Donald Trump doesn't know the difference between climate and weather

SHARES

BY Unknown Friday, December 29, 2017 0

Donald Trump doesn't know the difference between climate and weather

Donald Trump doesn't know the difference between climate and weather

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
(CNN) - At 8 p.m. Thursday, after a third straight day of golf at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and the temperature was 72 degrees, President Donald Trump tweeted this:
"In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"
The "logic" at work here is simple: How can climate change, aka global warming, be real if it is so cold outside?
Trump tweets that 'cold' East Coast 'could use a little bit of' global warming
It's the same sort of "logic" that led Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) to bring a snowball onto the Senate floor in late February 2015 as a supposed counterweight to claims of global warming. Toting his snowball in one hand, Inhofe, who was the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee at the time, said:
"In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I asked the chair, do you know what this is? It's a snowball just from outside here. So it's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable."
Yes, that really happened.
What Trump (and Inhofe) don't seem to understand --  or choose to ignore -- is that "weather" and "climate" are not the same thing.
Here's a brief primer on the difference between the two, via NASA: "Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere 'behaves' over relatively long periods of time."
That it is cold on any given day -- or week! or month! -- is not indicative of much of anything about the climate and whether it is warming or not. If the "weather = climate" logic held, a series of sweltering summer days could reasonably be concluded as incontrovertible evidence that the planet is getting warmer.
Which, of course, it is. This past October was the second warmest October on record -- and those records date back to the 1880s. The first 10 months of 2017 were, according to NASA, the second warmest 10 months ever -- second only to -- wait for it -- 2016. This year is likely to be among the three warmest years in almost 140 years of record-keeping, according to the Weather Channel. Of the eight warmest years ever, all have come since 1998, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (The eight warmest years, in order: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010, 2013, 2005, 2009 and 1998.)
You get the idea. All available evidence -- and there are 137 years of it! -- makes very, very, abundantly clear that the climate is changing. There's also this bit of fact:  97% of climate scientists who have published papers on climate change believe not only that the globe is warming but also that the warming is very likely due to human activity.
Trump is free to tweet whatever he likes. And he will continue to do so. But to use cold weather as some sort of rebuttal of broader climatological warming is not even close to accurate, factual or funny.

PDP rebranding itself with stolen arms money – Lai Mohammed

SHARES

BY Unknown Saturday, December 16, 2017 0

PDP rebranding itself with stolen arms money – Lai Mohammed

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said the Peoples Democratic Party is now rebranding itself with the stolen money that was originally meant to fight Boko Haram.
Mohammed, in an interview with Vanguard newspaper, was reacting to the criticism of the approval of State Governors that $1 billion should be released to the Federal Government to fight the Boko Haram insurgency.
The governors gave the approval on Thursday during the National Economic Council meeting.
It was presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
The Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, on Friday distanced himself from the approval.
Fayose said the money was meant to fund the re-election campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
Reacting to the position of the PDP on Friday in the interview with Vanguard, Mohammed said the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan “in one day distributed $269 million cash and N100 billion which was supposed to be money meant to fight Boko Haram”.
He said: “The sad thing about PDP is that they do not know when not to talk.
“If they were smart, they would know when not to talk.
“If not for their rapacious corruption, Boko Haram would not have metamorphosed into the monster that it became before we came in.
“If only they had approached governance with honesty, transparency and sense of purpose, Boko Haram would not have raged between 2009 and 2015.
“It was their inept handling of Boko Haram and their corruption that put us in this mess.
“They seem not to understand that the biggest challenge to any government and the primary responsibility of any government is law and order and security.
“It is because of the fact that we have been able to contain Boko Haram that they were able to hold their National Convention in Abuja.
“During their time, they were not able to celebrate the National Day openly.
“Under their watch, Boko Haram not only occupied 27 local governments in Borno State, but was also active in almost 10 states.
“Not that alone, they used to stroll to the federal capital, and three times they went to bomb the United Nations, the Police headquarters and under their watch, the Thisday newspaper was bombed and under their watch, about 200 Chibok girls were abducted.”