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Scott Wagner is an American businessman and state senator from the state of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Republican Party. What did he say?
"I haven't been in a science class in a long time, but the earth moves closer to the sun every year-you know the rotation of the earth," Wagner, a York County state senator, said, according to StateImpact Pennsylvania. "We're moving closer to the sun."
He added, according to StateImpact's Katie Meyer, that, "We have more people. You know, humans have warm bodies. So is heat coming off? Things are changing, but I think we are, as a society, doing the best we can."
I haven't been in a science class in a long time...
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Scott Wagner Explains Climate Change: 'We're Moving Closer to the Sun'
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 01 2017, @11:41AM (6 children)
I'm from western New York State. Pennsylvania is directly to our south, we share a long border (for a pair of eastern states). You might think that the two states had some beliefs in common, but this fool is yet another counter example.
Penn State University did offer a ray of hope the other day. One of their faculty contributed to a large study of arctic warming and jet stream activity leading to more extreme weather events. One of many articles here, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170327083120.htm [sciencedaily.com]
The first few paras from that page:
"We came as close as one can to demonstrating a direct link between climate change and a large family of extreme recent weather events," said Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director, Earth System Science Center, Penn State. "Short of actually identifying the events in the climate models."
The unusual weather events that piqued the researchers' interest are things such as the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Pakistan flood and Russian heatwave, the 2011 Texas and Oklahoma heat wave and drought and the 2015 California wildfires.
The researchers looked at a combination of roughly 50 climate models from around the world that are part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), which is part of the World Climate Research Programme. ...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday April 01 2017, @12:43PM (5 children)
"We came as close as one can to demonstrating a direct link between climate change and a large family of extreme recent weather events," said Michael Mann
In other words, we still didn't have concrete evidence to link extreme weather to global warming, but we're going to rush ahead and make the link anyway to insert into the next IPCC report (to be released in the 2020-21 timeframe, but work has already started [www.ipcc.ch]). Typical Mann-splaining. I think you'll need to keep looking for that "ray of hope".
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday April 01 2017, @07:17PM (1 child)
He touched it! khallow touched the tarbaby! Oh noes! Now he is being dragged closer to the sun!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02 2017, @10:03AM
Poor khallow! We will all miss him when the natural caused "earth circling the drain that is the sun" global warming toasts him, since he cannot git free of the goldurn tarbaby! Of course, if things do heat up enough, perhaps the tarbaby will soften, and allow khallow to get away! I just hope he does not run into a whole mess of feathers on his way out of town!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 01 2017, @08:13PM (2 children)
Yeah,
is a weak claim made to sound strong. At least this Wagner clown owns up to his own ignorance. Mann tries to make ignorance sound like knowledge.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Sunday April 02 2017, @12:09AM (1 child)
I didn't read the sciencedaily.com article, but from the bit quoted here it sounds as though Mr. Mann might be saying that there isn't enough knowledge to say that any particular weather event is due to global warming, but there is enough knowledge to say that global warming will cause a tendency toward (certain kinds of?) extreme weather.
Mr. Wagner seems to be saying that his knowledge is not up-to-date because he only studied the topic as part of his formal education. But some of his ideas are simply mistaken, and he didn't seem to be aware of that. I suppose he is now that this story has come out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02 2017, @01:05PM
I didn't read the sciencedaily.com article, but from the bit quoted here it sounds as though Mr. Mann might be saying that there isn't enough knowledge to say that any particular weather event is due to global warming, but there is enough knowledge to say that global warming will cause a tendency toward (certain kinds of?) extreme weather.
Without providing the evidence to support that assertion. Science is not merely about being right. It's also about employing methods to reduce the effect of our biases and effectively communicating those results to others. At this point, Mann is communicating disinformation by projecting an unwarranted level of confidence via said weasel language in the results of this study.
Mr. Wagner seems to be saying that his knowledge is not up-to-date because he only studied the topic as part of his formal education. But some of his ideas are simply mistaken, and he didn't seem to be aware of that. I suppose he is now that this story has come out.
Indeed. Or at least, that will now be a factor in his future elections.