180

180 refers to ppl who have changed sides (usually for economic or political reasons), especially with regard to global warming

MERRI OK

infamously McCain

neglected

expanding to ppl who turn to light too

see sellouts (refers to dems who take energy $)

apostates: GOP who are goodish on AGW ALSO TAG

see never trumpers tho note some rolled over to dark side eg steyn

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WIKI 3 26

Following people who have changed their position

Some climate change skeptics have changed their positions regarding global warming. Ronald Bailey, author of Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths (published in 2002), stated in 2005, "Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up."^[331] By 2007, he wrote "Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.... as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable."^[332]

Jerry Taylor promoted climate denialism for 20 years as former staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and former vice president of the Cato Institute. Taylor began to change his mind after climate scientist James Hansen challenged him to reread some Senate testimony. He became President of the Niskanen Center in 2014, where he is involved in turning climate skeptics into climate activists, and making the business case for climate action.^{[333][334][335}]

Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, reached a tipping point in 2006 as a result of his increasing familiarity with scientific evidence, and decided there was "overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming". Journalist Gregg Easterbrook, an early skeptic of climate change who authored the influential book A Moment on the Earth, also changed his mind in 2006, and wrote an essay titled "Case Closed: The Debate About Global Warming is Over".^[336] In 2006, he stated, "based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert."^[337]

In 2009, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his opinion that climate change was "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects". After the devastating 2010 Russian wildfires damaged agriculture and left Moscow choking in smoke, Medvedev commented, "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change."^[336]

Bob Inglis, a former US representative for South Carolina, changed his mind in around 2010 after appeals from his son on his environmental positions, and after spending time with climate scientist Scott Heron studying coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.^[338]

Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, funded by Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, had been a prominent critic of prevailing climate science. In 2011, he stated that "following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."^[339]

"I used to be a climate-change skeptic", conservative columnist Max Boot admitted in 2018, one who believed that "the science was inconclusive" and that worry was "overblown". Now, he says, referencing the Fourth National Climate Assessment, "the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing."^[340]

===

4/20

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/conservative-writer-accuses-rush-limbaugh-of-having-blood-on-his-hands-for-dismissing-the-coronavirus-crisis/

jon last bulwark

disillusioned conservatives, Jennifer Rubin, Peter Wehner, David Frum, Anna Navarro and Charlie Sykes among them. Michael Gerson, once a speechwriter for George W Bush, says: “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently.”

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wapo

no lnx

Health & Science

White House prepares to scrutinize intelligence agencies’ finding that climate change threatens national security

The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Juliet Eilperin and

Missy Ryan February 20

The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office.

The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, has said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.

The initiative represents the Trump administration’s most recent attempt to question the findings of federal scientists and experts on climate change and comes less than three weeks after Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats delivered a worldwide threat assessment that identified it as a significant security risk.

In late November, Trump dismissed a government report finding that global warming is intensifying and poses a major threat the U.S. economy, saying, “I don’t see it.” Last month, his nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, acting administrator Andrew Wheeler, testified that he did not see climate change as one of the world’s pressing challenges.

According to the NSC discussion paper, the order would create a federal advisory committee “to advise the President on scientific understanding of today’s climate, how the climate might change in the future under natural and human influences, and how a changing climate could affect the security of the United States.”

The document notes that the government has issued several major reports under Trump identifying climate change as a serious threat. “However, these scientific and national security judgments have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial scientific peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security,” it said.

Francesco Femia, chief executive of the Council on Strategic Risks and co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, said in an interview that the plan appeared to be an effort to undermine the consensus within the national intelligence community that climate change needs to be addressed to avert serious consequences.

“This is the equivalent of setting up a committee on nuclear-weapons proliferation and having someone lead it who doesn’t think nuclear weapons exist,” he said. “It’s honestly a blunt-force political tool designed to shut the national security community up on climate change.”

[Trump administration report says climate damage is ‘intensifying’ in U.S.]

It is unclear how much support Happer’s initiative has inside the administration: Deputies from more than a dozen agencies have been invited to attend a meeting on the topic on Friday in the White House Situation Room.

Several agencies declined to comment on the matter this week, including the NSC, the Pentagon, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Office of theDirector of National Intelligence.

Happer, who worked at the Energy Department under George H.W. Bush and joined the White House in September to work on “emerging technologies,” is not formally trained as a climate scientist. He developed a national reputation for his work on laser technology used in missile defense and on the interactions between light and atoms.

He has sat on the boards of two advocacy groups that have questioned whether global warming poses a serious risk, the CO2 Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute. Last March, when asked in connection with court proceedings whether he had received money from the fossil fuel industry, Happer said he had been given somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 fromPeabody Coalto testify before a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearing.

During a December 2016 energy and climate policy summit sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Happer explained that the CO2 Coalition aimed to counter the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant because it is the primary driver of recent climate change.

“I like to call this the CO2 anti-defamation league,” he said, gesturing to a slide, “because there is the CO2 molecule, and it has undergone decade after decade of abuse, for no reason.

“We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant,” he said. “It’s not a pollutant at all. .?.?. We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.”

Most scientists have taken a different view, concluding that the world must curb its carbon output dramatically in the next few decades or risk dire consequences. Global temperatures have risen roughly 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, from preindustrial levels. A U.N. report issued in October said the world has to cut its emissions by more than 1 billion tons each year over the next decade to keep the rise from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Trump administration, however, has accelerated domestic fossil fuel production and sought to reverse most of the curbs on greenhouse gas emissions adopted under President Barack Obama. Last year the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published an analysis predicting that global temperature rise could reach 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100 under the government’s current trajectory.

While several Trump appointees have argued that climate change does not pose a significant risk to the nation’s defense capabilities, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have reached the opposite conclusion.

[Trump grows frustrated with Coats, leading some to fear he might be fired]

The assessment Coats submitted on Jan. 29 to the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, states, “Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.

The Defense Department said in a report submitted to Congress in mid-January that several dozen military installations around the nation already are experiencing climate impacts. The assessment, which called climate change “a national security issue,” said rising seas, wildfires and other such disasters are likely to create more severe problems for the military in the coming years.

Juliet Eilperin

Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's senior national affairs correspondent, covering how the new administration is transforming a range of U.S. policies and the federal government itself. She is the author of two books — one on sharks and another on Congress, not to be confused with each other — and has worked for The Post since 1998. Follow

good e&e

Utah Sen.-elect Mitt Romney signaled he may focus on climate change when he's sworn in in January.

In a brief interview with E&E News yesterday, the former Republican presidential nominee said he sees climate change as a "critical area."

Asked if it was an issue he planned to be active on in the Senate, Romney said that he intends "to be active in everything I can be active in" after he takes his post.

Romney, a 2012 Republican presidential nominee who easily won his race to replace outgoing Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), has swung on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions for years.

As governor of the blue state of Massachusetts, he pushed to close old coal-fired power plants and helped create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — essentially a cap-and-trade plan — in the Northeast (Climatewire, Nov. 8).

He has also long advocated increased oil and gas production in an effort to increase U.S. energy independence, including drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

As a presidential candidate in a competitive GOP primary, Romney took a modified tone, shifting some of the dialogue to questions of economics as opposed to science.

"My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us," he said during a 2011 fundraiser, according to ABC News.

But for the past six years, the Republican has been fairly consistent in emphasizing climate change as an urgent problem that humans contribute to and demands action.

Last year, Romney told college students in St. Louis that he was "concerned about the anti-scientific attitude" expressed by some of his Republican colleagues and that he was convinced humanity has played a part in global warming(Climatewire, Oct. 3).

"I happen to believe that there is climate change, and I think humans contribute to it in a substantial way, and therefore I look with openness to all the ideas that might be able to address that," he said at the time.

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apostates?

disillusioned conservatives, Jennifer Rubin, Peter Wehner, David Frum, Anna Navarro and Charlie Sykes among them. Michael Gerson, once a speechwriter for George W Bush, says: “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently.”

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2 tucson panels

MARCH 11, 2018

Panel Discussion on the Republican Party Three authors talked about the Republican Party. Their books they discussed are titled, How the Right Lost Its Mind, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, and Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative.

craig s said corps have too much power?!

https://www.c-span.org/video/?441346-23/panel-discussion-republican-party

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http://grist.org/news/here-are-a-couple-of-weather-experts-who-actually-believe-in-climate-change/

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Margaret Thatcher's Climate Change Of Heart

The Huffington Post | By Lucia Graves Posted: 04/09/2013 11:15 am EDT | Updated: 04/09/2013 5:42 pm EDT

In 1990, Margaret Thatcher emerged as one of the first world leaders to champion climate science, issuing a call to action to fight manmade global warming at the Second World Climate Conference hosted at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the conservatives' case for environmental stewardship in the face of climate change. "I see the adoption of these policies as a sort of premium on insurance against fire, flood or other disaster," she said. "It may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later."

She would later recant many of her positions, however, adopting an increasingly skeptical stance. Although some maintain that she was consistent in her advocacy for the environment, more than 10 years later, she publicly criticized the push to protect it.

Her speech in Geneva acknowledged the uncertainty of the science behind climate change, before vigorously affirming that "the need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now ... there is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level."

A year before, in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York she urged the global community to take action.

"The evidence is there. The damage is being done. What do we, the international community, do about it? … It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. We have to look forward not backward, and we shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort."

She called for the United Nations to ratify a treaty by 1992. The New York Times covered it at the time with the headline: "Thatcher Urges Pact On Climate." Excerpts from some of her climate-change speeches are here.

But in 2003, she backtracked on her climate advocacy, calling climate activism a "marvelous excuse for supra-national socialism," and denouncing Al Gore's calls for international cooperation around climate change "apocalyptic hyperbole."

In her 2003 book *Statecraft* she wrote of "a new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-center governing classes," praised former President George W. Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and bemoaned the “costly and economically damaging” schemes to limit carbon emissions.

While it would appear Thatcher, who died on Monday at age 87, did a complete 180 on the issue, Iain Murray with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., has argued that she remained an environmentalist.

"Thatcher's environmentalism is founded on Edmund Burke's conservative view of our inheritance as being worth defending," he wrote. "Yet that view is tempered by her classical liberal belief that human wealth and progress are crucial. That is why Lady Thatcher can be described as a true free market environmentalist."

Will Oremus, writing for Slate, notes she never abandoned her faith in the scientific method, nor her belief that true conservatism entailed caring for the Earth so that future generations may thrive.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/margaret-thatcher-climate_n_3043873.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

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Really only one political force could stop a climate bill in 2010, the same force that has impeded action for more than a decade — the hard-core antiscience crowd that dominates much of conservative politics these days and that demagogues against even the most modest efforts to promote clean energy and reduce pollution. Indeed, they are pushing hard to punish any Republican who contemplates actually addressing the gravest threat to the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren. For instance, Republican National Chairman Michael Steele withdrew his endorsement for Rep. Mark Kirk in the Illinois Senate race in large part because he was one of the eight House Republicans to vote for the House climate bill (see my blog post, “Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 3“).

Since Crist faces a right wing challenger in the Florida Senate primary, he has moved away from his strong support for climate action. Pawlenty still dreams of being on the national ticket in 2012, so he too has abandoned his previous support for strong climate action (see “Pawlenty completes climate science flip flop, after flip flopping on support for bipartisan climate action“)....http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/01/10/205245/will-antiscience-ideologues-be-able-to-kill-the-bipartisan-climate-and-clean-energy-jobs-bill/

Reason Public Policy Institute and Reason Magazine, Reason Foundation makes an unparalleled contribution to the cause of liberty."

Ron Bailey, science correspondent for Reason, another libertarian climate skeptic who prominently changed his mind two years ago, summarizes here, where he quotes from both Begley and Penn. Bailey both schools and chides Penn, while acknowledging that there is ample room to debate policy:

Is it happening? Did we cause it? Yes, the balance of the evidence is that it is happening. Is it bad? Relative to what? Can we fix it? Maybe. But at what's the best way to do so? Are immediate deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions necessary? Some analysts don't think so. Government-forced conservation? Perhaps there is another way. Skepticism is certainly merited when it comes to proposals that aim to solve global warming.

Finally, is it OK to disdain Al Gore? Sure it is. But even an annoying self-important scold can be right sometimes.

It seems to me that Penn and Teller's defensiveness clearly signals a shift in their position from broad disagreement with global warming, both on science and on policy, towards conceding the core of the science while focussing on policy.

��

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Richard Pollock, a former director of Ralph Nader's group, Critical Mass, who switched sides to become a senior vice president for Shandwick Public Affairs, the second-largest PR firm in the United States. (Recent Shandwick clients include Browning-Ferris Industries, Central Maine Power, Georgia-Pacific Corp., Monsanto Chemical Co., New York State Electric and Gas Co., Ciba-Geigy, Ford Motor Company, Hydro-Quebec, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble.)

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http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-06-08-green-who-me-top-10-brownwashing-republicans/PALL

Grist.org

Green—who, me? Top 10 brownwashing Republicans

by Lisa Hymas

8 Jun 2011 2:12 AM

Greenwashing is out, brownwashing is in. These days, GOP politicians are scrambling to distance themselves from past environment-friendly statements, initiatives, and votes. (Thanks to Grist reader Gary Wockner for naming this trend.)

��

Check out the top 10 offenders. And watch for a lot more Republicans to join the club as we head toward the 2012 election.

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Scott Brown.Photo: lukexmartin10. Scott Brown

U.S. senator from Massachusetts

Before: "Reducing carbon dioxide emission in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine,'' he said in 2008 when, as a member of the state Senate, he voted in favor of his state joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon-trading initiative in the Northeast. "Passing this legislation is an important step ... towards improving our environment.''

After: "I think the globe is always heating and cooling. It's a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I've heard about potential tampering with some of the information," he said in December 2009, as the "Climategate" faux-scandal was raging. In April 2011, he voted to strip the U.S. EPA of its authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

Chris Christie.Photo: Bob Jagendorf9. Chris Christie

Governor of New Jersey

Before: "In a Christie administration, we can and will enforce environmental protections while encouraging emerging industries to grow our economy and create sustainable jobs," he said in October 2009, while reveling in the endorsement of the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

After: In May 2011, he pulled New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the only operational cap-and-trade system in the country. "The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It is a failure," he said -- after he undermined its effectiveness by raiding $65 million from a RGGI-generated fund that was supposed to support energy efficiency and renewable energy. His pullout could "doom U.S. climate policy," Brad Plumer speculates. On June 7, 2011, Christie said he planned to cut the state's renewable-energy goal from 30 percent by 2021 to 22.5 percent.

Read more about Christie and environmental issues.

Jon Huntsman.Photo: Christine Lu8. Jon Huntsman

Presidential candidate, former governor of Utah

Before: "[W]e must put a value on carbon," he said in October 2008. "Until we put a value on carbon, we're never going to be able to get serious about dealing with climate change longer term. Now, putting a value on carbon either suggests that you go to a carbon tax or you get a cap-and-trade system underway."

After: "Cap-and-trade ideas aren't working," he said in May 2011. "Much of this discussion happened before the bottom fell out of the economy, and until it comes back, this isn't the moment."