Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think one should consider the entire government part of the administration.

[crazy canuck]

BC's carbon tax viewed as the model to emulate

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how-to-make-a-carbon-tax-popular-give-the-profits-to-the-people

[Syt]

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/11/world/climate-change-arctic-report-card-2018-wxc/index.html

Unparalleled warmth is changing the Arctic and affecting weather in US, Europe

(CNN)The Arctic is experiencing a multi-year stretch of unparalleled warmth "that is unlike any period on record," according to the 2018 Arctic Report Card, a peer-reviewed report released Tuesday morning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Commerce.

The report states that human-caused climate change is transforming the Arctic, both physically through the reduction of sea ice, and biologically through reductions in wildlife populations and introduction of marine toxins and algae.

The report is yet another study from part of the US government indicating that climate change is real and having a profound impact, despite denials from the President and senior members of his Administration.

Temperatures in the Arctic are warming more than twice as fast as the overall planet's average temperature, with temperatures this year in the highest latitudes (above 60 degrees north) coming in 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981-2010 average. These were the second warmest (behind 2016) air temperatures ever recorded during the Arctic year, which runs from October through September to avoid splitting the winter season.

The five years since 2014 have been warmer than any other years in the historical record, which goes back to 1900. Although Arctic temperatures have been subject to wild swings back and forth through the decades due to natural variability, they have been consistently warmer than average since 2000 and at or near record since 2014, the report states.

"The changes we are witnessing in the Arctic are sufficiently rapid that they cannot be explained without considering our impacts on the chemistry of the atmosphere," Thomas Mote, a research scientist at the University of Georgia who authored part of the report, told CNN in an email.

Mote expressed that any natural cycle or mechanism that would lead to the amount of warming and ice loss that has been observed would take much longer than the few years over which we have seen these drastic changes.

The rapid warming of the Arctic is known as "Arctic amplification," which is due to multiple feedback loops that the report describes. Warmer temperatures lead to less ice and snow, which means less sunlight is reflected and more is absorbed by the darker oceans. This warms the ocean further, which in turn decreases the sea ice even more. The lack of sea ice and more ocean surface leads to additional cloudiness later in the fall season, which keeps the Arctic region warmer even later into the winter.

"What starts in the Arctic isn't confined there," Mote noted. "Changes in sea ice influence ocean currents and the jet stream in ways that can affect weather in lower latitudes, including the United States and Europe," Mote said.

The report highlighted several of these events over the past year as an example of how Arctic warming can influence day-to-day weather.

The swarm of Nor'easters that plauged the eastern United States in early 2018 and the extreme cold outbreak during March in Europe, known as the "Beast from the East," were specifically noted.

Sea ice continues to decline

As you would expect with the trend of record warm temperatures, sea ice has seen dramatic declines over the past 20 years as well, with 2018 continuing that trend.

According to the 2018 Arctic Report Card, this year featured the second-lowest winter sea-ice extent -- the amount of the Arctic Ocean that is covered with sea ice -- since the satellite record began in 1979. The summer minimum sea ice was the sixth-lowest over the same time period.

While winter sea ice extents have decreased at a much slower rate compared to the ice extent during the summer, there has been a significant change to the ice pack during the winter.

The ice is much younger than it used to be. According to the report, fewer than 1% of Arctic ice is considered "oldest ice," meaning it is at least four years old and has survived multiple melt seasons. Older ice tends to be thicker and more resilient to changes in temperature.

Since scientists began measuring the age of the ice in the mid-1980s, multi-year ice in the Arctic has decreased in size from 2.54 million square kilometers (roughly the size of Mexico and all of Central America combined) to 0.13 million square kilometers (roughly the size of Nicaragua in Central America) -- a 95% reduction in a little over 30 years.

"Sea ice cover has transformed from a strong, thick pack in the 1980s to a more fragile, younger, thinner, and more mobile pack in recent years," the report states, where "the thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in the summer and has contributed to the decreasing trend in the minimum ice extent."

Red tides and reindeer

The warming of the Arctic climate and the decline of sea ice have led to some drastic changes in the biodiversity of the region.

The report's authors found notable increases in harmful algal blooms, often known as red tides, which can affect human, wildlife and ecosystem health and lead to mass die-offs of fish and marine mammals, such as was observed in Florida during much of the summer this year.

As the Arctic warms, new toxins are being introduced to the region. This map highlights the location and kind of toxins found in marine animal species from 2004 to 2013 in the Alaskan Arctic.

While normally confined to warmer climates, the toxin-producing phytoplankton have been shifting northward as ocean temperatures rise, posing a risk to the local populations and economies that depend heavily on fishing for food and tourism.

Other native wildlife species are feeling the heat, as well. Reindeer and caribou populations continued to decline in 2018, according to the report, with their total populations dropping by more than 50% over the past 20 years.

While climate change isn't the only factor likely behind the decline in these herds, it is a driving force for a number of threats the animals face. Increased heat stress, food shortages, disease and parasites -- climate change overarches each of these challenges, the report states.

[Syt]

Climate/environmental policy at work:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/epa-science-adviser-allowed-industry-group-edit-journal-article

EPA science adviser allowed industry group to edit journal article

When the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begins a major review of air pollution standards this week, a researcher who has received funding from an industry group opposed to the rules will be leading the agency's panel.

Tony Cox, who was named chairman of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, accepted funding from the American Petroleum Institute (API) to help finance his research into particulate matter pollution. He also allowed the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group to proofread and copy edit his findings before they were published, according to his own acknowledgements.

It's highly unusual to give an industry group, or anyone who funds scientific work, a chance to influence the outcome of research, according to scientists.

"Certainly his ties to industry and comfort with allowing them to influence the science is concerning given he is heading a process where we know there will be heavy industry pressure to influence it," said Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The arrangement is unusual in the scientific community because it stands to discredit a researcher's work, even if the group that provided funding makes innocuous changes, other researchers said. In this case, the access that Cox gave to API doesn't seem to have dramatically altered the conclusions of his study. Instead, a small change here and there could have made it a friendlier vehicle for the industry's message, Goldman said.

It "implies that the messaging matters," she said.

Cox, who was nominated for his position by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been critical of EPA air pollution regulations and has said that research showing the connection between air pollution and serious human health consequences is overblown. He sent E&E News a study that happened to contain copy edits, which he said were made by reviewers. It's unclear which changes were made by API, and Cox denies that the fossil fuel lobbying group offered meaningful edits.

Cox is a statistician who is now tasked with overseeing the advisory committee's review of particulate matter pollution standards. It's supposed to make a key health determination that could affect millions of Americans: chiefly whether the level of air pollution they are breathing is hurting them.

The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee is meeting Wednesday and Thursday to review EPA's science assessment for particulate matter. It's part of the legal requirement under the Clean Air Act that EPA review scientific information related to the national ambient air quality standards for six pollutants. They are: particulate matter, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead and sulfur dioxide.

Cox states in his study that API provided input before it was published last year.

"This paper benefited from close proof-reading and copy-editing suggestions from API, but these reviews and suggestions were provided for the author's consideration without constraints that any of them be incorporated," he wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology.

API, which lobbies the government on behalf of fossil fuel companies, has a history of fighting regulations on air pollution, sometimes by pointing to the scientific conclusions of studies that it funded.

Before Pruitt resigned amid a flurry of ethics investigations earlier this year, EPA replaced academic researchers on its science advisory boards with researchers supported by industry groups. Pruitt declared that scientists who received EPA grants had conflicts of interest, while those who are paid by polluting industries deserved a louder voice. That's when he named Cox to lead the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

Under acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, EPA has gone even further to sideline scientists, particularly around air pollution. It recently disbanded a separate panel of scientists, who are supposed to review particulate matter pollution, and canceled plans for another panel that was to review ozone.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has remade the panel led by Cox. It now includes an academic and several state regulators who have downplayed the effects of air pollution.

Cox's 2017 study, which examines the causal relationship between air pollution and human health, was published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology. The journal has a reputation for publishing industry-funded work that's sometimes used to argue against government regulations.

Cox's research questions previous studies that have connected serious human health problems to air pollution. It fits with the approach that Cox has taken when testifying to Congress: He emphasizes uncertainties, including in 2015, when he told lawmakers that health benefits of reducing ozone exposure were "unwarranted and exaggerated."

Cox denied that API influenced his work and said the organization did not suggest any substantive changes. The fossil fuel group offered "some minor copy editing suggestions on punctuation and my use of 'relation' vs. 'relationship,'" Cox said.

"Neither in effect nor in actual fact did they interfere with, shape, or direct my findings or the conduct of my research in any way," Cox said in an email to E&E News. "My research was complete before I drafted the paper, and nothing of substance changed thereafter except in response to journal reviewer comments and my own re-reading for clarity. My research is and always have been my own, and I do not accept outside interference."

Cox has a history of attacking established research on the health risks of air pollution, using his own statistical model to crunch data associated with particulate matter, or PM2.5.

In one study, he said there was "no evidence that reductions in PM2.5 concentrations cause reductions in mortality rates." In addition to API, he has received funding from the American Chemistry Council and Philip Morris International Inc., the tobacco company.

There's a large body of science that connects serious health ailments to air pollution. Ozone and fine particle air pollution are particularly dangerous to vulnerable groups of people, including children, the elderly, people with asthma and outdoor workers.

The World Health Organization published research earlier this year that found nine out of 10 people globally breathe polluted air and that air pollution kills 7 million people annually. It's one of the leading causes of death. Vehicle emissions are a leading cause of air pollution worldwide.

John Bachmann, EPA's director for science policy on air quality during President George W. Bush's administration, said it's "crazy" that EPA is barring researchers who received agency grants from sitting on advisory panels. They are often some of the best researchers, he said.

That change means the panel overseen by Cox is reviewing air pollution standards without the help of a single epidemiologist. Altogether, the altered panels once included at least seven epidemiologists; they're all gone, Bachmann said.

He added that current members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee are qualified, but their capabilities, expertise and perspectives are greatly limited compared with those who once served on a specialized panel to review particulate matter. Pruitt disbanded it.

"It's a huge loss to claim you can review a document that has hundreds and hundreds of pages on epidemiology by people who don't do it, don't do the research in it and the one guy who has done some of it has a point of view that is not mainstream," Bachmann said, referring to Cox.

Cox's 2017 study is a "review paper that focuses on epidemiological literature and application of epidemiological methods to case studies by someone who is not an epidemiologist," said Christopher Frey, a former chairman of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

In the past, it was rare to appoint a chair who had not previously served on the panel, Frey said. The Clean Air Act requires reviews by the advisory panel to be thorough and to rely on the latest science. He said industry researchers, going back to tobacco industry efforts to discredit the health effects of smoking, are largely focused on uncertainty rather than the risks. Frey said EPA, when it funded some of his research, did not seek to edit his work beforehand.

"In a regulatory purpose, you really want all the members of the committee to be perceived as impartial and free of conflict of interest, and I don't think as a group this committee earns that perception."

Frey, who served as chairman of the committee from 2012 to 2015 and was first appointed in 2008 under Bush, said the current board is derived of stakeholders with a vested interest.

The panel lost prominence in other ways too. In the past, there were dozens of people reviewing air pollution research for three years. Now, it's seven people doing the review in one year.

"It's a perfect storm," Frey said. "So many things have been changed all at once, and every one of them weakens the process, and collectively it just creates a tremendously weak process that borders on being a total sham."

[Berkut]

He is basically saying "I submitted it to this industry group to review, but they didn't make any real changes, and I knew they wouldn't, but I submitted it to them anyway, oh, and also, really, I decided long before I wrote up the paper that it wouldn't actually say anything they would object to anyway, seeing as how they bought and paid for me a LONG time ago!"

[The Brain]

How do you do science on something that you cannot see, yet is everywhere, and is critical for our existence? That way lies madness and discussions about Trinity (not the good kind).

[Tonitrus]

How do you do science on something that you cannot see, yet is everywhere, and is critical for our existence? That way lies madness and discussions about Trinity (not the good kind).

Wait, what is the good kind?  The one in New Mexico?

[The Brain]

How do you do science on something that you cannot see, yet is everywhere, and is critical for our existence? That way lies madness and discussions about Trinity (not the good kind).

Wait, what is the good kind?  The one in New Mexico?

[grumbler]

I don't think one should consider the entire government part of the administration.

Agreed.  Just the executive branch of government is part of the administration.

[Syt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/climate/cafe-emissions-rollback-oil-industry.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

The Oil Industry's Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules

When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards — that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation — clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

The industry had reason to urge the rollback of higher fuel efficiency standards proposed by former President Barack Obama. A quarter of the world's oil is used to power cars, and less-thirsty vehicles mean lower gasoline sales.

In recent months, Marathon Petroleum also teamed up with a secretive policy group within the Koch network, the American Legislative Exchange Council, to draft legislation for states supporting the industry's position. Its proposed resolution, dated Sept. 18, describes current fuel-efficiency rules as "a relic of a disproven narrative of resource scarcity" and says "unelected bureaucrats" shouldn't dictate the cars Americans drive.

A separate industry campaign on Facebook, covertly run by an oil-industry lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and other oil giants, urged people to write to regulators to support the rollback.

The Facebook ads linked to a website with a picture of a grinning Mr. Obama. It asked, "Would YOU buy a used car from this man?" The site appears to have been so effective that a quarter of the 12,000 public comments received by the Department of Transportation can be traced to the petition, according to a Times analysis.

Gary R. Heminger, Marathon's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement that the company supported "sound fuel economy standards" and wanted to "help ensure they are achievable and based on existing technology."

He added, "We appreciate the administration's willingness to conduct a thorough review in order to ensure future standards are achievable and will actually benefit American consumers."

A spokesman for Koch Industries, the energy conglomerate led by Mr. Koch, said the company had "a long, consistent track record of opposing all forms of corporate welfare, including all subsidies, mandates and other handouts that rig the system."

The oil industry's campaign, the details of which have not been previously reported, illuminates why the rollbacks have gone further than the more modest changes automakers originally lobbied for.

The standards that the Trump administration seeks to weaken required automakers to roughly double the fuel economy of new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks by 2025. Instead, the Trump plan would freeze the standards at 2020 levels. Carmakers, for their part, had sought more flexibility in meeting the original 2025 standards, not a categorical rollback.

The Trump plan, if finalized, would increase greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by more than the amount many midsize countries put out in a year and reverse a major effort by the Obama administration to fight climate change.

The energy industry's efforts also help explain the Trump administration's confrontational stance toward California, which, under federal law, has a unique authority to write its own clean-air rules and to mandate more zero-emissions vehicles.

California has pledged to stick to the stricter standards, together with 13 other states that follow its lead. But President Trump's plan challenges California's rule-writing power, setting up a legal battle that threatens to split the American auto market in two.

That is a prospect automakers desperately want to avoid.

But for gasoline producers like Marathon, a shift toward more efficient vehicles poses a grave threat to the bottom line. In October, the company acquired a rival, Andeavor, making it the biggest refiner in the United States, with sales of 16 billion gallons of fuel a year.

Even while doubling down on gasoline, Marathon has projected an environmentally friendly public image. "We have invested billions of dollars to make our operations more energy efficient," Marathon said in a recent report. The company's Twitter account recently highlighted a gardening project and the creation of a duck pond at one of its refineries.

On a conference call with investors last week, Mr. Heminger, the Marathon chief executive, was already counting the extra barrels of fuel a Trump rollback would mean for the industry: 350,000 to 400,000 barrels of gasoline per day, he said.

"However, you have another side who doesn't want to pivot away" from the stricter rules, Mr. Heminger said. "So we have a lot of work to do to keep this momentum going."

Marathon's Early Start

Marathon began its outreach to the Trump administration early, asking to meet with Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency soon after he became its administrator in early 2017. Marathon had been a top donor to Mr. Pruitt in Oklahoma, a state where oil is so prominent that a well stands on the grounds of the capitol building.

"Our CEO, Gary Heminger, would be very glad for an opportunity to visit with the Administrator," a Marathon lobbyist wrote in an email to Mr. Trump's transition team on May 8, 2017. "I believe this would be a constructive dialogue." The E.P.A. helps oversee fuel economy rules along with the Transportation Department.

Mr. Pruitt was scheduled to meet with the Marathon chief at least twice — once in June 2017 as part of a meeting with the board of a powerful fuel-industry group, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and again in September for a more private talk, according to emails and schedules released in a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club.

A Marathon spokesman, Chuck Rice, said Mr. Heminger did not discuss auto-efficiency rollbacks with Mr. Pruitt. An E.P.A. official did not respond to a question about whether the auto rules were discussed.

Marathon then turned its focus to Congress, hiring the firm Ogilvy Government Relations to lobby legislators in Washington on fuel-economy standards, according to Ogilvy's disclosure forms. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the summer, Marathon representatives also approached legislators about an  industry talking-points letter, according to six people familiar with that effort. The file properties of a Microsoft Word version of one letter, provided by a Congressional delegation, show that it was last edited by a Marathon lobbyist, Michael J. Birsic, on June 11, 2018.

Mr. Rice of Marathon said the company did not write the letter, and the company declined to say who did. It did not offer an explanation for Mr. Birsic's digital fingerprint on the document file.

Nineteen lawmakers from the delegations of Indiana, West Virginia and Pennsylvania sent letters to the Transportation Department that included exact phrases and reasoning from the industry letter. The lawmakers' letters, sent in June and July, all make the point that oil scarcity is no longer a concern.

The Trump administration's proposed rollback echoes the post-conservation theme. While energy conservation is significant, the proposal says, the downside of additional petroleum consumption would be dwarfed by the rollback's benefits.

Representatives from the three state delegations either declined to comment or did not respond to requests.

Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the industry's campaign. "It appears as though oil interests are cynically trying to gin up support in Congress for the weakest possible standards to ensure that cars and SUVs have to rely on even more oil," he said.

"If this attempt is successful, the outcome will be a blow to the auto industry, consumers, and our environment."

The Facebook Campaign

The Facebook ads, featuring Mr. Trump waving alongside the message, "SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT'S CAR FREEDOM AGENDA!," appeared the week after the administration made public its fuel economy plan in August. At least 10 times during the two-month public comment period on the plan, the ads, which did not state their oil industry origins, asked people to write to the government to back weaker emissions standards.

Public comments matter in federal rule-making. The law requires that citizens' views be taken into account before a rule is finalized.

"File an official comment to SUPPORT our President's plan for safer, cheaper cars that WE get to choose," read one ad, which ran for seven days in early October. The ad leads to a page that provides basic language to submit.

More than 3,300 of the 12,000 public comments that D.O.T. has made public contain language identical to that petition, an analysis of the files showed.

The campaign was a product of the fuel and petrochemical manufacturers trade group, widely known as AFPM. However, neither the Facebook ads nor the site identified the industry group. Instead they name a group called Energy4US, which describes itself as "a coalition of consumers, businesses and workers" promoting affordable energy.

Energy4US has close ties to the industry group. According to internet domain records, Victor Adams, listed as an AFPM web manager, registered Energy4Us.org in 2015 using his work email address. Energy4US lists the group as a coalition member, along with about 50 other groups including energy interests, labor groups, a sheriff's association and even a recreational fishing alliance.

The AFPM board includes representatives from Exxon, Chevron, Phillips 66, Marathon and Koch Industries. The companies all referred queries to the group.

Derrick Morgan, a senior vice president at AFPM, said the group "regularly works with policymakers, coalition groups and individuals to promote shared goals," and also will "lead and join groups like Energy4US."

The Department of Transportation said it was "generally aware" that there were groups urging the public to make comments through online campaigns, but said it does not regulate them.

Taking the Fight On the Road

House bill 1593 is just eight words long: "To repeal the corporate average fuel economy standards." Koch Industries, a petroleum empire with interests as diverse as gasoline, pipelines, fertilizer and Stainmaster carpets, is the bill's sole corporate backer.

The measure, which would eliminate fuel standards altogether, is not expected to go far. But it underscores the company's stance on the matter. And Koch interests are fighting that battle not only in Washington but increasingly in statehouses and even local policy meetings nationwide.

In Dearborn, Mich., at a September meeting on the Trump fuel-efficiency rollbacks, Annie Patnaude of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-funded group, spoke in favor. "This is a step in the right direction to protect consumers and workers against government mandates that would limit choice," she said.

In Iowa, Americans for Prosperity joined the fight over whether to make it easier for gas stations to install chargers for electric vehicles. In Illinois, it discouraged state officials from considering subsidies for electric vehicles.

And last month an Americans for Prosperity representative trekked to a public hearing in Colorado, where regulators were thinking about becoming the 13th state to follow California's stricter standards. The representative, Shari Shiffer-Krieger, a field director for the group, argued that people in the rugged state wanted SUVs, not tighter emissions rules. "Coloradans deserve much better," she said.

The oil industry lost that fight. Colorado allied itself with California.

But Americans for Prosperity said fights like these get to the heart of its free-market philosophy. "We believe in a level playing field so all Americans have the equal opportunity to succeed," said Bill Riggs, a spokesman for the group, in a statement. The organization will keep fighting "mandates that unfairly pick winners and losers in any industry," he said.

Drafting Pro-Oil State Legislation

On August 6, a Marathon lobbyist, Stephen D. Higley, emailed a Wisconsin state representative an explainer of American fuel economy law. The memo didn't mince words.

"It's a relic," the memo said, particularly at a time when the United States was "poised to become the largest oil producer in the world."

The Wisconsin representative, Mike Kuglitsch, participates in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch-funded group that helps companies write model legislation for state lawmakers to use as a basis for their own laws.

Emails obtained by the Times show that Marathon has been working with members of the legislative exchange council to build support for the Trump fuel-efficiency rollback in state legislatures and to denounce California's power to write its own rules for cars. The emails were made public under Wisconsin's open records law to Documented, a watchdog group that tracks corporate influence in public policy.

California's special authority could effectively split the American auto market in two, since 13 other states — representing roughly 35 percent of nationwide car sales — have agreed to follow California's stricter rules. That means automakers might find themselves making cars to two competing standards.

"Who should decide what cars and trucks consumers should buy, consumers themselves or unelected bureaucrats in Sacramento, California or Washington, D.C.?" the memo sent by Marathon said.

In a statement, Bill Meierling of the legislative exchange council said that mandating fuel economy was a rule that "many state legislators believe doesn't make sense for working Americans."

Just days after the emails between Marathon and the Wisconsin lawmaker, some 1,500 state legislators and other officials from across the country gathered in New Orleans to cheer on Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation, at the legislative exchange council's annual convention. Marathon sponsored the event.

The Transportation Department was determined to cut government regulations, said Ms. Chao, a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which has received Koch funding and has long opposed the fuel economy rules.

Mr. Trump's proposed rollback, she said, "ranks as one of the most significant regulatory reforms that this administration is undertaking." The room erupted in applause.

[Syt]

And: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/climate/trump-clean-water-rollback.html?action=click&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Climate%20and%20Environment

[...]

The clean water rollback is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to weaken or undo major environmental rules, including proposals to weaken regulations on planet-warming emissions from cars, power plants and oil and gas drilling rigs, a series of moves designed to speed new drilling in the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and efforts to weaken protections under the Endangered Species Act. This week in Katowice, Poland, at an annual United Nations conference on mitigating global warming, Trump administration officials held an event touting the benefits of fossil fuels.

[...]

[mongers]

[Richard Hakluyt]

And a physics101 explanation of why the increasing concentration of CO2 matters :

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carbon_dioxide

Totally straighforward, an educated 12-year old could understand the implications.

[mongers]

And a physics101 explanation of why the increasing concentration of CO2 matters :

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carbon_dioxide

Totally straighforward, an educated 12-year old could understand the implications.

Very good.

[The Minsky Moment]

And a physics101 explanation of why the increasing concentration of CO2 matters :

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Carbon_dioxide

Totally straighforward, an educated 12-year old could understand the implications.

So well beyond the intellectual capabilities of our President.