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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."
None of us alive now will live long enough to see any seriously negative consequences. Humans will still be around in a hundred years, a thousand years, maybe in ten thousand years. We adapt.
I didn't realize how political it had gotten. The Wicked Witch of the West probably got a better write-up from them.
I'm not really worried about the environmental effects of climate change. We've scientifically progressed to the point where that can be managed. The real danger is that the impacts to the less advanced parts of the world are going to spur mass out migration. To some extent we're already seeing this in parts of the world. I don't know if it's fair to squarely lay all blame at the feet of climate change as shit like this happened historically before mankind could have any significant effect on the planet, but if we do have any potential to control these outcomes it would be best to prevent them.
As xenophobic as people might want to accuse America of being now, imagine what it would be like if millions flooded into the country to escape some hell wrought in their own lands due to prolonged weather effects such as drought, flooding, etc. Even the bleeding hearts who might normally feel obligated to help out in such matters will hoist the black flag if it gets bad enough.
I'm not fearful of the times ahead, but I don't think they'll be easy either. There's been all kinds of doom, whether from religious demagogues or scholars, preached in the past and yet humanity has endured and I suspect we will in the future. However, I didn't expect either the Brexit vote or Trump to succeed, but I think both show a level of dissatisfaction in the populace that's only going to grow further as time goes on. This feels like the beginning of transitional period for humanity where the old systems break down and give way to something new and different.
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.
Excuse me, but the story isn't about Hillary. She has NOTHING to do with this decision. You should stop trying to avoid the issues.
If things keep going this way, I'm all for the UN coming in and setting up a new provisional government. This insanity has to come to an end some way.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
As unfalsifiable as any inference from a geological or planetary or fossil record. Odd how this never seems to factor in unless we are dealing with climate science.
It's almost as if you don't want to know how the inference is made. Now why would that be?
all those people complaining about elites and insiders are in for a shock
That's the problem with voting for "change." You are going to get it.
I was very surprised, just based off reading comments on this site over the past few days, how many ardent Trump supporters are here. I say surprised not because I am assessing a value judgement but because US presidential voting in recent years has become much more strongly correlated with education level, and I presumed that a tech site would reflect certain patterns as a result. (Full disclosure: I did not like any of the available ballot options and wrote in my presidential vote for Alexander Hamilton. I live in a solidly colored state on the West Coast and knew that my little exercise in protest would not have any meaningful effect on my state's electoral college votes, otherwise I would have voted seriously.)
At any rate, it turned out that many many more people than pollsters and the media expected cast their votes in the cause of upsetting the status quo. There's nothing wrong with being unsatisfied with the way things are and wanting to lob a big water balloon full of "f--k you" at the powers that be in this country.
When you vote for the loser, you enter a world of "coulda woulda shoulda" and you can just theorize how things would have been better. But when you vote for the winner, you have to own that vote because you're getting what you said you wanted. That's the price of winning. And it will be fascinating to see whether the people who cast a ballot to shake up the system like what they get when the system actually gets shaken up...
"95% of all Slashdot
Because modern humans didn't exist 200 million years ago and didn't leave Africa until 20-thousand years ago so global temperatures prior to that are utterly irrelevant since we've NEVER had to survive (let alone to try thrive) in them.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
IF global warming is anthropogenic - WE ARE FUCKED. Sticking a carbon tax is like putting a toll on a toilet at a bar and expecting that people will stop peeing.
Under capitalism, taxing something is basically the best way we have to encourage people not to do it, especially if the money is spent cleaning up after the people who do the thing anyway...
BINGO! Regulations only work if the taxpayers are willing to fund a significant number of inspectors to enforce the regulations.have to fall in line. Those that don't will get surprise visits from inspectors, who will generally demand the unpaid tax at triple damages. That prevents, or at least reduces, transgressions.
I have heard some manufacturers quite literally say that they would prefer to use a "less poisonous" solvent in their process (for example). But if they did, its slightly higher cost would destroy their competitive advantage, and bankrupt them.
Really. There are plant-owners in industries that would much rather use a less toxic process solvent, but are prevented by free-market forces from doing so without losing any competitive advantage. They really do exist, but can do nothing unless the regulators or tax-men impose the same requirement on everyone in a market sector simultaneously and equally.
The EPA's SuperFund is a good example of this force for environmental clean-up in action.