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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."
Well the white baby boomers have now solved the problem of leaving a shitty planet to the next generation ... they are going to help end it themselves.by electing trump and his clown show. They don't give a crap they won't be around in 10-15 years anyway. They just want to go out on top, even if noone is left to see it.
So. Trump & Ebell? Whatever. Let them think themselves important.They are not.
Unfortunately, we have made them important
(assuming you are in US, that is).
I doubt that this will be the end of humanity, as we've lived through the ice age as well. But certainly parts of the planet that were inhabitable before will become uninhabitable in the future, and this will create wars and maybe our whole civilisation will collapse. Maybe we will lose everything industrialisation has brought us, and likely it will be harder in the future to get a similar industrialisation going due to the energy resources of the planet being depleted. But at least those coal miners could keep their jobs... or wait, they were replaced with machines. Well, whatever.
Here we go...
Indeed - all those people complaining about elites and insiders are in for a shock when such "think-tank" losers who have done nothing in their lives other than circle Washington like files end up suddenly getting put into positions where they are in charge of thousands despite zero useful experience.
The article is so non-newsworthy that I have NO reaction except "Of course." Alt-Right has the Trump card and they are going to play it hard until the rest of us drown.
I'm only reminded of a prediction webpage I wrote when Dubya staggered into the White House. My predictions were kind of broad, divided into the categories of education, federal courts, economy, environment, military, war, Internet, and public trust in government. No details, but just probabilities and some wild estimates of recovery times. Back then I though I was just being a gloomy Gus, but looking over the predictions after 15 years, it now makes me look like a Pollyanna with rose-colored glasses. Is it worth making such an effort for the Donald?
Right now a question of some interest to me is how long it will take the angry losers to learn they are still losers. Might make them angrier, but of course no one really cares about losers, especially losers who were stupid enough to believe silly promises for a vote. Even more obviously, no one cares about the mindless always-R (or always-D) voters. It's the cold-blooded haters who worry me.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
People don't stop breeding,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, between education, economics, and so forth, yeah they do. Several countries already have negative or neutral birthrates and are only net positive due to immigration.
There is no reason to beleive humans could not acheive equilibrium.
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.
Oh, fuck you. The richest nation on the planet, with 4% of the population, produces a quarter of the world's pollution directly. And even the Indian and Chinese pollution you whine about is to power factories, producing your electronics and cheap shit for Wal-Mart for you to buy.
I didn't realize how political it had gotten. The Wicked Witch of the West probably got a better write-up from them.
India and China are both signatories to the Paris Climate Accord.
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.
Meanwhile, I wonder Trump thinks he can cancel the Paris Climate Accord? WIll he take take some white out to cover over the names of the other signatories?
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.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Wrong. Coastlines are flooding now, desertification is already increasing, and massive populations are already moving on short notice as lands become untenable.
If you want to save people, work out a plan to deal with a Carrington event (look it up) or the super volcano under Yellowstone. Those actually matter more, because they would be sudden catastrophes with immediate widespread consequences, not something that happens gradually so there is time to mitigate. Plus if Yellowstone happens, all your climate science and anti global warming measures go right out the window, because the ash in the air overrides it. Plan for those, THEN talk to me about global warming. It might be a problem, but it isn't the problem to worry about first.
The US needs energy independence. Renewables are now providing some of the cheapest electricity (recent bids for offshore wind power in Europe are at levels below electricity from coal). Renewables employs more people than fossil fuels in the USA. Renewables don't rely on a politically unstable region of the world, where the US has had to spend huge resources to ensure continued supplies.
We need oil today, but our investment should be in renewables. Focusing on fossil fuels is not an economically sound decision, even if you discount global climate change.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Teach them scientists with their fancy book-learnin' a less, once and for all. Who's with me?
If ignorance was good enough for my daddy and my grandaddy before me, then by gum, it's good enough for me. Godspeed you Mr President.
You are welcome on my lawn.
IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size.
Nonsense. We could build things to last and keep them longer. We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil. We could make hay while the sun shines not just literally but also in manufacturing so that we can use more wind power and the like which goes through production cycles. It's affected by population size, but there's a whole lot of other factors. Right now the primary driver is greed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse emissions, guess what - that still wouldn't be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions...it wouldn't be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world's carbon pollution comes from the developing world.
-- John Kerry
Well, it's a good thing that Trump wants to bring those factories back home where we can keep an eye on them. Plus, think of all the other good effects from making our own products again. Good thing Hillary the crooked globalist didn't win, eh? Her idea was to go ahead with TPP and shove even MORE globalism down our throats. Hurrah for democracy!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Right, that's where things like UN economic sanctions come into play. We can expect USA to be more on the receiving end of those than the giving end for the next four years or so.
So let me get this straight. If you lived on a street where several of your neighbors were murderers, your solution wouldn't be to try to get them put away, your solution would be to grab an ax and join them in the frenzy?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Or we could just move to alternative energy sources? Why in the fuck should we spend untold trillions on engineering the climate just so we can keep burning oil, when we could, you know, stop burning fucking oil.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
That's true, but the latest bids for European offshore wind power are at rates that are comparable to US prices for electricity from coal (less than .05 euro per kWh). Prices for solar and wind power are dropping very quickly, whether residential or utility-scale projects.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Which is not a license to act like a fool.
Here's the thing about democracy: it doesn't guarantee you good government. It only gives you the ability to kick a bad one out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... 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.
We might be able to adapt to climate change itself, but the biomes do not have that capability, and we cannot adapt to a failed biome... well we might be able to pull off a small populaion, but your descendents' odds of being in that population are pretty small, and that small population's ability to make technological progress will be rather limited.
Someone had to do it.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Pollution and deforestation is a bigger problem than CO2 emissions, yet the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues.
From which orifice did you pull that "fact"?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
No, it's a direct function of the aggregate amount of heat-trapping gasses put into the atmosphere by all of the people on earth. If you could magically lower the rate of population growth to zero or below tomorrow, yet at the same time more and more of the developing world adopts more carbon energy demanding western lifestyles, you still won't have fixed the problem. Conversely, if we could magically make it so that we could have an equivalent lifestyle on a small fraction of the carbon-producing energy we use now, we could still maintain population growth with greatly reduced carbon output.
I'm not arguing in favor of continued population growth, anything but. But population alone is not the driving factor.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
specially in the poorer countries
This is a cultural result of lingering agrarian traditions, though poverty itself can be a contributing factor, in that these traditions still make sense if kids are the best way to ensure food security and health care into old age, or a source of free labor in mid-life. Providing social services could help make those traditions look sillier faster.
Someone had to do it.
Boy, you sure bought it hook line and sinker. Prepare for an extremely disappointing 4 years.
Someone had to do it.
What is the speculation based on?
Science.
I doubt that this will be the end of humanity...
Just wait until he appoints an anti-vaxer as head of the CDC. Life was so much simpler when the only anti-vaxers were those who hated VMS.
It is too late. There is no going back. Now we ride it out to the end. The end of us.
Just because we're already in the rapids doesn't mean we shouldn't try to avoid the waterfall. Things can always get worse.
Oh, and in no way will this be the end for humanity, almost certainly not even for civilization. "Too hot to grow tropical crops in Antarctica" is way beyond any of the current predictions, and with wind and solar and batteries improving and cheapening by the year, we'll eventually drastically cut CO2 emissions if only out of greed.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
They both held a lid on the islamists in their countries, and the West had no business destabilizing them. The results of Western meddling in those shitholes is clear: they've become much, much worse shitholes.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Now that Tesla's fucked all Elon's got left is his Mars project.
If you'd asked me last week if I'd go to Mars I'd have said "no way".
Where do I sign up?
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
Are you going to bomb the EU into buying American goods?
Fuck yeah, why do you think Putin got Trump elected? So they can requite their undying love for each other by divvying up Europe and "plundering the booty", so to speak.
I dunno, as a broke white male, I kinda like the sound of "The American Empire". It rolls off the tongue. Empire... Emperor Trump. Emperor Donald J Trump I of the Great American Empire. How's that for Making America Great Again, eh?
Seriously, let him roll back O's regulations on coal plants. At this time, they have done NOTHING. Prior to O, we were like China and was growing our coal plants. However, it was not O's regs that have stopped this.
It was 2 things which was the Mercury regs ( while we are already way below Europe, Asia, but this will bring our mercury down to near zero) being moved to end of 2016, along with W's push for drilling and fracking. That fracking provided CHEAP CHEAP nat gas at a time when coal plants had to decide on shutting down or putting on scrubbers. As such, we went from ~60% coal (and 15% nat gas) to 27% coal and 33% nat gas at end of this year. So, our fossil fuel has converted to clean fossil, but also dropped.
So, what will happen over the next couple of years? Trump and GOP want to push both COAL AND DRILLING. If both are done, then nat gas will remain low costs, and no American utility will want coal plant. OTOH, China, japan, and south korea might pick up more, but I doubt that it will be too much. Australia is now heavily automated on their coal. So, cheap coal is going NO WHERE in America.
UN-Subsidized Wind is already cheaper than coal. Solar is more expensive, but that is the average. Solar City has the lowest installed costs and with their new plant should be cheap than coal. So, America's electricity will continue to move towards being cleaned up over time.
That leaves vehicles. Tesla's M3 will be cheaper and superior compared to its ICE competitors. Who will want to buy a BMW 300 series when they can buy a Tesla M3? Few. The fastest competitor will compete with the slowest version of the M3. That will no doubt cause buyers of some of the most polluting cars (luxury cars such as Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Caddy, Porsche, Lexus, Infiniti, etc) to continue losing shares. As it is, Tesla MS already sells 1/3 of the full size luxury market and should move up to about 50% by summer 2017. Tesla MX is expected to hit 33% of is market by summer 2017. Basically, Tesla will force car makers to move to DECENT EVs or die. And by decent EVs, we are not talking the leaf, bolt, I3, i5 type garbage. All of those have been gutted so that they will not compete against ICE vehicles. Tesla will force them to produce cars that compete against tesla and will destroy their own ICE.
So, for those of you concerned with where America is going, do not fret. While we will likely drop paris, we will continue to clean up regardless of what trump and his ilk do.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size. ... which has an extremely small population and Kuwait which has a mini population.
No it is not. Most CO2 per capita is produced in the USA
CO2 production is tied to energy usage, industries, house heating, car travel etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
Your arguments boil down to, "you can't completely eliminate it so there's no point in doing anything", "we're all to blame so everything is pointless", and "delaying the problem is as bad as speeding it up". Are those really the ones you intended to make?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Anti-science comments surrounding AGW on slashdot were actually worse before 2003. Public opinion has changed for the better, eg: most people on slashdot would now accept the fact it's getting warmer, very few did back in 2003.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by
this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten
future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is
ours, chew and eat our fill.
-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
"The Ethics of Greed"
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Don't bother looking when you're crossing the road because an an aeroplane might crash on your head. So develop a man portable air warning radar THEN think about getting new glasses.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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...
Education helps, but it doesn't do you much good if you're not voting rationally. I mean, picking a candidate who's primary selling point is "I'm different, in a way that you have no idea or even a guarantee that I am, but I'm different, believe it" isn't rational at all. On top of that, Slashdot has a pretty quirky crowd, and while we tend to be well educated and accomplished, we also tend to entertain things that are a little less... normal. Sometimes this is healthy, such as our general standards on civil and social rights or the outcry on mass surveillance back in 2013 - but sometimes it's not, such as, well, Donald Trump's popularity. However, it's alright - he's our president now, so there's no more uncertainty. With Republican domination at virtually every level of government, there is absolutely no excuse for his failures except himself and his party, so you can judge for yourself how Republican policies work out in practice.
Ultimately, I have serious doubt the Slashdot crowd will get what they want, but I'm keeping an open mind to Mr. Trump's presidency. If we do wind up dissatisfied, then I'm sure we'll be ready to vote for a progressive candidate, someone who'll probably be a younger version of Mr. Sanders, and hopefully a democratic senate and House of Representatives (as unlikely as that will ever be). And if/when we do, I'll be prepared to own my vote for that, much as I hold Trump supporters today to theirs.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Brawndo.
Because plants crave electrolytes.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Pollution and deforestation is a bigger problem than CO2 emissions, yet the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues.
From which orifice did you pull that "fact"?
Why? Is he wrong? Or are you just another one of those idiots like Trump who sit there with their hands over their eyes and their thumbs in their ears singing: LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALA I CAN'T SEE YOU.!!
Deforestation is proceeding all over the world at alarming speed and pollution isn't helping either. To take just one example you cannot get any marine seafood anymore that isn't full of microscopic plastic particles and has chemical traces that are not normally found in nature. The result has been a massive extinction wave which makes deforestation and pollution at least as big a problem as climate change.
>Resources exist to be consumed
Citation needed.
Important note: Nwabudike Morgan is a fictional character from the Civilization series meant to epitomize/caricature the ruthless/sociopathic entrepreneur. Quoting him, instead of Ayn Rand, should be seen as sarcasm.
China is now doing more than the US to clean up
Jesus AmiMoJo why are you constantly talking about subjects that you know literally nothing about?
My source is that right wing nut job think tank known as greenpeace
Yet China has another 200,000MW of coal-fired capacity under construction, and a new Greenpeace analysis has identified a further 150,000MW of projects potentially able to enter construction — despite recent suspensions.
I have an idea though... why dont you just fucking stop making shit up on every story they you "feel" for?
"His name was James Damore."
Nothing you just said contradicts the fact that you lied. You made shit up. You did it because you "feel."
China emits over twice as much CO2 as the US and the rate this growth of its emissions is still increasing you fucking fucktard lying twat.
My source is again that right wing think tank known as greenpeace.
Being a transvestite doesnt give you permission to lie about all the shit you feel for, fucker.
"His name was James Damore."
So it's Bush all over again? And you're surprised by this because...?
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Those of us who remember history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***