TRUMP NAMES CLIMATE SKEPTICS, ENERGY LOBBYISTS TO KEY POSTS,TAKING AIM AT DISMANTLING CLIMATE ACCORD AND POLLUTION PROTECTIONS

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By Miriam Raftery

November 11, 2016 (Washington D.C.)—President-Elect Donald Trump has wasted no time in appointing environmental and health experts’ worst nightmares to key cabinet posts, though oil energy executives are praising the moves.

Energy lobbyist Mike McKenna has been named to head Trump’s Department of Energy transition team; his recent clients include Dow Chemical and the oil tycoon Koch brothers,  Climate Wire and Scientific American report. Trump has also named infamous climate change denier Myron Ebell to lead the Environmental Protection Agency transition team. Ebell has said climate change is “nothing to worry about” in an interview with Vanity Fair

The British House of Commons in Parliament sought to censure Ebell for his criticisms of Britain’s chief scientific advisor.  Ebell has been called a “misleader” on global warming by Rolling Stone and was named to a Greenpeace “Field Guide to Climate Criminals.” 

Trump has called climate change a hoax, even though 97% of the world’s top climate scientiswts say it is real and man-made. 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded worldwide. Trump has said he would cancel the international Paris climate accord if elected. 

In an e-mail, Ebell stated post-election, “President-elect Trump’s ofte-repeated promises in the campaign are fairly black-and-white,”  Scientific American reports.

Trump is expected to dismantle President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Act, which included EPA regulations to cut coal-fired power plant emissions, which contribute to air pollution and global warming, by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. Trump has called for construction of more coal-fired power plants.

Trump has not yet named his Secretary of the Interior,  though it will likely be someone who favors opening up federally protected publics for oil drilling,  fracking, and other energy development. He is also expected to push through the Keystone pipeline and boost fossil fuel production including domestic drilling that include include offshore drilling along California's shoreline, as well as loosen environmental and safety regulations on pipelines, actions that concern many in the wake of the San Bruno deadly gas pipeline explosion and the ongoing protest against the Dakota Access pipeline amid fears it could pollute the Missouri River.

Trump’s election drew praise from Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, who stated, "America's prosperity and security is anchored by a strong oil and natural gas industry, a vision that emerged victorious last night,” the Dallas News reported Wednesday.

But John Sterman,a professor at the Massachusetts Instittute of Technology, wrote in a Climate Interactive analysis the day after the election,”Pessimists will find abundant support for despair this morning,” the New York Times reports. 

He voiced fears that if the U.S. pulls out of the international climate pact, other nations may follow, boosting greenhouse gas emissions sharply at a time when climate experts warn that warming is so extreme that we are reaching a tipping point from which there may be no way to halt the acceleration of  warming to temperatures too extreme to support life on earth within a generation.

According to the Sierra Club, one of the nation’s most respected environmental protection organizations, Trump is the only world leader who doubts the science behind climate change. Upon word of his election, the Sierra Club posted on Facebook, “This is a deeply disappointing day for the United States and the world. But what is important to remember is that there are millions upon millions of Americans who stood up to Donald Trump’s ignorance, his misogyny, and his racism -- and these same millions will be standing up every day moving forward to ensure he can’t roll back all the progress we’ve made in recent years to tackle the climate crisis. Make no mistake, this loss hurts for reasons that extend far beyond this space. But we are not licking our wounds, we are preparing for the fights to come.

 

 

 


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Comments

sanity will again run the

sanity will again run the world and the fraud and crime of global warming pushed back into the closet of hate and evil where it belongs

What "experts" do you base your false views on?

I happen to have a degree in Enviornmental Studies, studied under top climate scientists at UCSB, and recently interviewed one from  Scripps for our show. Yeah, the guy who actually measures ice in antarctica who gave very detailed explanations of why they are 100% certain this is man -made.  I've read thea actual science and studied actual data, unlike the sheep blindly believing what the alt-right anti-science propaganda sites and politicians in the pockets of the oil industry tells them.

The hate and evil is on the side of those who put oil profits above the safety of our world.  How will you feel when you find out the hard way how wrong you are, and you realize to your horror that the planet is destructing at a fast pace with temps far higher than now and you were partly responsible for this by refusing to educate yourself on actual facts?

 

...And don't let me forget

Myron Ebell is a PAID LOBBYIST for the oil and gas industry. Even if you didn't believe in climate change (which puzzles me greatly), you have to see that this man is a SERIOUS conflict of interest. He's a horrible pick and needs to be denied any further post in the administration.

Stop the Ignorance and think this one through

EastCountyDan: Jesus, your ignorance on this issue is the exact reason we face a serious crisis. While your concern for veteran's is valuable and well-intentioned, it has so little to do with this issue. We are NOT AT ALL discussing "1 degree warmer weather in 150 years." You need to do some serious research and find out what's going to happen to the world if we allow the current course of events to continue. The stakes are SO HIGH, that basically any other issue needs to take a backseat. Who cares who fits the bill? Everything else, everything else you want to build or fight for will fall apart in several generations if we do not address this issue seriously. Think of your family, your kids, grandkids... all that work and love and attention you will dedicate to them will be for absolutely nothing when our country destabilizes like Syria, which exists in an area which historically was known as the FERTILE CRESCENT and the cradle of civilization. Doesn't look like that today, does it? Climate change isn't in the future, it's already happening and the evidence is overwhelming. If you don't believe me, do your own research asI have done, from many independent and verified sources.

Perpetuating the myth

Does it upset you when the fact that polar ice is the highest in history? Does it upset you when you find out that the data has been manipulated to show global warming when it isn't? Just curious.
NASA disagrees with you Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.
The new Antarctic sea ice record reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth’s environments, said NASA researchers. Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has referred to changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change. Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss.
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.
Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year; the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km). On Sept. 19 this year, for the first time ever since 1979, Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 7.72 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice extent stayed above this benchmark extent for several days. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 7.23 million square miles (18.72 million square kilometers).
The single-day maximum extent this year was reached on Sept. 20, according to NSIDC data, when the sea ice covered  7.78 million square miles (20.14 million square kilometers). This year's five-day average maximum was reached on Sept. 22, when sea ice covered 7.76 million square miles (20.11 million square kilometers), according to NSIDC.

So now...

... we have moved from it's Bush's fault to it's all Trump's fault. Even BEFORE he has named a single cabinet member. The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Climate change is only for America

Riddle me this. Why is it always America that has to foot the bill for "Global Warming". China is the biggest polluter in the world by far yet we are the ones that have to pay for it. All of us working class that when the price of gas goes up a dollar we have to cut back somewhere else in our daily budget.
Oh and stop the fallacy of big business and corporations needing to be taxed more to cure it. That is the biggest lie there is.
Let me help you out with this. Business, corporations, industries, etc. DO NOT PAY TAXES!!!!!
Not a single one. ANY and ALL expenses' are passed to the consumer. You really think if you want to "Give it to those horrible gas companies" with a huge tax? Well welcome to more expensive gasoline. Oh and that doesn't mean that you pay more to drive. No no no no. It means you pay more to drive, the truck that brings your food you the store pays more to drive, the store that pays gas and electricity pays more, the restaurant pays more and that means every single facet of your life becomes more expensive.
When we get to a point that veterans are not sleeping on the streets and killing themselves because they can't get help, when people in San Diego don't pay half a months pay just for rent, when we can all have at least 3 to 4 months of living cash in our bank accounts than we can talk about the 1 degree warmer weather we will have in 150 years.