Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he wants the Environmental Protection Agency to be run by Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a longtime ally of the oil and gas industry who has led litigation efforts to overturn the EPA’s rules to address climate change.
As a state attorney general, Pruitt was caught sending a letter to regulators that was drafted by lobbyists working for Devon Energy, a major drilling company. As Pruitt joined a lawsuit against rules opposed by the fracking industry, he simultaneously courted industry donors, including billionaire fracking executive Harold Hamm, who served as the co-chair of Pruitt’s 2013 election campaign.
Pruitt has questioned the role of human-made pollution in causing climate change, writing for the National Review this year that the “debate is far from settled.”
The Pruitt announcement was immediately criticized by environmentalists. Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the nomination of “a climate change denier” who “has worked closely with the fossil fuel industry to make this country more dependent, not less, on fossil fuels.” Robert Verchick, the president of the Center for Progressive Reform, called the pick “a clear indication that the administration plans a full-throated assault on environmental protections.”
The nomination comes on the heels of other industry-friendly staff announcements. Earlier this week, the Trump transition team revealed that a former mining industry lobbyist as well as think tank fellow who denies human-made climate change are among the team members now reshaping the EPA to fit the president-elect’s agenda.
George Sugiyama, one of the new EPA transition team members, was the chief counsel for Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the lawmaker best known for his claim that climate change is a “hoax” and that scientific research tying greenhouse-gas emissions to the warming planet have been refuted by the Bible. Before working for Inhofe, Sugiyama was paid to lobby on environmental regulations on behalf of the National Mining Association.
David Kreutzer, another hire for the Trump EPA transition, is an economist and think tank official who has been a vocal critic of environmental regulations and climate change science. “Global warming is for real in that we’ve had global warming since the end of the last Ice Age,” he told C-SPAN’s Steve Scully last year.
As a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a group funded by foundations controlled by Koch Industries and other fossil fuel firms, Kreutzer has co-published several papers in which he casts doubt on federal policies aimed to fight climate change. In a paper from April that calls climate change an “unlikely problem,” Kreutzer and his colleagues argued that Obama’s EPA policies were “favoring elites and undermining the fairness of our economic system.”
This year alone he has criticized carbon dioxide caps, solar power, and fuel regulations. His main critique is that they are too costly and give the government too much power. Kreutzer has advocated several times for more domestic oil drilling. In 2008, he recommended in congressional testimony that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be drilled for oil.
During the election, Trump also selected Myron Ebell, an official at the Competitive Enterprise Institute — another think tank that relies on donors such as Devon Energy and Koch Industries — to work on leading the handoff at the EPA. Like his Trump colleagues, Ebell has long campaigned against any type of action to curb greenhouse gas pollution. Though he’s not a scientist, Ebell has made a career out of questioning the science around global warming, working at a fossil fuel industry group formed in 1997 “to dispel the myths of global warming exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis.” He has said that global warming is “nothing to worry about.”
Top photo: Exhaust from a coal-fired power station.
I think it’s interesting to consider what the counter-move will be. There are many tropical countries which are seeing the U.S. dismiss global warming, claiming the science is bunk, taking the profit (on behalf of the very richest), and keeping always in mind that if there is global warming it won’t hurt the U.S. very much since a lot of it is really cold and studies have shown it is one of the least adversely affected countries. The U.S. does this in collaboration with its new KGB allies which are in a similar position.
So what will the tropics do? The obvious thing is that they have another look at the science behind this myth about global ozone depletion! They’ve been paying fortunes for fancy patented refrigerants that don’t work as well as CFCs, and fancy patented new air conditioners to put them in, and surely now will be their time to ask: why? Maybe ozone holes are just a natural cycle. And even if they’re not, well, the tropics can save money on their ever-increasing cooling bills… and the ozone holes are at way high latitudes they don’t have to worry about. Seems like a no-brainer…
He’s a liberal, I tells ya. He brought in a fast food exec at Labor, an oil advocate for EPA, wants Sessions at Justice. He’s so liberal and he’s friends with Crooked Hillary. He’s going to resign and give her the job in January.
Liberal Trump. Hahaha.
William Bednarz,
Nobody’s “buying jobs.” The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, and Trump made a specific point during the campaign that they need to be lowered significantly. Tax-relief isn’t “buying” something at its expense–rather it’s stopping a theft.
They have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world if you don’t include deductions and other exclusions. If you do, they rank a bit lower. This also doesn’t take into account other complexities, such as state tax rates, property tax rates and income tax rates, which are quite a bit lower on average in the US compared to a lot of other developed nations.
The core issue driving all of this is total tax revenue, and part of the reason that the corporate tax rate is so high in the US is that it is extremely politically unpopular to raise income tax rates. But, one way or another, the government needs revenue to function.
I find that one decent metric to get a fuller picture of tax in a nation is to look at the percentage of GDP derived from tax, as this wraps all those taxes together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP
By that metric, the USA is fairly middle of the road, and quite low by developed country standards.
… if you’re rich enough or smart enough to navigate the code to get those deductions and exclusions.. otherwise, for all those companies not like General Electric: good luck.
Donald Trump has not been sworn in yet. I do not know what his oath will entail. Has he – hand picked his cabinet – as a diversion to his plans. . . There is no cabinet till after Trump is sworn in – and then they in turn are sworn in. . .. I am not trying to make light of what my be a very bad situation.
Trump to date has played everyone so far. . .
Trump has not done anything yet . Not one god-damed thing . What we are witnessing is the biggest Pre-Innaugaral smear campaign ever waged .
Yeah Trump might be the unproven worst . Then again Hillary was a proven evil .
And Bernie Sanders owes me $500 !! What a Judas Goat he has turned into .
The whole thing STINKS !!!!
Agree, the SenSanders telling us the CrookdClintons NotNow routine is painful. Can think of some good things to do with that amount.
Karma has a way.
Donald Trump made 282campaign promises – how many of them do you believe?? If you promise everything to everybody someone will be short changed. THE WALL has changed to a fence – maybe a double fence in places. Not going to buy jobs except with carrier?? He says he is re-thinking the dreamers who are in college. . . FLIP-FLOP. . . Supports?? COAL?? and fossil fuels – that includes oil?? So with coal you get black lung disease – and oil – air pollution and lung cancer??
No more imported steel – but the companies let the equipment rot in hell requiring new equipment. Imported steel is cheaper which is why people were buying it – now to buy new equipment the steel will cost?? Soundbites & Lies – – it does not add up. . .
Number 12 & 13 on his list – – one says he is against raising the federal minimum wages (it is already too high). . . .
the other says he is for raising the federal minimum wage – the people need a raise……
Smoke & Mirrors???
Politicians are always lying. DJT is really good at being a politician; his thank you tour seems to be generating quite a bit of popular support, .. wouldn’t you say? The crowd sounds excited.
in a sense, Climate Change Deniers Have Declared War On All People. They will insist that your suffering today, and more suffering tomorrow is a natural consequence of things and they also make big profits – at your demise. They have no more right to life on this planet than you. And the right to life of the living is first and foremost says God.
Hey Barb ,,
I’m almost 78yrs and if there is one thing I’ve learned about us humans :
We don’t give two shits about anything except that which effects us personally . Now personal can be extended to family , then tribe , then country ,,and so forth . But fact is , only mass death of the human race can extend the personal to the species level .
As the old Spanish Priests made the disobedient Indians say before they chopped off their heads ” ADIOS ” !!
A DIOS——-> TO GOD !!!
One thing good about picking an imbecile to run the EPA who is a direct descendent of the flat-earth club is that the oceans will rise and wipe out those wealthy seaside mansions. This is a DOUBLE WAMMY BENEFIT because it will remove the wealthy mansions from what should be public beaches (they should all be public) and it will hopefully bankupt them which removes lots of the wealth monster interest demanding pie they insist we feed.
Indeed will they learn by the school of Reallife they so often refer to.
” the school of Reallife ” ?
Look pal , they have learned this much —-
GET AS MUCH AS YOU CAN WHILE THE GETTING IS GOOD !!
and
Let GOD take care of the HEREAFTER !
Agree, xcept they are the ones, the InquisitionBuddies you above note, who tell us your life here is nothing bc they have some god who killed his own child as better than you, as an excuse to get you out of their way.
Where were you when Obama’s EPA declared fracking safe for drinking water? When they opened up vast lands for arctic drilling? When they allowed Warren Buffets bomb trains to transport billions of gallons tar sands fuel? When the feds auctioned off Ohio’s only national forest to fracking? When Obama’s EPA covered up their own whistleblowers regarding Flint? When the EPA approved a pesticide that would kill all bees, only to be overruled by a judge? When Obama approved the first nuclear power plant in almost 30 years just miles form a black town?
Where were you when Obama’s EPA recently agreed to allow dumping of fracking waste in the Gulf of Mexico and California:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37710-epa-plans-to-allow-unlimited-dumping-of-fracking-wastewater-in-the-gulf-of-mexico
Moral of the story: Liberal propagandists like Lee Fang don’t care about the environment. They artfully sweep under the table any destruction caused by a Democratic president and gleefully monitor and glorify environmental destruction caused by a Republican. In this case, pre-crimes. If Lee Fang cared at all about the environment, every question I asked above would have been an Intercept article.
How about an article on Obama’s recent decision to allow fracking waste to be dumped in the ocean? /s
My = thoughts, but then many have not understood the CrookdClintonsObamaNaftaTpp Pact– the one that talks hope and change but ONLY WORKS FOR WS!
If that stack has a scrubber, then what we are seeing is water vapor in the photo above, right? Water vapor is a greenhouse gas too, right? The other pollutants in exhaust gases though, we can’t see… unless it’s PM, but the opacity rules have effectively done away with the mental issue of seeing that pollution. The point: those type of photos have little effect on folks to sway opinion if they know the process. It’s becoming a poor scare tactic. Years ago there were citizens who were alarmed at all the pollution coming out of the hyperbolic cooling towers — this was before CO2 or greenhouse gas legislation and it highlighted public ignorance.
Do we know that we can do anything about climate change or global warming? If we are causing it, and we likely are helping it along, that atleast seems very reasonable, it does not mean that we can do anything about it… or does it? Everytime we do an infrastructure project we are certainly ripping down trees to make way for roads and exhaust — that doens’t seem to help w local cooling.
In fact, it is something to be concerned about, we should continue to collect data anyway we can with or without the US gov / NASA… but what are we going to do? I don’t believe anyone has solutions that does not interfere w/ human rights or national security.
It’s ridiculous to say there’s nothing that can be done. Investing in renewable energy is doable, and would be a good long-term investment independently of climate change. (Only a primitive civilization depends on fossil fuels, if you’re familiar with the Kardashev scale.)
Even with little political will, there are still things scientists could do: geoengineering, for one.
Yes, you reallyhave to wonder how we sent a men to the moon in 1969, the last century!
We should be soooooo ashamed!
The us will be last, hiding between the “oceans cannot protect us anymore” idiocy.
Like, anyonehere still using a rotary phone?– yea, that hurt!!!
Investing in renewable energy is doable,…….
not exactly
if you follow that process from start to finish you will see how ridiculously impossible it is. The fact is, the geezer wealth club would rather die than switch.
I think we can look forward to paying Chinese entrepreneurs and inventors every penny of the royalties that they will continue to earn by dominating the development of renewable energy equipment … and having their boots on the ground in America to make sure of that.
btw… Lawyers in charge of business or major operations is a really bad idea. Lawyers as a rule are not about good relationships, fair play, goodness, or getting things done. Mostly they are devious, disloyal, selfish, crafty, and inept in human relationships. If you are looking to do any sort of business, and you find that the business is run by or handled by lawyers, expect to get shafted. As a former bigshot business guy, i NEVER let the lawyers in the company call the shots, ever. I would ask them for advice on certain things but they NEVER had decision power ever.
rule of thumb: Ordinary people want to get along with everyone else, lawyers want to play off differences.
_”When our river turned orange”_
http://www.hcn.org/articles/when-our-river-turned-orange-animas-river-spill
Well, lesee: Seattle and most other large cities now drenched in high-intensity blue-spectrum LED glare so overpowering that NASA is warning that astronauts can see, from the ISS, a 30% increase in luminosity; bird sleep cycles were thrown off long ago. ULF noise levels from amplified car audio equipment in neighborhoods, off the meter. Fluoride injected into potable water (with Harvard School of Public Health warnings that IQs of children are at risk because of it).
Crickets from EPA.
You’re so right: Because if we can’t get everything, let’s get nothing.
Fuck the EPA.
Yes, that’s what the EPA is saying. Not a straw man at all. It must be tough for you in the big scary world where you don’t have media pundits telling you what to believe.
Fuck clean water, eh?
Fuck breathable air.
Fuck preventing toxic products being sold to children.
Yes, we don’t need any of that, because it hurts your feelings to imagine a world where we actually have to think about the long term viability of our survival as a species, as in, maybe not treating the natural world like some kind of infinite ATM.
The EPA has been fucked for a while.
The Animus River spill occurred precisely because the EPA rejected industry advice on the assumption that it would ONLY be self-severing to industry.
The EPA did not even have their own engineering done on the site. Any competent mining engineer would know the mine could very likely be flooded behind the closed adit. There are independent mining engineers, as well as corporate engineers, available at reasonable rates, who do exactly what the EPA needed; de-water a mine before it is to be opened.
The EPA sent a crew out to tear open the closure wall and the mine emptied out. (The idiots operating the equipment are lucky they were not buried by the sudden outflow.)
If a mine manager had ordered a crew to tear into a mine with no engineering behind the project they would be facing criminal charges for the damage to the environment due to reckless behavior.
Yet under Obama we have an agency, tasked with protecting the environment, rejecting engineering advice and causing a massive toxic spill.
As is true with virtually everything Obama; no charges or accountability.
ULF? :: the section of the CAA still has “Sound Pollution” reserved and unwritten; so what would the US EPA do about that?
I hope you’re not a vaccine truther as well.
I finally understand the alt-right playbook. Distract from disaster (EPA administrator and transition team hell bent on dismantling important climate change rules) with lots of smaller issues. EPA makes plenty of mistakes (see Flint), but overall the past 40 years, the environmental and human health improvements have been dramatic.
Mr. Fang and Ms. LaChance
There is no doubt that man-made global warming is contributing to climate change today, but every individual should be skeptical of the long range models which look decades into the future to predict the dire consequences of climate change. They are educated guesses – at best. Even then, a radical costly program would be necessary to reverse the predicted effects of climate change which is really too far advanced to change much.
Regardless, the EPA has long been used as a political weapon against development of natural resources (mining, logging, oil and gas) so it’s nice to see some limits placed on their ideological interference in the development of our nation’s natural resources. I can only imagine the horror felt by the current liberal employees of the EPA.
Another example of the classic fossil-fuel funded canard, the old double bind defence, all wrapped into one statement!
1) “We don’t know how much humans are responsible”
2) “OK, maybe it is happening, but we don’t know how bad it’ll get!”
3) “It’ll cost a lot to fix!”
4) “It’s too late to do anything because we spent so long arguing about whether it was happening!”
Cognitive scientists must have a field day with this nonsense.
But please, keep spouting those same tired talking points, I hope you’re getting a cut from those fossil-fuel funded think tanks.
Tim
Sorry, I have no faith at all in the long range forecast for global warming (decades in the future) which predict dire consequences if we don’t spend 100 trillion dollars tomorrow. On top of that, the west is primarily supposed to foot the bill. Currently, China is the largest emitter of carbon primarily because of their dependence on coal. The development in the third world, in general, has also made them large carbon emitters. Take your case to the Chinese to start with, OK?
“In an unusual rebuke earlier this month, China’s top climate negotiator criticized Trump’s promise to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, saying that a “wise” leader should enact policies that conform with global trends. At a UN climate meeting in Marrakesh this week, China doubled down, asserting that its efforts, and the efforts of other nations to address climate change, will not change if the United States rescinds.”
“In 2015, China installed 32.5 GW of wind power capacity, a global record. It also hit 43 total GW of solar capacity, exceeding what was considered an ambitious goal of 35. China is on track to meet its Paris pledge—of reaching peak carbon emissions peak by 2030 at the latest—well ahead of schedule, and has even set itself a new target of cutting power sector carbon emissions 60 percent by 2020.”
http://gizmodo.com/will-china-become-a-leader-on-global-climate-action-1788868865
Fair enough Dave, but China has more incentives than just global warming. About 1-2 million people die each year from air pollution (“Air pollution causes 4,400 deaths in China every single day, says new study” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/air-pollution-china-deaths_us_55cd9a62e4b0ab468d9cefa9?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004 via @TheWorldPost). The air pollution is caused by burning coal in power plants and factories. They use about one-half of the coal produced on earth. In addition, they have increased their use of hydroelectric power which I support, but the environmental impact is very large from the construction of huge reservoirs and literally moving entire communities.
Thanks.
“Sorry, I have no faith at all in the long range forecast for global warming (decades in the future) which predict dire consequences if we don’t spend 100 trillion dollars tomorrow.”
I’m interested in this, why don’t you have confidence in the work of climate scientists in modelling the changes? Can you point to some of the peer-reviewed research you’ve read that convincingly suggests alternate scenarios? Because currently, these destructive trends are supported by the vast majority of people working in the actual fields that deal with this, (although not a few bloggers or bribed think tanks, neither of which actually do any of the research or relevant work at all but have outsized support from the right wing because in-group/out-group selection renders our species stupid.)
“On top of that, the west is primarily supposed to foot the bill.”
If you look at the latest climate agreements, there is actually an extremely equitable deal in terms of which countries pay for what. Not to mention, let’s keep in mind it’s the west that spent the last two hundred years treating the planet’s atmosphere like a sewer. It’s a bit rich to complain “no fair!” when you’re the one who wrecked the place, particularly when the consequences are most dire for those with the least means to combat it.
Moreover, China actually has a plan to transition away from carbon-intensive generation over the next few decades and, thusfar at least, they are sticking to it. Yes, they have a lot of issues still, but they are moving in a direction that actually somewhat accords with what the science says rather than just repeating talking points from blogs because the physical realities of the world hurt their ideological feelings. Yes there are big impacts from hydroelectric dams, and they’re an authoritarian government so they’re going to fuck people over and that’s awful, but guess what has an ever bigger impact? The oceans acidifying to the point that nothing besides jellyfish propagates, continent-spanning droughts leading to the collapse of whole bioregions that previously supplied crops, sea level rises costing trillions to mitigate, more than a billion people vulnerable to climactic change resulting in a refugee movement we haven’t seen since the Black Death. You know the other large body of people who accept climate change and are preparing for it, besides the scientific community? The military. They’re already prepping for a century of destabilization because they can’t afford to just believe a right wing fairy tale.
You’ll have to forgive me for being short with you, but we’re getting to the point where this is now a matter of survival and I have zero patience for people who just spout whatever they read on blogs or media reports, either left or right, that then believe they are more qualified to understand what is happening in a field of science than the people who are actually qualified to do the work. If you have questions, read the actual science, cite papers, follow where the research leads, even if it makes you uncomfortable, that’s the entire reason the scientific method works, because it’s one of the only systems of knowledge that provides answers that are not immediately emotionally satisfying.
if HALF THE PEOPLE ON THE PLANET SUDDENLY DIED TODAY, it may not be enough to stave of worse disaster. IF every couple on the planet was limited to ONE CHILD PER WOMAN, we might escape being completely anhilated but we would still suffer catastrophic consequences.
MY PREDICTIONS for the last 7 years have all come true and my estimates of devastation were way above science predictions. Persons like craig care so little for life itself (they are racist, depressed, souless, sadistic, imbecillic, mentally deranged, arrogant, or something else) that they are willing to shut their eyes and pretend everything is fine we can fix it we will die anyway bla bla bla that these people in positions of authority need to be fired because every passing day will make the needed changes that much more catastrophic.
Look at it this way, would you hire a person to kill your children, slowly?
Yes, my version was one child per adult, and we donot break up twins or triplets, etc.
But then Turk PresErdougan has declared all muslims to be free of any birth control– so go figure!
Good comp!
Very wellsaid, some commenter–did not catch his name, i believe said something thet “Trump cannot do certain xxx bc the US is not a Planned Economy…” which really shows the great failing of the US today.
True observation but a future great waste to continue on in this idiocy.
Contrary to that the TPP was certainly a (secret) Plannned Economy!
That may well evolve to survive– nothing does well ala willynilly!
They are getting big$.
Those who fuel chevro-exxo bc they think they are getting an exclusive high quality additive, fooled by “no betta ” are fooled bc they are all the same!
Y the time their odometer reaches 100,000 miles, they will have spentan extra $4,000 to $8,000 at least!
And to triple the additive per gallon cost <1 USCent!
Big money yea!
I seriously doubt you know much about models. Of course there’s more uncertainty farther into the future, because many things could change, but at a basic level we’re simply talking about physics. If A happens, B will happen, and B is pretty bad.
Yep, ut when these guys go to the dentist, they personally understand the Science! They buy the best ,-)
Jose
“…….Of course there’s more uncertainty farther into the future, because many things could change…..”
True, I believe. There is always uncertainty when simplifying complex parameters into a workable model – especially when applying the results well into the future. Conditions change on the earth for unknown reasons causing the earth to heat and cool. For example, the Little Ice Age generally occurred between the 14th and 19th centuries, but without any certainty of the causes (Wikipedia):
“……..Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population…….”
That’s why looking too far into the future is haphazard at best.
LIBERAL, adjective,LIBERTY, noun, 34th WethePeople Constitution Word.
Note of advice– make sure your healthcare provider is somewhat liberal, your lifemay depend on it.
Yes, the Environment needs to be protected from predatory developments– giveaway you live in a secluded safeneighborhood.
Lee,
If you’re genuinely interested in this issue, you need to stop the “fossil fuel” fairy tale. Science. As in Russian abiotic oil theory. Crude oil is not a biological substance. It’s created in the mantle and when it rises to a resevoir, it picks up biological matter. Resevoirs are re filling. Drill deep enough anywhere and you will find it. 30-40 bbl crude is here to stay. Matt Simmons was a Saudi/ exxon pimp. Then let’s have a discussion based on science.
Yes, the science. Let’s focus on the science… Oh wait, the vast majority of geologists do not think that abiotic oil theory is a viable explanation for the size, position or composition of oil deposits. Even your precious Russians, by a large majority, do not subscribe to this theory. But of course, it’s not in your interest to actually look at the science, is it?
And before anyone starts moronically claiming that Titan is somehow proof of the abiotic nature of oil. First of all, the deposits on Titan are primarily liquid methane, which is entirely different than petroleum. Oil can lead to methane, but so can lots of other non-biological sources. Currently, the scientific community is leaning towards a non-biological origin for the hydrocarbons on Titan.
From Scientific American:
“Christophe Sotin of the University of Nantes in France and his colleagues have argued that Titan might sustain an underground ocean of liquid water. Dissolved ammonia, acting as an antifreeze, would help to keep it from freezing solid. In their model, the ocean is 100 kilometers underneath Titan’s surface and 300 to 400 kilometers deep. In the past, the decay of radioactive elements and the leftover heat from Titan’s formation might have melted nearly all the body’s ice—so the ocean might have extended all the way down to the rocky core.
Under those conditions, reactions between the water and the rock would have liberated hydrogen gas, which in turn would have reacted with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon grains or other carbonaceous material—producing methane. I estimate that this process would have been capable of explaining Titan’s observed methane abundance. Once produced, methane could have been stored as a stable clathrate hydrate and released to the atmosphere either gradually, through volcanism, or in bursts, triggered by impacts.
An intriguing clue is the argon 40 gas detected by Huygens as it descended through Titan’s atmosphere. This isotope forms by the radioactive decay of potassium 40, which is sequestered in the rocks deep in Titan’s core. Because the radioactive half-life of potassium 40 is 1.3 billion years, the small amount of argon 40 in the atmosphere is evidence for slow release of gases from the interior. In addition, optical and radar images of the surface show signs of cryovolcanism—geyserlike eruptions of ammonia-water ice—which also indicates that material wells up from the interior. The surface appears relatively young and free of craters, which is a sign of resurfacing by material from the interior. The estimated resurfacing rate would release methane from the interior quickly enough to balance the photochemical loss. Methane on Titan plays the role of water on Earth, complete with liquid surface reservoirs, clouds and rain—a full-fledged methalogical cycle. Thus, a substantial body of evidence exists, even more so than for Mars, that methane stored in the interior would have no difficulty getting out to the surface and subsequently evaporating into the atmosphere.”
But of course, it’s not in your interest to actually look at the science, is it?
Said every “Climatologist” ever.
Really? That’s quite amazing, every climatologist I know is fairly screaming these days for policymakers to read the actual science. What is there in the peer-reviewed literature of climate science that you have read that makes you think otherwise?
Tim, where is the “science” behind Fossil Fuel theory? There is none. And it is constantly being refuted right before all of those un named geologists you claim to know. The Peak Oil clock ran out right around the same time Al Gores’ did. Stick with the fake news. It’s what you’re good at.
I don’t claim to know many geologists at all. I just look at the data, the majority of working geologists do not subscribe to an abiotic origin of oil for the majority of petroleum stocks on this planet. And claiming there is no science is pretty rich. Out of the sum total of scientific papers over the past few decades, the overwhelming majority have pointed to a biological origin. Not saying they are necessarily correct and, who knows, maybe abiotic oil will prove itself in time, but the weight of evidence in peer-reviewed scientific literature suggests otherwise.
There’s a pretty good summary of the situation, particularly in regards to peak oil, here:
http://web.cup.edu.cn/peakoil/docs/20130102172506152072.pdf
No, Chris, don’t you know that dinosaurs and ferns were subducted several miles under the floor of the Gulf of Mexico?
You don’t know fossils were also found on Titan?
Ha! How many stegasauruses (as the 3 stooges would say) are in a bbl of crude anyway? And, yes they finding crude in the Gulf deeper than any biologic matter ever existed. But, rhe biggie is the methane on Saturn’s moons. As I ecall, we had an Ice Age here that came and went. Maybe all those Mammoths were driving their Hummers too much and eating too much red meat.next thing you know the theory humans were spontaneously thrown into existence in a swamp will also be debunked. Does anyone know how much “settled science” has been debunked in the last say 200 years?
And yet another evangelical Christian in The Cabinet.
“Pruitt is also an evangelical Christian — he serves as a deacon at First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Okla. and graduated from Georgetown College, an evangelical school. He has a record of opposing marriage equality, transgender bathroom access and abortion, and opposed a church-state separation ballot initiative on the Oklahoma ballot earlier this year.”
http://religionnews.com/2016/12/05/evangelicals-in-trumps-cabinet-educators-worry-science-will-be-a-casualty/
Maybe somebody should poke radio documentarian Joe Cuomo and ask him to update the documentary he did for WBAI about Premillennialism and what might happen if a “believer” has access to the U.S. nuclear arsenal?
“RELIGIOUS LEADERS TELL OF WORRY ON ARMAGEDDON VIEW ASCRIBED TO REAGAN”
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/21/us/religious-leaders-tell-of-worry-on-armageddon-view-ascribed-to-reagan.html
Mike Pence is, I think, very scary.
“As a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a group funded by foundations controlled by Koch Industries and other fossil fuel firms, Kreutzer has co-published several papers”
Shouldn’t that be Heartland Foundation?
i guess don blankenship was busy. hopefully standing rock will serve as a blueprint and make addressing climate something akin to civil rights as opposed to whatever stuffed suits agree to behind closed doors (“acceptable increase of 2 degrees” and such.) nothing is going to happen at the government or business levels and we definitely don’t want to wait for a “democratic” solution to arise (waiting which would have had black folks using separate water fountains into the 1980s due to a lack of demographic support.)
it all depends on how much of the anti-trump hatred is just a “phase” like occupy turned out to be.
In other words, no change from the Obama “drill, baby, drill” era.
The actual lack of F’s Trump gives and throwing the middle finger to the face of the people who voted for him is a rare type of narcissism.
Anyway as Chomsky said we are literally heading into an age where we will be putting humanity at the risk of extinction for profit.
Let’s not forget that Oklahoma is literally falling apart from its fucking fracking frenzy.
How insane must a person — a society — be to ignore daily earthquakes?
If an asteroid was on a collision course with earth, who would negotiate with the asteroid? Nobody.
Same with the climate except, unlike an asteroid bringing a mass extinction with it, things can be done to mitigate the impending (ongoing) climate catastrophe.
Wiltmellow
“…….Let’s not forget that Oklahoma is literally falling apart from its fucking fracking frenzy…….”
That might be a little exaggeration, Wilt. Earthquake activity associated with waste water disposal and to a much lesser extent with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has been known about since the 60s. Earthquakes are actually associated with very few wells. In addition, there are ongoing studies to mitigate the problem wells like shutting them down! Identifying major active faults is another challenge for preventing larger earthquakes: Journal of Petroleum Technology (http://www.spe.org/jpt/article/7139-searching-for-solutions-to-induced-seismicity).
Hahaha
Why shouldn’t those destroying the earth and poisoning the water talk about it among themselves?
It’s embarrassing when all that produced water gets reinjected, right? (Produced water? What the hell is “produced water?”
Here’s Forbes’ — Forbes! — explanation of the earthquake “problem” you dismiss with insider jargon:
I have a google machine too.
Hahaha
Why shouldn’t those destroying the earth and poisoning the water talk about it among themselves?
All that toxic waste water gets reinjected, right? (Produced water? What the hell is “produced water?”
Here’s Forbes’ — Forbes! — explanation of the earthquake “problem”:
Wilt
You are using classic language of the radical environmental community, Milt. Finding solutions should be the goal because the alternative (what you want) is to shut the industry down – like logging in the US. What natural resource industry doesn’t have hazards associated with it? For example, maintaining water quality is a challenge for all natural resource industries – especially mining. Yet, you will continue to use the products like everyone else. It’s demand, Wilt. Logging, mining and the oil and gas industries exist because of demand – and were never meant to “improve” the environment. The primary goal of regulation is to reduce the impact of environmental damage when natural resources are “harvested” for our benefit. No matter how much environmental quacks want to return us to caves, it’s too late to turn back.
Despite the hazards in California i.e., living in an active earthquake zone, people still choose to live there. Despite the hurricanes, people still live in Florida. Despite the tornadoes, people still live in Kansas. I have yet to notice a mass exodus from California or Oklahoma despite the attempt by industry to “destroy” the environment in Oklahoma. Of course, your radicalized verbiage really has nothing to do with induced earthquakes at all, but you simply are using the earthquakes (like spotted-owls) to attempt to shut down an industry. This is much more about global warming than earthquake hazards. You would think that the Journal for Petroleum Technology (Petroleum Engineers) was just another front organization to fool the ignorant public – a Trump gimmick – to continue operating until Oklahoma collapses into the abyss. In fact, mitigating the hazards is a response by the industry to lessen the hazards or they will be shut down. How does industry benefit from that result? Only radical environmentalist benefit. Well, they cut off their nose to spite their faces….
Thanks.
What if demand (ie growth) is the engine of global warming itself though? I find it interesting to see the psychological underpinnings of this mythical narrative of “moving forward”/”turning back” and that the only reaction to any suggestion that perhaps it’s not in our long-term interest as a species to exploit every available resource on the planet. I also think it’s interesting that even the merest hint that we don’t treat nature like a giant ATM machine is tantamount to calling for all humans to reside in the caves again. Maybe the situation is more complex then you’re implying.
“Identifying major active faults is another challenge for preventing larger earthquakes:”
That waste-injection activates passive faults is a major (pun intended) inconvenience …
It certainly is possible to reactivate any fault in an area under active tectonic stress.