The Most Mocked Man in the World

Can we objectively consider the viewpoint of another and understand, or do we quickly decide their perspective is without merit? Here's a chance to find out.  Read this excerpt from a well-written piece with a different point of view and perhaps different value system.  Which points might be relevant to today's discussion?

“He is, as of this writing, the most mocked man in the world.”

 ~From Rebecca Solnit‘s recent piece on Donald Trump

     A man who wished to become the most powerful man in the world, and by happenstance and intervention and a series of disasters was granted his wish. Surely he must have imagined that more power meant more flattery, a grander image, a greater hall of mirrors reflecting back his magnificence. But he misunderstood power and prominence. This man had bullied friends and acquaintances, wives and servants, and he bullied facts and truths, insistent that he was more than they were, than it is, that it too must yield to his will. It did not, but the people he bullied pretended that it did. Or perhaps it was that he was a salesman, throwing out one pitch after another, abandoning each one as soon as it left his mouth. A hungry ghost always wants the next thing, not the last thing.

     This one imagined that the power would repose within him and make him great, a Midas touch that would turn all to gold. But the power of the presidency was what it had always been: a system of cooperative relationships, a power that rested on people’s willingness to carry out the orders the president gave, and a willingness that came from that president’s respect for rule of law, truth, and the people.  A man who gives an order that is not followed has his powerlessness hung out like dirty laundry.  One day earlier this year, one of this president’s minions announced that the president’s power would not be questioned. There are tyrants who might utter such a statement and strike fear into those beneath him, because they have instilled enough fear.

     ... This would-be tyrant didn’t understand that he was in a system where many in government, perhaps most beyond the members of his party in the legislative branch, were loyal to law and principle and not to him. His minion announced the president would not be questioned, and we laughed. He called in, like courtiers, the heads of the FBI, of the NSA, and the director of national intelligence to tell them to suppress evidence, to stop investigations and found that their loyalty was not to him. He found out to his chagrin that we were still something of a democracy, and that the free press could not be so easily stopped, and the public itself refused to be cowed and mocks him earnestly at every turn.

     The man in the white house sits, naked and obscene, a pustule of ego, in the harsh light, a man whose grasp exceeded his understanding, because his understanding was dulled by indulgence. ... One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him.  One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall.  Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.

______________________________________________(the author is a liberal activist, obviously)

Thoughts?  
Apart from the prophesied disaster for millions, is there some measure of usefulness in the description, that he is perhaps unfamiliar with the workings of political office, checks and balances, and limits of authority?  And rule of law?  And truth?  Has he in some measure bullied his way to the office?  Of course.  Is he a prolific liar?  Consider: 70 percent of Trump’s statements (those checked by PolitiFact during the campaign) were false, 4 percent were true, and 11 percent mostly true.  The statistics since inauguration are similar.  Is that a problem?

To keep things in perspective, critics of Clinton were equally and accurately derogatory.  She was portrayed as a behind-the-scenes manipulator, untruthful, ethicless, and conscienceless.  The DNC was unveiled as unrepresentative of the party.  All such elements are necessary to our understanding and discussion if we are to make our way forward.

Americans are generally dissatisfied with governance and politicians.  Public approval of our Congress has reached historic lows in recent years, and little has been accomplished to the satisfaction of the general public.  Healthcare has seen great change but not improvement in quality, cost, or availability.  International trade has seen great change but not without extraordinarily harsh impact on the developing nations.  The economy has made great progress but only for the wealthiest, particularly in the developed nations.  The GAP between rich and poor continues to widen at an accelerating pace, and the middle class has declined below the 50% threshold.  

We've taken our step toward change.  Can we understand the various concerns of the citizenry?  Can we discuss them thoughtfully?

Tipover Point

In a pleasant conversation on sustainability economics, the question came up -- is there a tip-over point we should be watching for?  Good question.  😏

• Is there a critical threshold ...
• For population?
• For arable land use?
• For fresh water consumption?  

Well, yes. And we've perhaps passed each of those thresholds already.

Humanity’s demand for goods and services exceeds the resources our ecosystems can continue to provide. We first exceeded this limit in 1970 when population was just over half of what it is now.

Our ecological footprint is a measure of the amount of land required to sustain a country’s consumption patterns, including the land required to provide the resources people use (most importantly food and forest products), the area occupied by infrastructure, and the area required to absorb CO2 emissions. The measure also takes imports into account, so that the negative environmental impact of products is considered where these are consumed rather than where they are produced. 

Reasonable estimates suggest that each person can sustainably use 1.8 global hectares for a one-planet life.  Today though, we extract resources faster than they are regenerated. At the current levels of population, consumption, and waste, humankind needs about 1.6 Earth-like planets to sustain everyone's lifestyle.  Any improvements we attempt become progressively more difficult as quality of life issues compete for resources.

High-consumption countries have become examples of wealth out of balance – they do well on life expectancy and well-being, perhaps, but they maintain their lifestyle with an unsustainable ecological footprint, larger per capita than other countries in the world. It would require perhaps five Earth-like planets to sustain this way of life if everyone lived at their high-consumption level.  Lifestyle comes at a cost. 

How soon will this be visibly intrusive in the marketplace, in international relations, in our quality of life?  We're well past that threshold as well.

Did you know that China is buying huge swaths of land in Africa for farming? And in the U.S. and France. Saudi Arabia owns and farms large areas in California and Arizona because it's cheaper to use U.S. water reserves than their own.  Australia recently blocked China from buying a farm the size of Kentucky.  Food is expected to replace oil as the marketplace centerpiece for the 21st century.

As for the developing nations, what room is left for their improvement in quality of life?  Do your own inquiry.  This is one of perhaps several issues our children and grandchildren will view differently than we do today.

Pyramid - 2017

Have you ever spent $30 just because you wanted something?  That's a week's income for most folks.

In our tumultuous world, making a way forward for our children is difficult.  Unless you're rich. The rich never go hungry or without shelter. Children of the wealthy have reliable access to water, healthcare, and education.  And a way forward. Everyone else, not so much.

"... in the majority of countries below the median per capita income, wealth is accumulating more slowly than the population is growing."  ~UNDP HDR

Individual countries sized by percentage of population in poverty
Click on the chart to see the data in detail.

The international community is making progress in many areas. The percentage of folks in extreme poverty is perhaps going down, but we are struggling with increasing population.  Food, health care, sanitation, water, education, all are far from equitably available.  Large changes are needed.

Meanwhile, it doesn't take much to lend a hand in the developing countries.  For the price of a restaurant dinner here, a kid there can attend school for a semester and get a meal each day. For a few hundred dollars, they can attend college or a trade school for a semester.  With help, a family can put a floor in their house, bed pads under their children, and start a garden or a small business.  They can make progress by their own labor with a little help for some resources.

In distressed regions that today are dealing with drought and famine, sponsoring meals for their small school will ensure kids get at least one meal a day. A little support will help them rebuild their herds and replant their crops now that rain has finally come. Feel free to join in.

____________________________________________________________

Uh oh.

In the grand banquet hall, folks smile and chat cheerfully as they enjoy a wonderful dinner.  They eat and drink to their heart's content - food that is better and more abundant than at the finest tables in ancient Athens or Rome, or even in the palaces of a young Europe. 

When the waiter  arrives holding the bill, the diners are in shock.  Some begin to deny that this is their bill. Others deny that there even is a bill.  Still others deny eating anything.  From one table comes the suggestion that the man is not really a waiter, but is only trying to get attention for himself or to raise money for his own projects.  Finally, the group concludes that if they simply ignore the waiter, he will go away.  This is where we stand today on the subject of climate change and the associated human contribution.  

For the past 150 years, industrial civilization has been dining on the energy stored in fossil fuels, and the bill has come due.  Many continue to sit around the dinner table denying that it is their bill, and doubting the credibility of the man who delivered it.  (paraphrased from Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes, et al.)

Our presence on the planet changes things, of course.

• Humans annually absorb 42% of the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity, 30% of its marine net primary productivity, and 50% of its fresh water.*
• Now, 40% of the planet’s land is devoted to human food production, up from 7% in 1700.*
• Fifty percent of the planet’s land has been transformed for human use.*

*Vitousek, P. M., H. A. Mooney, J. Lubchenco, and J. M. Melillo. 1997. Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems. Science 277 (5325): 494–499; Pimm, S. L. 2001. The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth. McGraw-Hill, NY; The Guardian. 2005. Earth is All Out of New Farmland. December 7, 2005.

• Equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster fifty times over, continuing oil spillage in the Gulf of Guinea has cost millions their livelihood, their communities, and their water.  Those who haven't abandoned the Niger Delta region are left in contamination and poverty; some are rising up in revolt.  It's been going on, the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez every year, for FIFTY years.  If it ever stops, recovery will take a century or more.
• Pelagics (tuna and the like) are now at risk from pollution and illegal overfishing.  Total adult biomass summed across all monitored pelagic populations has declined globally by 52.2% from 1954 to 2006.  Certain regions have seen 90% decline in population bringing malnutrition and starvation among indigenous fishing communities.*

* Maria José Juan-Jordá, Iago Mosqueirad, Andrew B. Cooperf, Juan Freirea, and Nicholas K. Dulvyc, Grupo de Recursos Marinos y Pesquerías, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de A Coruña, 15009 A Coruña, Spain; Earth to Ocean Research Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada; Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory, Lowestoft, United Kingdom; European Commission, Joint Research Center, Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen/Maritime Affairs Unit; School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada - Global population trajectories of tunas and their relatives

• Recent changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide are contributing to the ocean's acidification.  A third or so of our fossil fuel CO2 emissions are absorbed by the oceans; that's around 10 billion tons per year added to the ocean chemistry.  The changing aquatic environment is killing the coral reefs, and not slowly. The current rate of change is now 100 times faster than any changes in ocean acidity in the last 20 million years, raising questions of whether marine life can adapt to the changes.  The scope of impact is under continuing study.  NOAA. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
• Since 1850, the industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 to 409.78 ppm. The international scientific community has concluded there's a better than 90 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in Earth's temperatures over the past 50 years.  Update IPCC  NASA, NOAA

The debate among scientists and the weight of evidence are well past the basics of atmospheric processes and the mechanisms of radiative equilibrium.  Skeptics tend to focus on some arguable detail, and on that basis dismiss the wealth of established facts.

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on public health, environmental science, and other quality of life issues. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of pollution, pesticides, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. Interestingly, a small subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these problems.  Why might they pursue such a course?

Who would sponsor a campaign saying that smoking (including secondhand smoke) is not a health risk? (1965-1994)
Or that acid rain is not an ecosystem risk? (1974-1990)
Or that the ozone depletion was not an environmental problem? (1976-1993)
Or that air pollution (mercury & toxic chemicals, particulates) from power plants is not a health risk? (1967-2011)
Or that emissions from fossil fuel use have no significant environmental impact? (1998-2017)

Why would someone lobby against investigation and regulation of those industries involved and spend millions doing so?  
That's what they did and continue to do today.

"The recent shift in the community of global warming deniers from merely attacking mainstream climate scientists to alleging their involvement in criminal activity is an unsurprising but alarming development in the long campaign to discredit the established scientific fact that burning fossil fuels is causing the world to warm. This latest escalation fits seamlessly into a decades-old pattern of attempts to deny the reality of environmental ills — smoking, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming. Similar or even identical claims have been promoted for decades by other free-market think-tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, and, most persistently, the George C. Marshall Institute. These think tanks all have two things in common: They promote free-market solutions to environmental problems, and all have long been active in challenging the scientific evidence of those problems. ... the American public had been repeatedly fooled by the same strategy and tactics." ~Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

So, back to that banquet ...
              ... there's no such thing as a free lunch.

___________________________________________________________________________
Unless we've reviewed the science, broadly and in depth, we don't have an opinion. What we have is a preference and perhaps a bias.

Culture Notes - II

The appetites we have are all perhaps natural, but do they rule our lives? Should they? Here's an example.

Question:  Does it matter what you see?
In the 50's, children and dogs ran free, and no one worried about them.  We all walked to school or rode our bikes.  On the weekends, we didn't follow any particular plan, and our parents weren't worried as long as we were home before the streetlights came on.  Today ...?

Today, children aren't left unattended in the mornings while they wait for the school bus.  They aren't left unsupervised on the playground.  We don't let them wander alone, and we have a particular concern about strangers, especially men.  Our culture has changed ...

Abuse of minors, trafficking, and exploitation have increased since the 60's.  Pornography is now a multibillion dollar industry and available to youth worldwide.  Sexualization is a centerpiece of the advertising and entertainment industries (sex sells) and is increasingly presented to younger audiences.  And it's all legal.  Government regulation hasn't preserved the cultural safety our children used to enjoy.  It couldn't, of course.  All of us and everyone we know are regularly exposed to such content as part of advertisements, movies, sitcoms, and reality shows.  And the news.  Moral standards have become ambiguous and traditional families are in decline.

What we see (as individuals or as a culture) is a brain changer.  Not just an annoyance or a distraction, it actually changes our physical brain structures, content, and processes.  Here's how:

• Our brains are constantly changing and being transformed by our experiences and what we see, hear, and feel.  Example: When you sit and watch a movie, your brain is changing according to the images you see and the emotions you feel. Your brain is structurally different after that movie than it was before. (Makes you think twice about what you are watching.)
• Our thoughts influence our physical health, our emotions, and our behavior. What you think will set the course for your life.

With that in mind, here's just one of the visual exposure aspects of today's culture:

• Porn sites today receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, & Twitter combined. (HuffPost)  
• 43% of online porn viewers start between the ages of 11 and 13.
• The most common porn role is women in their 20’s portraying teenagers. (JM)  (IWF)
• The child pornography market exploded with the advent of the internet and advanced digital technology.  (US-DOJ)  In '07, the FBI identified 130,000+ child porn sites.
• In 2016, 4.5 billion hours were spent on the world’s largest porn site. (PH Analytics) And, that's just one site.

Just one site's statistics ...

So what does that mean for the culture in which we and our children live?

What goes on inside of us (as individuals or as a culture) will eventually show up on the outside.

“You have been experiencing the effects of your thoughts your entire life.” ~Dr. Caroline Leaf

Is there a healthy path forward for our culture or for us individually?  Any good news?   Of course.  Truth is unchangeable.  Everything else changes. 

We've been given a baseline on which to build our lives and raise our children, but the environment that surrounds us is toxic.  It's a battleground, and government is not the solution.  We should plan accordingly.

Update:  On internet searches for porn -- according to data released by Google, six of the top eight porn-searching countries are Muslim states. Pakistan tops the list at number one, followed by Egypt at number two. Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey come in at numbers four, five, seven and eight, respectively.  The impact of the industry is global and not limited to western culture.


As a youngster, I was told with a smile ...

 Things are not as they seem.
    You were born into a world at war.

       Everything you do counts. 

Culture Notes - I

The appetites we have are all perhaps natural, but do they rule our lives?  Should they?  Here's an example from western culture.

Question: How much is enough?
Starbucks former CEO, now Executive Chairman, is worth $3+ Billion and gets paid $21.7 Million each year.

He's in the top echelon for income in the US, and there are thousands more like him; folks with incomes in the $millions annually.

The lower half of individual wage earners in the US average $12.7k, net (after taxes).  That's the lower economic 50%, 80 million working folks who pay taxes. (Per SSA wage statistics for 2015)

Households depend on more than one income, The lower 90% of U.S. households average $30.7k net (after taxes).  A full-time Starbucks store supervisor nets about $21.6k.

There's a measure of validity in rewarding a workman for his labor, of course.  There's also the issue of exploiting the labor of others for personal gain.  Is there anything wrong with the current GAP between the extraordinarily rich and the labor-force that produced their wealth? Is the greed we see on Wall Street and elsewhere okay, or is it deadly?

Giving government the job of regulating ethical business standards hasn't worked well.  Curious where else that particular failure has spilled over? 

______________________________________   
Consider The Nation or perhaps The GAP

It has indeed been hotter in years past

Temperature ...

Click on the Chart

     Discussion of natural climate cycles are appropriate, but we'll want to understand them along the timeline of modern humans and other life.  Significant changes in the past have brought mass extinctions and a restructuring of the ecosystem. Natural cycles are perhaps physically inevitable and in the queue for our consideration. Different natural cycles appear to occur on tens to tens of thousands of years periodicity and can fall in sync to exaggerate or mitigate the combined impact.

     It has indeed been hotter in years past, but humans weren't in existence yet, and the world was a radically different place.

     Separate from those natural cycles are the changes we see ourselves causing today.  The basic physics: if you add greenhouse gasses to an experimental sunlit atmosphere, it absorbs additional heat in proportion to the amount added.  At some threshold, its capacity to shed that heat is exceeded, and a runaway increase follows. 

     There are a number of unresolved questions regarding the timeline projection and the degree of impact, but there's little reason to suggest our children and grandchildren will not face difficulty in adapting.  That's one of our modern concerns regarding our ecosystem.

... and Life since there's more going on than just warming.

Tokyo-Yokohama, 37.8 million

Through most of history, everyone lived a rural lifestyle dependent on agriculture and hunting for survival. 

• In 1800, 3% of the world's population lived in villages of 5000 or more. 
• By 1900, about 14% were urbanites, and 12 cities had a million or more residents. 
• In 1950, 30% of the world's population lived in cities and, the number of cities with over 1 million people had grown to 83, each with its economically specialized segments and associated vulnerabilities.

Jakarta, Indonesia, 30.5 million

We've seen unusual urban growth. 

• It's 2017, and more than 50% of the world lives in cities. There are more than 400 cities over a million and 35 over 10 million. The more developed nations are about 75% urban (US-81%), while 45% of residents of less developed countries live in urban areas. 
• The trend is growing worldwide. We expect that 70% of the world population will be urban by 2050, and most urban growth will occur in less developed countries.

It's a bit naive to think there's no significant impact.  Did you know extinctions have accelerated along with population? 

At the turn of the 20th century some 100,000 tigers roamed throughout Asia. Today the last 3200 tigers in the wild are scattered across 7 percent of their former range, often in small “island” populations whose isolation puts them at risk of becoming inbred and imperils their long-term survival.  ~ Sharon Guynup

We're in a mass extinction spiral.  Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson estimates that 30,000 species per year (three species per hour) are being driven to extinction. The natural background rate is one extinction per million species per year (approximately 5-10 species per year).  Human-caused extinctions, most triggered by habitat destruction, are 100 - 1000 times the background rate according to one conservative statistical model.  (The actual numbers continue to be controversial)

The current mass extinction differs from all others in being driven by a single species rather than a planetary or galactic physical process. When the human race — Homo sapiens sapiens — migrated out of Africa, waves of extinction soon followed. The colonization-followed-by-extinction pattern can be seen as recently as 2,000 years ago, when humans colonized Madagascar and quickly drove elephant birds, hippos, and large lemurs extinct.

The first wave of extinctions targeted large vertebrates hunted by hunter-gatherers. The second, larger wave began 10,000 years ago when the advent of agriculture caused a population boom and a need to plow wildlife habitats, divert streams, and maintain large herds of domestic cattle. The third and largest wave began in 1800 with the harnessing of fossil fuels. With enormous, cheap energy at its disposal, the human population grew rapidly past 1 billion in 1800 to 2 billion in 1930, 4 billion in 1975, and over 7 billion today. We'll reach 8 billion by 2020 and 9 to 15 billion (likely the former) by 2050.

"No population of a large vertebrate animal in the history of the planet has grown that much, that fast, or with such devastating consequences to its fellow earthlings. Humans’ impact has been so profound that scientists have proposed that the Holocene era be declared over and the current epoch (beginning in about 1900) be called the Anthropocene: the age when the "global environmental effects of increased human population and economic development" dominate planetary physical, chemical, and biological condition."

• Humans annually absorb 42% of the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity, 30% of its marine net primary productivity, and 50% of its fresh water.*
• Forty percent of the planet’s land is now devoted to our food production, that's up from 7% in 1700.*
• Fifty percent of the planet’s land mass has been transformed for human use.*
• More atmospheric nitrogen is now fixed by humans than all other natural processes combined.*  Although carbon dioxide may get more press, “the nitrogen cycle has been altered more than any other basic element cycle.”

*Vitousek, P. M., H. A. Mooney, J. Lubchenco, and J. M. Melillo. 1997. Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems. Science 277 (5325): 494–499; Pimm, S. L. 2001. The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth. McGraw-Hill, NY; The Guardian. 2005. Earth is All Out of New Farmland. December 7, 2005.

• Coral reefs are declining rapidly: destructive fishing practices and runoff from overdevelopment all take a toll, weakening the reefs and making them more susceptible to storms and diseases. The latest reports state that as much as 27 percent of monitored reef formations have recently been lost and as much as 32 percent are at risk of being lost before 2050.

• Coral reefs cover only about 0.1 percent of the ocean bottom but are vital to ocean life: 9 million marine species, including 4,000 kinds of fish, rely on coral reefs for food or shelter. Further, reefs form a central pillar of many countries' economies, supporting fishing industries and protecting coastlines from storm surges.

• Pelagics (tuna and the like) are now at risk due to overfishing and pollution of breeding areas.  Total adult biomass summed across all monitored pelagic populations has declined globally by 52.2% from 1954 to 2006.  Certain regions have seen 90% decline in population causing malnutrition and starvation among indigenous fishing communities.*

*Global population trajectories of tunas and their relatives Maria José Juan-Jordá, Iago Mosqueirad, Andrew B. Cooperf, Juan Freirea, and Nicholas K. Dulvyc, Grupo de Recursos Marinos y Pesquerías, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de A Coruña, 15009 A Coruña, Spain; Earth to Ocean Research Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada; Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory, Lowestoft, United Kingdom; European Commission, Joint Research Center, Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen/Maritime Affairs Unit; School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Suggesting that the changes we've brought are minor or inconsequential goes perhaps beyond naive to some measure of indifference or the inattentive privilege of wealth.

Gaslighting

Earth and climate scientists generally agree that humans are contributing to global warming, but there are naysayers.
  
Apart from the science, the public discussion is informative but not necessarily objective.

"CO2 traps heat -- more CO2 means a warmer climate.  That is basic physics, borne out by the history of climate. Denying these well-established facts is about as smart as claiming the Earth is flat, and best left to cranks, ideologues and fossil fuel lobbyists."  ~ Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of ocean physics at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.  That's one side of the debate, of course.

I hope Trump listens to his daughter Ivanka on climate change, Mike ...     CNBC-1 hour ago - The former New York mayor says he wants President Trump to change his mind about pulling out of the Paris agreement. "We are two-thirds of ...

(CNN) Until last Friday night, the eve of the People's Climate March on Washington, the US government website EPA.gov explained how humans are warming the planet by burning fossil fuels and why that is important for us and for future generations.  Now the page carries an Orwellian message: "This page is being updated."

"Thank you for your interest in this topic," the message continues. "We are currently updating our website to reflect EPA's priorities under the leadership of President Trump and [EPA] Administrator Pruitt."

It's been clear for some time what Donald Trump and his appointees prefer to think of climate change.  At worst, they call it a hoax. At best, they say it's overblown -- no big deal.  We need more science, they insist, while stripping government science agencies of funding. 

Based on research spanning more than half a century, scientists understand that human contribution is the single critical change factor. Regular reviews of actively publishing climate scientists (Ref) reveal that the majority agree: climate-warming trends over the past century are most likely due to human activities.  Many scientific organizations worldwide have independently issued public statements endorsing this position.  That said, there are a minority who disagree and who should be heard objectively.  Beyond the science, biased contrarians suggest global warming ended about 19 years ago (despite the 10 warmest years on record occurring in that period) and that any further warming is unlikely to be a critical concern. (Ref)  The disagreement is much politicised, unfortunately, rather than debated reasonably.  

Statement from eighteen scientific associations - "Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver." (2009) (Ref)

The administration's position is troubling, and not only because their policies may contribute to human-induced global warming with perhaps worsening droughts and rising seas. It is troubling because Trump and this administration are apparently "gaslighting" the public on the science to date.

With the same playbook the tobacco industry used, Trump and other political deniers inject uncertainty and confusion into climate policy discussions.  Without addressing the science, they discount it as inconsequential.  You can do that when you're powerful; you can insert your preferred truth without factual backing.

Gaslighting.  Why might anyone do that?  Why might a group of power players do that?

Here's one reason to consider ... Exxon knew about fossil fuel and climate change 40 years ago.  They did their own research, then covered the results with a multi-million dollar obfuscation campaign, much like the tobacco industry's strategy.

Is there relevant opinion on both sides of the issue, and is the corporate/political arena the appropriate venue?  In science, what is relevant is independently reproducible results.  
________________________________________________________
Scientific Organizations Affirming That Climate Change Has Been Largely Enabled by Human Action

1. Academia Chilena de Ciencias, Chile
2. Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa, Portugal
3. Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana
4. Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales de Venezuela
5. Academia de Ciencias Medicas, Fisicas y Naturales de Guatemala
6. Academia Mexicana de Ciencias,Mexico
7. Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Bolivia
8. Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru
9. Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
10. Académie des Sciences, France
11. Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada
12. Academy of Athens
13. Academy of Science of Mozambique
14. Academy of Science of South Africa
15. Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS)
16. Academy of Sciences Malaysia
17. Academy of Sciences of Moldova
18. Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
19. Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran
20. Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt
21. Academy of the Royal Society of New Zealand
22. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
23. Africa Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science
24. African Academy of Sciences
25. Albanian Academy of Sciences
26. Amazon Environmental Research Institute
27. American Anthropological Association
28. American Association for the Advancement of Science
29. American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)
30. American Astronomical Society
31. American Chemical Society
32. American Fisheries Society
33. American Geophysical Union
34. American Institute of Biological Sciences
35. American Institute of Physics
36. American Meteorological Society
37. American Physical Society
38. American Public Health Association
39. American Quaternary Association
40. American Society for Microbiology
41. American Society of Agronomy
42. American Society of Civil Engineers
43. American Society of Plant Biologists
44. American Statistical Association
45. Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
46. Australian Academy of Science
47. Australian Bureau of Meteorology
48. Australian Coral Reef Society
49. Australian Institute of Marine Science
50. Australian Institute of Physics
51. Australian Marine Sciences Association
52. Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society  
53. Bangladesh Academy of Sciences
54. Botanical Society of America
55. Brazilian Academy of Sciences
56. British Antarctic Survey
57. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
58. California Academy of Sciences
59. Cameroon Academy of Sciences
60. Canadian Association of Physicists
61. Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
62. Canadian Geophysical Union
63. Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
64. Canadian Society of Soil Science
65. Canadian Society of Zoologists
66. Caribbean Academy of Sciences views
67. Center for International Forestry Research
68. Chinese Academy of Sciences
69. Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
70. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
71. Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
72. Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences
73. Crop Science Society of America
74. Cuban Academy of Sciences
75. Delegation of the Finnish Academies of Science and Letters
76. Ecological Society of America
77. Ecological Society of Australia
78. Environmental Protection Agency
79. European Academy of Sciences and Arts
80. European Federation of Geologists
81. European Geosciences Union
82. European Physical Society
83. European Science Foundation
84. Federation of American Scientists
85. French Academy of Sciences
86. Geological Society of America
87. Geological Society of Australia
88. Geological Society of London
89. Georgian Academy of Sciences  
90. German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina  
91. Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
92. Indian National Science Academy
93. Indonesian Academy of Sciences  
94. Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management
95. Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology
96. Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand
97. Institution of Mechanical Engineers, UK
98. InterAcademy Council
99. International Alliance of Research Universities
100. International Arctic Science Committee
101. International Association for Great Lakes Research
102. International Council for Science
103. International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
104. International Research Institute for Climate and Society
105. International Union for Quaternary Research
106. International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
107. International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
108. Islamic World Academy of Sciences
109. Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
110. Kenya National Academy of Sciences
111. Korean Academy of Science and Technology
112. Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts
113. l'Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
114. Latin American Academy of Sciences
115. Latvian Academy of Sciences
116. Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
117. Madagascar National Academy of Arts, Letters, and Sciences
118. Mauritius Academy of Science and Technology
119. Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts
120. National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina
121. National Academy of Sciences of Armenia
122. National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic
123. National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka
124. National Academy of Sciences, United States of America
125. National Aeronautics and Space Administration  
126. National Association of Geoscience Teachers
127. National Association of State Foresters
128. National Center for Atmospheric Research  
129. National Council of Engineers Australia
130. National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, New Zealand
131. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
132. National Research Council
133. National Science Foundation
134. Natural England
135. Natural Environment Research Council, UK
136. Natural Science Collections Alliance
137. Network of African Science Academies
138. New York Academy of Sciences
139. Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences
140. Nigerian Academy of Sciences
141. Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters
142. Oklahoma Climatological Survey
143. Organization of Biological Field Stations
144. Pakistan Academy of Sciences
145. Palestine Academy for Science and Technology
146. Pew Center on Global Climate Change
147. Polish Academy of Sciences
148. Romanian Academy
149. Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
150. Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain
151. Royal Astronomical Society, UK
152. Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
153. Royal Irish Academy
154. Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
155. Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
156. Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
157. Royal Scientific Society of Jordan
158. Royal Society of Canada
159. Royal Society of Chemistry, UK
160. Royal Society of the United Kingdom
161. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
162. Russian Academy of Sciences
163. Science and Technology, Australia  
164. Science Council of Japan
165. Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
166. Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics
167. Scripps Institution of Oceanography
168. Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
169. Slovak Academy of Sciences
170. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
171. Society for Ecological Restoration International
172. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
173. Society of American Foresters   
174. Society of Biology (UK)   
175. Society of Systematic Biologists
176. Soil Science Society of America  
177. Sudan Academy of Sciences
178. Sudanese National Academy of Science
179. Tanzania Academy of Sciences
180. The Wildlife Society (international)
181. Turkish Academy of Sciences
182. Uganda National Academy of Sciences
183. Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities
184. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
185. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
186. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
187. Woods Hole Research Center
188. World Association of Zoos and Aquariums
189. World Federation of Public Health Associations
190. World Forestry Congress
191. World Health Organization
192. World Meteorological Organization
193. Zambia Academy of Sciences
194. Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences

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OTHER RESOURCES

1. J. Cook, et al, "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002
   
   Quotation from page 6: "The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic, or human-caused, Global Warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.”
   
   J. Cook, et al, "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 8 No. 2, (15 May 2013); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
   
   Quotation from page 3: "Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.”
   
   W. R. L. Anderegg, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107.
   
   P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/2009EO030002.
   
   N. Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618.
2. Statement on climate change from 18 scientific associations (2009)
3. AAAS Board Statement on Climate Change (2006)
4. ACS Public Policy Statement: Climate Change (2010-2013)
5. Human‐Induced Climate Change Requires Urgent Action (2013)
6. Global Climate Change and Human Health (2013)
7. Climate Change: An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society (2012)
8. APS National Policy 07.1 Climate Change (2007)
9. GSA Position Statement on Climate Change (2010)
10. Joint science academies' statement: Global response to climate change (2005)
11. Understanding and Responding to Climate Change (2005)
12. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (2009)
13. IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers (2014)
14. And for a look at the contrarian view - WHY SCIENTISTS DISAGREE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMINg (NOV 2015)
15. And a list of organizations which deny climate change and human impact