monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The US experienced a record year of losses from fires, hurricanes and other weather related disasters in 2017, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

Total losses amounted to $306bn the agency said, over $90bn more than the previous record set in 2005.

Last year saw 16 separate events with losses exceeding $1bn, including Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Noaa confirmed that 2017 was the third warmest year on record for the US.

Last year witnessed two Category 4 hurricanes make landfall in the States.

Hurricane Harvey produced major flooding as a result of a storm surge and extreme rain. Nearly 800,000 people needed help. Researchers have already shown that climate change increased the likelihood of the observed rainfall by a factor of at least 3.5.

Noaa says the total costs of the Harvey event were $125bn, which is second only to Hurricane Katrina in terms of costs over the 38 years the record has been maintained.

Hurricane Irma was a Category 5 storm for the longest period on record. Rain gauges in Nederland, Texas, recorded 1,539mm, the largest ever recorded for a single event in the mainland US. Hurricanes Irma and Maria cost $50bn and $90bn respectively.

As well as hurricanes, there were devastating fires in western states, particularly in California. While last winter and spring saw heavy rains in the region that alleviated a long-term drought, the resulting boom in vegetation created abundant wildfire fuel. Fires in both the north and south of California meant hundreds of thousands of residents had to be evacuated from their homes.

The report from Noaa says that across the US, the overall cost of these fires was $18bn, tripling the previous wildfire cost record.

Noaa confirmed that in overall temperature terms, it was the third warmest year in the US since records began in 1895, behind 2012 and 2016.

"In the general picture the warming [of the] US over the long term is related to the larger scale warming we have seen on the global scale," said Deke Arndt, chief of Noaa's monitoring section.

"The US will have a lot more year to year variability so that it bounces up and down depending on prevailing weather regimes. But the long term signal is tied with long term warming."

The eastern US has been experiencing an extreme cold snap, leading some, such as US president Donald Trump, to query the impact of global warming.

However, Noaa scientists were quick to point out that cold spells do occur even if the overall temperature trend is rising.

"We do live in a warming world but we still have very cold poles and we still have the same weather systems that pull cold air away from those poles and down to where we live," said Deke Arndt

"We are still going to see blue blobs on the map, but when they average out with the pinks and red that we see over the course of the year, we end up seeing a pretty warm year."

While Monday's temperature data from Noaa deals only with the US, last week the European Weather Centre said that globally, 2017 was in fact the second warmest on record.

According to those figures, 2017 was the warmest year on record without the influence of the El Niño weather phenomenon. The calculation was derived from millions of observations from land, sea and space, combined with models.

Temperatures in most regions of the world were above the 1981-2010 average - especially in the Arctic. On the island of Svalbard, the city of Longyearbyen repeatedly experienced mean monthly temperatures more than 6 degrees C above the long-term mark.

In November last year the World Meteorological Organization issued a provisional bulletin stating that 2017 was likely the second or third warmest year on record. That prediction will be clarified in the coming days and weeks as various agencies around the world publish their data for the full year.

There are usually some small differences between the datasets held by the different national bodies based mainly on their coverage of the polar regions and and in their estimates of sea-surface temperature.

Trump has started his “Lie to the Fools” tour to convince the public that his tax giveaway to billionaires is a good deal for the general-public. Trump is now claiming that the tax cut is not $1.5 trillion but it is actually a $5.5 trillion tax cut. Since all the news articles have listed the tax cut at $1.5 trillion how can Trump now claim it to be $5.5 trillion? This appears to be a case of those alternative White House facts. “Figures never lie but liars do.” Now the undisputed king of liars is showing you how it is done. The Senate rules only allowed the Republicans to raise the deficit by $1.5 trillion this is why the tax bill settled on that figure. But to arrive at this figure some taxes were cut, the tremendous tax cuts for corporations from 35% to 21% far exceeds the $1.5 trillion. The taxes were indeed cut by $5.5 trillion but other taxes were raised by $4 trillion. Trump and the White House are flaunting the massive amount of tax cuts to corporations as cuts to the middle class. The Republican tax scam raises taxes by $4 trillion nearly three times the amount the Republican cut taxes.

The beauty of the Republican tax scam is the is that one group is getting massive tax cuts while the vast-majority will see little if any of the tax cuts. While the majority of the tax deductions were eliminated for middle class they gave the businesses 20% of their income tax free in the pass-through loop hole. While most tax deductions were eliminated for individuals the very same tax deductions remained for businesses. Why do the figures work? Because you have the 400 richest Americans on one side of the equation and the other 330 million on the other side of the equation. A few dollars from the 330 million can and did provide a tremendous tax cut for the richest. Know this tax scam for what it actually is a $4 trillion tax increase on the majority to pay for a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the 400 richest Americans. What the Republicans are counting on is that the middle class will not know how this actually affects them until 2019 when they fill out their taxes fort 2018.

Think Tonkin Gulf, know what I'm sayin?

It's odd that you feel the need to mischaracterize my questions and opinion as 'crowing'.

Transcript in full

Miller: Jake, what I care about is having three minutes to tell the truth about the President of the United States.

Tapper: You had plenty of time. I let you give like a three-minute filibuster at the very top.


Miller: You gave me two minutes.

Tapper: Stephen. Okay. Thanks for coming.

Miller: You should be ashamed of yourself, honestly.

Tapper: This is the reason they don't put you out on TV, okay. This is the reason.

Miller: No, Jake, you brought me on to talk about the Camp David summit and you -

Tapper: First of all, I had plenty of questions about immigration, but you kept telling the same story over and over.

Miller: Because you’re asking about the salacious – (inaudible)

Miller (cont.): Look that’s all you want to talk about and you don’t have any interest in talking about –

Tapper: I had plenty of questions but you kept on repeating yourself and kept on not letting me ask my questions.

Miller: Really, because you’re (inaudible) calling me a factotum.

Tapper: After you spent the entire interview attacking CNN and (inaudible), OK, so don’t act all offended.

Miller: I'm not acting offended. I am offended. I'm offended by you and I'm offended by your network.

It's odd that you feel the need to mischaracterize my questions and opinion as 'crowing'.

We have a very firm stance. Look, our stance, you know what it is. We're very firm. [Kim] knows I'm not messing around. I'm not messing around. Not even a little bit. Not even 1%. He understands that.

What the Republicans are counting on is that the middle class will not know how this actually affects them until 2019 when they fill out their taxes fort 2018.

By bribery, I mean giving Iran money to slow the process of developing nuclear weapons (Clinton era)...

...and using the weapons they developed anyway (Obama era.).

Are we all crowing?

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is blaming the “deep state” for the administration’s failure to get a federal energy board to authorize subsidies for coal and nuclear power plants.

Lewandowski said the Monday decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows the “deep state is very real.”

The commission’s unanimous decision to reject Mr. Perry’s proposal is final. While four of the five members of the commission were nominated by Mr. Trump, the agency has historically operated independently of the executive branch

Are you really suggesting that we should have stolen the funds we returned in order to rebuild corroded infrastructure in the USA?