Talk about saving the world from climate change!
Already with the election of Donald J. Trump as America’s 45th president, we have seen a huge drop in unseasonal temperatures in portions of the northeast U.S.
In Pittsburgh, for example, max temperatures went from being 14oF above normal the day before the election to much closer to normal after. It continued to be a chilly weekend thereafter.
Could it be that The Donald is already affecting climate change in a positive way in the U.S., or perhaps is it just the snowflakes protesting his election that are chilling the air of victory?
We’re dealing with climate after all, so only time will tell.
The natural climate will continue to change as it sees fit. Hopefully the climate of students indoctrinated by leftist professors will change as maturity sets in with the exposure to real world conditions.
These conditions include the fact that as measured temperature data is collected for the globe, vaunted climate model temperature trends continue to be proven wrong. Decades long projections by models have the mercury rising ever upward, while reality has the thermometer relatively flat.
Of course very few professors have in-depth knowledge of the workings of the atmosphere, so they must have faith in those whom they trust to assure them that the long range conditions of the airy environment are confidently discernable. Who better to discern such lofty things than other professors in the echo chamber of academia where like-minded gnostics see clearly into their climate crystal balls.
Those divining spheres show conditions to be bad if ordinary people, including students, continue to indulge their carboniferous sins. So, the pressure is on for the proselytizing of young, malleable, immature minds. Those minds can easily become distraught and activate themselves to save the planet.
Professors can then sit back in their cushy environs and reap the benefits of student armies pressuring the deplorable working class to pay for their visions of an ecological Shangri-La.
Yet, the naïve students are blind-sided by the largely academic ideology of environmentalist universalism. Their misguided passion is rooted in a grade school through graduate school education that is filled with unrelenting indoctrination in the catechism that people are killing the planet by living comfortably off fossil fuels.
It is offensive to many of us real-world, practicing atmospheric scientists that so many ignorant and arrogant professors call those who challenge their “wisdom” juvenile schoolyard names like “climate denier.”
To the professors’ acculturated shock, perhaps with a Trump administration, experienced, knowledgeable dissenting atmospheric scientists outside of the campus confines (aka “deniers”) will be given a chance to provide perspective on the complex issue of climate change, its magnitude, and reasonable mitigation.
After all, there are well established climate facts, such as the observation that man’s activity on small and medium scales has impacted climate. Cities that were built over former forests show measurable increases in temperature when compared with the surrounding countryside. Other long-term changes to atmospheric dynamics from cities are also known, like its obvious effect on local airflow.
Weather patterns can change from human’s untoward inputs to not only landscape changes but to a minor extent increased anthropogenic dust and gases in the atmosphere. However, since drastic measures to reduce “greenhouse gases” will lead to at best a small fraction of a degree decrease in global temperatures, it makes more sense to focus time and talent on further reducing toxic pollutants that pose a real threat to public health. Healthful communities will result from government regulators and communities working together with job-growing industries to reasonably limit harmful emissions.
People do have some substantial, limited impact on climate. But, how extensive is that impact is a question far from being answered in any “settled science” way. Students–especially those snowflake crystals frosting the air of a Trump victory–along with their professors need to learn this.
Anthony J. Sadar is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and author of In Global Warming We Trust: Too Big to Fail (Stairway Press, 2016).