Posted by Trump's corporatist appointees on Tue, 27 Feb 2018 06:31 | #

Trump’s deleterious corporatist appointments do not only follow a severe anti-environmentalist agenda and are not only of limited term cabinet appointees.

He has made a record number of life-long appointments of Court Justices acting in corporate interests -  Trump appointee, Supreme Justice Neil Gorsuch, is set to pass legislation that will drastically reduce the power of unions.

The Intercept, “Koch Document Reveals Laundry List of Policy Victories Extracted from the Trump Administration”, 25 Feb 2018:

the backdrop of a chaotic first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the conservative Koch brothers have won victory after victory in their bid to reshape American government to their interests.

Documents obtained by The Intercept and Documented show that the network of wealthy donors led by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch have taken credit for a laundry list of policy achievements extracted from the Trump administration and their allies in Congress.

The donors have pumped campaign contributions not only to GOP lawmakers, but also to an array of third-party organizations that have pressured officials to act swiftly to roll back limits on pollution, approve new pipeline projects, and extend the largest set of upper-income tax breaks in generations.

“This year, thanks in part to research and outreach efforts across institutions, we have seen progress on many regulatory priorities this Network has championed for years,” the memo notes. The document highlights environmental issues that the Koch brothers have long worked to undo, such as the EPA Clean Power Plan, which is currently under the process of being formally repealed, and Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, among their major accomplishments. The memo also highlighted administration efforts to walk back planned rules to strengthen the estate tax in a list of 13 regulatory decisions favored by the network.

[...]

Days after the tax bill passed, Charles Koch and his wife donated $500,000 to Speaker Paul Ryan’s joint fundraising leadership PAC, which has a heightened threshold for donations.

Despite some public antagonism over Trump — including flirtations with replacing him as the nominee with Ryan at the Republican National Convention —  the Koch brothers have enjoyed incredible access with his administration. The president’s lawyer, Don McGahn; the president’s chief liaison to Congress, Marc Short; and the president’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway all previously worked for the Koch network before taking their current positions in the White House. Ethics forms reveal that officials across the government, including at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, previously served at Koch think tanks or other Koch groups. Vice President Mike Pence also maintains a very close relationship with the Koch brothers.

The Koch brothers are also hoping to fundamentally reshape other aspects of American society, including labor unions and the judiciary.

The memo details efforts to weaken the power of labor unions, including a broad attack on private sector labor unions in states controlled by Republicans in 2017. Meanwhile, the memo notes that the Trump administration has shelved a number of Obama-era rules that were viewed as too friendly to workers and labor unions, including the Overtime Rule and the Joint Employer Rule. The latter would have reduced the barriers for workers at franchise businesses, like fast food outlets, to form a union.

“Labor reform is not an overnight process; advancing major federal labor reform requires a long-term strategy,” it adds. To that point, the Koch network plans to press forward with the Employee Rights Act, legislation to extend right-to-work laws nationally and set up new barriers for labor activists hoping to form new unions.

The memo notes that they believe Justice Anthony Kennedy will soon retire, and the effort to replace him will be “far more contentious” than the effort to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch.

“If President Trump nominates a principled, constructionist nominee for Justice Kennedy’s seat or any other vacant seat, we anticipate engaging with both grassroots and under-the-dome tactics, bringing paid and earned media and events to support the confirmation.” The memo notes that the network sponsored pressure effort on Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., all of whom eventually voted to confirm Gorsuch.

Posted by Scott Pruitt's Cone of Silence on Wed, 09 May 2018 20:07 | #

NPP, “Reporter On New Email Dump That Reveals Secret Inner Workings Of Scott Pruitt’s EPA”, 9 May 2018:

New York Times reporter Eric Lipton says the response to a recent FOIA request shows that Scott Pruitt and his staff have gone to great lengths to keep the public and the news media at a distance.

Posted by Astrophysicist, Dr Jeff Bennett, on global warming on Tue, 15 May 2018 16:46 | #

Climate change skeptic tries to debate astrophysicist, Dr. Jeffrey Bennett, on the matter of global warming:

2018-05-14 - 3 Dr. Jeffrey Bennett

Posted by Global Warming hoax? on Sun, 03 Jun 2018 10:36 | #

Washington Post, “Temperatures in Europe’s far north set records for May”, 31 May 2018:

A life guard tests a diving tower at a public pool in Kleinmachnow, close to Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, May 30, 2018. Record-high temperatures are creating a summer-like atmosphere in Germany even weeks ahead of the official start of summer.

by Jan M. Olsen | AP May 31

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Temperatures in Europe’s far north are breaking records, prompting Scandinavians to take dips in fjords well ahead of the official start of summer next month.

In the municipality of Etne, on Norway’s west coast, the mercury hit 32.7 C (90.8 F) on Wednesday, a record for May.

In Denmark, May has already broken records for sunshine, with 348 hours recorded by Wednesday — expected to reach 360 on Thursday. The previous high was 347.

A temperature record from 1889 — when Denmark’s Meteorological Institute started recording temperatures — is likely to be broken when an average of 15-15.1 C (59-59.1 F) for May is likely to be logged at the end of Thursday, beating the current May record, which was 13.8 degrees C (56.8 F), spokesman Mikael Scharling said.

“The reason for the warm weather is that there has been high pressure that has been over northern Europe since the beginning of May and has been keeping low pressure away,” Scharling told The Associated Press.

Scharling said it was too early to say whether the early summer-like temperature were somehow connected to global warming, saying “we need to analyze that a lot more.”

“What we can say that is that we have seen warmer temperatures for the month of May since 2000,” he added.

People took dips in harbors and fjords across southern Norway, and bans on open fires because of dry forests and grass have been issued in both southern Norway and Sweden.

In Poland and northern Germany, an unusually hot May has been reported with farmers complaining of damage caused by dry weather to crops such as rapeseed oil.

The unusual high temperatures were a challenge for crowds in Poland walking in traditional Corpus Christi processions Thursday.

Many people were seen protecting themselves from the scorching sun with umbrellas. Thursday’s holiday marked the start of a four-day break for many Poles, who headed for Baltic Sea beaches or Warsaw’s Vistula river to cool down.

Temperatures in Warsaw reached 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 Fahrenheit)

___

Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

In Poznan, Poland, I never experienced this kind of intense heat in May - it’s like August at it’s most severe.

A 78 year old woman who has lived here all her life confirmed - she has never experienced anything like this kind of heat here at this time of year.

Posted by mancinblack on Sun, 03 Jun 2018 11:23 | #

Some like it hot. Eastern Norway has also had its warmest May on record.

https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/record-warm-affects-life-in-eastern-norway

Posted by DanielS on Sun, 03 Jun 2018 12:29 | #

Speaking of Norwegians,

I was walking home past a restaurant/bar on my street and could overhear, and see to some extent, an unusually large, friendly, homogeneous but foreign clientele partying within…

So, I stepped in to investigate…the party spilled out into the beer garden in the back yard behind…full of tall, blonde, nicely dressed and from what one could guess, unnervingly intelligent people ...

It was no problem for me to crash the party, have a rum and coke, and ask who these people were and what this was about?....

It turned out they were Norwegian medical students celebrating their graduation from the medical school here in Poznan.

An impressive group - dozens, definitely giving cause for hope and optimism for the future of North Western Europeans as well….

Posted by Scott Pruitt out as EPA director on Fri, 06 Jul 2018 18:04 | #

Scott Pruitt out as EPA director, but…

New EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler, Former Coal Lobbyist, Aims to Continue to Dismantle EPA from Inside.

Posted by Kieran Suckling - biological diversity.org on Wed, 25 Jul 2018 22:35 | #

Kieran Suckling - biological diversity.org

Trump’s War on the Environment, from Attacking California Fuel Standards to Destroying Public Lands

Published on Jul 25, 2018

https://democracynow.org - While climate change denier Scott Pruitt has been ousted as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency over a slew of corruption scandals and his close ties to industry lobbyists, the Trump administration’s war on the environment and environmental regulations continues unabated. For more on the government’s attacks on public land protections and key regulations like California’s fuel emissions standards, we speak with Kierán Suckling, executive director and a founder of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Posted by mancinblack on Sun, 29 Jul 2018 18:34 | #

“Attribution of the 2018 heat in northern Europe” - key findings from the World Weather Attribution report -

* The heat based on observations and forecast is very extreme near the Arctic circle but less extreme further south.

* From past observations and models we find that the probability of such a heatwave to occur has increased everywhere in this region due to anthropogenic climate change, although in Scandinavia this increase was not visible in observations until now due to the very variable summer weather. 

* We estimate that the probability to have such heat or higher is generally more than two times higher today than if human activity had not altered climate.

* Due to the underlying warming trend, even record breaking events can be not very extreme but have low return times in the current climate.

* With the global mean temperatures continuing to   increase heat waves like this will become even less exceptional.

The authors acknowledge that the report is not peer reviewed but are confident in their methodologies. Another report will be published before the end of the year.

Full report -

https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analyses/attribution-of-the-2018-heat-in-northern-europe/

Obviously they haven’t heard that the alleged human contribution towards global warming is “fake news” and a “scam to transfer wealth from the developed world” (otherwise known as America) to the developing world (otherwise known as “shit holes”) and to argue otherwise is “poison to nationalism”.

Posted by Wheeler Dealer on Tue, 21 Aug 2018 15:33 | #

Trump travels to Charleston, West Virginia, today to hold a campaign rally and announce a massive role-back of environmental regulations for coal-fired power plants. The de-regulation will dramatically weaken the clean power plan which aimed to cut carbon dioxide emissions in order to address climate change. Under President Trump’s planned deregulation, individual states will now be allowed to be able to decide whether to curb emissions. The Washington Post reports the deregulation will mean at least twelve times more carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere over the next decade.

Andrew Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist

The mountain top strip mining, coal mining and water poisoning of West Virginia has to be one of the saddest stories of the destruction of natural resource. West Virginia is an absolutely beautiful state - exquisite in its mountain, hardwood, fern and moss topography (or has been, anyway… in addition to being demographically White).