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Today, the Washington Post is reporting the EPA Administrator is considering recommending to the White House that the EPA’s 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding be rescinded. Let’s look at a few of the reasons why this might be a good thing to consider.
The Science
The science of human-caused climate change is much more uncertain that you have been led to believe. The globally-averaged surface temperature of Earth seems to have warmed by 1 deg. C or so in the last century. The magnitude of the warming remains uncertain with a 30% range in different thermometer-based datasets, and considerably weaker warming in global “reanalysis” datasets using all available data types. But whatever the level of warming, it might well be mostly human-caused.
But we don’t really know.
As I keep pointing out, the global energy imbalance caused by increasing human-caused CO2 emissions (yes, I believe we are the cause) is smaller than the accuracy with which we know natural energy flows in the climate system. This means recent warming could be mostly natural and we would never know it.
I’m not claiming that is the case, only that there are uncertainties in climate science that are seldom if ever discussed. The climate models that are the basis for future projections of climate change are adjusted (fudged?) so that increasing CO2 is the only cause of warming. The models themselves do not have all of the necessary physics (mostly due to cloud process uncertainties) to determine whether our climate system was in a state of equilibrium before CO2 was increasing. (And, no, I don’t believe the warming caused the oceans to outgas more CO2 — that effect is very small compared to the size of the human source).
As most readers here are aware, for many years I’ve been saying the science of “climate change” has been corrupted by big government science budgets, ideological worldview biases, and group-think. Even my career has depended upon Congress being convinced the issue is worthy of big budgets.
It is almost impossible for new science to be published in the peer-reviewed literature that in any way runs counter to the current narrative which states that humans are causing a “climate crisis” from our CO2 emissions, a natural consequence of fossil fuel burning. That “peer review” is now in the hands of climate scientists whose research careers depend upon continuing government funding. If the “problem” of global warming were to be much less than previously believed, funding for that research could dry up.
The most alarmist science papers are the ones that get all of the press, which then get exaggerated and misrepresented by the news media. As a result, the public has a very skewed perception of what scientists really know.
As Roger Pielke, Jr. has been pointing out for many years, even the IPCC’s official reports do not claim that our greenhouse gas emissions have caused changes in severe weather. Every severe weather event in the news is now dutifully tied in some inferential way to human causation, but with public opinion of mainstream news outlets at an all-time low, fewer and fewer people take those news reports seriously. Severe weather has always existed, and always will. Storm damages have increased only because of increasing infrastructure and everyone wanting to live on the coast.
And about the only, clear, long-term change I’m aware of is a 50% decline in strong to violent tornadoes since the 1950s.
But you would never know of any good climate news if your main source of information is Al Gore’s books, your favorite environmental think tank (that you contribute to so you can get their yearly calendar), or the mainstream media.
Costs vs. Benefits
If there was no cost to replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy, I might be a little more supportive of regulations which choose winners and losers, rather than letting the marketplace decide. But everything humans do requires energy, and so human flourishing depends upon abundant and affordable energy. We in the developed world might have excess wealth to spend on pricey new forms of energy (although our rapidly increasing national debt argues we don’t have excess wealth to squander), but most of the world’s poor continue to struggle to pay for energy we have in relative abundance… if they even have access to it.
The 2009 Endangerment Finding
The Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 falls under the EPA’s Clean Air Act, and so EPA would need to regulate it if it was considered a threat to human health and welfare. Which it did in 2009.
But this “threat to human health and welfare” business cuts both ways.
For example, I could argue that most premature human deaths are caused, indirectly, by what we eat (or don’t eat). The incidence of obesity and related illnesses continues to rise. So, given the threat of food to human and welfare, why not just outlaw food? Food is a threat to human health and welfare, too.
Clearly we don’t do that because food is necessary for life. But so is CO2.
CO2 is required for photosynthesis, which in turn is required for the food chain on land and in the oceans. NASA-based satellite measurements since the 1980s have documented global greening from increasing CO2. It has been estimated global agricultural productivity has increased by trillions of dollars from crops growing better, with more drought resistance, in a CO2-enriched atmosphere.
I’ve read the technical support document for the 2009 EF. It is full of gloom and doom. Any benefits to more CO2 are downplayed while costs are trumpeted. Its authorship appears to have been heavily influenced by environmental activists, most of whom have their own agendas. Much of the science in it now sounds more like Al Gore’s original alarmist book Earth In The Balance (which referenced me, but couldn’t get my science contributions right) than a balanced assessment of the science of climate change.
Fifteen years since the 2009 Endangerment Finding, we now know much more. None of the scary scenarios originally predicted have actually come to pass, or at a minimum they were greatly exaggerated. Ten-year deadlines to “do something” about the “climate crisis” have come and gone since this mess started in the 1980s… a few times over. Even the IPCC (which only allows alarmist-leaning scientists to participate) has admitted it is unlikely we will experience significant changes in severe weather by the year 2100 that can be tied to increasing CO2.
It makes sense to now reconsider the Endangerment Finding. Let the free market (including consumer preferences) decide which forms of energy we use.
What’s the current situation regarding the vertical temperature profile in the tropical troposphere? I used to see you & Christy saying that it wasn’t following the models very closely – is that still the case?
Last I knew from John Christy (who tracks this), it’s still the case. I say it’s evidence that positive water vapor feedback isn’t as strong as the modelers claim… in the models, there is a strong relationship between tropical upper tropospheric warming and positive water vapor feedback (well-documented by the IPCC). Upper tropospheric water vapor changes are tied to precipitation efficiency, the controls on which are not well understood. So, the modelers just assume constant RH everywhere. –Roy
Many of the main points of this blog reiterate a short post on this site i made a few weeks back:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2025/02/uah-v6-1-global-temperature-update-for-january-2025-0-46-deg-c/#comment-1698427.
I heartily agree. However (my) best estimates of ECS over land in tropical (i.e. consistently hot, yearly averages of 80 to 85 F) latitudes is about 5 F per doubling of CO2. At current rates of CO2 emission this doubling will occur in about 140 years. I would consider a 5 F increase from these levels to be a serious hardship in the tropics. This is on century long time scales. This is the only “alarming” projection that is realistic and is seriously warranted at this time.
correction…I should have written “4 F per doubling”.
Hallelujah !!
Thirty years of deliberate and intentional lying about climate by NPR is enough.
It annoys me each time the local PBS/NPR station comes on with its mantra of “truth, integrity, and diverse voices” lots of diverse voices, except when a story can be linked, however peripherally, to climate change, when they demonstrate how fast they discard their integrity when it would mean abandoning the Holy Grail of anthropogenic climate change, and simply parrot the ‘threat of climate change’ pravda.
The other reality is that US EPA does not regulate the 90% of carbon emissions that come from the 95% of people who live in other countries. It is also interesting that China is claimed to have more than half of all solar panels in use. That is about 7% of their electric production. Coal is over 80%, and there again, they consume more than half of the coal that is burned world wide. The world is a very long way from anything close to “carbon neutral”.
Tim S
” The world is a very long way from anything close to ‘carbon neutral’. ”
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This is correct.
However, this is NOT due to countries like China or, in the future, India.
Most people only think about emissions without worrying about where their real cause comes from. An example.
Decades ago, German industry and especially large German retail groups discovered that it would be far more profitable for all of them if German industry brought the machines they needed to manufacture their products to China and had the products manufactured there by ultra-cheap workers rather than at expensive workplaces in Germany.
The only thing the Germans wanted to keep was their decades-long technological lead in the field of machine tools, which they considered ‘sacred’.
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We all can imagine that Germmany was by no means the only country in which this happened.
Here is the result of this, taken from
Consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions accounting with capital stock change highlights dynamics of fast-developing countries
Zhang-Ming Chen & al. (2018)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05905-y/figures/6
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You can easily see that when considering consumption as the major factor, China moves down to the level of Mexico or Brazil.
Bindidon, thank you for that very honest and accurate description of the Climate Change “problem”. It is not just greenhouse gases, it is that there are too many people who want to live too comfortably. That is why the green movement also opposes nuclear power. They seem to want the people to live a more harsh life and suffer more. Is there a different answer?
How much of the increase in China and India is due to a better standard of living for the people? Are they allowed to live a better life? It seems that the Communist Party in China needs to keep the people happy to some extent if they want to stay in power and enforce the police state.
While we are at it, let’s talk about red meat. They want to blame cattle ranching for increasing methane. They want us to eat a vegetable and legume diet in addition to nuts and fruits. The reality is that the equilibrium concentration of methane in the atmosphere (generation minus oxidative removal) is only twice historical levels. That means that fully half is from natural sources that always have and always will exist. Natural sources may actually increase due to farming practices for those natural sources of food. Nice try for the green folks, but that whole issue falls flat on its face.
Tim S
Your strange reply doesn’t have anything to do with what I wrote.
Bindidon, my apology for not understanding your intent. Just remove the first five words, and it makes no reference to you. For the rest, that is my assessment of the situation. I stand by every word. There very clearly is a lot of hype and additional motives involved. The excessive hype and wild predictions are actually the only basis for claims that climate change is a crisis. Otherwise, there is very little in the science to suggest a crisis or emergency.
There is only ONE way to stop the rise of atmospheric CO2. And that is to stop all economic activity in all nations immediately.
Almost every economic activity creates waste heat and requires energy, which is usually accompanied by CO2 emissions. While a solar pane, windmill an EV do not create CO2 emissions in use, manufacturing them does create CO2 emissions, especially for EVs.
About 175 of all 195 nations, including China and India, don’t really care about CO2 emissions. And they include all the fastest growing populations, and include almost 7 billion people out of 6 billion.
PS: I love CO2 emissions and global warning. I consider both to be very good news based on sciece and observations over the past 50 years of actual global warming.
RE: 2nd to last para, last sentence:
“IPCC (which only allows alarmist-leaning scientists to participate) has admitted it is unlikely we will experience significant changes in severe weather by the year 2100 that can be tied to increasing CO2.”
Could you please cite the IPCC doc title, page and para where this statement is based upon ? A google search seems to generate statements to the contrary – which again are not supported by any citation.
Thanks, Steve, Edmonds WA
Roger Pielke, Jr. has been discussing this for years: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-ipcc-actually-says-about –Roy
“unlikely we will experience significant changes in severe weather by the year 2100 that can be tied to increasing CO2”
Dr Spencer refers to the IPCC as paraphrased by Roger Pielke Jnr above. RPJ says:
The IPCC helpfully provides a summary table for a range of extremes, indicating for various phenomena whether emergence has been achieved with medium or high confidence at three points in time:
to date (today), i.e., specifically when IPCC AR6 was completed in 2021,
by 2050 under RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5, and
by 2100 under RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5.
Neither of these statements are precise. The actual text in the IPCC says:
“Already emerged in the historical period
Emerging by 2050 at least for RCP8.5
Emerging between 2050 and 2100 at least for RCP8.5″
Not “unlikely we will experience significant changes in severe weather by the year 2100”
There are various severe weather metrics that will not emerge by 2100, and others that will emerge between 2050 and 2100, or by 2050, according to the latest IPCC report.
There is no doubt in my view as to your capacity to encapsulate atmospheric global temperatures changes in a meaningful and sustainable manner.
The problem with all datasets that have less than a 250 year term is that the trends in the change in the weather are obscure with no mechanism evident.
Acting as proxies Chinese records and foraminifera studies show that a temperature variation of up to 4C is quite common over the last 4,000 years. There is no evidence that CO2 has anything to do with climate change.
I accept your findings that there maybe a minor contribution that is barely measurable
We can look forward to a rise in temperature by as much as 2.5C over the 250 years without any obvious contribution from the influence of CO2.
It has happened before and will happen again.
“temperature variation of up to 4C is quite common over the last 4,000 years.”
Those are local or regioal temperatures. ot global. There are no accurate global average temperature data worth studying until 1979 (UAH). No proxies even snuggest a 4 degree C. GAT variation in the past 5000 years. In the 1980s the best proxy estimates were +/- 0.5 degrees C. for the past 5000 years. The GAT has increased about 0.7 degrees C. since 1975.
“There is no evidence that CO2 has anything to do with climate change.”
There is 128 years of evidence that has convinced at least 99.9% of scientists including Mr. Spencer. The evidence has withstood a 128 years test of time.
That ship has sailed and you are still on the dock.
Sorry Mr Greene,
Your inability and of the good Doctor is to look beyond the limits of your databases.
I used the Chinese scientific database summary to illustrate the simple fact that temperatures range over 4C and have done so about at least 3 times over that period.
The fundamental behaviour of gases, CO2 included, is that they absorbed in cooler temperatures and described when temperatures rise.
It is for this reason CO2 behaviour trails the change in temperature regime.
In fact, CO2 should considered the magic molecule. No CO2 no photosynthesis, no plant growth and no replenishment of oxygen.
Ice core samples also show that this is just a warming cycle and that the earth has been through many warming and cooling cycles. CO2 levels have also fluctuated way before the internal combustion engine or coal burning. The sun has 2500 times the influence over whatever man can do to the environment. Time to chill out and stop burying CO2.
Roy-
The problem is the concerns you raise are not relevant in making an endangerment finding under the CAA. The textual standard is precautionary and does not allow for any cost-benefit balancing or considerstion of other trade offs. All that is required is that the EPA administrator can reasonably anticipate some threats from warming to health or welfare, the latter of which is defined quite broadly. We can agree that EPA regulation of GHGs is folly, but the statutory text makes the finding(s) very difficult to undo. Setting a rational climate policy will require legislative action.
Jonathan:
Can the WH/EPA Administrator simply conclude that, based upon what we’ve learned in the last 20 years, including no changes that can both be considered harmful and attributable to increasing CO2, that increasing CO2 is no longer considered a threat to human health and welfare? If so, what happens next (from a legal standpoint)? Could Massachusetts vs. EPA be reversed?
Separate Question: Remember when coal was the enemy, and natural gas was our savior? Coal people warned NatGas was next (which is what happened). What happens when EPA decides water vapor emissions from hydrogen vehicles (or any fuel burning vehicle) cause increases in the heat index (which would be true)… can the EPA then regulate the burning of any fuel? Send us back to the Dark Ages? See how ludicrous this all becomes? So, what is the legal recourse… only new legislation?
-Roy
“What happens when EPA decides water vapor emissions from hydrogen vehicles (or any fuel burning vehicle) cause increases in the heat index”
Surely you know the difference between long-lived atmospheric GHGs and the ones that quickly rain out. No one is going to regulate water vapour.
As ridiculous as it seems, I would not put it past the global warming zealot crowd to try something like that. After all, the “green new deal” movement has nothing to do with helping the environment.
Are the “zealots” going to be anyone of note? Anyone that will make government policy? Because if not, why worry about them?
Some people are easy marks for ‘freedum’ ideas.
There is quite good evidence that the greenhouse effect is at its maximum level. There is also a physical explanation as to why. That would mean 100% of the warming we have seen has been natural.
60+ years of NOAA radiosonde data as described in Miskolczi 2010 along with 25 years of NASA CERES radiation data as documented by Willis E just a month both show a constant overall greenhouse effect.
There are natural cycles which could have caused all the warming as well. A combination of the millennial cycle, AMO, PDO and the Hunga-Tonga volcano appear to have led to a significant reduction in clouds.
There is really no other good scientific explanation for the data other than a constant greenhouse effect. This should be used in the reconsideration of the endangerment finding.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268182965_Rebuttal_of_Miskolczi's_alternative_greenhouse_theory
Miskolczi has been debunked.
“The magnitude of the warming remains uncertain with a 30% range in different thermometer-based datasets, and considerably weaker warming in global reanalysis datasets using all available data types”
Really?!
This ERA reanalysis finds:
“The February 2024 January 2025 period was 0.73C above the 1991-2020 average, and 1.61C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level.”
https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-january-2025
This article sums up what a lot of us believe. Two things I disagree with are: (1) Last year’s Supreme Court ruling in June regarding the Chevron Deference changed the EPA’s power from the Clean Air Act. The courts are not going to defer to the federal agencies. (2) We know without disagreement that natural CO2 emissions exceed (20 to 1) human emissions. I have yet to see a mathematical model other than Berry’s (and Salby, Harde, et.al.) that handles this mathematically and correctly.
“(2) We know without disagreement that natural CO2 emissions exceed (20 to 1) human emissions. ”
That fact is irrelevant because nature absorbs slightly more CO2 than is emitted in the annual carbon cycle. In fact, nature has been absorbing CO2 for billions of years..
Humans release CO2 and absorb none. That is why humans are responsible for ALL of the +50% increase of atmospheric CO2 since 1850.
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Concerning this article:
It is irrelevant
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The 2009 endangerment finding was replaced by the August 2022 IRA passed by Congress. It can be repealed and defunded by Congress but that has not yet happened,
We dispute the science behind the IRA but laws are made by politicians, not scientists. Almost all of the government funded “science” says rising CO2 is or will become dangerous. Goverments get the “science” they pay for.
Just like cigarette companies paid scientists and doctors to say cigarettes were safe, from about 1930 to 1960.
Nate you are showing a current anomaly peak temperature and comparing it to the mean of a 50 year period.
If one could scientifically say that mean annual temperature only varies by increased CO2 it might be meaningful. But we know that isn’t true. Heck according to Milankovic astronomical variations 1.61 degrees is something rather routine naturally.
That doesn’t mean the warming is all natural but it also doesn’t mean its not natural.
As I have been saying for months, our science community needs to look at orbital perturbations to the speeds of earth through its orbit as it moves closer to and further from the sun.
According to data since 1980, last year the earth spent several more days closer to the sun vs further from the sun since 1980 suggesting at least an 84 year cycle for Uranus, on top of which if so there must also be a 164 year cycle for Neptune. And of course astronomical science is also aware of other cycles affecting Neptune but haven’t yet pinned down the causes.
We have lots to learn about how climate is affected.
Somebody needs to get in there and build a database of the most important stuff to work on as it seems the main current thrust seems to be population control.
To compare: the same 12 mo. period for GISS gives 0.69 above the 1991-2020 average.
Thus the surface and reanalysis data are close to the same. In fact the surface data is slightly lower, 0.69 vs. 0.73.
Nate, This link from Copernicus shows all of the major surface temperature anomaly datasets on a single plot and they’re in pretty good agreement. No idea what the “30% range” remark is referring to.
https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-indicators/temperature
Indeed. Thanks.
What he is talking about is the warming trend varying over the past ~40 years by 30%. Since the warming is so slight its hard to see that much difference on the plots of temperatures you are looking at over the past 40years.
Uncertainty cuts both ways. But this essay seems to imply it only cuts one way – less warming, fewer problems.
There is an important component missing from this assessment. We don’t have the capacity to escape if the uncontrolled geological experiment we are running with our atmosphere brings about the worst of the projected changes.
I’m not saying that will happen. I’m saying unless we can get a new atmosphere, or unless we all get tickets off-planet if the experiment goes south, or unless you can guarantee me 100% that the worst will not happen, then I think it’s reckless to take the risk when we are inside the test tube.
So sure, weigh the costs and benefits, figure out ways to mitigate emissions without it being too onerous on developing countries. Take everything Roy and others have said on board and and do out best rather than throw up out hands because it’s all too hard or ideologically inconvenient.
And don’t caricature the effort. Emissions mitigation is painfully slow. Even the most driven polities aren’t making it happen at a reckless pace. But where accelerated transition has occurred, where is the predicted economic armageddon? Which economies fell apart because they built transition to renewables into their policies?
The results in underdeveloped countries is a mixed bag. Some communities now have power were none existed, in the form of solar micro-grids, which has a high upfront cost, but an extremely low ongoing cost compared to f/f. On the other hand, developing countries are finding the cost of fossil fuel and fossil fuel plants has gone up as the international community puts economic pressure on fossil fuels, making it more expensive to expand existing grids. but this doesn’t have to be an argument to back off, it can be a call to find better solutions.
And the are many other arguments for transitioning to fossil fuels.
Reducing the hold that unsavoury regimes have on consumer countries. The West has long propped up some very brutal regimes, whose power has been enriched by the world’s need for oil.
Recognizing and getting ahead of the day when the resources run out.
Reducing pricing volatility, which fluctuates wildly, especially for oil due to the market instability, conflicts and supply issues. The costs of renewables are more predictable, resulting in a more stable economy.
Creating more jobs – renewables creates more jobs per unit energy than fossil fuels, in production, installation and maintenance.
Renewables are better for human health.
There is more environmental degradation with fossil fuels, and risks to water tables from fracking and oil spills, not to mention oil spills in the sea. (That’s not to say there is no environmental harm from renewables, just that it is less).
Decentralising energy access makes a grid more resilient to power outs, and makes power outs more localised.
Fossil fuel plants use massive amounts of water for cooling. Renewables don’t, reducing stress on water resources.
Many wars are tied to fossil fuels – eg ME conflicts. Becoming nationally self-reliant means spending less on military to protect supply routes and engaging in wars for energy security.
This could also play out locally with an oppressive government. A fossil fuel grid is easier to control and shut down than a renewables grid with semi-independent nodes. Renewables diminishes the weaponization of energy access.
There is a part of the conservative lexicon in the US (because the issue is fairly polarised politically in the US, and that’s who I’d have to convince) that I wonder might not find some appeal in energy self-sufficiency. You set up a micro-grid in a community, or panel your house to the nth degree, and now you don’t have to rely on the government or corporations to get your stove lit and your shower heated.
Isn’t there something about good old self-reliance that makes the notion of being master of your own energy source appealing?
barry says:
”Uncertainty cuts both ways. But this essay seems to imply it only cuts one way less warming, fewer problems.
There is an important component missing from this assessment. We dont have the capacity to escape if the uncontrolled geological experiment we are running with our atmosphere brings about the worst of the projected changes.
Im not saying that will happen. Im saying unless we can get a new atmosphere, or unless we all get tickets off-planet if the experiment goes south, or unless you can guarantee me 100% that the worst will not happen, then I think its reckless to take the risk when we are inside the test tube.”
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You mean unless you personally feel 100% safe you want to hold the whole world hostage until you do? Talk about narcissism!
The entire world and science knows this is a grand experiment of random changes that determines survival . . .and you want to regulate it?
The fact is we have been regulating it now since the Clinton administration and have accomplished what? Absolutely nothing but more death and misery by virtue of the negative impacts of regulation increasing the cost of living!
You got more than 25 years of this to accomplish something with zero measurable results.
Now its time to end that anti-progress experiment and get back to the drawing board of broadly looking at climate perturbances both natural and manmade while providing better opportunities for people to adapt to challenging climate change, should that ever occur as surely, naturally, it will do as it has for millions of years.
“You mean unless you personally feel 100% safe you want to hold the whole world hostage until you do?”
I kind of rely on people understanding that my argument is more generalised, and not about me personally. I realise that I should probably walk people through it a bit morte, but I speak in the personal sometimes because it uses less words, and my posts are long enough.
“accomplished what? Absolutely nothing but more death and misery by virtue of the negative impacts of regulation increasing the cost of living!”
That sounds like a lot of emotion and little investigation. And if you want to talk about death and misery, let’s put oil wars and the health effects of fossil fuels on the other side of the ledger for a start. A proper assessment would have a much broader overview than you’re offering.
barry says:
” ”You mean unless you personally feel 100% safe you want to hold the whole world hostage until you do?”
I kind of rely on people understanding that my argument is more generalised, and not about me personally.”
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LOL! So now you are saying you feel what others feel? LMAO!
Maybe you ought to check the recent polls Barry.
barry says:
” ”accomplished what? Absolutely nothing but more death and misery by virtue of the negative impacts of regulation increasing the cost of living!”
That sounds like a lot of emotion and little investigation. And if you want to talk about death and misery, lets put oil wars and the health effects of fossil fuels on the other side of the ledger for a start. A proper assessment would have a much broader overview than youre offering.”
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LOL! A lot of speculation that current wars are oil wars. Why not dig up something from Alexander the Great’s invasion of Persia while you are at it. Current wars in the middle east have been crusades for women and gay rights. And they have been ever since the Dems rejected G.W. Bush’s claim of Mission Accomplished in 2003. Not that Bush wasn’t complicit in committing the dumbest blunder of all time in acquiescing to Shite Muslim demands to fire every Sunni muslim, including all the military talent, in the Iraqi government and economy as payback for the deprivations of Saddam Hussein on the Shite population.
But thats all now in the past and the American public isn’t going to tolerate it.
As to whether fossil fuels are a net positive for mankind or a negative isn’t a question worth asking.
Unless you want to argue that financial well being that has arisen from the availability of fossil fuels has an insignificant net relationship to death and misery you have no argument. It may well be that you personally can absorb the additional costs but that’s precisely the problem of you thinking your ”feelings” are the most important. And just speaks to your character that you deign to tell others who have no bread to just eat cake.
Worse you could actually care but view that money grows on trees as does a pre pubescent child (with the government being the tree for those children whose development remained arrested into their older years)
“LOL! So now you are saying you feel what others feel? LMAO”
You’re the only person here talking about feelings. And looks like that’s because your reason is based on them, judging by the adolescent acronyms bookending your vacuous remarks.
Sorry, bill, but you’ve got nothing of value to offer, only the usual unimaginative bile.
Barry if you don’t want to debate this you don’t need to respond to my posts with your whining. You didn’t address a single point I made.
I am sorry if you dislike that I find it really humorous that you need to be 100% certain that CO2 isn’t going to warm the planet another 1.5C.
But your emotions are not what my points are about. The majority of people in the world don’t want to be told to do what some special interest committee wants them to do.
Concern about CO2 oscillates around 50% and is of significantly less concern than their financial situation. You can live in denial of that but that’s why in virtually every poll I have seen global warming concerns reside at the bottom of the list. Your fears and your standards of proof seem quite unreasonable if you actually care about others.
Benefit Cost ratio is 200:1 or more.
There is no downside to CO2 emissions that even remotely outweighs the societal benefits of access to cheap reliable plentiful energy from fossil fuels.
The argument that CO2 is a pollutant that poses a risk to climate is without evidence despite billions being spent on studying the issue.
As Roy points out any changes that might be attributed to CO2 emissions is impossible to measure because the effect is too small.
Master of my own energy source? Newfoundland is called ‘the rock’ because it has been completely denuded of its forests that were destroyed to supply someone’s own energy source. There are too many of us to rely on the supply of ‘Cow Pies’ for fuel.
“Benefit Cost ratio is 200:1 or more”
I’ll wait for the expensive talk, thanks.
Barry,
Just gives us a little evidence of your theory. Give us evidence that all the CO2 rise is due to fossil fuels. Give us evidence that the Equivalence Principle doesn’t apply to CO2. Give us evidence that 0.4% of the atmospheric gases cause 60F warming. Give us evidence that temperature rise follows CO2 rise. Give us evidence that emissivity is 1. Give us evidence that the planet’s temperature would be 255K without greenhouse gases.
Why do I have to litigate a premise the author of this blog already agrees with? Because Roy doesn’t deny established science, it makes him more interesting.
“As I keep pointing out, the global energy imbalance…is smaller than the accuracy with which we know natural energy flows in the climate system. This means recent warming could be mostly natural and we would never know it.”
Exactly.
And we don’t even know the natural energy flows. They’re all estimations, imaginations, guesses, assumptions. And even if we knew the exact energy flows, in and out, radiative energy does not correspond directly to temperature. A whole bunch of low-energy photons does not make high-energy photons.
Another factor that needs to be considered is temperature is a poor measure of energy balance and flow. Average temperature can be rising as the planet cools and could be falling as heat energy increases. The ‘science’ behind AGW and the ‘climate’ crisis is flawed! Garbage into inadequate models and political garbage out to the masses to control them by fear. A mirror image of the COVID fraud on a long term scale.
The Sun, water and CO₂ are essentials for photosynthesis and for life as we know it on planet Earth, CO₂ is not a pollutant!
How many years would it take to get back to the 1000-1200 ppm range of atmospheric co2 at the present rate of growth at which plants optimally grow?
The biosphere is better at sequestering co2 from the atmosphere than it is at releasing it to where it originated.
Burning hydrocarbons is enhancing the bisophere’s ability to increase agricultural production.
Man is saving the biosphere from it’s own devise.
We might not even reach 600 ppm (see my post, below, based upon my published CO2 budget model)… it depends a lot on the rate of future CO2 emissions, which is pretty uncertain. But you are right, recent research keeps finding that previous estimates of CO2 uptake have been low. https://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/will-humanity-ever-reach-2xco2-possibly-not/ -Roy
G.J, have you been inside a greenhouse on a hot day? Great for the plants, but do you want to live there?
We’re going to find out what it all looks like on Earth, because CO2 emissions are not appreciably slowing down yet, and I don’t think they will, despite all the hand-wringing about the alleged wrong-headedness of trying to slow down the giant geological experiment.
Hi Dr. Spencer
Thanks for a great article. And I agree with you 100%. But I have additional reasoning for doubt that all of the predictions and scare tactics are true. I am an ex-programmer and corporate IT worker. Most of the scientists use models to make their futuristic predictions of what will happen. But what most people don’t realize about is the ‘If-Then-Else’ paradigm in programming. To expand on this a little, although you might know more than me, my paradigm means simply ‘If this is true, do this, Else do that’. So basically you can make the models report anything that you want depending on how the models are programmed and what data is sent in. And like you said in your article, what programmer who earns his living building these models would make it produce data that was contrary to current thinking. Not going to happen. Keep up the good work and have a great day.
“As I keep pointing out, the global energy imbalance caused by increasing human-caused CO2 emissions (yes, I believe we are the cause) is smaller than the accuracy with which we know natural energy flows in the climate system. This means recent warming could be mostly natural and we would never know it.”
You keep saying this without really explaining what natural flows you mean.
The daily or seasonal oscillatory flows can be quite large. But they are not relevant. Only the natural flows averaged over the time scale of the measurements of the imbalance are relevant.
So energy flows averaged over months or years is what matters. The measurements show a persistent and slowly increasing energy imbalance over years. With no known comparable natural flows on that time scale.
Nate you didn’t even address the statement that Roy made. Both anthropogenic and natural change operate on the principle of energy imbalance. Thus any warming or cooling which actually is constantly going on means there is an energy imbalance.
Your statement that daily and seasonal imbalances being short term are not relevant to climate change. Thats a nothing comment that doesn’t address longer termed natural or anthropogenic climate change.
So your strawman argument falls on its own face in a very juvenile manner.
Here is the important phrase:
“the accuracy with which we know natural energy flows”
What does the word “know” mean in that sentence?
Try to explain your answer in the context of three possible states of knowledge which are Known-Knowns, Known-Unknowns, and Unknown-Unknowns.
The unknowns allow some here to heavily fantasize.
Yes Nate fantasizes that changes in outgoing LW and absorbed SW are sufficiently measured to estimate the imbalance when in fact its computed by the proxy of computer modeling. Computer models define the target and the estimates hit that output every time. . .even while the computer models fail to predict how fast warming is occurring.
We know that you can’t do both at the same time and thats the evidence off Nate’s fantasizing that we can.
Sure we have measurements. . .with significant error bars. So we have folks with Ouija boards and divining rods to narrow the error bars down to fit the computer models. . .and they just leave out the fact that the computer model had just been reinitiated with current climate data to validate the fantasy output.
Then he comes in here to criticize the guy that actually understands the uncertainty.
So Nate, is this a fantasy? Do you endorse this statement from a very official source that low levels of CO2 caused the most recent glacial minimum, if in fact that is what they mean by “ice age extremes”?
Within only the past century, the CO2 control knob has been turned sharply upward toward a much hotter global climate. The pre-industrial level of atmospheric carbon dioxide was about 280 ppm, which is representative of the interglacial maximum level of atmospheric CO2. During ice age extremes, the level of atmospheric CO2 drops to near 180 ppm, for which the global temperature is about 5 C colder.
Actually, you left out the important bit, which I think muddies the waters rather than illuminates.
“the accuracy with which we know natural energy flows in the climate system”
The energy imbalance = rate in v rate out of the system. We don’t need to know flow rates within if we have a good enough grip on the bulk transfer into and out of the climate system.
Just as we don’t need to be able to observe or predict the heat flow and bubble formation in a pot of water in order to estimate when it will boil over.
”It makes sense to now reconsider the Endangerment Finding. Let the free market (including consumer preferences) decide which forms of energy we use.”
Absolutely! Being a life long environmentalist I have evolved over the decades as I became aware that environmental initiatives always fail unless they have popular support.
the free market is by far the best way to gauge popular support. But waiting for popular support to manifest itself often encourages to turning ones focus to building a bureaucratic quagmire of red tape that tends to do a lot more harm than good slowing progress to a snail’s pace.
The most effective tools are well-founded certification programs. Certification programs for trade and human rights, forestry, seafood, wildlife safety have been extremely effective. Much more so than slow bureaucratic processes where claimed harms are often not well established but instead is merely pushed by a powerful subset of the population for an unlimited number of reasons.
These programs succeed because open debate lives on its own merits. While not being 100% effective, which nothing is, its far better than when governmental and oligarchical interference is fostered through regulatory threats and character assassination.
I think it is deliriously hopeful to imagine that the intelligence of consumers increases with the sample size.
If the consuming population were smart, we wouldn’t be so prone to obesity, for example. Cigarette companies would be out of business already.
But even if consumers were always judicious in their choices, there are many factors which dilute the power of purchasing to effect social change.
If the better choice is not available, what power do consumers have? If every fashion industry uses exploited labour, how can consumer choice change this? If every energy provider pollutes the air, how does purchase power get them to clean up their act?
Most people don’t have time or inclination to research suppliers. Removing government regulation leaves the consumer to pour over the fine print for everything. Who is going to do that?
Ethical consumerism disproportionately favours those who can afford to care. If social change is tied to purchase power, the wealthy either have greater influence, or there are two tiers of goods – one ethical tier for the wealthy few, and an unethical tier that is cheaper to make for the less affluent.
That’s not to say that boycotts and enrollments in ethical purchasing won’t make a difference. It has. But it is not enough on its own.
barry says:
”I think it is deliriously hopeful to imagine that the intelligence of consumers increases with the sample size.”
Nobody ever claimed that. Barry so shut down your strawman factory, listen, then reply intelligently.
What we are talking about is consumer choice as opposed to committees made up of special interests. People will not choose the dirtiest option when ”dirtiest” is understood to be dirty.
For one example, MSC certification programs have been among the most successful certification programs for seafood. US led fishery management was a complete failure up until the last couple of decades. Why?
The reason is unilateral management efforts were undermined internationally. Instead of obtaining the ”correct” response, US fishery management efforts only served to shut down US fishermen. They were caught in a government Catch 22 where if they violated the rules they lost their licenses to fish. If they didn’t violate the rules they couldn’t compete with foreign sources of seafood in the market and went out of business that way.
MSC Certification has begun to reverse that. Here is a list of seafood retailers who now feature their products.
Ahold
ALDI
Albertson’s/Safeway
Amazon Fresh
Big Y
Brookshire’s
ButcherBox For Pets
Clover Valley
Costco
CVS pharmacy
Delhaize
Dierbergs Markets Inc.
FishChoice
Food Lion
Full Circle
Giant Food
Good Chop
H.E.B.
Hannaford
Harmons
HelloFresh
HY-VEE
IKEA
Inland Market
Kroger
LIDL
Made in Washington
Market Basket
Meijer
Mudbay
Natural Value
Price Chopper
Raley’s
Sam’s Club
Schnucks
Shoprite
Schwan’s Global Supply Chain
SMART & FINAL
Sprouts
Stew Leonard’s
Stop & Shop
SUPERVALU
Target
The Fresh Market
The Vitamin Shoppe
Thrive Market
Tops Markets
United Natural Foods
Vital Choice
Walgreens
Walmart
Wegmans
Weis
Whole Foods Market
Wild Fork Foods
Check to see if your retailer is on the list. MSC is just one of several successful certification programs that has brought about the improvement of many fish stocks worldwide.
Over the past 2 decades fishermen have been scrambling to get their fisheries certified as it was the only way to develop a significant market for their products. This has led to the reversal of the depletion of the oceans. There are still outlaws, primarily China, in particular, and some others where they can sell their products to their own populations but the progress of managed fisheries worldwide have prospered from certifications from a number of certifying programs like MSC.
Likewise for CO2. Management of CO2 has been a colossal failure for decades. Its just like decades of efforts by the US government to improve fisheries beginning in 1976 under the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act where little was accomplished for 2 decades because the civil service knew all they would accomplish would be the destruction of US fisheries.
Now ignorantly we have leaders like Joe Biden and Gavin Newsome following the same path of failure that we pursued in fisheries for decades.
So if you want to argue this point keep the ignorant strawman arguments out of it and look to actually accomplish something other than the collapse of this nation. The fact is harm from CO2 is far from being established if you want to believe from the scanty evidence that it is harmful thats certainly your choice and you can voluntarily abstain from the use of fossil fuels. But have you?
Strawman?
“Let the free market (including consumer preferences) decide which forms of energy we use.
Absolutely!”
That’s what you said. What strawman?
“People will not choose the dirtiest option when “dirtiest” is understood to be dirty.”
You seemed to miss most of my points.
People frequently choose the dirtiest option of its cheaper or more attractive in some other way. Why is obesity so prevalent if people make wise choices? Why is tobacco still hugely profitable?
If every choice is as dirty as the other, how does purchase power help? If every energy plant pollutes, what choice is there to make?
And thanks for the clue you do get it – if people ‘understand’ what they are paying for – but they don’t always. How do you find out which polluting power plant your energy provider draws from? If indeed there is any choice on that between energy providers, which their usually isn’t.
If you remove government regulation then you remove directives and enforcement for corporate transparency. Now consumers have to spend hours and days researching every product they buy to see if its ethical, when the company is now free to bury that information. And only the wealthy can afford to care. most people don’t have the time to investigate, and will buy the cheapest item regardless of the ethics, which are now murky and not part of the conversation anyway.
Luckily a consumer is a chemist and has a water testing lab at home. They post on facebook that the town’s water supply contains impurities that are dangerous. There is no other water supply. How does purchase power help here?
As I said, boycotts of and enrollments in products can have a good effect, but it is not nearly enough by itself to hold companies accountable.
Complainers benefitting from government regulation take it for granted while they advocate for unshackling companies from governmental accountability.
barry says:
”What strawman?”
Barry you said: ”I think it is deliriously hopeful to imagine that the intelligence of consumers increases with the sample size.”
I said THAT was a strawman! I never said anything like that. So its clearly a strawman.
So what do you do? You try to deflect the fact with a nonsensical spew.
Here we go again!
”People frequently choose the dirtiest option of its cheaper or more attractive in some other way. Why is obesity so prevalent if people make wise choices? Why is tobacco still hugely profitable?”
So now you seem to be saying being fat is dirty and smoking tobacco is dirty. I bet you are one of those secondary smoke snowflakes making up science that they are killing you. Am I right?
No, you are not right, and you are dull. When you can marshall your thoughts on topic and make a cogent point, then we can have a useful conversation. Maybe.
“So now you seem to be saying being fat is dirty and smoking tobacco is dirty.”
It is because you are either incapable of connecting the dots to the point that consumers make bad choices, or that you are simply contrary, that you are dull. I’m not walking you through points that moderately intelligent people can understand, and less ego-bound people can engage with sincerely.
barry says:
March 2, 2025 at 10:14 PM
So now you seem to be saying being fat is dirty and smoking tobacco is dirty.
It is because you are either incapable of connecting the dots to the point that consumers make bad choices, or that you are simply contrary, that you are dull. Im not walking you through points that moderately intelligent people can understand, and less ego-bound people can engage with sincerely.
————————
You are making vacuous points based upon the strawman you have set up in your head.
a) Sure consumers make bad choices but they aren’t bad choices if they can’t afford the better choice. . .it becomes a choice of survival.
b) I did say some actions have to be regulated because it completely clear that its going to harm others. Thats not the case with CO2.
c) I said that voluntary approach is the most effective not the only thing. Most of your objections are juvenile, like saying what if its the only choice and that people don’t have the time to do it right. You are ignoring so much its ridiculous. For instance, Labeling regulations are far less obtrusive to consumer choice. Your what isms aren’t helpful
d) You say: ”Ethical consumerism disproportionately favours those who can afford to care.” Exactly! Your backwards viewpoint doesn’t get that we don’t want to favor anybody if we can manage it Much less the wealthy who can afford a bit more regulation. . .but regulation can’t manage that as regulation applies to everybody in a nation of the rule of law. So in your guilt over this perspective you are a big proponent of welfare which really over the long haul helps nobody.
And worse you don’t even understand that it becomes the suppliers who lead the charge as every supplier wants to be perceived as ecofriendly. Suppliers are better connected to their customers than you are or your favorite band of bureaucrats, leaving you and them with the label of bad guy as regulation should only follow as a last resort. You are just pissed you can’t get your way by force as a free people isn’t going to stand for when your draconian approach effects the majority who simply doesn’t believe your fairy tales. Unfortunately there are special interests, including the bureaucracy that would rather just crush people than lose their opportunities to advance.
e) Your objections fly in the face of success. And thats success from many perspectives.
f)What we are discussing is that place between risk and reward. Its different for every living sentient human being. You chose to crush others unless as you stated above your risk is zero. Thats the ”perfect” definition of evil showing your lack of willingness to consider the effect on others and what their risk hierarchy looks like for themselves and their families.
And before you lash back at me on that, consider the fact that that is what you said. Certainly ”cleaner” choices can be wise for you and devastating for others.
And you will put those others in the welfare concentration camp for their own good. It all fits. Slave holders had the same mentality.
Dr Spencer.
I’m starting to worry for my sanity since, three weeks ago I found myself agreeing with Mike Pence, then last week I agreed with Steve Bannon, and yesterday I agreed with Laura Loomer. Today I’m in agreement with you that the EPA’s Endangerment Finding could stand an update.
As you know, this proposal to overhaul the Finding is likely to be litigated all the way to the supreme court. I look forward to seeing the complete case offered by the denial community which I suspect will rely heavily on economics since the underlying science of global warming and climate change stands on solid ground.
To quote the Governor of Maine: “I’ll see you in court.”
Regards.
The underlying science of global warming and climate change:
1. The greenhouse effect is solid science.
2. Human activities have likely contributed to the greenhouse effect. This is solid science.
3. Will global warming and climate change have catastrophic results? This is mere assertion and the solid science contradicts it. In fact global warming and climate change are measurably good for the planet.
1. True
2. False
3. Irrelevant.
The greenhouse effect is still misunderstood but there is a warming effect provided by radiative gases. Water vapor is by far the most important gas while CO2 has some effect. CO2 had reached it’s maximum warming potential long before humans starting to add more to the atmosphere.
Regardless of the politics, the transition to renewables is already well underway and driven mostly by the market, costs down, tech advances, and the desire of the public for clean and sustainable energy.
To try to impede this trend is comparable to trying to hold on to the horse and buggy in 1910, or the incandescent light bulb in 2015.
Trump has signed an executive order to bring back the incandescent light bulb.
OMG
I never stopped using incandescent bulbs.
Nate,
Tell us about yourself. Do you lead by example? Ride a bicycle everywhere? No natural gas or propane in your home? Or do you live in a hut? You only live where power is provided by Green energy sources? Do you have a solar panel connected to your microwave and oven? Have you completely disconnected from your power company because you lead by example? What about your computer and internet connection, how are they powered?
I used to smoke. Was happy to tell anyone it was bad for the health. Not sure that the fact I smoked had anything to do with the truth of the information.
“Trump has signed an executive order to bring back the incandescent light bulb.”
Which is overall quite a bit more more expensive to use than LEDs, comparing cost per bulb + energy usage per hour + life span.
Are these people on crack? How does a decision get made which only adds to the cost of living?
I guess some incandescent bulb-maker pal gets to benefit?
The irony is that the transition from walking, biking and the horse and buggy has led to a transportation system that pollutes the air and most likely contributed to the obesity problem, at least in the US. Maybe we should have been more thoughtful of the implications instead of gone all in?
That’s genius, Billy Bob. What’s your horse’s name? I haven’t seen any Conestoga wagons on the freeway. Does your family travel at night?
Stephen, Your comment makes zero sense. Can you elaborate?
I diagree with the food analogy, ban all food because some of it kills us, EPA is not trying to ban CO2. The 2009 findings are as follows;
EPA finds that the elevated concentrations of the six greenhouse gases in the atmospherecarbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.
EPA finds that the combined emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas air pollution which endangers both public health and welfare.
I think we all agree there are benefits to regulating food quality without a full ban. I do think many alarmist have pulled from these findings that CO2 specifically is to blame and have overblown the impact of CO2 without good science. With that said, regulating energy to push society to be more efficient and extend energy resources is good, doing to stop climate change is a waste of time.
We can shut down every factory, disable every ICE vehicle and kill every human being and climate will continue to change. We know the following;
1) Earth has had multiple ice ages, thus all previous ice ages have ended resulting in a ice free Earth.
2) The sun has steadily increased output over billions of years and will continue to do so until it burns up the inner planets.
3) The orbit/planet tilt impact direct sunlight on land vs. ocean surface, changing average daily temperaturs.
4) We are in an ice age and will eventually leave it unless we intervene directly. Destroying our existances will do didily.
So yes I agree with you Roy that cost vs. benefit appear to be ignored and the EPA findings need to be refined. Specifically, what are the costs and benefits from a comprehensive list of results (warmer vs. cooler vs. status quo) (method used to get there). And how do these gases endanger the health and welfare (climate change vs. air quality). And what magnitude do each type of greenhouse gas impact that. Is a warmer Earth going to kill us all or will we benefit, and if it will kill us all, should we not intervene directly instead of the lost cause of reducing CO2 emissions. Is it more expensive to have a space based solution to reduce incoming solar radiation, or augment the atmosphere to increase albedo, certainly given what is known above, reducing CO2 is a waste of time.
Animals are adaptable and we live in a variety of climate regimes. We need to find a solution that provides greater benefit than cost.
” 4) We are in an ice age… ”
*
What are you telling us here, BillyBob?
*
” Currently, we are in a warm interglacial that began about 11,000 years ago.
The last period of glaciation, which is often informally called the Ice Age, peaked about 20,000 years ago.
At that time, the world was on average probably about 10F (5C) colder than today, and locally as much as 40F (22C) colder. ”
The origin of this info is not reachable – hopefully not due to Elonald Musrrump’s brainless fight against all sources which don’t match their beliefs.
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This site however is perfectly reachable :–)
https://www.icr.org/article/was-there-really-ice-age/
” Animals are adaptable… ”
Are you speaking about billions of Humans who actually are so poor that they lack any economical, societal and often enough even political possibility to adapt?
From Wikipedia for Bindidon
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth’s surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth’s climate alternates between ice ages, and greenhouse periods during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the ice age called Quaternary glaciation. Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed glacial periods (glacials, glaciations, glacial stages, stadials, stades, or colloquially, ice ages), and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called interglacials or interstadials.
In glaciology, the term ice age is defined by the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, the current Holocene period is an interglacial period of an ice age. The accumulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is projected to delay the next glacial period.
So to clarify, I am refering to ice age not interglacial period of an ice age. Also known as icehouse earth.
As for animals, yes humans would fall under that category. Here is a wikipedia reference. Hope this helps.
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. Animal body lengths range from 8.5 μm (0.00033 in) to 33.6 m (110 ft). They have complex ecologies and interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known as zoology, and the study of animal behaviour is known as ethology.
Let me know if you have additional questions, always a pleasure.
Now we get mass firings by DOGE of NOAA personnel.
Never mind the illegallity of non-senate approved advisor actually directing policy and personnel management, it makes so little sense for an outsider with little expertise or accountability to be make these choices which could have negative impacts on the public.
It makes much more sense for the head of the agencies, who are actually accountable to Congress if things go wrong to make these management choices.
The buck stops with them, not Elon.
In case beginning to see some of the braver senate ‘approved’ cabinet appointments taking back their authority.
This is a big mistake, the drop in observations will not serve to prevent the effects of hurricanes, to which the US is always at risk. It will turn against the safety of Americans.
Exceptionally, we agree at least 100%.
Good move, DOGE.
We don’t need NOAA hurricane forecasts since we got Ireneusz.
Makes you wonder how X has maintained operations since Musk fired 3/4 of his workforce. I’m positive the NOAA needs all 4900 employees. There are expanding weather needs. The weather is expanding.
X is not the go-to you should be using to justify staff cuts. Fewer people use it (15-20% drop in activity), it was janky after the firings and still is, with bannings that were given no justification, outages, and malfunctions in its components like displaying ads. It has lost 50% of its ad revenue. It’s been struggling to pay off the $13 billion loan, and Musk has several times announced it’s close to bankruptcy. Meanwhile, other platforms have seen a significant increase in membership as people migrated away from the cesspool of hate speech that is now X.
No doubt Musk will try to gut the government departments whose scrutiny X has attracted from all the vilification and threats of physical harm.
I can’t wait for DOGE to get to NASA.
Can a bureaucracy be gutted more than 100%?
NASA needs to be closed.
“NASA needs to be closed”
Sure, let China take over space exploration.
The US has been the superpower long enough. Time to hang it up and let someone else be dominant. America First isn’t about being first internationally, after all.
The rest of the world can handle international peace and stuff, with China and maybe Russia leading the way. They’ll do a great job.
I have never seen such cowardice as today in the Oval Room.
Shame on the Putin sycophant and his laughable altar boy.
*
I predict that the pathetic Putin sycophant will face another impeachment process within a year at the latest this time, however, not at the initiative of the Democrats, but … by Congress.
Yep indeed. Some great peacemaker.
Calm down.
People dont just suddenly choose to support Putin – their beliefs are shaped by their upbringing, environment, etc. Instead of reacting with division, try to understand why they think the way they do. Posts like this wont bring you closer to that understanding.
Trump is exceeding Putin’s wildest dreams.
” People dont just suddenly choose to support Putin their beliefs are shaped by their upbringing, environment, etc. ”
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Indeed, krokodillo.
Feel free to discover how right you are
https://www.marianne.net/agora/entretiens-et-debats/regis-gente-donald-trump-a-ete-cultive-par-les-services-sovietiques-puis-russes
, with a little help from our friend
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&op=translate
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You don’t have a bit of an idea of who is the Trumping boy.
Zelensky made a monumental and historic blunder to insult the President in the Oval Office in front of live cameras. The other possibility is a master stroke of genius to draw Europe into the war in his defense. The US gravy train is over. That was made clear.
Who would have imagined that Trump would be the adult in the room. He said in so many words that he cannot insult Putin and then get on the phone to negotiate a deal. He does understand that no deal has any substance or chance of succeeding unless both parties get something they want. Does Zelensky actually want peace?
Here is my scorecard:
Russia – loser
Putin – loser
Ukraine – loser
Zelensky – to be determined
EU – winners so far
Trump – no lose situation
US taxpayer – minimal damage
EU taxpayers – less damaage
The only clear winner is Europe. Putin is being disgraced and Russia is being severely degraded in every way — economically and militarily. Ukraine is being destroyed, but the cost for the rest of Europe is rather small. Even if Putin signs a deal and rebuilds his military, it will be a long time before he is able to threaten anyone else.
The EU does not want Ukraine to be completely taken over by Russia. They certainly do not want to get directly involved, but they seem to be content watching young men die in trench warfare with a near stalemate. Some reports say Russia is making very small gains.
Russia is never going to be completely expelled from Ukraine. How does that happen? What is the result of continued fighting?
BREAKING NEWS
Another prediction of mine comes true. This story is 15 minutes old. In an interview on CNN with Kaitlan Collins, Marco Rubio quoted an unnamed European Foreign Minister. In so many words, the European strategy is for the war to go one more year. At that point, Russia will be so weak that Putin will be begging for a peace deal. My take on that is that prolonged death is good for Europe.
Zelensky is a passionate leader, no doubt about that. But sometimes passion clouds judgement. I just hope he doesn’t let his emotions get the best of when Ukraine needs level-headed decisions.
Trump can publicly call Zelensky a dictator and blame him for the war, and then gets to be miffed when Zelensky calls Putin a dictator and calmly contradicts Trump in public instead of kissing his ring?
Trump and his team chose to have a long press gaggle, and Trump said he was fine with everyone watching an open discussion on live TV. He just couldn’t take it when Zelensky didn’t kowtow to his BS. Incorrectly correcting the president of Ukraine on what year Crimea was invaded. Lying about how much the US has given, lying that Europe has given less, preening when a reported asked him a flattering question, complaining over and over about Biden and reminding everyone how yuge his election win was, trotting out his hits from last year’s campaign. Then Vance chiding Zelensky for not tugging the forelock hard enough. Did he say thank you? That was the first thing he said in that room, lapdog. But Vance knew that. This was a show.
An absolutely embarrassing moment in US history. The president of the United States tacitly aligning with the aggressor, Russia, in the most dangerous war in Europe since WWII. And what a slovenly, craven way to do it, mouthing Putin’s talking points in the oval office to his victim.
The loyalists have their own fantasy of a strong Trump and an ungrateful Zelensky blowing it for Ukraine, just as their mouthpieces tell them. But the rest of the world is not so entranced and knows exactly what a monumental disaster this represents.
As predicted. Trump has fully capitulated to Russia, and this performance is his ticket out of having to stand up to Putin, who he clearly admires. Nice job setting that up, JD.
“The US gravy train is over.”
What are you on? Gravy train is easy money with little effort.
That’s how badly you’ve been sucked in. You use transactional language like this forgetting that it’s a war, not a bludge. Holding up a scorecard instead of considering the principle of the international order for peace, of which until now the US has been among the the most ardent supporters, and only seeing the immediate gain with no thought for the long term, in which the US invested wisely for years.
Now the US is a rogue nation, breaking old alliances and cosying up to dictators. Running foreign policy like a business. This is nothing to be proud about.
“In so many words, the European strategy is for the war to go one more year.”
It’s not a strategy it is a well-known estimate of Russia’s financial capacity to continue. Europe did not consider capitulating to Russia. That’s Trump’s brilliant plan.
“Marco Rubio”
said the quiet part out loud. He that all Zelensky is here to do is sign an economic agreement. He basically confirmed in that interview that there were no US guarantees for security. Why on Earth would Zelensky sign over his country’s assets if the US isn’t going to commit to Ukraine’s security, and Trump has said Europe should do that anyway?
Trump et al will deflect blame for their one-sided deal, but it was a squeeze and nothing else.
Unprincipled gangsters are running ‘negotiations’ for the US.
Trump was messy in this exchange, but at the end of the day, Ukraine desperately needs U.S. support. The reality is, the U.S. has already given billions, and yet Ukraine’s situation hasn’t really improved. Many are starting to ask if this is just an endless cycle with no real plan for victory. It’s not about who’s right or wrong – it’s about keeping allies. If Zelensky keeps mismanaging relationships and pushing away the country funding his war effort, is that really a smart move? Ukraine can’t afford to alienate the people paying the bills.
My good friend barry (sarcasm?) demonstrates once again why he is irrelevant to me and the current conversation in general. I will admit to only briefly scanning his current rantings. Political talking points, emotion, and misinformation do not substitute for thoughtful comments. I have suggested that he calm down and think before he touches his keyboard, but he resists that advice.
For the record, President Macron revealed that France and other countries do have agreements for some repayment, but not complete repayment. People who are interested can research the details.
Nobody knows what Trump says to Putin in private. It was Zelensky himself who said Putin fears Trump. Powerful men who act crazy scare people, and they both understand that.
The official position of the Trump administration seems to be that throwing large amounts of money and material support, without compensation, into a stalemate war, will only result in more death and not much else. Russia is getting weaker and also slowing gaining ground according to some reports. The only thing that is certain one year from now is that more people on both sides will be dead.
“If Zelensky keeps mismanaging relationships”
Has he had trouble with any other country?
Nope, the rest of the allied international community staunchly supports Zelensky and is very clear on who screwed up that meeting.
Other European leaders met with Trump and corrected him. Macron sitting in the very same chair as Zelensky insisted as Trump objected that Europe had provided more support to Ukraine than the US. But Macron is not at war and not asking for help, so Trump had nothing to bully him with.
The message to Zelensky is take the deal and be grateful. It is a bad deal, and he insisted on security guarantees and explained why in public. He remained dignified. He didn’t call the press conference, which Trump could have shut down at any moment. Trump and Vance own this.
“The official position of the Trump administration seems to be that throwing large amounts of money and material support, without compensation, into a stalemate war, will only result in more death and not much else.”
That’s right, they have zero interest in the consequences if Russia succeeds in gaining territory, or about the NATO alliance, except to appease Russia by taking it off the table. They do not have a geopolitical idea in their heads, or what the ramifications are for European stability with any peace plan they have come up with.
You’ve articulated it well. To them the war is a ledger, with dollars on one side and death on the other.
It’s patently obvious what the ‘deal’ is with Russia. Russia will definitely keep Crimea and parts of the Donbas, and the US will withhold approval for Ukraine to join NATO. The US will get access to Ukraine’s resources for the deal, which Russia should take as a signal to encroach no further, but the US will not put a base or station troops in the region, trusting that Russia will keep its word, or fear American reprisal. Russia will also not have to pay reparations. they may be asked to promise to rebuild the Donbas into a shiny resort, but there will be no way to police that.
And if Putin truly fears Donald Trump he will hold off taking more of Ukraine, now that he his front line has advanced, until the next president comes to power. But not even Trump would go to war in Ukraine. He would just blame them again.
Ukraine has fought not only for its own sovereignty, but also for everyone else, to prevent future Russian incursion. It is critical that this succeeds. The Trumpists seem to be blissfully ignorant of the threat. Uncritical loyalty does that.
This isn’t about emotions or morality – it’s about smart leadership. Ukraine is in a fragile position, completely reliant on U.S. aid, and yet Zelensky risks alienating the very people funding his war effort. Whatever you think of Trump, diplomacy is about working with difficult partners, not provoking them. Putin knows how to keep allies closely – Ukraine doesn’t have that luxury. It can’t afford to make powerful enemies.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a critical threat to European and world security.
This fact is being lost – or deliberately obscured? – in the posturing about bad behaviour.
Zelensky’s position and views have not wavered, and they must have known he would be resolute on camera. What else did they expect? Did they imagine that he would play along with their appeasement of Russia? If so, they are cretinous. Did they coach him? Obviously not.
Zelensky was measured and consistent. He looked most calm, the most frustrated was when the rude, asinine reporter enquired about his clothes.
Vance kicked off the histrionics.
Either this was all improvised, in which case the presidential team are incredibly incompetent to have allowed their differences to be aired, and to risk their appeasement strategy in public next to Zelensky. A very bad call.
Or, it was staged to bait Zelensky and have Vance make that incredibly condescending and unnecessary announcement to justify Trump walking away from a deal Zelensky was not prepared to sign, and then to blame Zelesky for it. This also has played extremely with with Trump’s base. Trump, the most powerful person in the world, as he says, holds all the cards, somehow managed to be the aggrieved party.
At any moment Trump could have called it off. But he wanted it to go on, so everyone could see why he is “justified” abandoning Ukraine.
Somehow Trump, the most powerful person in the world, who as he says hold all the cards, has managed to make his followers believe he is the aggrieved party in this (and by extension the United States). All because Zelensky wouldn’t play ball, sign an unfair deal and fail to give a public thumbs up to it while his enemy was being appeased right before his eyes.
“Zelensky made a monumental and historic blunder to insult the President in the Oval Office in front of live cameras.”
What insult? Failing to be grateful enough?
Please explain.
Dr. Spencer, Dr. Soon created a great new video demonstrating how archeological evidence debunks CO2 driven warming.
You should do a post on this evidence, documenting all the ancient sites worldwide that are far inland now.
https://youtu.be/rP_sfbslAh0
Yes, I made a comment a couple of years ago about Ur site being inland now and it used to be on the coast. Haven’t heard a good explanation for a city over 5000 years old not being under water.
Continental uplift following deglaciation on higher latitude coastlines and sedimentary from rivers and sea, among other things, can cause local topography to rise in height. I didn’t get onto Ur, but then I lost interest after the bells and whistles in the video got to Thermopylae.
“The accretion of legend in the narratives is matched by physical change in the landscape. Thermopylae, literally ‘Hot Gates’, was named for the hot springs which still gush from the hillside. These springs, and seismic action and silt from the nearby River Spercheios, have added 20 metres of soil, so that where once a steep mountainside fell sharply to the sea there is a flat plain, and the tall hill of the last stand has become a low knoll. Only a Herculean effort of imagination or digital imaging can picture the pass as it was when the Greeks stopped the Persians in their tracks.”
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/puzzles-thermopylae
“The geomorphology of the battle terrain has changed significantly since ancient times due to the Sperchios River delta progradation. In this work an attempt is being made to undertake a palaeogeographical reconstruction of the pass and the battle terrain in Ancient Thermopylae in order to set out new information based on new geoarchaeological data. Geomorphological data in combination with geological, stratigraphical, paleontological data of an extensive drilling project supported by electrical resistivity tomography led to the determination of the palaeoenvironmental changes in the area of the Thermopylae Pass ”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3166/ga.23.241-253
“Conflicts among historians over the battle at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. tend to center around supposed inconsistencies between ancient sources, particularly Herodotus, and the modern topography of the region. The area, however, is one of extensive tectonic activity, fluctuations in sea level, and sediment deposition. Any attempt to reconstruct ancient events on the basis of modern topography alone is therefore bound to be misleading. Precise paleogeographic reconstruction would require a large-scale drilling program. This study involved the drilling and analysis of seven core holes in sediments infilling the Gulf of Malia. Results clearly demonstrate a Holocene epoch marine incursion to the far west of the Malian embayment and subsequent considerable variation over time in the physiography at Thermopylae.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/009346987792208448
How hard did you try to find studies on the topography of Ur and the surrounding area?
Hogwash.
You tried very hogwash to find studies, did you?
I didn’t make this stuff up. That’s why I shared some research with you, so you could see I’m not imagining it.
Willie Soon appears to be unfamiliar with isostatic rebound and sediment build up, and with the notion that topography can change over time. But that video wasn’t terribly serious, so who knows?
Yes, it’s hogwash. These are the same people who construct the Tree of Life. Hogwash. It ain’t science.
Eustatic sea level is the global change in sea level caused by changes in the amount of water in the world’s oceans. It can also be caused by changes in the shape of the ocean basins.
Sea levels were higher at the battle of Thermopylae. There is more water in the ocean now but the ocean basin has expanded … causing sea level to drop. Thermopylae is a prime example.
What are you talking about, stephen, these are peer reviewed articles by different groups who report on new geoarcheological information from (then) recent drilling for that purpose in the area. The Journal of Field Archaeology is not a cult, or whatever it is you are referring to.
Isostatic rebound and elevation changes due to sedimentation is not some hocus pocus stuff, it’s well documented geological activity.
But by all means, rely on Willie Soon and his technicolour you tube video, if that’s what it takes to hold on to your ignorance.
Blinny,
Isn’t Germany supporting Putin?
Absolutely not. Are you severely misinformed or just strolling?
You dingleberry. Have you heard of Nord Stream?
Ok, so just severely misinformed. Germany has provided 30 billion Euro in military assistance to Ukraine, and 50+ billion in aid, as well as emphatically and consistently denouncing Putin and the invasion.
Germany cut its gas supply from Russia by 2023, and cancelled Nord Stream 2 immediately after the invasion in 2022.
I’d be curious to know where you got this upside-down-land talking point from. There are entire communities who have a grip on a very alternative reality, and it seems to be a feature that has intensified, particularly in the US, due to the siloing of views on the internet.
You dingleberry, they buy it from their neighbors who buy it from Russia.
barry
As always, the 6.9L pickup driver Anderson excels more in polemics and insults than in valuable information.
No wonder that he insults me as ‘Nazi’ and is a fan of the Trumping boy, who himself excels in polemics, insults and lies (see his ‘dictator’ insult against Zelenski – which he cowardly retracted later on with a ‘Did I say that?’ – and his lie about ‘They should never have started the war’, by the way 100% butt-kissing Putin, who was evidently glad to hear that lie from the US).
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Former chancelors Schröder and Merkel, as well as the German gas energy based industry never had any problem with Putin and Russia.
Even today, Merkel refuses any criticism against her decision not to help Ukraine as Russia annected Ukraine’s Crim.
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Due to the Russian invasion on Ukraine, Germany stopped gas imports from Russia by September 2022 (42% if the gas import came from there before).
Since then, due to the quick building of LNG terminals, Germany imports gas from (1) Norway (2) Denmark (3) Netherlands (4) Belgium (5) US (6) Algeria via France.
None of these countries import gas from Russia.
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Europe has no chance to stop gas import from Russia, especially countries like Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary.
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Hungary’s Orban is by the way a fan of both Putin and … the Trumping boy, like all of Europe’s far-right politicians and their voters, starting with the German AfD, an ultra right wing party that – 100% contrary to its political convictions – is led by a lesbian woman who lives in Switzerland (!!!) with a foreigner woman from Sri Lanka (what is of course the only reason for me to respect her).
They all love Putin’s Russia and the US Trumping boy together with his obsequious subordinate Vance.
I can only imagine stephen gets his ‘news’ and views from One America News Network, facebook, you tube or some other hopelessly biased source.
Which, last I heard, was not pumping any gas.
If you look at the numbers, Europe is consuming Russian natural gas. They have to be, and oil. Also, the US is the only one who has substantially materially supported Ukraine. Zelensky is a rockstar with the left. He is not a rockstar with Trump or the MAGA people. We don’t want War. We don’t want our soldiers dying over there and we don’t want to be spending tax dollars on Zelensky. Trump is close to peace. Russia will substantially withdraw close but not all the way to the embarkation line and Zelensky will get most of his minerals back if Zelensky would just shut his mouth and listen to Trump and Vance.
“the US is the only one who has substantially materially supported Ukraine”
That’s another Trumpian lie. The US has provided more weaponry, but the EU and the UK have provided more than half of what the US has provided. In terms of total spending on Ukraine, including aid and other financial support for the war effort, Europe has provided more to Ukraine than the US. Stop believing what these liars say.
US total commitment = $174 billion
EU total commitment = $198 billion
UK total commitment = $17 billion
in equivalent USD.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12305
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/united-states-america/eu-assistance-ukraine-us-dollars_en
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-support-to-ukraine-factsheet/uk-support-to-ukraine-factsheet
Never mind the falsehoods, this economic chest-thumping is not diplomacy. It’s amateur hour with narcissistic adolescents.
The US also has ongoing business interests in Russia. This point of yours, whatever it is, is completely incidental to the serious concerns around this war.
But if you think this is salient:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/russia
What do you think Trump should do? Ban Russian imports? Order businesses to stop trading with Russia? How about those canny tariffs of his?
EU gas import 2024
Norway 31 (%)
Russia 16
USA 11
Algeria 10
Tunesia 7
Qatar 4
UK 4
Other 17
Isn’t UK part of Europe?
Geographically yes; economically, not any more.
The MAGAmaniac 6.9L pickup driver actually has not yet understood that the European Union and Europe are two geographically, politically and economically distinct entities.
What’s the sense of arguing with people who not only are so 100% fixated on the US that they ignore everything outside their country, and above all insult others as Nazi and think bloodthirsty dictators would be ‘Leftists’ ?
Is driving away your allies a good idea?
The analysts reckon that China will be ready to fight a war with the US in 2027. There is an increasing probability that Trump and the US will be fighting that war alone.
China will go for easier targets.
Taiwan is an easier target.
Indeed.
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan.
Any of the countries facing into the South China Sea are at risk.
The US is already committed to help defend Japan and South Korea and would find themselves fighting a superior enemy. Unless Trump goes isolationist and lets China build an empire in AS Asia and the Pacific.
China is at substantial risk for getting its butt kicked if it attacks Taiwan.
I would not assume China will achieve its goals.
The threat of US intervention is the primary shackle on China.
Does America First mean withdrawing from commitments to global security?
No, we have commitments to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea that we should maintain. They appreciate us and pay their fair share. I would say our best allies are those three plus UK, Australia, and Israel. Everyone else? No desire to support any others.
“They appreciate us and pay their fair share”
Mob boss mentality. They pay us, we protect them, everybody wins.
The rule of law and keeping a lid on crime isn’t a consideration. In this case it’s only international peace we’re talking about.
ent…China has never gone outside it borders to attack anyone. Why would they start now?
I think Trump is in for a rude awakening and that won’t play well with him. His popularity is already under 50% and it will drop as he bullies US citizens and US allies.
You are wrong … again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
“China has never gone outside it borders to attack anyone. Why would they start now?”
China has attacked outside its borders a few times since the 1950s. Korea, for one.
It is a lose/lose situation for China. They can’t even build the islands in the China Sea correctly.
Michael van der Riet…
“The underlying science of global warming and climate change:
1. The greenhouse effect is solid science.
2. Human activities have likely contributed to the greenhouse effect. This is solid science”.
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Sorry, neither point is solid science, neither has been proved, only alleged based on consensus, itself based on a misunderstanding of the nature of heat dating back to 1850. It has never been proved since 1850 that human emissions are warming the atmosphere and the current theory is based purely on speculation and model-based consensus.
I have argued here that the term ‘greenhouse effect’ is a misnomer that cannot possibly describe the effect ascribed to it. The inference is that the same mechanism that warms a greenhouse also warms gases in the atmosphere. That is not possible.
The common factor between the two situations is infrared energy. It is claimed that a greenhouse warms because infrared energy produced from the absorp.tions of SW solar energy, is trapped by glass in the greenhouse and that CO2 acts like the glass, producing warming of the atmosphere.
A real greenhouse actually warms because ALL gas molecules, which are 99% nitrogen and oxygen, scavenge heat directly from heated surfaces in the greenhouse and rise. They cannot rise beyond the glass and get trapped at the roof level where the heat accumulates, making the greenhouse interior hotter than the surrounding air. That process cannot possibly work in the atmosphere itself since there is nothing to block the convection.
The comparison is based on an anachronism dating back to the 19th century when it was believed that IR and heat were the same thing. It was believed that heat moved through gases like the atmosphere via ‘heat rays’, and those mythical heat rays are the same as IR, which is incorrect.
When that theory was formulated, no scientist had any idea of atomic structure. Electrons were not discovered till 1898 and it took another 15 years before Bohr related electron transitions in atoms to electromagnetic energy emissions, of which IR is a part.
According to Bohr’s theory, in order for EM/IR to be emitted from a surface, the mass must give up kinetic energy, which is heat.
That thermal energy loss is in direct proportion to the EM created and emitted. That is, if a mass emits a certain amount of EM it must lose an equivalent amount of heat.
Therefore, by the time IR is emitted from the Earth’s surface, the related heat is lost. That means heat cannot be transferred as heat (thermal energy) from the surface and subsequently trapped by so-called greenhouse gases.
IR from the surface can be absorbed by GHGs and converted back to NEW heat but that heat has no relation to the original heat on the surface. It is new and cannot be trapped.
The Ideal Gas Law and the heat diffusion equation make it clear that the amount of heat produced cannot exceed the mass percent of the GHG in question. That means CO2 with a mass percent around 0.06% cannot produce more heat in the atmosphere than 0.06C for every 1C rise in temperature of the atmosphere.
You can’t prove a theory but you can show evidence. Scientific method: evidence or observation, speculation or hypothesis, theory, and then LOL, Law. The fact that CO2 has risen and that temperature has also risen recently does not support a theory, or, a Law, or even a hypothesis for that matter. Let’s continue observing and looking for evidence. There is no problem with trying to cut air pollution, but not sure if reducing carbon is a good thing. Labeling CO2 as a pollutant is hogwash.
The problem with Green House Theory is Berry has falsified it with his conservation of mass (which is a Law) model.
Winter
https://i.ibb.co/qFF609FG/ventusky-temperature-2m-20250302t1100-40n87w.jpg
The western circulation is braking hard in the stratosphere over North America, which will prolong winter in the US.
https://i.ibb.co/60VFkrGv/gfs-toz-nh-f00.png
Anyone who claims that Zelensky insulted the Trump boy and Vance during their confrontation in the White House (carefully staged to Zelensky’s detriment) is a liar.
Here is the full transcript by Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/02/28/trump-zelenskyy-vance-face-off-in-oval-office-shouting-match-heres-everything-they-said/
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Apart from the x million US MAGA groupies, everyone understood that the Trumping boy’s and his cabinet’s only interest was to humiliate Zelensky in the most brutal way possible – regardless whether or not for the final benefit of Putin.
The Trumping boy is visibly not interested in peace, but in his megalomaniac urge to act as a global ruler.
The only consequence will of course be that Putin’s Russia will intensify its destructive war actions in Ukraine, which are directed exclusively against the civilian population.
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By the way, for the dumbies who obsequiously, credulously believe their Trumping idol when he lies about Uraine having started the war and Russia having only been busy with saving pro-Russia people in Ukraine’s eastern districts: here is a link to an article (published by the French newspaper Le Monde, last updated on 2022, May 9) with therein a graphic showing how the Russian invasion against Ukraine:
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2022/03/02/guerre-en-ukraine-suivez-en-carte-l-evolution-de-l-invasion-russe-au-jour-le-jour_6115863_4355770.html
Anyone can see that the very first goal of the bloodthirsty Russians around Putin was not the defense of Donbass, but in reality to take Kiev and bring down Ukraine as a whole (in their insane overestimation they thought they would only need three days to do this).
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The Russian war madness has cost over 10,000 civilians and 50,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian side, as well as over 100,000 soldiers on the Russian side.
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The Trumping boy never gave any assurance that Putin and his henchmen would end the war if an agreement was reached between the US and Russia.
This can only feed the idea that the White House was actually only concerned with rare earths in Ukraine that were destined for the US.
Russia has already stepped up missile attacks on civilian facilities in Ukraine.
Zelensky and Trump are both very talented, savvy leaders. I don’t know what exactly is going on behind closed doors, but we can expect a ceasefire very shortly. The “rare earths” idea was brilliant.
It is amazing that you post comedy satire like this, and then want to be taken seriously with the other content you post.
As Ike said;
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Dwight Eisenhower
For people who don’t suffer from MAGAmania
Ukraine and Europe alone against Russia (translation’s excerpt)
Editorial
Le Monde, French Newspaper
01.03.2025
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q5E4su0MxOEMd4DMfcq0YVG_8WfL40H8/view
***
Yes, Europe is compared to the USA a small, irrelevant part of the World.
But Kiev is for example only 1,200 kilometers from Berlin and we Europeans must now quickly free ourselves from our dependence on the richest and the militarily by far most powerful country, as it is now led by a completely unpredictable megalomaniac.
That’s reality we can’t escape anymore.
Look at the bright side Bindi — you still get to be an arrogant phony linguist.
Ukraine has the strongest army in Europe.
It certainly has the most battle-hardened army, and Ukraine was already known for having fierce fighters. At some points in this war you could argue it was the “strongest”, but the UK, France and Russia have had greater stores of superior material at their disposal, while Ukraine has never had the same extensive capability of these nations. Russia’s military is now of course depleted, as is Ukraine’s fighting forces.
Their resistance to Russia has been nothing short of heroic.
It has been the threat of Putin deploying nukes that has kept other countries from sending forces to Ukraine, so Ukraine is providing a defense that the world needs to see succeed. Russia cannot be allowed to advance into Europe. Ukraine’s sovereign integrity is the bulwark, and Ukrainians have stayed committed to do what we cannot. Of course the rest of the world has to support them.
The US appeasement of and capitulation to Russia is not just a disgrace, it is an unconscionable strategic error.
I wasn’t including Russia in that but probably a better army man for man than Russia too.
By violently confronting Volodymyr Zelensky and taking on Russian positions on Ukraine, Donald Trump is giving the Kremlins master an unexpected new asset.
The Kremlin welcomed the 180-degree turn in American diplomacy on Ukraine on Sunday. This radical change largely coincides with our vision, said Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian presidency, in a comment dated Wednesday, before Volodymyr Zelenskys visit to Washington, but made public on Sunday. This discrepancy only underlines the obvious: Vladimir Putin applauded with both hands the attitude of Donald Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, towards the Ukrainian head of state last Friday, in the Oval Office of the White House.
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From the French right wing newspaper ‘Le Figaro’
We believe in America First and not Europe or Ukraine first. We are members of NATO but it is a joke because Europe doesn’t believe in NATO so why should we? Has Germany every paid its proper share of NATO?
barry
Thank you so far from near Berlin for your excellent assessment of the situation we are currently facing (I assume Ireneusz Palmowski would agree, since he lives in Poland and thus even closer to the area of Russian aggression).
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Geographically, you may live further from here than some MAGAmaniac posters from the US; but you actually behave way closer to us.
I have felt close to Europe ever since I learned about WWII, the signal event of the last century that fundamentally changed the Western world, committing it to peace and global security, to individual freedom and democracy. A set of values we all share, forged from the fire of the worst conflict in human history.
To see the US desecrate the covenant it had such a large part in making is awful. I haven’t advocated for much since the early 2000s, when the US and allies, including my own country, invaded Iraq on trumped up ‘intelligence’. The fallout from that benighted violation of the UN Charter was mainly felt by Iraqis. Now the US is going rogue on a different front, and this may be far more consequential for the Western hemisphere.
I forgot that ren is Polish. He will have no illusions about Putin. Poland well knows the threat of Russia.
The problem isn’t Russia.
You should be a lot more concerned about Islam.
https://www.rebelnews.com/former_mayor_blasts_failed_multiculturalism_after_jihadi_school_erupts?utm_campaign=ay_diversityfail_022925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=therebel
“The problem isnt Russia.”
Thank you for spreading this message, comrade. Russia is the victim of bad press.
The only ones who have desecrated it are the Europeans. Have they ever paid their fair share? We need to close the US bases in Europe and bring the troops home. Maybe keep the sub bases in UK and Spain but that’s about it.
If the USA pulls out, then goodbye to them and hurrah. From the UK too.
That’d be fine. We don’t need either.
stephen…I have no interest in alienating you, I enjoy your posts in general. However, there comes a time when a spade needs to be called a spade.
It’s not smart for the US to turn its back on allies who bailed them out. Had Britain fallen in early WWII, the Germans would have inherited the largest navy in the world. With them attacking the US east coast and Japan attacking the West coast, the US could not have survived for the simple reason they were not prepared.
What Trump is doing now flies in the face of the bravery of US troops in WW II who fought side by side with the UK and Commonwealth forces. Anyone who alienates friends and allies over money is a friggin ijit.
Sure, the US contributed financially, in a major way, to the Allied cause in early WW II, albeit unknowingly for most, but let’s not forget that the UK, the British Commonwealth countries, and Russia did the early fighting. Even when the US finally entered the war in North Africa, in June 1942, after the Brits had held off Rommel, they were hopeless till they gained experience.
The North African campaign began in June 1940, so it was 2 years before the US sent any troops to help. At least, with leaders like Dwight Eisenhower, and FDR, the US was willing to listen to reason. Many US generals wanted to attack Europe directly in 1942 but were convinced it could have been disastrous.
Even on D-Day, neither US forces or other forces could advance till the Canadians did the dirty work, for a month, of distracting the German defenders so the US could eventually do an end run. It was the Canadian armies (thanks to the ijit Montgomery) who bore the brunt of the post D-Day invasion, in a valiant effort to counter whatever Panzer divisions the Germans could throw at them in an effort to drive them back into the sea.
However, the US made a major error by failing to involve themselves in filling the Falaise gap, which could have trapped almost the entire German army. Due to that goof by Bradley, who did not want to distract Patton from his end run, much of the German forces escaped to fight another day.
The US did not begin to arm till after Pearl Harbour and for the first while they were paranoid about a Japanese invasion. They knew they were not ready. Otherwise, why would they be concerned about a small nation like Japan?
You can thank FDR for understanding the implications of the US failing to help out in Europe. He secretly, and at his own political peril, orchestrated a secret system of aid to the UK ***and Russia*** to enable them to keep up the fight against the Nazis.
Isolationism helps no one and is a Neanderthal policy in this day and age.
I’ll back the US any day of the week but I will also be its worst critic when it is being stoopid.
Isolationsim is dumb. It benefits only the wealthy and does nothing for the average US citizen.
Water vapor feedback appears to be negative since the radiosonde and satellite data show decreasing upper tropospheric humidity.
Bates and Paltridge
That didn’t stop the alarmist like Brian Soden who used microwave radiance emissions from oxygen to determine a radiative signature of upper-tropospheric humidity and just like that, they made it go up.
sam…WV feedback can only be negative. A feedback that aids amplification can only do so if there is an amplifier involved.
Here’s the equation used in engineering for an amplifying feedback system…
G = A/(1 + BA)
where…
G = overall feedback
A = amplifier gain
B = feedback component
There is no positive feedback theory for the atmosphere that recognizes that equation. The theory is based on conjecture and consensus only.
The irony, is that Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS, a mathematician who programs climate models for GISS, and who now leads GISS, could not provide an equation that explained his claim of positive feedback.
sorry…suffering brain damage tonight.
G = overall gain, or amplification, not overall feedback.
Gavin Schmidt blocked me on X. Also blocked by Zeek, Andrew Dessler and Michael Mann. Not sure why. I’m familiar with the Feedback equation they use. I own a climate science textbook written by Dessler. In order for CO2 warming to be amplified by water vapor, the amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere must increase in response to CO2 induced warming and it has not. The radiosonde data from balloons and the 6.7 um emissions from water vapor at that altitude show it to be decreasing overall between the 60-degree latitudes. There is no evidence that it is increasing in response to warming of the upper troposphere which has warmed. This should put a nail in the coffin of climate alarmism since water vapor feedback is the entire basis for this alarmism. There was never an issue with CO2 induced warming.
binny…”Ukraine and Europe alone against Russia…”
***
You mean EU and Ukrainian propaganda vs. Russia. THE EU were involved, along with US reps, in the removal of a democratically-elected Ukrainian president in 2014. The US, through the CIA, have a lengthy history of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries but never a country like the Ukraine, who claimed to be a democracy in Europe.
US representative Victoria Nuland is on record as having argued with the EU over the replacement for the deposed Ukrainian leader ***BEFORE*** he was run off by right-wing extremists. The fact that the army and police stood by while a democratically-elected president was deposed, is evidence of internal corruption backed by the West.
Whatever a person believes about the situation in the Ukraine, the country is an abject mess of corruption. In fact, a group that monitors corruption world-wide has listed the Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe.
I am not asking anyone to believe the following but it does lay out an alternate POV that must be taken seriously by an objective mind.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-really-happened-in-ukraine-in-2014-and-since-then
Hi, maybe this has been addressed before, but I don’t read all the comments or posts on this site. I am wondering…
If CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, why is Mars cold? It has about 95% CO2 in its atmosphere. I thought about why it would be cold, like the fact that it’s further from the Sun than Earth, but the counter-argument to that is there are virtually no clouds on Mars so it is receiving almost 100% sunlight to the lower atmosphere/surface, so it should be warmer. And the CO2-warming effect should have (in theory) more than made up for the further distance from the Sun.
thanks.
joe…in real science, CO2 is neither a potent warming agent, nor does the so-called greenhouse theory hold water.
The Ideal Gas Law and the heat diffusion equation, long established in science reveal that CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere can heat the rest of the atmosphere no more than its mass percent of 0.06%. That means for each 1C warming, CO2 can provide no more than 0.06C warming in our atmosphere.
Part of the reason is this. In Earth, CO2 can capture no more than 10% of surface radiation at most. The rest escapes directly to space. On Mars, with an atmospheric density about 2% of Earth’s atmospheric density, there is simply not enough CO2 to capture a significant amount of surface radiation.
Remember, surface radiation is NOT HEAT. As any surface radiates energy, the related heat is lost during radiation. Since the surface on Mars is at a lower temperature, the frequency of radiation it emits is likely not in the IR spectrum required by CO2.
Good question! There are multiple, interconnected reasons why CO2 isn’t an effective GHG on Mars.
Firstly, nearly any gas could be a ‘greenhouse’ gas, if the absorp.tion bands of the gas, which are discrete, match the emissions bands of the planet beneath, which depends on the temperature of the surface. CO2 and H20 are the primary GHGs on Earth, because at Earth’s average temperature the peak radiative emission spectrum strongly overlaps the spectral bands for absorp.tion by these two gases.
As well as Mars being colder, and thus having a peak emission band at lower frequencies, which are not as effectively intercepted by CO2, the atmosphere is far less dense, at 0.6% of Earth’s surface pressure. There are far fewer molecules per cubic volume to intercept radiation from the surface, so of the upwelling radiation around CO2’s peak absorp.tion spectra, much of it escapes directly to space due to there being so much empty space between molecules.
Furthermore, the pressure broadening that widens the absorp.tion bands on Earth, happens to a much tinier degree on Mars, meaning even less radiation is absorbed.
Also, water vapour (H20) is an even more powerful GHG on Earth, with more absorp.tion spectra, and this is missing from Mars’ atmosphere.
Finally, Earth’s greenhouse effect is also taken up collisionally with other molecules abundant in the atmosphere, so the entire greenhouse effect has a lot of molecules to impede the rate at which thermal radiation escapes the surface to space.
Mars just doesn’t have the atmospheric density to provide a strong greenhouse effect. There is a greenhouse effect, just very negligible.
Mars is ‘cold’ relative to earth.
Have a read of this for some absolute in-situ temps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars *
Its atmosphere is so thin it doesn’t really have a ‘greenhouse effect’ to help smooth out the radical temperature changes between poles and tropics – or day and night. Like earth, it’s poles will always be very cold (relatively). Although CO2 is a significant percentage of the atmosphere, in physics (and finance and many other things) you can’t ignore the total amount of something. In Mars’ case, the total amount of atmosphere is too small to really absorb any heat, hence it all gets to the surface and warms it up. Until night, when it all disappears back out to space almost as quickly as it came in.
Even if CO2 was the potent agent it’s said to be, 95% of bugger-all is even less than bugger-all!
*I hadn’t realised that Mars temperatures were a bit ‘unexpected’. I’d hazard a guess it’s due to the influence of winds, which play a big part in temperature observations on Earth (because they can be ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ depending on where the air mass has come from. Mars has pretty impressive winds – probably because the atmosphere is so thin.
Ok, thanks for all the replies guys.
So from what I gather, basically, a planet’s temperature is determined by atmospheric pressure.
It got me thinking, on the topic of clouds, water vapour, CO2 – it is interesting to note, also – since Mars is basically a desert – on Earth, the deserts get cold at night, and warm during the day – much like on Mars, mainly because of the lack of clouds & water vapour.
Atmospheric density, rather than pressure, is important.
Eg, my scuba tank has twice the pressure of Venus at the surface, yet is the same as room temperature.
Yes, in general the more humid the location, the less the difference between night and daytime temperatures. Arid atmospheres allow surface radiation to reach space more quickly, cooling the surface quicker.
Great post Roy, thank you.
barry….”To see the US desecrate the covenant it had such a large part in making is awful”.
***
I would not confuse Trump’s myopic views with those of US citizen’s at large. Remember, his popular vote percent was around 50% following the election and has since dipped to 45%. He has quickly become a legend in his own mind but his perceived popularity is far from what he thinks.
I think that had the Democrats behaved rather than indulging in political correctness, they would have beaten him again. I am glad he won since the Dems were dragging the US down the sewer.
Same with Russia, it’s a mistake to associate Russians in general with the leaders. Russians have had no chance for self-determination ever, as far as I can see.
Trump is neither a statesman nor is he a politician. He is a wealthy businessman on a crusade to reduce taxes for him and his wealthy buddies and he is doing it at the expense of good US citizens.
Hopefully, he will wake up before he is impeached.
In terms of negotiating foreign policy the US = the Trump administration.
You should read your Sun Tzu.
USA has no legitimate interest in Ukraine that justifies spending hundreds of billions of USA tax Payer money.
Same Same in Canada. Trudeau is using Ukraine as a Squirrel to distract from his terrible government.
Go ahead and tell us what excuse you would use to make war on Russia because of its war with Ukraine? There is no Jus Ad Bellum.
How do you not see a threat to Europe, and thus international peace, from Russian expansionism? Crimea first, now Ukraine. Trump parroting Russian propaganda doesn’t change what is obvious to the rest of the world. Everybody benefits from a stable international order, including the US.
It’s only taken 80 years for people to forget the lessons of WWII.
“Go ahead and tell us what excuse you would use to make war on Russia”
Defending Ukrainian sovereignty is enough, no need to invade Russia. Russia has already made war. Must Trump-lovers inevitably buy into his upside down view of the facts?
If it is all about money and American supremacy, why wouldn’t Trump join forces with Russia and share the spoils of Ukraine? Apparently Putin and Trump have a good relationship, and Trump has just proven he could be a great ally.
Or the US could take Ukraine right now, displacing Russia and taking by force the resources Trump believes is owed. Now the US is positioned to dictate terms in Europe. This would also set the precedent that no one disrespects the US. The message is sent to Denmark that it might want to sell Greenland rather than have it taken, and Panama is also put on notice.
If it’s all about money and the pre-eminence of American interests, why wouldn’t Trump do this? He’s already left open the option of taking Greenland by force.
Calm down.
I’m just wondering if there is any other principle here besides immediate American self-interest that Trump admirers could articulate.
Honestly, it looks to me as they cover for Trump, and have no other guiding principle save whatever he says America First means.
I’m sincerely curious. Not just sarcastic. red, do you think the US now stands for what it used to? International peace and the promotion of democracy to expand the sphere of liberty and justice for all people? Or do you think the US is now stepping back from those values on the international stage and isolating itself from everything but what serves its direct self-interest? That it would sacrifice the values in the UN Charter and the customs that have kept us from a world war for nearly a century?
I am reasonably sure I know what Donald Trump thinks. I want to know what the people who back and give him his mandate think. Are they in lockstep with his overt behaviour, or imagining they see some deeper purpose, which doesn’t abandon these 20th Century values?
Sorry barry, but you have no clue what Trump is thinking. You can’t get out of your box. You just regurgitate your cult beliefs.
And, you can’t learn.
It’s interesting how you and others can’t answer straight questions.
Maybe you are waiting for Donald to tell you what to think.
Very well put. It is such a shame that the billions spent trying to find man’s fingerprint on global warming, was not spent on actually trying to figure out how everything affecting the atmosphere and climate interacts.
There is so much spin and misinformation going around about the Ukraine situation to make someone’s head spin — political spin that is. Hate makes people stupid, and some are proud of it.
Here are some facts:
The mineral deal with Ukraine IS a guarantee in itself. All rational comments from official sources in Europe agree with that. The official EU position is that they want the deal. Once the deal is in place and US citizens are on the ground working, Putin would be attacking US interests to do anything wrong at all. How simple is that? Zelensky made a huge blunder, and now the EU has apparently reeducated him.
Zelensky is opposed to a ceasefire. He said so directly. That was the start of all of the nasty comments back and forth in the Oval Office. The ONLY thing Trump said in “support” of Putin was that he did not want to insult Putin and then get on the phone to negotiate. How simply is that?
This is the fun part. The British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Peter Mandelson, who is a Labour party member (“centre-left”), was on US television suggesting that “Ukraine should be the first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow”. How is that different from Trump?
“The mineral deal with Ukraine IS a guarantee in itself.”
Answer this:
What stopped the US including a clearly stated guarantee of security in the deal? Why did they elect to make it implicit instead of explicit?
The answer to that question is critical to understanding what happened.
Trump the art of the deal.
Not written by Trump.
he and the book’s publisher, Howard Kaminsky, alleged that Trump had played no role in the actual writing of the book.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Deal
Tim S appears to get it — “The mineral deal with Ukraine IS a guarantee in itself.”
USA mining rare earths is effectively “boots on the ground”.
Bindi, barry, RLH, and gordon remain clueless.
ok, wise one. Maybe you can explain why the US didn’t give an explicit guarantee of security. What stopped them from sealing the deal with what Zelensky asked for?
Responsible adults understand it, barry. But you’re a child of the cult.
Called anyone a “lying dog” today?
All what MAGA altar boy Clint R is able to write is ‘child’, ‘cult’.
How boring.
Their occasional, small but fierce feuds cannot hide the fact that Clint R is the perfect complement to Robertson.
But these days, Robertson surprisingly seems to be keeping a little more distance from the Trumping boy, his embarrassingly submissive court jesters and their ridiculous MAGAmania.
” This is the fun part. The British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Peter Mandelson, who is a Labour party member (“centre-left”), was on US television suggesting that “Ukraine should be the first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow”. How is that different from Trump? ”
Typical MAGAniacal reduction of what happened.
Tim S. seems to be obscuring the fact that there is a much closer connection between Great Britain and the USA than with Europe, let alone with Ukraine.
That is a rather simple-minded view.
*
What about the inverse cherry-picking by mentioning, for example, the fact that King Charles surprisingly invited Zelenski at his home castle Sandringham and congratulated him? He he.
*
But… let us step back and look at how German Chancellor-designate Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU, right to far right wing) reacted to the meeting in the Oval Room (from Merkur, a right-wing newspaper):
” CDU leader Friedrich Merz has made serious accusations against US President Donald Trump.
Merz believes that the conflict between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj was deliberately provoked by the American side.
After consultations between CDU committees in Berlin, the Union’s candidate for chancellor said he had analyzed the scene several times.
“In my opinion, it was not a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Selenskyj, but obviously an induced escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office.”
On Friday in the White House, Trump and his vice president J.D. Vance confronted Selenskyj with fierce accusations in the Oval Office, accusing him of ingratitude, among other things. ”
*
From the French ‘Figaro’ (right wing)
” Former Polish President Lech Walesa said Monday he was “frightened and disgusted” by the reception given Friday by the American president.
Lech Walesa, an icon of the fight against communism in Poland, said Monday March 3 he was “frightened and disgusted” by the reception given Friday by the American president to his Ukrainian counterpart, which he said was reminiscent of the “interrogations” once carried out by the communist services.
The 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner sent Donald Trump an open letter, co-signed by some forty former political prisoners of the communist regime in Poland, in reaction to the altercation between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
“It is with horror and disgust that we followed the broadcast of your conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” the former anti-communist opponents wrote to Donald Trump, in their letter published on Lech Walesa’s Facebook page.
“We find offensive your expectation of respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States to Ukraine in its fight against Russia” at a time when “gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood to defend the values of the free world,” they insisted. ”
*
Yeah. It would be beneficial for all of us if more Americans took a closer look at the rest of the world, wouldn’t it?
America has no obligation to fund other nations’ wars from now to eternity. America made its decision. We want this war to end, which means we want to quit funding this war of attrition in perpetuity. If that offends you, well I’m all broken up over that!
It is not surprising that Bindidon wants to use political spin to refute my observation that political spin is part of the problem. I directly and correctly quoted the British Ambassador. It is a clean fact. The official EU position supports a ceasefire. Zelensky clearly stated he was opposed to an immediate ceasefire. Has that changed?
More fun is the fact that barry has clearly stated he does not understand the difference between armed soldiers in uniform, and civilian mining and metal processing experts. Attempting to explain probably would not help. He will just jump to some other misunderstanding.
The European Union has been clear that any brokered peace deal has to come with security guarantees. No European ally of Ukraine has said that the deal offered by the US came with security guarantees, implicit or otherwise, and no ally of Ukraine blamed Zelensky for not signing it. On the contrary, they rallied behind Zelensky straight after the Whitehouse debacle. They haven’t criticised Trump outright for fear of bruising his ego and reducing the chances of a deal being salvaged. Unfortunately, they all have to navigate a personality instead of simply policy.
A nod and a wink on security was not a deal that Zelensky could or should sign on behalf of his people.
I will ask again, as supporters of the deal as offered seem to be blind to the question:
Why didn’t the US simply make explicit in the deal what you believe was implicit? Why not give Zelensky the guarantee he needs, and what he needs to show his people, if the US is truly committed to protecting its financial interests in Ukraine?
You who seem to know the inner workings of Trump’s mind, let us know what the rationale is here, please.
Crews battle wildfires in North and South Carolina amid dry conditions and gusty winds
A dry start to the year brings high risk to the Carolinas, including areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Based on recent events, looks like the southeast, besides being a high risk area for storms and flooding, is emerging as a wildfire risk area as well.
The perfect storm: Lots of pine forests, wildlife-urban interfaces, and Trump voters.
barry…”How do you not see a threat to Europe, and thus international peace, from Russian expansionism? Crimea first, now Ukraine”.
***
Barry…you are so intent on blindly accepting propaganda like that from the IPCC and the western media that you refuse to look for other views that are readily available.
Putin took Crimea in retaliation for the Ukraine illegally running off a pro-Russian president in 2014 who was legally voted into power. The western media has bent over backwards to downplay such a heinous event and they have tried to write it off as propaganda.
How can it be propaganda? The president was forced to flee for his life in a country claiming to be a democracy. Why did the US and the EU not only standby, they also sanctioned it by pre-planning a successor while the president was still in power.
Why are you not questioning these facts?
Why is it not obvious to you that the EU, along with US support, had an ulterior motive in the Ukraine? They have been trying to surround Russia with NATO forces so they can point missiles directly at Russia from close range.
There is still a great deal of hostility toward Russia due to the long, dark history of the Stalin and post-Stalin era. Even though Gorbachev and Yeltsin bent over backwards, by breaking up the former USSR, and sanctioning Putin as a good leader, we in the West keep up this paranoia about the former USSR.
I am not so naive that I think we should blindly trust Putin, but under the threat of a nuclear war, we should be in constant contact with him, not trying to alienate him. We should at least consider his motives for invading the Ukraine, rather we keep up this nonsense about him trying to take over other European countries.
Where’s the proof?
The Ukraine actually had no right to Crimea since it was awarded to them by Krushchev, who was Ukrainian. It was awarded to them as part of the USSR, not as an independent country. Since the Crimea was part of the USSR what right did the Ukraine have in claiming it? And what right did Gorbachev and Yeltsin have in giving the USSR away?
They acted in good faith, presuming we in the West are honourable, which is a major laugh.
When the president was ousted, native Russians in the Donbass region who had voted for the president rebelled. Again, the western media tried to portray them as Russian ingrates who were causing issues that went unexplained. The Ukrainian army was sent in and got their butts kicked. So, Kyiv resorted to the Azov battalion who had been sanctioned by the US government due to the Nazi memorabilia they proudly advertise such as swaztikas and the SS lightning bolts on their flag.
Ask yourself, why was Azov more successful than the standard Ukrainian army. Think what Nazi means.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider Putin’s explanation for invading. Some 8 years after the coup in 2014, they were simply fed up with the on-going attacks by Kyiv on Russians in the Donbass region. He was particularly galled by the fact the attacks were led by the Azov battalion and their openly pro-Nazi leanings.
When Putin attacked, he gave the following reasons, which have been conveniently dismissed by the western media and politicians.
1)To rid the Donbass of what he called Nazi elements, an obvious reference to Azov.
2)to give the pro-Russian people in the Donbass an opportunity to vote for their future.
So what has he done to date? He has eliminated Azov and consolidated only the Donbass region, exactly what he said he’d do.
“Putin took Crimea in retaliation for the Ukraine illegally running off a pro-Russian president in 2014 who was legally voted into power”
What gives any country the right to invade another over its internal affairs? How is this in any way conscionable after WWII?
You are parroting Russian propaganda. Sucker.
“So what has he done to date? He has eliminated Azov and consolidated only the Donbass region, exactly what he said hed do.”
More propaganda parroting.
Russia has attacked Ukraine across the country with airstrikes. It’s initial offensive targeted the capital, 400 miles from the Donbas. Russia has bombed the energy infrastructure in every region of Ukraine. It has also taken cities outside the Donbas area, including Mauripol, and continues to attack Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Kharkiv. Russian forces have been expelled from many cities inside and outside of the Donbas region. It has also held or still holds cities that have no strategic relevance to securing the Donbas, but are obviously part of a wider strategy to acquire all Ukrainian territory.
You’re getting your news from Russia Today and a blogger, no doubt. You are hopelessly misinformed.
” When Putin attacked, he gave the following reasons, which have been conveniently dismissed by the western media and politicians.
1)To rid the Donbass of what he called Nazi elements, an obvious reference to Azov.
2)to give the pro-Russian people in the Donbass an opportunity to vote for their future.
So what has he done to date? He has eliminated Azov and consolidated only the Donbass region, exactly what he said hed do. ”
*
Robertson behaves since March 2022 as a liar and above all as Putin’s perfect useful idiot.
Nobody knows why he even can’t stop boring us with this utterly stubid Azov batallion blah blah.
*
If he had a bit of a clue of what really happened, he would never write his disguasting nonsense.
*
I repeat for the dumb Robertson what I wrote above: here is a link to an article (published by the French newspaper Le Monde, last updated on 2022, May 9) with therein a graphic showing how the Russian invasion against Ukraine:
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2022/03/02/guerre-en-ukraine-suivez-en-carte-l-evolution-de-l-invasion-russe-au-jour-le-jour_6115863_4355770.html
*
Anyone can see that the very first goal of the bloodthirsty Russians around Putin was not the defense of Donbass, but in reality to take Kiev and bring down Ukraine as a whole (in their insane overestimation they thought they would only need three days to do this).
How people do not understand Russia’s intent when it attacked Ukraine’s capital is beyond me.
Kyiv is 400 miles away (650km) from the Donbas. Putin has frequently said that Ukraine is a part of Russia, and many times denied its legitimacy as a sovereign nation, writing an essay on it, and announcing it yet again just before the invasion. Russia’s intent is so obvious that you have to be incredibly blind or incredibly dim not to see it.
Zelensky has no reason to trust that Russia will honour any agreement that doesn’t have explicit guarantees backed by force.
What do Trump supporters tell themselves about his constant outright lies? Do they overlook them? Is honesty worthless to them?
When Donald Trump falsely doubles the amount the US has given to Ukraine ($350 billion, he fabricates, easily checkable), and falsely claims the US has given more than Europe, do his followers not know he is lying? Or do they glide past this and many other lies as if integrity has no value? Do they think his constant fabrication is acceptable because all politicians spin (and so he is no less dishonest than any of them)? Do they think making stuff up is a political strength?
The view from Moscow:
“The Trump administration’s rewrite of decades of U.S. foreign policy on Russia, laid bare in the Oval Office confrontation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is bringing Washington into alignment with Moscow, the Kremlin said Sunday a shift that could upend the geopolitics that have governed international relations since War World II.
“The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television on Sunday. “This largely aligns with our vision…”
“The Oval Office blowup last week, in which Vice President JD Vance accused Zelensky of insufficient gratitude for U.S. support and Trump warned that his refusal to compromise with Putin was “gambling with World War III,” has been seen here as a “gift” to the Kremlin…
The meeting fit Russia’s narrative perfectly, Konstantin Remchukov, the well-connected editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, told The Washington Post.
“We don’t even have to step in we can just retransmit what the Americans are saying,” Remchukov said. He noted that Putin had “smartly” withheld comment on the meeting, and could afford to stay silent for now.
“The public will conclude that our leaders were correct in their assessment of Zelensky as a leader of Ukraine,’ Remchukov said. “This is a huge gift for them….”
A senior Kremlin official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told The Post that Moscow had been astonished by the “tremendous change” since Trump’s inauguration and welcomed his “pragmatic, rather than enemy-like approach.” But he warned that such deals were “potential possibilities rather than imminent plans.”
“Trump has said that America will be potentially ready to talk about lifting sanctions,” he said. “But only after the peace settlement.”
The head of state-owned banking giant Sberbank, a close associate of Putin, said he did not anticipate a swift end to Western sanctions.
“We’re working from a scenario in which no sanctions are lifted and, more likely, they are toughened,” German Gref told reporters Thursday. Trump last week extended U.S. sanctions against Russia for another year.
A Russian academic close to senior Russian diplomats told The Post that the Foreign Ministry is currently split between those who wont ever trust the Americans and those who see a historic opportunity to restore dialogue, quickly prepare a summit and get results. The academic spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Not everyone here is ready to celebrate the thaw.
“Trump apparently has decided to be friends with Putin no matter what, and this will not lead to anything good,” said Vlad, a 23-year-old human rights lawyer. Like many interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for reprisals.
“Personally, I find this terrible,” he said. “It is more confirmation for Putin that he can do whatever he wants.”
Remchukov, the editor, said officials are conscious that the U.S. midterm elections next year could mean that the chance to end the war on terms favorable to Russia is fleeting.
“At the top [of government] I have not seen anyone who is too optimistic about ending the conflict,” he said. “Even though Trump’s position seems anti-Zelensky, nobody thinks he is pro-Russian entirely or for good….”
Supporters of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny gathered over the weekend at his gravesite in the Moscow suburb of Marino to mark the first anniversary of his funeral. Navalny, regarded by many as Russia’s last democratic hope, died unexpectedly in an Arctic prison colony last year in what family and supporters have called a state-sponsored execution.
On Sunday, a handful of people wept, hung their heads in solemn silence and lit candles. Some expressed doubt about a meaningful change in U.S.-Russian relations or an imminent end to the conflict with Ukraine.
“Trump is so unpredictable,” said Svetlana, 59, who had come to the grave to lay some white carnations.
Others said Zelensky had carried himself “with dignity,” and that they were waiting to see what came of European security summits.
“I dont see this war ending while Putin is still in power,” said Alexei, 29. “Putin wanted to take Kyiv in three days, and now Trump wants peace in a day. But look where we are, three years in. … Our losses are gigantic. I do not see a quick or easy way out of this.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20250303005045/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/02/russia-ukraine-trump-zelensky-clash/