Overcast and on the warmish-side this Tuesday evening on California’s north coast, a gentle trough before some more wet weather slated this week — according to the NWS, a couple of storms inbound, the first Thursday night, a second heavier one for Friday through Saturday, bringing rain, gusty winds and isolated thunderstorms/small hail.
This winter of our discontent just won’t end…

Weather-wise, the most-potent question for all of climate-change skepticism was posed Sunday by Chris Wallace at Fox News, of all people/places, to Scott Pruitt, the EPA’s new chief, and big-lipped denier:

“But sir, you’re kind of sugarcoating what you said,” Wallace said.
“The question I have is: What if you’re wrong? What if in fact the earth is warming? Simple question. What if you’re wrong?”

(Illustration by Handoko Tjung, found here).

In this period of rapid news flashes off the T-Rump, Pruitt’s awkward bullshitting has been lost in the crush — just two days ago. WTF?
And just like all the shit piling-up around the T-Rump, Pruitt’s been called on the carpet for an interview earlier in March — he’s such an asshole, and like T-Rump, don’t bother with facts.
Per Mashable yesterday:

Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is under investigation by his own agency for misstating the basic scientific consensus on human-caused global warming.
Turns out that providing misguiding scientific information to the public isn’t a cool thing to do, after all — even in the Trump administration.
…
But Pruitt may have crossed a legal line when, during an interview on March 9 with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” morning show, he denied the reality of human-caused climate change, contradicting findings published on his own agency’s website.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said, when asked if he thinks carbon dioxide emissions are the main “control knob” on the planet’s climate.
“But we don’t know that yet, as far as … we need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis,” he said.
Pruitt’s comments put him at odds with the conclusions of his own agency’s climate scientists, who have found that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and welfare.
At the urging of the Sierra Club, the EPA’s scientific integrity official is reviewing Pruitt’s comments to see if they violate the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which requires that all agency employees — including political appointees like Pruitt — “communicate with honesty, integrity, and transparency.”
The policy also states that policy makers “… Shall not knowingly misrepresent, exaggerate, or downplay areas of scientific uncertainty associated with policy decisions.”
…
The EPA has not specified an end date for the investigation, but said the matter could be referred back to the Office of the Inspector General, who could take disciplinary action.
“Administrator Pruitt makes no apologies for having a candid dialogue about climate science and commonsense regulations that will protect our environment, without creating unnecessary regulatory burdens that kill jobs,” EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in response to an initial Reuters story on the inquiry.

This lost in the swirl of Susan Rice and truly nothing to see saga now being misdirected onto the media by the T-Rump apparatus — yet again, WTF

This feeling of depression and anxiety is also part of our warming environment — add a piece of shit like the T-Rump to the mix, and the brain goes Gothic — ‘The Cure‘ has become upbeat, producing songs of happiness.
A new report from the American Psychological Association claims global warming is not only bad for the earth, but bad for our minds, too.
Via Psychology Today last Saturday:

Take, for example, the after effects of natural disasters, which the authors of the report argue have the most immediate impact on mental health “in the form of the trauma and shock.”
Such trauma and shock arise in response to losing personal property or livelihood, losing a loved one, or experiencing personal injury.
“Terror, anger, shock and other intense negative emotions that can dominate people’s initial response may eventually subside, only to be replaced by post-traumatic stress disorder,” they add.
The authors offer an example of the spike in suicide and suicidal ideation among residents of Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, as documented by Kessler et al., 2008 and Lowe, Manove, & Rhodes, 2013.
Following the traumatic incident, they report, both suicides and thoughts of suicide doubled, while one in six residents met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Additionally, 49 percent of residents suffered from an anxiety or mood disorder.
…
Natural disasters alone aren’t the only causes of climate change-related mental health problems.
“Changes in climate affect agriculture, infrastructure and livability,” the authors explain, “which in turn affect occupations and quality of life and can force people to migrate.
These effects may lead to loss of personal and professional identity, loss of social support structures, loss of a sense of control and autonomy and other mental health impacts such as feelings of helplessness, fear and fatalism.”
…
Extreme temperatures in their own right have a unique influence on behavior and wellbeing.
As research by Craig Anderson (2001) and Simister & Cooper (2005) has shown, aggression increases as temperatures rise.
Thus as summers get hotter, so might our tempers — likely due, the researchers explain, “to the impacts of heat on arousal, which results in decreases in attention and self-regulation, as well as an increase in the availability of negative and hostile thoughts.”
Heat can also impact our ability to think clearly, they add, “which may reduce the ability to resolve a conflict without violence (Pilcher, Nadler, & Busch, 2002).”
Higher temperatures have also been found in other research to increase the risk of suicide (Lee et al., 2006).

Key point:

Add to this mounting fear and anxiety derived from watching the world around us change in irreversible ways — coupled with the helplessness of feeling as if we cannot stop or reverse global warming — and you have another effect of climate change on mental health: “Watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations, may be an additional source?of stress (Searle & Gow, 2010),” the authors write.
“Albrecht (2011) and others have termed this anxiety ecoanxiety.
Qualitative research provides evidence that some people are deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration due to their inability to feel like they are making a difference in stopping climate change (Moser, 2013).”

Action by shitheads like Pruitt and the rest of the T-Rump crowd only makes it shittier…

(Note: First time in a long while couldn’t post yesterday — a personal goal is to publish every work day of the week. And like the way-vast majority were technical in nature. My IT was upgrading and did something to take Compatible Creatures offline for a time).