The one who "smelt" it, dealt it
There's not a snowball's chance in hell that Trump will be able to gaslight his way out of the blame for climate catastrophes that will occur on his watch. And what does God have to do with it?
If it weren’t so tragic, it would be amusing to list all the ways climate deniers have tried to distract people from the glaring fact that human-assisted climate change1 is a direct contributor to many, if not most, of the natural calamities that have been foisted upon us during the 21st century. We can now include the recent wildfires in Los Angeles on that list. If only gaslighting2 could generate clean energy, we would easily meet the global demand.
By the way, now is the time to download the Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Report, because on January 21, it will be replaced by a paean to “clean” coal or an ad for some soon-to-be-waterfront Trump property.
For the record, here’s what’s on the DOE’s home page today:
A clean energy revolution is taking place across America, underscored by the steady expansion of the U.S. renewable energy sector.
The clean energy industry generates hundreds of billions in economic activity, and is expected to continue to grow rapidly in the coming years. There is tremendous economic opportunity for the countries that invent, manufacture and export clean energy technologies.
Responsible development of all of America’s rich energy resources -- including solar, wind, water, geothermal, bioenergy & nuclear -- will help ensure America’s continued leadership in clean energy. Moving forward, the Energy Department will continue to drive strategic investments in the transition to a cleaner, domestic and more secure energy future.
Good luck with that.
While you’re into downloading endangered facts, check out the soon-to-be-defunct www.climate.gov, while you can. You’ll see charts on the bottom of the home page monitoring key climate indicators.3 You can also browse those indicators here.4 Beginning next week, ocean levels and melting glaciers will be as closely monitored by the government as Donald Trump’s violations of the Emoluments Clause.
Whenever you are tempted to fall into some kind of crazy climate denial conversation, check out the 2022 World Disasters Report, which fortunately will not be memory-holed on January 20. It shows dramatic increases in natural disasters, especially climate-related ones, over the past half century.5
Such a waste of time, having to rebut these crazy deniers.
My personal favorite fabrication from the past few years is the oft-repeated claim that global warming can’t be a thing because - wait for it - it’s cold outside.
The Rainforest Alliance explains, in language a fourth grader can understand, why that argument is full of hot air.
There’s a difference between climate and weather: Weather fluctuates day in, day out, whereas climate refers to long term trends—and the overall trend is clearly and indisputably a warming one. While the impacts of climate change have only just begun to hit the Global North, farmers in the tropics have been contending with impacts—from droughts to floods to a proliferation of crop-destroying pests—for years.
Got it?
Perhaps the most famous “It’s too cold for Global Warming” stunt took place almost exactly ten years ago, when Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma took a snowball onto the Senate floor to berate the “hysteria” of global warming.
“It is very, very cold out,” he explained.
Ironically, Imhofe died last July, on a day when it was very, very, very warm.
2024 was, in fact, the warmest year ever recorded (said an article appearing this week,6 just as the world was reeling from the devastating wildfires in L.A., and according to reliefweb, 3,583 other ongoing, primarily climate-related disasters7).
Further, the summer of ‘24 was the hottest season on record, and the hottest day of the hottest month of the hottest year was during last July, the same month as Inhofe’s death.
At 3 PM on the day of his death, July 9, it hit 100 in Oklahoma City.
Very, very, very warm.
Was Someone Somewhere trying to send a message about the chutzpah of that snowball in the Capitol prank?
One might say that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that the crazy weather we’ve been seeing is not related to human-exacerbated climate change. Now Senator Inhofe can bring his middle school antics right to Hades’ door to test that theory.
And now Gaslight’s Greatest Hits takes us from a snowball that melts to snowballing smelts.
So the once and future president, Donald Trump, has decided that the L.A. fires are happening because of smelts. That’s right. Little fishes. I won’t waste your valuable time by lending credence to this theory. 8
The real reasons places like California are seeing more natural disasters - from wildfires to droughts to floods - are being drowned in the sea of misinformation. I’ll just point you to a site that can help you respond to the annoying gaslighters who choose to politicize this tragedy while distracting us from the real cause behind it.9
Inside Climate News states:
Several of the statements made by incoming president-elect Trump, as well as Elon Musk, were riddled with both misinformation about our water management system as well as about the fires,” said Ashley Overhouse, a water policy advisor for Defenders of Wildlife whose work has focused on protecting the Delta smelt. “That kind of misinformation is not only incredibly inappropriate here, it’s also dangerous.”
Suffice to say that Trump’s disinformation campaign wouldn’t be so infuriating if it didn’t follow so closely on the heels of so many recent climate-based disasters of epic proportions here on U.S. soil, including damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the southeastern states and 22 other major natural disasters in the U.S. in 2024, the second highest on record (2023 is the champ, at 28).
The news keeps getting worse. According to the A.P., not only did last year’s global average temperature easily pass 2023’s record heat, it also surpassed, briefly, the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact.
It’s not about making the world better for our children anymore. Yes, they will suffer too, if there is anything left, but the flames have come literally right to our front door. It’s no longer about tomorrow, but here and now. It’s our world of 2025 that is becoming a dystopia. Not just the U.S., but all around the world, as this Australian front page coverage of the L.A. fires demonstrates:
There is nowhere to hide. We are all interconnected. This is the week when all of L.A. became a backlot and the worst disaster movie imaginable became real. And this is the week when the whole planet became L.A.
What does this mean? For Trump, the alarm bells should be ringing. Already we are seeing that there will be an increasingly steep cost of climate disasters in both economic and human terms - the cost of the L.A. fires already is being estimated at 50 billion - and we know from Covid in 2020 that when the corpses start to pile up, Trump starts spewing crazy conspiracy theories anywhere he can. We can expect more of this for the next four years, and the ones to suffer most will be Trump himself, in terms of popularity… and all of us, in terms of staying alive and healthy.
To repeat, for the gaslighters, the ones who most need this fact drill-baby-drilled into their heads: If only Trump understood that unless he turns himself around and helps to heal the environment, which can be done with tremendous economic benefits, he will eventually be blamed for every natural disaster that comes our way, as he was for Covid. And with climate catastrophes siphoning off his supporters as they head for the hills - or from them - there will be no place for him to hide.
Everyone will recognize that he who “smelt” it, dealt it. And he’ll have to deal with it.
If he were smart, he would begin planning now, as Joseph did in the Bible, for the years of famine (and floods) that are sure to come. He could end up a big hero. Maybe, in the end, his ego will push him in the right direction.
Meanwhile, he is following the path of his climate-denying predecessor, Senator Imhofe, right down the rabbit hole to the hellhole.
What does God think?
But there is one other distraction Trump might well attempt - one right out of Imhofe’s playbook:
Don’t blame me: Blame God.
Imhofe believed that only God can affect the climate, not people. He told a 2012 address given to a Voice of Christian Youth America radio program, “[M]y point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."
But what if God actually wants us to fix the problem? I don’t know what God thinks, but the question reminds me of an old joke, so well-worn that Imhofe might have heard it. I used to think it was a Jewish joke10, but I’ve since learned that there are Christian, Hindi and Buddhist versions.
It’s the parable of the drowning man. Here’s a version from Psychology Today.
A storm descends on a small town, and the downpour soon turns into a flood. As the waters rise, the local preacher kneels in prayer on the church porch, surrounded by water. By and by, one of the townsfolk comes up the street in a canoe.
"Better get in, Preacher. The waters are rising fast."
"No," says the preacher. "I have faith in the Lord. He will save me."
Still the waters rise. Now the preacher is up on the balcony, wringing his hands in supplication, when another guy zips up in a motorboat.
"Come on, Preacher. We need to get you out of here. The levee's gonna break any minute."
Once again, the preacher is unmoved. "I shall remain. The Lord will see me through."
After a while the levee breaks, and the flood rushes over the church until only the steeple remains above water. The preacher is up there, clinging to the cross, when a helicopter descends out of the clouds, and a state trooper calls down to him through a megaphone.
"Grab the ladder, Preacher. This is your last chance."
Once again, the preacher insists the Lord will deliver him.
And, predictably, he drowns.
A pious man, the preacher goes to heaven. After a while he gets an interview with God, and he asks the Almighty, "Lord, I had unwavering faith in you. Why didn't you deliver me from that flood?"
God shakes his head. "What did you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."
In the Jewish version, the preacher is a rabbi, who goes to heaven and God says, "You schmuck! I sent three boats!”
What can I say? The Christian God always sounds like Morgan Freeman and the Jewish God always sounds like Mel Brooks.
God has provided all the warnings we need to rally the world to this cause. God has sent us the technology to fix this problem on our own. The world is ready to do just that. All it takes is a leader with the wisdom to do it. If not an American president, then a whole lot of state governors and foreign leaders who can hold the line for the next four years, helped by regular folks like you and me, who see through cheap stunts like Inhofe’s melts and Trump’s smelts.
We can still save the planet.
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Causes for rising emissions (European Union website)
Burning coal, oil and gas produces carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
Cutting down forests (deforestation). Trees help to regulate the climate by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. When they are cut down, that beneficial effect is lost and the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse effect.
Increasing livestock farming. Cows and sheep produce large amounts of methane when they digest their food.
Fertilizers containing nitrogen produce nitrous oxide emissions.
Fluorinated gases are emitted from equipment and products that use these gases. Such emissions have a very strong warming effect, up to 23 000 times greater than CO2.
What is gaslighting? “The modern definition of gaslighting is a psychological manipulation technique in which a person tries to convince someone that their reality is untrue. It is a tactic often used by narcissists to gain control of their intended target. Gaslighting tries to create bewilderment, embarrassment, and misconceptions in the victim’s mind. The person performing the gaslighting is attempting to confuse a person into questioning their own beliefs, values, thoughts, and behaviors. …A person who is subjected to repeated attempts of gaslighting can doubt their thoughts, memories, and behaviors which in turn can cause them to become dependent on the abuser and emotionally frazzled. In many cases, gaslighting is considered psychological and emotional abuse.” (Middle Georgia State University)
Here’s what’s being monitored now on climate.gov - until next week.
Click to see the latest on Greenhouse Gases, Weather & Climate, Oceans, Snow & Ice, Health & Society and Ecosystems
Including these that are currently happening or being cleaned up (list produced with the help of AI):
See Inside Climate News: Misinformation Spreads Like Wildfire Online While LA Neighborhoods Burn - Misleading claims and falsehoods about water and firefighting resources distracted from the unprecedented conditions that left Los Angeles primed for the most destructive fire in its history.
It’s an exhausting task pushing against the immoral and cruel lies spread by Trump and Co. Thank you for doing your part.
Excellent, excellent. Born and raised in LA, fourth generation, thank you for today’s installment. As a kid I used to catch smelt using my dropline from the pier in Malibu. My heart is broken for those who lost their homes and for what is coming next week, for what is ending for mankind. I can only hope that Europe will be strong enough to resist the propaganda and lies Elon hath brought upon us! Best,
Kim