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Trump signs order sweeping away Obama-era climate policies


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Trump signs order sweeping away Obama-era climate policies

By Valerie Volcovici and Jeff Mason

REUTERS

 

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U.S. President Donald Trump holds up an executive order on "energy independence," eliminating Obama-era climate change regulations, during a signing ceremony at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an order to undo Obama-era regulations to curb climate change, keeping a campaign promise to support the coal industry while calling into question U.S. support for an international deal to fight global warming.

 

Flanked by coal miners, Trump enacted his "Energy Independence" executive order at the Environmental Protection Agency. A coalition of 23 states and local governments vowed to fight the order in court.

 

The order's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a key factor in the United States' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.

 

Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions.

 

Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.

"I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations," Trump said at the EPA.

 

The room was filled with miners, coal company executives and staff from industry groups, who applauded loudly as Trump spoke. Shares in U.S. coal companies edged higher in response.

 

The wide-ranging order is the boldest yet in Trump’s broader push to cut environmental regulation to revive the drilling and mining industries, a promise he made repeatedly during the 2016 presidential campaign. Energy analysts and executives have questioned whether the moves will have a big effect on their industries, and environmentalists have called them reckless.

 

"I cannot tell you how many jobs the executive order is going to create, but I can tell you that it provides confidence in this administration’s commitment to the coal industry," Kentucky Coal Association president Tyler White told Reuters.

 

Environmental groups hurled scorn on Trump's order, arguing it was dangerous and went against the broader global trend toward cleaner energy technologies.

 

"These actions are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American," said billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, the head of activist group NextGen Climate.

 

Trump signed the order with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Vice President Mike Pence by his side.

 

LEGAL CHALLENGES

 

U.S. presidents have aimed to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, which triggered soaring prices. But the United States still imports about 7.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, almost enough to meet total oil demand in Japan and India combined.

 

Green group Earthjustice was one of many organizations that said it will fight the order both in and out of court. "This order ignores the law and scientific reality," said its president, Trip Van Noppen.

 

An overwhelming majority of scientists believe that human use of oil and coal for energy is a main driver of climate change, causing a damaging rise in sea levels, droughts and more frequent violent storms.

 

But Trump and several members of his administration have doubts about climate change, and Trump promised during his campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, arguing it would hurt U.S. business.

 

Since being elected, Trump has been mum on the Paris deal and the executive order does not address it.

 

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change who helped broker the Paris accord, lamented Trump's order.

 

"Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics," she said.

 

The order directs the EPA to start a formal process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014 but was never implemented in part because of legal challenges brought by Republican-controlled states.

 

The Clean Power Plan required states to collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

 

Some 85 percent of U.S. states are on track to meet the targets despite the fact the rule has not been implemented, according to Bill Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, a group of state and local air pollution control agencies.

 

Trump’s order also lifts the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management's temporary ban on coal leasing on federal property put in place by Obama in 2016 as part of a review to study the program's impact on climate change and ensure royalty revenues were fair to taxpayers.

 

It also asks federal agencies to discount the cost of carbon in policy decisions and the weight of climate change considerations in infrastructure permitting, and it reverses rules limiting methane leakage from oil and gas facilities.

 

(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner)

 
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-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-03-29
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If there was ever a need for court to check one of his orders, now's the time. The banning of certain folks going into the US is trivial compared to this. Someone with half a brain seriously needs to educate them on the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. While I stand up for the bloke on a lot of issues, this is one where he has got it completely wrong.

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4 minutes ago, daveAustin said:

If there was ever a need for court to check one of his orders, now's the time. The banning of certain folks going into the US is trivial compared to this. Someone with half a brain seriously needs to educate them on the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. While I stand up for the bloke on a lot of issues, this is one where he has got it completely wrong.

If you start with the right year the world is actually cooling.

 

I don't believe a word of it any more after being forced to attend attend a two day seminar on this issue. After being showed graphs with no numbers on the 'Y' axis you don't win me, in fact it is tantamount to lying.

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Luckily, a majority of American's are against what Trump is doing.

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/28/politics/donald-trump-russia-presidency/index.html

Quote

A Quinnipiac University poll last week found that Americans see many of Trump's budget plans as a bad idea. They line up 67-31% against cutting research on climate change, and 83% to 14% against cutting funding for after school programs for instance.

 

Sadly, he's allowed to do silly things like this.  He's just going after Obama.  He doesn't really understand the details of much of it.

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Interesting analysis:

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/28/politics/donald-trump-climate-change-executive-order/index.html
 

Quote

 

But the executive order, while sweeping, does not do everything the Trump administration thinks. It is unlikely to bring a restoration of the coal industry, is certain to be caught up in court for years, and on its own, doesn't pull the US out of the Paris accords.

............

"The executive order will be challenged legally because it undermines the Supreme Court's Massachusetts vs. EPA decision, which ruled that the government has a duty to limit climate pollution under the Clean Air Act assuming an endangerment finding, which was issued in 2009, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012, and served as the basis of the carbon pollution limits for new and existing power plants," the National Wildlife Federation said on Tuesday.

 

 

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40 minutes ago, maoro2013 said:

If you start with the right year the world is actually cooling.

 

I don't believe a word of it any more after being forced to attend attend a two day seminar on this issue. After being showed graphs with no numbers on the 'Y' axis you don't win me, in fact it is tantamount to lying.

Can you show a link that proves this?  I guess if you went back to the beginning of time, the earth was pretty hot.  But everything I've read about more recent times show a massive increase in the temperature.

 

Seems scientists agree the planet is getting hotter, but the average person doesn't.

 

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.short
 

Quote

 

Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC.

.........

Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

 

 

I'd place my bets with the scientists.  97% of them. LOL

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Trump's entire understanding of science, is that the sun rises in the morning, and steel girders allow his buildings to remain in an erect position. He is showing utter disregard for the planet, and the fragile ecosystems that are in dire need of protection. 

 

The room was filled with miners, coal company executives and staff from industry groups, who applauded loudly as Trump spoke. Shares in U.S. coal companies edged higher in response.

Does this not say it all? During his charlatan campaign he exclaimed over, and over, and over that he was going to drain the swamp. Yet, his entire administration is completely beholden to lobbyists, from top to bottom. How about re-populating the swamp with 16 foot crocodiles? 

 

They are now farming areas of Greenland that used to be barren ice fields. The country has become far more arable, due to extreme warming over the past 20 years. But, again we had nothing to do with that. How convenient a position for industry. We all know why the deflector in chief buys into this stuff. It is easy, and expedient. And the protection of the planet means nothing to him. He is not a visionary man. But, for the rest of us? Massive ice shelves are splitting off from the Antartican continent. Just a coincidence? 

 

On the Arctic Circle, a chef is growing the kind of vegetables and herbs - potatoes, thyme, tomatoes, green peppers - more fitting for a suburban garden in a temperate zone than a land of Northern Lights, glaciers and musk oxen.

Some Inuit hunters are finding reindeer fatter than ever thanks to more grazing on this frozen tundra, and for some, there is no longer a need to trek hours to find wild herbs.

Welcome to climate change in Greenland, where locals say longer and warmer summers mean the country can grow the kind of crops unheard of years ago.

"Things are just growing quicker," said Kim Ernst, the Danish chef of Roklubben restaurant, nestled by a frozen lake near a former Cold War-era U.S. military base.

"Every year we try new things," said Ernst, who even managed to grow a handful of strawberries that he served to some surprised Scandinavian royals. "I first came here in 1999 and no-one would have dreamed of doing this. But now the summer days seem warmer, and longer."

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greenland-climate-agriculture-idUSBRE92P0EX20130326

Edited by spidermike007
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The coal miners are going back to work, throughout his campaign, President Trump promised the American people that he would roll back Obama era regulations that KILLED the coal mining industry. Those regulations left millions of Americans jobless and hopeless; they felt they had no place to turn.

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1 hour ago, maoro2013 said:

If you start with the right year the world is actually cooling.

 

I don't believe a word of it any more after being forced to attend attend a two day seminar on this issue. After being showed graphs with no numbers on the 'Y' axis you don't win me, in fact it is tantamount to lying.

Cooling or not - this seems to be the dividing point between environmentalists and anti same - every idiot should be able to conclude it's not good for anything or anybody to pump out billions of tonnes of gases and particles every year. 

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20 minutes ago, stander said:

The coal miners are going back to work, throughout his campaign, President Trump promised the American people that he would roll back Obama era regulations that KILLED the coal mining industry. Those regulations left millions of Americans jobless and hopeless; they felt they had no place to turn.

The world is evolving. We don't have much use of horse carriage makers these days either.

 

Except not in the US, of course. Not with that dimwit behind the wheel.

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1 hour ago, Traveler19491 said:

Image result for new york 1973 today clean air

 

I rest my case.

Show the same comparison for China, and you will see that nothing has changed, in fact its getting worse as we buy all our goods there, New York manufactures very little now. Only difference is they have the work and the pollution.

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EPA chief: Trump to undo Obama plan to curb global warming.

"So we've penalized ourselves through lost jobs while China and India didn't take steps to address the issue internationally. So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation," he said.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d8c840e2f2f24a7d887743222caf095f/epa-chief-trump-undo-obama-plan-curb-global-warming

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China has been taking steps, far more than the USA. The consequences of being the manufacturing hub of the world is all too glaringly apparent in the smog the people have dealt with for years.
What changes? One example in this video link:
China: "In with the New" - YouTube

 


Yes, China has grown to be the major source of CO2
post-68308-0-29972800-1449634396_thumb.jpg

Then again, as Grubster pointed out, not all that is manufactured in China stays in China. Europe and the USA have exported their pollution.

GreenhoueGasesEmbeddedInTrade-300x181.pn

Edited by RPCVguy
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Perhaps the universe works in cycles and the sun solar cycles. If that's the case as is historically I'm not sure if we impact all that much. I do appreciate clean air to breath but the politicians seem to have another agenda.

 

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

 

"The data clearly establishes that there has always been a cycle to CO2 long before man’s industrial age. This is data government wants to hide. As along as they can pretend CO2 has never risen in the past before 1950, then they can tax the air and pretend it’s to prevent climate change. Moreover, while we can clean the air with regulation as we have done, under global warming, they allow “credits” to pollute as long as you pay the government. It is the ultimate scam where they get to tax pollution and people cheer rather than clean up anything."

 

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/nature/nasa-finally-admit-its-going-to-get-colder/

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3 hours ago, stander said:

The coal miners are going back to work, throughout his campaign, President Trump promised the American people that he would roll back Obama era regulations that KILLED the coal mining industry. Those regulations left millions of Americans jobless and hopeless; they felt they had no place to turn.


Please provide a link that shows miners actually going to back work.  Not that it's a good thing.  More jobs are available in clean energy projects and they are higher paying.  Not to mention better for the environment, better for the worker, and better for America.

 

http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/28/news/economy/trump-power-plants/index.html

 

Quote

 

Trump move to roll back climate rules won't bring back coal or mining jobs

But the reality is that the demand for coal in the United States has been declining for years due to capitalism, not government regulations.

 

The falling price of natural gas is the primary reason for the plunge in use of coal by utilities. Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, are also becoming more competitive.

 

 

Coal mining is going the way of buggy whips.  No longer needed.  Keep up...

 

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1 hour ago, stander said:

EPA chief: Trump to undo Obama plan to curb global warming.

"So we've penalized ourselves through lost jobs while China and India didn't take steps to address the issue internationally. So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation," he said.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d8c840e2f2f24a7d887743222caf095f/epa-chief-trump-undo-obama-plan-curb-global-warming

LOL  Obama's Climate policies are NOT the major cause of job loss to China.  And if you've ever been to China, you'll know what an absolute mess that country is in.  Foreigners are leaving due to environmental pollution.  Pollution which reaches the US via air and water.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/asia/china-underground-water-pollution.html

 

Quote

 

Rural Water, Not City Smog, May Be China’s Pollution Nightmare

BEIJING — More than 80 percent of the water from underground wells used by farms, factories and households across the heavily populated plains of China is unfit for drinking or bathing because of contamination from industry and farming, according to new statistics that were reported by Chinese media on Monday, raising new alarm about pollution in the world’s most populous country.


 

 

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18 minutes ago, Linzz said:

Perhaps the universe works in cycles and the sun solar cycles. If that's the case as is historically I'm not sure if we impact all that much. I do appreciate clean air to breath but the politicians seem to have another agenda.

 

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

 

"The data clearly establishes that there has always been a cycle to CO2 long before man’s industrial age. This is data government wants to hide. As along as they can pretend CO2 has never risen in the past before 1950, then they can tax the air and pretend it’s to prevent climate change. Moreover, while we can clean the air with regulation as we have done, under global warming, they allow “credits” to pollute as long as you pay the government. It is the ultimate scam where they get to tax pollution and people cheer rather than clean up anything."

 

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/nature/nasa-finally-admit-its-going-to-get-colder/

Terrible sources of new.  Armstrong bilked many out of a lot of money, and spent years in jail. 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-10-13/after-prison-a-forecaster-aims-for-a-comeback

Quote

Martin Armstrong is a self-taught economist who is starting to build an Internet following from an almost-empty office across the street from Philadelphia City Hall. He’s also an unrepentant felon who spent 11 years in prison for cheating investors out of $700 million and hiding $15 million in assets from regulators.

 

The other may be partially true, but doesn't say climate change isn't real.  It is....

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3 hours ago, stander said:

The coal miners are going back to work, throughout his campaign, President Trump promised the American people that he would roll back Obama era regulations that KILLED the coal mining industry. Those regulations left millions of Americans jobless and hopeless; they felt they had no place to turn.

Maybe the Obama regulations would have killed the last few jobs in the mining industry. Those regulations have not been in effect though due to court proceedings, so jobs lost were jobs lost due to economics, not Obama regulations.

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Not blaming any president, Democrat or Republican. But, I do not believe, as some have said that Obama's EPA initiatives have had that much effect on the world climate situation. He has neither made it warmer or cooler. I don't believe any living president has that kind of powers. If they did,  I think they would be thought of as a god.

 I also don't think anything he has done, has improved the air quality greatly. I am sure some good came of it, but how much in 8 years?  The air quality may have improved, but not that much in 8 years.

It has taken many, many years for the quality to improve and indeed in my lifetime it has.

 My own opinion (and it's just that)  on the fact that air quality has gotten better in the U.S. is that most manufacturing jobs have left the country and gone overseas. 

 That is why I believe places like China have actually adopted the pollution that we would still have if the factories and such were still in the U.S.  

Trump wants to bring back manufacturing to the U.S..  Good for jobs, bad for the environment.  At least in the U.S. 

 So, in order to do this, Trump needs to relax some of the EPA rules. It is a double edge sword.  Yes protections could be put in place, but that would not be cost effective. There would be no point in trying to bring back jobs to the States if it was too expensive to manufacture and then sell the product. 

Am I even close? 

 

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15 minutes ago, kowpot said:

But, I do not believe, as some have said that Obama's EPA initiatives have had that much effect on the world climate situation. He has neither made it warmer or cooler. I don't believe any living president has that kind of powers. If they did,  I think they would be thought of as a god.

Good post kowpot.

 

I would say that it doesn't matter how much of a difference Obama's contribution to dealing with climate change has made in itself, the point is he was leading other countries in the effort to tackle this enormous problem.  People around the world have looked to the USA to set an example.  Trump has now announced through his latest actions that in fact, the USA has stuck it's head firmly back in the sand.  Shame on you Trump!  

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2 hours ago, Linzz said:

Perhaps the universe works in cycles and the sun solar cycles. If that's the case as is historically I'm not sure if we impact all that much. I do appreciate clean air to breath but the politicians seem to have another agenda.

 

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

 

"The data clearly establishes that there has always been a cycle to CO2 long before man’s industrial age. This is data government wants to hide. As along as they can pretend CO2 has never risen in the past before 1950, then they can tax the air and pretend it’s to prevent climate change. Moreover, while we can clean the air with regulation as we have done, under global warming, they allow “credits” to pollute as long as you pay the government. It is the ultimate scam where they get to tax pollution and people cheer rather than clean up anything."

 

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/nature/nasa-finally-admit-its-going-to-get-colder/

  1. Yes, there are cycles in solar radiance, but the current warming of the planet is happening during a period of lower solar energy output. While solar radiance matters, it is on a much lower magnitude than the increase in amount of heat trapping greenhouse gases - i.e. gases that are transparent to visible light from the sun, but which are opaque to infrared (heat) wavelengths.
  2. For over the past million years of Ice Ages, CO2 concentrations have ranged between 180ppm (cold cycles) and 280ppm (inter-glacial warm cycles) Humans as a species have only been around for a quarter of that time, so we (and most other species now on the planet) have never experienced the warmer conditions that a more efficient atmospheric thermal blanket (over 40% more CO2) will generate. Even GMO technology has yet to develop the food plants that can tolerate / photosynthesize and grow in conditions anticipated 30-60 years from now. CropYieldVolatility.jpg.291004be3cef8ea504b1a420b4172f8a.jpgCorn, Rice and Wheat crops will be too variable in yield to count on, and that is just for starters. The above graphic is from a video lecture by Prof. Battisti is from upstate New York, and his densely informative graphics clarify why and how everyone will be intensely and adversely affected... EVEN currently cooler areas like UPSTATE NY.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YToMoNPwTFc&t=2090
  3. The more thoughtful Carbon Tax proposals (like by James Hansen) are a Carbon Fee and Dividend to keep it revenue neutral to the government - though preventing politicians from trying to access it will be a chore we can agree on. The dividend on a per capita basis would ease the burden of price hikes on those with the least, while the 10% highest income earners who (see my chart in my earlier post) would be most able and inclined to switch to alternative energy so as to avoid as much of the carbon fee as possible. Since they generate nearly half the CO2, that would accelerate the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
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2 minutes ago, elgordo38 said:

This whole charade is just an exercise in vindictiveness and nothing else. 

And creating a mess that tax dollars will be used to sort out.  What's he's done here is initiate a whole bunch of legal actions.  That are going to take years, and lots of money, to resolve. 

 

Thanks Donald, for wasting my money.  And wasting the time of our government officials.

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3 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Terrible sources of new.  Armstrong bilked many out of a lot of money, and spent years in jail. 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-10-13/after-prison-a-forecaster-aims-for-a-comeback

 

The other may be partially true, but doesn't say climate change isn't real.  It is....

Of course climate change is real, I never said it wasn't . The mission is identifying the reasons for it's changes. 

As for Armstrong you need to read a bit deeper. He spent some time incarcerated because he wouldn't give up his computer codes on cycles to the powers that be. But I don't really give a monkey's, his predictions on Brexit and a Trump win made me a lot of money so I don't really care what your view of him is.

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7 hours ago, maoro2013 said:

If you start with the right year the world is actually cooling.

 

I don't believe a word of it any more after being forced to attend attend a two day seminar on this issue. After being showed graphs with no numbers on the 'Y' axis you don't win me, in fact it is tantamount to lying.

I don't think people try to win others that are a lost cause.  Where was this "seminar", and what organization sponsored and promoted it?

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6 hours ago, stander said:

The coal miners are going back to work, throughout his campaign, President Trump promised the American people that he would roll back Obama era regulations that KILLED the coal mining industry. Those regulations left millions of Americans jobless and hopeless; they felt they had no place to turn.

A few, but why not do something that is going to last like training them to do something else?  Even the CEO of the largest coal company said coal is dying.  There is 2.4 trillion square feet of natural gas in the USA alone.  Coal can't compete with natural gas.  Almost all of DTs promises were lies, impractical or nonsensical.

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1 hour ago, RPCVguy said:
  1. Yes, there are cycles in solar radiance, but the current warming of the planet is happening during a period of lower solar energy output. While solar radiance matters, it is on a much lower magnitude than the increase in amount of heat trapping greenhouse gases - i.e. gases that are transparent to visible light from the sun, but which are opaque to infrared (heat) wavelengths.
  2. For over the past million years of Ice Ages, CO2 concentrations have ranged between 180ppm (cold cycles) and 280ppm (inter-glacial warm cycles) Humans as a species have only been around for a quarter of that time, so we (and most other species now on the planet) have never experienced the warmer conditions that a more efficient atmospheric thermal blanket (over 40% more CO2) will generate. Even GMO technology has yet to develop the food plants that can tolerate / photosynthesize and grow in conditions anticipated 30-60 years from now. CropYieldVolatility.jpg.291004be3cef8ea504b1a420b4172f8a.jpgCorn, Rice and Wheat crops will be too variable in yield to count on, and that is just for starters. The above graphic is from a video lecture by Prof. Battisti is from upstate New York, and his densely informative graphics clarify why and how everyone will be intensely and adversely affected... EVEN currently cooler areas like UPSTATE NY.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YToMoNPwTFc&t=2090
  3. The more thoughtful Carbon Tax proposals (like by James Hansen) are a Carbon Fee and Dividend to keep it revenue neutral to the government - though preventing politicians from trying to access it will be a chore we can agree on. The dividend on a per capita basis would ease the burden of price hikes on those with the least, while the 10% highest income earners who (see my chart in my earlier post) would be most able and inclined to switch to alternative energy so as to avoid as much of the carbon fee as possible. Since they generate nearly half the CO2, that would accelerate the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

I am skeptical of this CO2 credits thing as well.  Just reduce toxins and pollution overall.  We have the tech now to run almost everything on clean energy.  Planes and heavy equipment may take a while to transition, but almost everything else is viable for change now.

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2 minutes ago, kowpot said:

 

I hate to jolt you into reality, but Obama is not the president, and clean energy is taking over the world.  China is becoming stronger because of DT.  The guy is a joke.  Even he might realize it one day.  Don't live in the past.  Don't live in ignorance.

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