Over the past week I have been sifting through tweets, newsfeeds, video clips to collate the evidence that Trump has no intention of allowing the election of November 2020 to result in his removal from office. Yet in the last few days Trump has come out and publicly declared just that. There is no need to direct attention to the signposts that have marked the way over this past year since Trump has now made no secret that he will not accept anything other than his return to power. In his most recent statement he repeated his intention not to accept ballots — add to that his stacking of the courts and his demonstrated willingness to use the army to “dominate” U.S. cities.
The only question is, What is the legitimate and necessary response to his declared intention? It is not just a United States problem. The future of human civilization is threatened by the vanity of a single man and a party spellbound or intimidated by him. If one can blindly deny the world’s highest number of deaths from covid-19 in one’s own nation (or say those who are dying don’t matter because most of them are of little consequence to the national economy) then we are living in Fantasyland to expect a thought for future disasters within the US and beyond. From The Science Show:
Today we have evidence of three domino-like connections.
The first one is that rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic is speeding up thawing of permafrost, which makes the jet stream meander, which in turn leads to more droughts and forest fires, which in turn causes even faster heating when the forests emit carbon dioxide.
The second domino is when melting of Greenland is slowing down the heat circulation in the North Atlantic, which in turn is reinforcing droughts in the Amazonian rainforest, drying out and resulting in fires and huge emissions of greenhouse gases when the forest irreversibly moves towards a savanna state.
The third domino risk is when ice sheets in the Arctic and Greenland show evidence of being connected via the oceans to Antarctica. When the Arctic melts, the exchange of heat in the ocean from the southern to the northern hemisphere will slow down, and this means that the ocean around Antarctica gets gradually warmer, which will result in huge glaciers being lubricated by hot surface waters and thereby gliding faster into the ocean with an ultimate risk of not just one- to two-metre sea level rise, but over ten metres.
. . . .
Thirty years ago, we could perhaps ignore the fact that the world’s major ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, like the temperate forests and the world’s peatlands, were global commons that we need to protect together. Earth was so biologically intact, and thereby resilient, and our carbon footprint was so limited that Earth could absorb national mismanagement without putting living conditions for all of us at risk. Not anymore.
Think about the following. We are at 1.1°C of global warming. We must not exceed 1.5°C and certainly not go above 2°C. We are on track to take us to 3° or 4°C of warming. If we are going to have any chance, global emissions must start to decline this year and then be cut by half by 2030, then cut by half again 2040, and then reach zero by 2050. This is what we call the carbon law; cut emissions by half every decade and you follow science.
But this will only work if the planet does not surprise us. That is, all ecosystems and all the ice sheets and all the storage of energy and conveyor belt heat in the oceans must remain intact. If we were to lose the Amazon rainforest, it could potentially add another 1°C of warming by itself. If we were to lose all of the Earth’s temperate peatlands, this could potentially lead to another 1°C warming. . . .
This is no time to be treating Trump as “just another candidate” or the election as “just another election” as has been happening throughout history. And it’s no time for other nations to be treating the United States as a “good global citizen”.
Neil Godfrey
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On the subject of reducing fossil fuel emissions, I suspect that we would have to adopt radical societal transformations in order to hit the 50% target by 2030. I support these changes, but I worry about the often spineless democratic party or the sheeply general public actually getting us there. On how we could do it: https://skepticink.com/humesapprentice/2020/05/04/the-united-states-v2-0/
If Trump loses the election and uncharacteristically DOES step down, then the solutions have a chance. Trump ‘s presidency may be seen as the last, clownish, fated gasp of climate deniers. And with that firmly behind, responsible people can get down to work again.
Granted, Trump stepping down sounds a bit overoptimistic right now.
Allowing Trump another four years raises the question of his successor in 2024 — it is hard to think Trump will not either find a way to hold on to power or choose a close loyalist to succeed him — also holding on to power by hook or by crook — and protect him from the law.
I suspect Trump’s talk about not stepping down is BS, but if he is serious he would be removed by the military, and failing that, the public may raise up its pitchfork if he does not. Nothing is certain in these times but if Trump were re-elected it would be a long shot. Something bad has happened on his watch, and history proves when that is true about a leader in a democratic country, they get voted out.
I believe Trump has spent his entire life evading the law. From the days his father cheated the government with fake bids.
To his own days as a child, when he bought three switchblade knives, and was sent to a disciplinary military school, rather than juvenile prison. Then when he admitted finding “loopholes” in tax laws. Then his infamous more recent crimes.
For Trump, the law is just a game to get around.
If he is so sure that mail-in voting is frequently corrupted, it’s almost certainly because he has seen his Republican friends do it.
Congress tallies the Electoral College votes and declares who is the new president. No doubt there will be court challenges, but if Biden is declared the winner, on inauguration day it should not matter one jot whether Trump leaves the White House or not. Biden will be Commander in Chief when the Chief Justice swears him in. We can then settle down to watch the amusing siege: the White House surrounded by police with no pizza deliveries allowed while expert “hostage negotiators” shout through loud hailers to the deranged former president.
But of course Trump and Barr may try to arrest everybody who opposes them before inauguration day. One can only hope that the military take seriously what they learned about not obeying illegal orders.
Neil you say “the future of human civilization is threatened by the vanity of a single man and a party spellbound or intimidated by him” but I believe that there is a group of people at the top who control the US money supply, the military and certain critical aspects of foreign policy. In my worldview it matters not so much who the president is. In fact he or she is a distraction to you and I for an insidious web of greed and power. Sure Trump is a buffoon, as is Johnson in the UK, but our first priority should be to call out the deception that the real axis of evil has done by the war on terror justified by 911 and demand an independent investigation into 911. Such deceptions are not the work of a single man or his political party.
Peter Brannen’s award-winning book, “The Ends of the World,” (an assessment of the world’s past 5 extinction events, with a context for the future) estimates a 5 degree celsius rise in world temperature by 2100, and evidence in the book suggests it could be higher, like 6, 7, or 8. These are catastrophic numbers. The fires in California (like the Australian fires of last year) are described by all on-the-ground observers as “apocalyptic,” and a story yesterday said that tree roots in Oregon continue to burn at 12,000 degrees, and are not always detectable, although the ground above them smokes. The senator from my state says that “drastic reductions” in greenhouse gases are needed to keep the rise under 2 degrees celsius–but there is no such “drastic reduction” in the offing, from any source. It is all we can do to get someone other than Trump elected President, and it’s only done by Biden promising he’s “not a socialist” and won’t be “extreme” in his (green) policies. The main problem is that a political consensus is so far out of reach in the U.S. All the polls show the greenhouse gas issue is low on most voters’ list of priorities. And you can’t get done what needs to be done without what HRH Prince Charles calls a “Marshall-like plan” from all points in the globe. The world has already changed a great deal, and will change even faster going forward. The world of 2100 will not resemble the present one much at all, I suspect.
ALL you guys are delusional. You hate Trump so much it has clouded your thinking. Trump is not trying to destroy America or the world. Trump is trying to save it. If Harris and Biden get elected and are able to put a liberal on the Supreme court that will be what destroys the world. Between giving the LBGT community full rough shod run over all the rights of everyone else and the killing of babies all the way up to the ninth month. This is what will destroy the earth.
In my humble opinion, here is what is going to happen……….
President Donald Trump will be reelected in a landslide. He will also win both the
House and the Senate. Then President will began to truly make America great again and bring more peace, stability and wealth to the world.
You been warned….. get ready.
I suspect you misunderstand Roe v Wade on the “up to 9 months” issue, even though I accept that you will probably disagree with the Court even when you do understand it. This is what Roe v Wade decided on that issue [Section X, 1 (c)]:
“(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.”
Even the harsh Texas law that was struck down in Roe v Wade allowed abortion “to preserve the life of the mother”, as would most people who can imagine being in the situation of allowing the mother to die.
By the way, Marty. Trump’s appointee Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the latest LBGT case that went to the Supreme Court. The Court held that employers were no more able to discriminate against LGBT people than they were allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, or gender. In fact it held that to punish someone for say, dressing like a woman, but not if that person is a woman was a violation of the sex discrimination Act – as it clearly is. If Trump wants judges who do his or your wishes exactly he will have to exclude anyone considered qualified by the American bar Association.