This is your brain on stale air

[bannination]

We always talk about global warming.... but I've never seen this side effect adequately explained. Very cool, and very scary. Some people can't function with 15% less brain.

[Vrede too]

We already know about at least 2 potentially dangerous feed back loops:

As the ice melts there's less sunlight reflected back into space = more warming.
As the permafrost melts more methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is released = more warming.

Is this a 3rd dangerous feed back loop? As the CO2 levels go up, we become dumber and more likely to be Repugs, thus less likely to address AGW = more warming.

[Vrede too]

U.S. EPA senior official falls short of calling climate change a crisis

The Trump administration's senior air pollution official said on Friday that he and his agency were still exploring the science of climate change and fell short of calling it a crisis.

Bill Wehrum, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)assistant administrator for air and radiation and previously a lobbyist for coal and oil industry interests, said at a public event in Washington that he supported a rollback of former President Barack Obama's centerpiece climate change regulation.

Democrats and environmental activists have criticized the Republican administration of President Donald Trump for reversing Obama-era regulations and announcing its intention to withdraw the United States from an international accord to fight global warming....

Asked if the EPA is trying to determine whether climate change is a crisis, he responded, "I'm trying to figure that out. I'll admit I did not come to the agency as a climate change expert ... I'll admit, there is a lot I don't understand about climate change," he said.

He added that he did not finish reading the National Climate Assessment, a U.S. government report mandated by Congress and written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, which outlines the projected impact of global warming on American society.

The report, released late last year, warned that climate change would cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure. White House said it was "largely based on the most extreme scenario." ...

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide.... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
-- Thomas A. Edison, 1931