the head of the House judiciary committee, defied the Republican congressional leadership and was reportedly supported by several legislators currently under OCE scrutiny.The amendment was voted through by the House Republican conference over the New Year’s holiday with no prior notice or debate and inserted in a broad rules package the House will vote for on Tuesday. It turns the formerly independent OCE into the Office of Congressional Complaint Review, a subordinate body to the House Ethics Committee, which is currently run by the Republican majority and has a long history of overlooking charges of malfeasance by lawmakers.

The new body will not be able to receive anonymous tips from members of Congress or make its findings public.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... thics-body

Let the corruption begin.

[Svartalf]

you mean, "let it increase"... the fact such a vote could happen shows that the worm is already deep in the fruit.

[Animavore]

Judith Curry, one of the deinalist arseholes mentioned in the article I posted on the previous page, appears in this recap of 2016 in climate. As well as a couple of other household, denialist names.

The Bad


Despite the progress above, global warming continued. In fact, 2016 marked the third year in a row that record global temperatures were set. We are well over halfway to the 2-degree mark that puts us into a real climate danger zone and we have not even come close to doubling CO2 yet (although we will).

The temperature levels reached this year don’t prove the world is warming; in fact, we never look at a single year as evidence. Rather, proof was found in the oceans. Several major studies were published this year that clearly show the world’s oceans are warming and that computer simulations have been spot-on in their predictions. Simply put, the Earth is warming and the models got it right.

But that said, reaching almost 1.5 degrees Celsius with only about a 45% increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means that the contrarians, like Roy Spencer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Judith Curry, are shown conclusively to be wrong. The rate of warming we are seeing, in both the air and ocean temperatures, is inconsistent with the fanciful and optimistic beliefs of this group.

But not only does the Earth not care about the contrarians; the weather doesn’t either. And it has been a crazy year with many climate-change induced weather events that should give us all cause for concern. We know that a warming climate will have many weather effects. For instance, in a warming world, there is increased evaporation which tends to dry out areas and make droughts worse. But, in some parts of the world, the warming air has more water vapor (higher humidity) so that heavy rainfalls occur and more flooding happens. The general rule of thumb is that areas which are currently dry will become more dry. Areas that are currently wet become wetter. And rains will occur in heavier downpours. And that is just what we are seeing.

In the United States, we have had a continuation of the terrible drought in California. We’ve had a new heat-wave drought in the southeastern part of the US and that led to terrible wildfires.

There have been terrible floods in other locations, including Maryland, West Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Iowa, among others. Outside the US, there has been an incredible heat wave in the Arctic which has led to the lowest ever wintertime ice ever recorded there. The Arctic is looking very precarious for the important summertime low ice extent. We have a good chance at breaking the record (again).

Terrible flooding the UK, Myanmar, Argentina, Indonesia, Spain, and Egypt, and others. There have been simultaneous flooding and heat waves in Australia, crazy hot weather in India and the Middle East.

And typhoons and hurricanes are getting stronger because of climate change. As we warm the planet and its oceans, there is more energy available to fuel these hurricanes. According to expert Jeff Masters, 2016 saw the strongest storms ever observed in two regions. We also witnessed seven Category 5 storms, which is a huge number. Among typhoons that hit land, two of the top five occurred this year. These listed weather events, which are increasing, have been predicted to be an outcome of global warming. The scientists making these predictions got it right.

Read the full good, bad, and ugly here; https://skepticalscience.com/climate-20 ... -ugly.html

[Jason]

Oh, I just noticed that article is from Breitbart. A fake news publication which looks set to become Trump's personal propaganda mill.

No worse than the Washington Post, surely. It seems everyone is in the "fake news" business these days.

[Brian Peacock]

At least publications like the Washington Post will acknowledge, redact and retract articles when they're wrong - something climate science denialists never do.

[pErvinalia]

Brietbart is propaganda. It always has been.

[Animavore]

Oh, I just noticed that article is from Breitbart. A fake news publication which looks set to become Trump's personal propaganda mill.

No worse than the Washington Post, surely. It seems everyone is in the "fake news" business these days.

Way worse. It is a white supremacist propaganda publication. It is not a real newspaper.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah. The WaPo has lots to lose if it it is caught out lying. Breitbart has very little to lose.

[Animavore]

Yeah. The WaPo has lots to lose if it it is caught out lying. Breitbart has very little to lose.

That's because it's never told the truth in the first place.

[Collector1337]

Way worse. It is a white supremacist propaganda publication. It is not a real newspaper.

Breitbart is a "white supremacist propaganda publication."

Except Breitbart is Jewish.

But, conservatives are the ones who live in an alternate reality...

Fucking hilarious.

[JimC]

Not all "white supremacists" are anti-semitic...

[Brian Peacock]

He probably means Jews can't be white nationalists in the same way Blacks can't be racist? Whatever, the article is climate science denialist propaganda all the same.

[Jason]

Is it? Propaganda? Well, the Trump administration will give the AGW people the chance to deal with this propaganda in a public forum. Surely that can only be a good thing.