Friday September 18th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Science Verses Superstition And Conspiracy Theories…The Politics Of Climate Change And COVID-19 In My Backyard
Dear Diary. I have a boat load full of information on the latest tropical news and western fires, but before we get to that, I’d like to turn to politics concerning both the climate crisis and our ongoing pandemic. Due to “Chort,” my aptly named western heatwave event, and the recent Gulf hurricanes named Laura and Sally, it’s not been since at least July since we have put the critical U.S. elections into focus as the main topic on this blog.
As many of you know I live in the U.S. South, which politically is one of the most conservative areas on the planet. A lot of this conservatism stems from religious views brought from the old European world to the new. Colonialism brought the South mainly a mix of Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, the Baptists, Methodism, with some Catholicism. The Southern Baptists, a sect I was brought up in, not so long ago tried to profess that slavery was the natural order of things via passages from the Bible, which is now considered to be a detestable view, of course. This 19th century view led to the Jim Crow South during the 20th century and has led to prevalent white supremacy prejudices hanging on across this area as late as this date. Older anti-intellectual views, such as creationism, have held on compared with how the rest of the planet has evolved. Racism and anti-intellectualism go hand in hand. So, its no surprise, my Australian and British friends, that arcane scientific thought has held sway, particularly in less educated areas of the rural South.
Back in 2017 the state of Alabama held a special Senate election to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions, who was tapped to be Trump’s Attorney General after the 2016 election. Just about any Republican running to fill the seat would have been a shoe in except that the candidate, Roy Jones, turned out to be a pedophile. More from Wikipedia:
In November 2017, during his special election campaign for U.S. Senate, several public allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Moore.[7] Three women stated that he had sexually assaulted them when they were at the respective ages of 14, 16 and 28.[7][8] Moore acknowledged that he may have approached and dated teenagers while he was in his 30s, but denied that any of the girls were underage or that he had sexually assaulted anyone.[9][10] President Donald Trump endorsed Moore a week before the election,[11] after which some Republicans withdrew their opposition to Moore. Democrat Doug Jones won the election, becoming the first Democrat since 1992 to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama.[12]
Turn the page to 2020 and Senator Doug Jones is on fairly shaky political ground since he is a Democrat, despite doing a decent job for the state of Alabama in my view. I seriously think that a former football coach from Auburn University will get elected, despite having no government experience, just because he’s running as a Republican, the dominant party in the South ever since Reagan got elected in 1980. Here is more from Inside Clinate News:
Senate 2020: In Alabama, Two Very Different Views on Climate Change Give Voters a Clear Choice
Republican Tommy Tuberville denies global warming science, saying God controls the climate. Doug Jones, a Democrat, calls ignoring global warming “malpractice.”
BY JAMES BRUGGERS
This story is part of a series focusing on climate change in 11 key Senate races on the ballot in November.
At a Glance:
- Democrat Doug Jones does not wear concerns about climate change on his sleeve but he also has not been afraid to tell conservative voters in his state that it’s a problem. He shook the political landscape in Republican-dominated Alabama when, in a 2017 special election, he became the first Democrat in Alabama to win a Senate seat since 1992.
- In the Republican primary, President Donald Trump degraded his former attorney general Jeff Sessions at every turn; as a result, retired Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville is now challenging Jones as an unconventional candidate with anti-science views.
- Tuberville does not accept mainstream climate science and has espoused a conspiracy theory about the Green New Deal and the coronavirus pandemic.
In rural, politically conservative states like Alabama, politicians who are seeking office and want to show their support for environmental causes usually don’t talk about climate change. They talk about how they like to hunt and fish and will protect natural treasures.
Doug Jones, a Democrat and former U.S. Attorney who made a name for himself by prosecuting Ku Klux Klan members, is doing just that in his campaign for the Senate. Alabama relies on its environment, Jones says, “not just for its beauty, but also as a driver of our state’s economy.”
But Jones also has gone beyond the traditional hook and bullet argument, supporting U.S. participation in the Paris climate agreement and speaking about the need to rein in climate change.
His opponent, retired Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, denies the science of climate change, citing his religious belief that God controls the climate.
The Environmental Protection Agency forecast for Alabama is one of rising seas and more severe flooding and drought, all driven by climate change. Tropical storms and hurricanes have become more intense in the last 20 years, according to the EPA. On Wednesday, Hurricane Sally, a Category 2 storm, made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama, bringing torrential rains and damaging wind.
Many Alabamians care about climate change, especially those who live near the coast, but the issue probably will not stand out as a significant concern for voters, said Regina L. Wagner, assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama. “I expect this race to basically be purely based on partisanship” and turnout, she said. “Jones can win if Democrats are motivated and turn out in high numbers and if Republicans are less motivated.”
Wagner said she wonders whether Trump splitting the party with his endorsement of Tuberville will have any lingering effects on Republican voters’ enthusiasm. The pandemic and the economy are also likely to factor into voters’ decision making, she said.
Still, the two candidates will present climate voters with a choice.
Tuberville took to Twitter in 2019 to object to a climate sit-in at the Harvard-Yale football game, writing that he would never have allowed such a scene. “Make no mistake about it, this is a result of liberal academia indoctrinating our kids. I guarantee you one thing, this would have never occurred when I was a head coach,” he tweeted.
And asked about the coal economy by the Jasper, Alabama, Daily Mountain Eagle newspaper, which serves a coal-mining region of the state, he went straight to the subject of climate change to express his opinion, by denying the science and then blaming China.
“There is one person that changes this climate in this country and that is God. OK?” Tuberville said in an interview posted on YouTube.
“You hear these people talk about the emissions and all those things,” he said. “Sure, we’ve got cars driving around, we’ve got coal burning but we are a small part of that. Look at China?”
Tuberville went on to say that climate change was “a talking point on the left that gives them an opportunity to scream and yell that this country is not going to last for 12 more years.”
And as a guest on the WVFN Jeff Poor radio show serving parts of northern Alabama including Huntsville, Tuberville said, without evidence, that the economic shutdown brought on by the pandemic was in fact an experiment by backers of the Green New Deal.
For his part, Jones, in AL.com, Alabama’s largest news source, defended climate science. “Ignoring the overwhelming evidence would be a form of malpractice on the part of public servants, the business community, and individual citizens alike,” he wrote in a 2019 op-ed article. “Left unaddressed, our children and grandchildren will inherit a less healthy planet, with far-reaching consequences for their economy, health, and way of life.”
Jones broke ranks with Democrats last year when he voted against nullifying President Trump’s watered-down replacement for President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which had sought to crack down on greenhouse gases from power plants. Jones told The Hill newspaper that he did not support the Trump administration’s weakening of power plant regulations but was also opposed to the method his fellow Democrats were using to stop the new Trump rule.
The Takeaway:
Of all the Democratic senators up for re-election, incumbent Jones is considered the most vulnerable. He may have lucked out in 2017’s special election, facing former Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, whose campaign wilted under national media investigations and allegations of juvenile sexual assault.
But political observers in the state do not count him out. AL.com describes him as a “proven winner” who “remains a strong candidate.”
Tuberville is also a newcomer to politics with all the uncertainty that brings.
In a normal year, conventional wisdom would dictate that Jones could not win in a state with broad support for an incumbent president of the other political party. But this isn’t a normal year, and some polling suggests Trump’s response to the pandemic may have damaged him politically, even among Republicans. If enough independents and moderate Republicans feel that way (along with the fans of Auburn arch-rival, University of Alabama), they may reject an unproven Trump surrogate, and Jones will win his first full Senate term. Otherwise, Tuberville—who won 159 games and lost 99 in 21 seasons coaching at four universities over 21 years—will add another voice of climate denial to the U.S. Senate.
As I’ve often stated Science is how God demonstrates and reveals to mankind how His creation truly works. This applies in the worlds of both weather/climate and medicine. Those going against what science tells us usually are in for a world of hurt. Sally has hit the Mobile, Alabama area hard this season. That hurricane was one of many ramped up due to above average sea surface temperatures during this historic Atlantic hurricane season. Will this event convince Alabamians to vote Blue, away from Trump’s decisive and superstitious Red Republican Party? We will see come November.
It’s getting hot in the West again, unfortunately. Here are some “ET’s from Friday:
Here is more climate and weather news from Friday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid COVID-19 pandemic:
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”