We learned a long time ago — like, decades ago, around the time of the alarming warnings of global cooling — that journalists aren’t to be trusted with their takes on climate change, which they filter to us through scientists, who landed a probe on Mars and so must not be wrong about climate change.
Plus, we still have journalists claiming that tsunami warning following an earthquake in Alaska is proof of climate change.
The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale, for example, informed his followers that President Trump was “talking nonsense as usual’ about climate change when Greta Van Susteren inquired about it.
Greta Van Susteren asked Trump about climate change. Talking nonsense as usual, he said the problem is that other countries have "not-good air that comes over to the United States." He said of China's Xi: "He's got to do something with his climate." https://t.co/1L3ennh0z8 pic.twitter.com/W6XIRWVmDC
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) December 4, 2018
This is the climate version of his immigration rhetoric. When other countries send their air, they're not sending their best.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) December 4, 2018
Nice, solid reporting there.
What’s certainly not nonsense is that China is one of the world’s largest polluters by a large margin, while the U.S. has actually reduced carbon emissions.
But is Dale saying it’s nonsense that polluted air from China could reach the United States? That’s weird, because we’ve been told Americans need to shift to a plant-based diet immediately because the rainforests are being cleared to raise cattle, and those cattle farts are polluting the earth’s atmosphere with methane, altering the climate of the entire planet and probably causing those hurricanes off the eastern seaboard.
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Lots of snarking about Trump’s comments here, but somehow no mention of the fact that it’s been widely reported for *years* that pollution in Asia wafts across the Pacific & reaches the West Coast.
?https://t.co/ug7Sk3LRDi https://t.co/rxctR8Exjw
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 4, 2018
These people fervently believe that CO2 emissions caused by air pollution are going to create a climate change apocalypse on Planet Earth, but simultaneously don’t believe that it’s even conceivable that air pollution from China could reach the United States.
Because Trump.
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 4, 2018
I don't think anyone's in denial that Asian air pollution crosses the Pacific. It's just that bringing that up in the context of climate change is a non-sequitur.
— Daniel Schulz (@deschulz) December 4, 2018
LOL yeah “no one” is in denial of that except for ummmm the person who I quote tweeted and the hundreds of people in his replies and the thousands of people mashing the retweet button
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 4, 2018
I still think you're reading it wrong. Dale (who's a solid reporter fwiw) is saying it's hot nonsense that the real problem with climate change is Chinese bad air crossing the Pacific.
— Daniel Schulz (@deschulz) December 4, 2018
Wrong. He is not dismissing Trump’s claim simply as a factual non-sequitor but rather as something ridiculous & untrue.https://t.co/nVLKj4To6x
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 4, 2018
My God, those comments. Seriously, these people know nothing about this issue which they claim to be a matter of life and death.
— Literally An M551 Sheridan (@PhilthyPhil2012) December 4, 2018
aren't we like two news cycles from how the smoke and air pollution from the wildfires in Cali were seen or experienced in New York?
— Kangaroon (@YalcrabD) December 4, 2018
How fast are new cycles now?
— Jordan Woodward (@WildWoodward) December 4, 2018
If anyone has an easily accessible chart to share of annual CO2 emissions by country on a per capita basis for the last 20 or 30 years or so, that'd be great. Per capita or not, cumulative share matters too.https://t.co/nOsDxkD2ia pic.twitter.com/If6aUl7tih
— Blame Big Government (@BlameBigGovt) December 4, 2018
Cumulative in the prior graph being an estimate from 1751 to present. Over the past couple decades the US has been flat in emissions (decrease per capita) while China has seen YUGE increases. Weird how activists don't sound like Trump screaming "CHYNA!" pic.twitter.com/eimXLwBteo
— Blame Big Government (@BlameBigGovt) December 4, 2018
Trump stumbled on a way to pressure countries to clean up their environment without talking about climate change!
You say their pollution is affecting the US right now (not nebulously via climate change).
May be inadvertent, but it’s genius.
— Boomerleaks (@notwokieleaks) December 4, 2018
But … but Trump was the only leader at the G-20 who didn’t sign on to the totally non-binding Paris Climate Accords, while even China and India signed, so they must be much more serious about cleaning up the environment, right?
SHORTER: Trump only world leader at G-20 https://t.co/Rd5OjggwqJ
— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) December 1, 2018
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