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Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic To Lead EPA Transition (cbsnews.com)

Billly Gates writes: Trump's transition team is steamrolling ahead to transition the government. Trump chose Myron Ebell to oversee environmental policies. Myron Ebell is chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of climate change denialists and alarmists. Scientific American provides some background information about Ebell in a report from earlier this year: "In a biography submitted when he testified before Congress, he listed among his recognitions that he had been featured in a Greenpeace 'Field Guide to Climate Criminals,' dubbed a 'misleader' on global warming by Rolling Stone and was the subject of a motion to censure in the British House of Commons after Ebell criticized the United Kingdom's chief scientific adviser for his views on global warming. More recently, Ebell has called the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan for greenhouse gases illegal and said that Obama joining the Paris climate treaty 'is clearly an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate's authority.' He told Vanity Fair in 2007, 'There has been a little bit of warming ... but it's been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it's caused by human beings or not, it's nothing to worry about.' Ebell's views appear to square with Trump's when it comes to EPA's agenda. Trump has called global warming 'bullshit' and he has said he would 'cancel' the Paris global warming accord and roll back President Obama's executive actions on climate change."

26 of 1,066 comments (clear)

  1. And you think Hillary would be any different? by Uberbah · · Score: 2, Informative

    She exported fracking the world as Secretary of State. She waged war on Libya and Syria to keep the supply of energy moving. She was going to continue in the fine tradition of Obama - who was a bigger oil man than Bush and Cheney combined.

    That's the problem with all the whining and bitching from Dems and the media, before the election, now, and after Trump takes the oath of office - every criticism you can make of Trump applies to Hillary Clinton, as much if not more so. The only "difference" here is that Hillary would utter the occasional platitude that we need to do something about climate change, while continuing to drill for more and more oil, and mine for more and more coal.

    1. Re:And you think Hillary would be any different? by Jzanu · · Score: 4, Informative

      Libya and Syria were civil revolts by subject populations against dictators, in both cases resisted with military force. In Libya the western world organized and deposed a dictator as required. In Syria the fallout of the motivational failure of the Republican party and the deadlock they inflict on the most powerful nation prevents equivalent and necessary actions to remove Assad.

    2. Re:And you think Hillary would be any different? by Uberbah · · Score: 4, Informative
  2. Flamebait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The Scientific American article is dated Sep 26th.
    This post isn't news, just someone looking for today's "how fucked are we?" reaction in comments.

  3. So no one read the fucking article? by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is one of the scare pieces the media ran to frighten liberals into destroying trump.

    The article was written BEFORE Tuesday.

    And judging from the cesspool responses in this thread, I'm also going to be exiting from reading and commenting here.

    Beau, you should be ashamed of yourself. Either you aren't doing your job and being an editor, or you are abusing your job and being a jackass.

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  4. Let's play "WHO SAID IT?" by Jhon · · Score: 1, Informative

    “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”

    Wait for it...

    "President Obama"

  5. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by quax · · Score: 5, Informative

    Less funny longer time scale:

    http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx...

  6. She was pretty anti-coal by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Informative

    and it cost her Ohio. Coal's pretty worthless if you're not willing to allow massive pollution of the kind that has immediately negative consequences for people's quality of life. Sure, you can make steel with it instead of burning it for power, but there's a glut of Chinese steel that's not going away anytime soon.

    The thing about Hilary is she wasn't going to make things better but she also wasn't going to make them worse. Trump will accelerate all the bad stuff while his running mate + supreme court picks take away women's reproductive rights. If you have a wife, girlfriend or daughter and no anything about the terror that is child birth left up to God's whim you know this is terrifying...

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  7. Re:Breaking News by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course Trump can cancel the Paris Climate Accord, at least for the US. The Senate never ratified it. It, in spite of being a treaty, was declared in force for the US on Obama's word alone. Trump's word alone can therefore repeal it.

  8. Disingenuous all around by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. The SA article is dated September 26, but the submitter carefully worded the opening sentence to make it sound like a post-election event ("Trump's transition team is steamrolling ahead to transition the government"). Those people we call "editors" either didn't check it or didn't care.
    2. The SA article presents this as an absolute fact, but then essentially says "a little birdie told me so." Other sources (including one written today) are honest enough to call it what it is: a rumor.

  9. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by quax · · Score: 5, Informative

    Consider the scaling, on the scaling to the left our current trend would make for an almost vertical ascent.

  10. Check out this guy's science background. by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to Wikipedia he's got a BA in philosophy and a M.Sc in politics. Between getting out of school and setting himself as a climate expert he worked as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

    He has never done anything STEM related or worked in any other field but politics.

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  11. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by quax · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google is your friend. There are many ways to infer the past thermal record, some are mentioned in the article.

  12. Just in time ... by quax · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... when now even biologists can detect the impact of global warming on the biosphere.

    I am sure if we just keep ignoring the problem, it will go away.

  13. It gets worse by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Trump is also floating the name "Ben Carson" as Sec'y of Health and Human Services. Ben Carson is a creationist who hawks vitamins to cure cancer.

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    1. Re:It gets worse by bongey · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ben Carson one of the best pediatric neurosurgeons in the country. Was Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins, that happens to be a Christian. Yep he screwed up a bit on the vitamins crap. Much better than the two previous Obummer sec'y who were both politicians, neither of the two had any education in medical field.

  14. Science by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is the speculation based on?

    Science.

  15. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by yuriklastalov · · Score: 2, Informative

    Where the fuck have you been since 2003? This place has been going down the shitter for so long all that's left are the skid marks.

  16. Re:MAD - and some of you will be by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Informative

    Clean energy is a huge opportunity for the US economy, not a threat. China is now doing more than the US to clean up, so don't give us that "it's futile if no-one else does it" shit.

    If the US wants to build up manufacturing again it will either have to clean up, because the EU requires it if you want to sell your products here, or it will have to limit itself to selling into developing nations.

    Plus, you should stop being selfish libtard fucks.

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  17. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yep, apparently a science budget that has been set by republicans for 6 years has been funding only the scientists who keep finding what the republicans really didn't want to hear. Hell the last several chairmen of the senate science committee were all very vocal deniers and the majority of them were creationists (Apparently knowing anything about, or even LIKING, science actually DISQUALIFIES you for the job of overseeing the government's science funding).

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  18. Brawndo by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Informative

    Brawndo.
    Because plants crave electrolytes.

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  19. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by fintux · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have a look at this: http://coed.com/2016/11/09/how... The generation difference is much greater than the regional difference. There are also other interesting maps here: http://www.motherjones.com/pol....

  20. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by tburkhol · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm sincerely interested in knowing what your point is.

    His point is that between 100,000 years ago (last ice age) and 100 years ago, the planet warmed by about 3 degrees. In the last 100 years, the planet has warmed by another 3 degrees. So, when Mr Ebell claims that 3 degrees is well within historical ranges, he's looking only at the delta and not the velocity.

    Waffle Iron is exaggerating a bit, though - it really only took 10,000 years of warming to end the ice age, and the temperature division between pre- and post-industrial revolution is probably more like 4:2 than 3:3. Still 4 degrees in 10,000 years is two orders of magnitude faster than 2 degrees in 100. You can get downtown by walking at 1 m/s or by 100 m/s bullet train. Same trip, same distance. One takes 5 minutes, the other takes 8 hours. Also, it hurts a lot more if the bullet train hits you that if the walker hits you.

  21. Re:And the hits keep on coming ... by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Community Reinvestment Act has never FORCED a bank to loan anyone money. Ever. It merely required that the banks stop discriminating by having different loan terms based on neighborhood.

    That doesn't mean they were required to loan anyone money, only that they had to treat everyone the same.

    And there was nothing in the law - any law - that required the banks to over-leverage, or lie about the ratings of their investment instruments, or to hide the poisonous mortgages in bundled-tiered-re-bundled packages.

    > Conservative economists were warning about the bubble but were ignored.

    Cite one.
    =Smidge=

  22. Re:Breaking News by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of course Trump can cancel the Paris Climate Accord, at least for the US. The Senate never ratified it. It, in spite of being a treaty, was declared in force for the US on Obama's word alone. Trump's word alone can therefore repeal it.

    A nit: The Senate basically never ratifies treaties that the US enters. We almost never use the treaty process defined in the Constitution.

    What we do instead is what's called a "congressional-executive treaty", where the executive branch (usually the State Department, though sometimes the president personally) negotiates the terms and signs them. This signature does not obligate the country, unless everything being committed to is within the executive branch's authority (those are called sole executive treaties). Normally that's not the case, so the signature on its own is really nothing more than a commitment to go back to Congress and try to get enabling legislation passed which enacts the terms of the treaty as federal law. This is done through the normal legislative process, getting both houses to pass the legislation with a simple majority vote and then having the president sign it.

    The reason the congressional-executive process is used rather than the constitutional process is that it's usually easier to get majority approval of both houses than a 2/3 majority of one, especially since it leaves room for negotiation. Not generally on the agreed-on terms of the treaty, but on domestic side issues (i.e. pork).

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  23. Re: And the hits keep on coming ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is bunk, another example of false equivalence. Go do some research before makong claims like this. The greenhouse gas emissions from producing solar cells or wind turbines are completely offset in the first few months of use. Or, equivalently, it only takes a few months worth of energy to make these devices. After that, you're home free for 20-30 years. It is entirely possible to create a self-sustaining, zero-emission energy system. And since wind and solar power are now getting cheaper then coal, it's going to happen whether you care about climate change or not.