Trump Assault on Climate Scientists Begins at Energy Department
Donald Trump (Credit: Michael Vadon)
UPDATE: Department of Energy officials have defied Trump and refused to answer the more intrusive questions on the questionnaire. Meanwhile, the president elect has selected former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run the Energy Department. When Perry ran for president, he promised to eliminate three government agencies during a primary debate; he named two of them but could not remember the name of the Energy Department.
This whole year has just gotten stranger and stranger. I must be in a very surreal dream or a coma or hallucinating….or something.
With Donald Trump reportedly set to name the head of America’s largest oil company, Exxon Mobil, as the nation’s chief diplomat, the president elect’s “carbon today, carbon tomorrow, carbon forever” strategy is becoming ever clearer.
A man who believes climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese is filling his government with like-minded conspiracy buffs. It’s clear that it will be virtually impossible for the United States to address global climate change in any meaningful way over the next four to eight years.
Over at the Energy Department, Trump’s paranoid campaign has taken an interesting turn: the targeting of individual civil servants for doing their jobs.
Donald Trump’s transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.
The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”Trump and his team have vowed to dismantle specific aspects of Obama’s climate policies, and Trump has questioned the reality of climate change. The questionnaire, which one Energy Department official described as unusually “intrusive” and a matter for departmental lawyers, has raised concern that the Trump transition team is trying to figure out how to target the people, including civil servants, who have helped implement policies under Obama.
Thousands of scientists have signed petitions calling on the president-elect and his team to respect scientific integrity and refrain from singling out individual researchers whose work might conflict with the new administration’s policy goals. This potential clash could prompt a major schism within the federal government, with many career officials waging a battle against incoming political appointees….
Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, called the memo’s demand that Energy officials identify specific employees “alarming.”
“If the Trump administration is already singling out scientists for doing their jobs, the scientific community is right to be worried about what his administration will do in office. What’s next? Trump administration officials holding up lists of ‘known climatologists’ and urging the public to go after them?” Halpern asked.
This move has some major implications at NASA, which Trump advisors have accused of pursuing “politically correct” science on global warming. The administration wants to cut the space agency’s Earth science budget and transfer what is left to NOAA.
It may only be a matter of time before NASA officials get a similar list of questions targeting scientists, if they have not already received one.
This is a mistake. The evidence for human-created climate change is overwhelming; its consequences will be severe for the nation and the world; and a government that cherry picks what science to believe and not to believe based largely on ideology and conspiracy theories is leading its people down a path of rapid decline.
46 responses to “Trump Assault on Climate Scientists Begins at Energy Department”
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Could it be that Trump wants to wean us off foreign oil? If we’re gonna use fossil fuel, lets use ours. We can, and should, continue developing alternative energy. Maybe this will actually accelerate our alt energy programs.
while I am a fan of becoming energy independent again, how does chasing down climatologist help with AE?
Oh, chasing them down is what is anticipated by progressives, because it’s what the progressives have been trying to do with “skeptics” for about 12 months. Remember all those Attorney Generals from Blue States demanding lists of both researchers and donors from NGOs, from which they could prosecute people? They think Trump is interested in the same things they were about to activate, that being reward your friends and punish your enemies.
In fact, the audit of the DoE will provide those who will become responsible for DoE spending with a good idea of what work is being done, and who is doing it. Then, they will be cutting work they think shouldn’t be done, and begin work they think should be done. Knowing the current state of play is needed before they can rationally decide on what to change.
These protests over questions are simply a lever for progressives to slow such changes. For instance, it is probable that Molten Salt Reactors will be something that the new administration wants to see technology developed for. Unlike the Obama Administration, they do not have a wing of their Party organized around opposition to any and all nuclear power, including MSR.
Once they know what is being done, and who is doing it, they will be able to form priority lists of their own. They will have pretty much the same amount of money, so the bottom of the priority lists will get shaved off to fund the MSR tech development. The same thing will happen for development of the supercritical CO2 turbine technology that would benefit a NASA space reactor program so much, …at least I hope it will be. The combination of that with MSR temperature ranges would be an excellent expansion of our ability to power propulsion throughout the Solar System.
Where were the 72 questions looking for money? One of them asked about DoE spending money for research on the Social Effects of Carbon, and in particular on sending DoE personnel to expensive conferences about the subject. Expect that subject to be low-hanging fruit on the priority lists. Here is the list of questions with comments by someone who does this for organizations: https://wattsupwiththat.com…
This sort of thing is how businessmen turn around an organization when it is being saved from bankruptcy. That is what they are intent on doing with the US government. I wish them luck in that.
I agree, folks are viewing this from the narrow perspective of the debate on climate science, and as usual are using the “victim” card that many scientists love to use these days when they get into politics that is over their head.
Viewing the entire body of questions from the perspective of Strategic Management this is not about finding individuals to
reprimand as the politicians are saying, it’s about determining if there is any chance of salvaging the DOE as an independent cabinet level department by reorganization or if the viable elements would perform better merged into another department while shutting down the DOE itself.
In terms of this infamous question in the questionnaire that the scientists have singled out it appears, when viewed in
the context of the other questions, to be for the purpose of determining the level of DOE resources that were spent on UNCCC, how much of that was duplication of the efforts of other agencies, and what the outcome was in perspective of the mission of DOE.
Yes, but no. They want to cut NASA’s Earth-science programs, but they have no intention of transferring a dime to NOAA. I’m not sure why people keep repeating this line, they’ve made no secret of it.
Since its going to take about twenty or thirty years to completely transfer US electricity consumption from fossil fuels to carbon neutral technologies, Congress and the Executive branch need to simply mandate that a continuously growing percentage of electricity production and transportation fuel be derived from carbon neutral technologies or fuels.
Legislation mandating that at least 50% of electricity production from a utility in the US be carbon neutral by 2030 wouldn’t be difficult to achieve since about 35% of our electricity production is already carbon neutral. Many US utilities already produce electricity that is more than 50% carbon neutral.
A substantial increase in the number of nuclear power plants at current nuclear sites (over 60 commercial nuclear sites in the US) could easily help to achieve this goal by 2030. Nuclear power provides about 21% of the electricity in the US. A bolder mandate, 90% by 2040 could also be achieved by simply expanding the number of nuclear power plants at– existing sites. There’s plenty of room at– existing nuclear sites– to more than triple or even quadruple nuclear electric power production.
But even this effort would only solve about 40% of America’s total energy needs since nearly 60% of America’s energy use is related to transportation: mostly the demand for gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel.
And even domestic electricity demand is likely to substantially increase over the next 20 to 30 years due to the natural increase in US population and the probable increase in the number of automobiles and other vehicles that are partially or totally powered by electricity.
Marcel
Nope. Absolutely, the wrong way to go about this.
Worse, your numbers are WAY OFF.
We have over 100 nuke plants NOW, we have the most in the world.
The next couple of nations combined are still less than what America is.
But, the large GW plants will not work here. We need the small SMRs, and we need to add in the mix with rectors that burn up waste.
And we have a number of OLD plants that not only are shut down, but still have waste at those sites. These are ideal for add SMRs that can make use of it and will burn it up.
As to our energy usage matrix, it is roughly divided into 3rds;
transportation, industry, and electricity.
Due to Tesla, we will continue our move to EVs at a relatively fast rate. And with our current energy matrix, it will lower our CO2. Right now, for 2016, we will see about 27% of our electricity come from coal. However, at the end of 2016 (i.e. NOW), we are at about 22-24% from coal. For the next couple of years, we will remain at this level, UNLESS, Trump does not allow Nat gas and oil to be exported (gut feeling says that he will allow BOTH to occur which will raise our nat gas rates). As such, with vehicles moving to electric and about 50% of our electricity is from fossil fuel, we will see that 1/3 drop heavily.
That leaves industry. And the only way to deal with that, is NOT to regulate, but to simply tax GOODS/SERVICES based on where the worst sub-part comes from. In fact, we should be doing that to ALL GOODS/services that we consume/use in America. This will encourage ALL STATES AND NATIONS to drop their CO2.
All that is needed is to add OCO3, along withs Japan’s new carbon monitoring sat, both of which are able to read absolute values over an area to tell us the real numbers (look at data on OCO2 to understand why this is desperately needed).
Finally, we need to normalize the data, but in a sane fashion. To get industry to change, we need to normalize it based on emissions / $ GDP. If we do that, then it forces industries and govs (state and nationals), to change their emissions.
The principal point that I was trying to make was that solving the problem of generating electricity only solves 40% of our carbon pollution problem.
But you are correct, transportation consumes only about 28% of our energy needs with industrial chemicals consuming 22% of our energy.
I didn’t say anything about what kind of nuclear reactors should be used to produce domestic electricity at existing sites.
My reference source for US energy consumption is from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the year 2015.
The first thing we need to do is have the feds fulfill their obligations and take all the spent nuclear fuel / waste from the existing plants, and bury it in those caverns . This is possible, since Harry Reid is blocking the way. He took all the money for his state, but balked when it came time to actually take the nuclear material. And, it looks like I’m getting another winter cycle of snow / sub-zero temps again. I could use some global warming right now.
BS on all of that.
What is blocking more going in, was that the site was already showing issues. And it would not be capable of handling.
In addition, DOE had actually selected a site in west texas, but since it was close to Bush’s ranch, President Bush selected NV, which was NOT the way to go.
In addition, burying ‘nuke waste’ that is NOT spent, is foolish.
Instead, we can use it as fuel and have less than 5% of the 100,000 tonnes of waste that we currently have.
And it would be safe within 200 years.
Finally, the waste would generate a LOT more profits for the utilities and help pay for burying the waste.
Actually two of the questions on the questionnaire are about options for storing waste at Yucca Flats
I just want someone to start building a wall at the Canadian border to block the Polar Vortex that is coming my way. It’s going to get damn cold again this week.
Another idiot who doesn’t know the difference between “weather” and “climate”.
Did Neolithic man have to face the same issues when the last Global Warming ended the last Ice Age?
Actually, the last global warming, was normal temps, not hot temps.
And neo-lithics came about right at the end of the ice age.
The neolithic was the stone age beginnings of the agricultural revolution. That revolution came in response not to the warming after the last glacial advance, but to the “Younger Dryas Event”, which was actually a *return* to colder conditions for about 1,300 years. There was about 1,000 years of warming, …then the Younger Dryas Event, …followed by about 1,300 years of famine and starvation from its effects, during which time those desperate enough among the species of obstreperously violent primates called Homo Sapiens Sapiens cooperated enough to have invented agriculture. After that we returned to warmth with the Holocene Climactic Optimum, from which we are now still declining in temperature and rainfall.
FYI here is an NPR article that actually includes the list of questions.
http://www.npr.org/sections…
There is also a list, and comments from a man who does organization audits all the time, at https://wattsupwiththat.com… .
An enemies list, you say? Aleady? Excellent; excellent! Lord Putin will be much pleased…
Even during the election, one of Trump’s advisors commented that they were making a literal list of enemies for future action after they won.
Nixon would have been proud.
So, we’re back to the MSM theme that all Republican Presidents will be either stupid, or Nixon?
Trump is – but I’d give Tricky Dick more credit.
This guy is no Nixon. Nixon wrote books. This guy doesn’t read books. He doesn’t have to read books, because he’s, uh, really smart.
Nixon was actually a lot better than these spineless bleeding-heart liberals that are a scourge on humanity.
Makes Swamps Great Again.
Yes, I know about the laurentian icesheet and the ice dam. After all, I live in the Columbia River Valley, where similar events occurred with Flathead lake repeatedly. So? The correction about the timing of the neolithic is still needed.
Why did you think I was wanting to do that in my comment? Why did you think *they* were trying to do that in their questions? They know you and people like you have no incentive to treat them with respect. This isn’t a game inside academia, and isn’t played by academic rules. The people taking over DoE have zero faith that science is the major motivation of the people they will be replacing.
I was responding to the foolish idea that a group about to take over a government hierarchy should not be asking questions that any new management should want to ask when taking over an operation they intend to change the direction of.
You do understand that management needs such information to manage an organization successfully, …right?
Why should you want a climate researcher to comment on auditing questions? Eschenbach has paid attention to DoE and its spendthrift ways in the past, and has experience in audits, …so he gets to have his say. Climate research is not all that should be paid attention to in government takeovers.
They probably had to pack their bags and leave the flat plains now known as the Baltic and North Seas.
I see an impeachment in the making and a reprimand by the Supreme Court for this witch hunt that is about to open a whole barrel of fish manure for this presidency.
{laughs} Hardly. The Republicans control both Houses, and with control of the Senate they will again control the USSC.
And the Republican Party is in awe of Trump. He’s doing what they only dreamed about.
well let’s see.
Given McConnell and Ryan have said his Tax plan is dead on arrival, and they won’t fund his infrastructure plan, it’s going to be something
The money chasing climate panic parasites will leave the climate circus quickly now as they realize that their money tap from US tax payers has suddenly been cut off. Those greedy psychopaths will go into astrology or electricity hypersensitivity or some other such pathetic scam aimed at fooling the most vulnerable of their monies.
The Trump administration will kill the climate panic circus world wide sooner than anyone now imagines. In two years no one will even mention global warming any more. That anti-scientific political fraud hoax is dead and burried and will soon be forgotten, given the promised hard core cabinet of Donald J trump.
For his next trick, Kapitalist (aka, J. Bruce Ismay) will now explain how God himself could not sink the White Star Line’s newest passenger liner. Take it away, Bruce!
I see, …so thinking anyone *not* in academia has anything useful to say on a science subject is “damning”. Well, Thomas, we have your category well defined. The first principle of science was defined by the motto of the Royal Society, “Nullis in Verbum”, and I will follow them in not accepting authority just because it’s academic. Richard Feynman was also good, when he noted that “Science is the organized belief in the ignorance of experts”. That demand for academic authority is the path of scholasticism, not science.
As to the ice sheets, yes, I’ve seen articles on there being more than one, and that’s fine. As I said, the Flathead Lake floods that left the soil my apartment sits on were repeat events, so I find no difficulty believing that others were the same. I have no interest in contending I have an academic career in climate science, just as I have no interest in allowing academics to be my sole guide to what I think about climate.
You are certainly free to bay at the moon as often as it feels good to you.
The Al Gore hockey stick doomsday panic has been been scientifically disproven by several sigmas. I’m just telling you what will happen. Listen if you are interested about the future of the climate panic fraud: It will quickly cease to exist! Once the money flow from US tax payers (who else did you think paid for the whole circus?) stops, all the doomsday prophets will shut up. They lie only because they are paid to lie. Not because their fraudulent deluge scam is actually happening.
Call me back in a couple of years if I’m not correct in saying that the climate panic will now completely cease to exist. It will become another humorous funny failure of Besserwissers, just like the coming ice age was in the 1980s. Climate scientists are not scientists. They are just stupid opportunists and are proven wrong again and again and again and they keep on making the most mad and outrageous claims about the economy and politics of which they have none and zero competence. They have failed because they are so stupid and don’t know what they are talking about. It is a relief for science overall that their financing now will be completely eliminated so that they must put their good brains to something useful instead.
What will happen now will be very much like how racial biology research institutes were suddenly shut down all over the Western world once Nazi Germany was defeated. Another so called “scientific” political ideology has died this winter.
Your ignorance only meets your arrogance.
The crap you are posting is really hilarious: now you are not only denying global warming and climate science outcome but even its existence. Are you really that stupid to try to sell this bullshit on a spaceflight website? Hey, even if these people are not interested in climate research, they heard at least about Sentinels and Copernicus programme. Or about JSON. Or U.S. weather sats.
Furthermore, the main besserwisser with no competence here is you. You may try to refrain from writing this BS and read up.
The lying climate fraudsters is a closed little sect. Their activities are dominated by hate and denial, deep inside they know that they are completely wrong and also that they were unlucky when they made their ignorant bet on future weather 20 years ago. The 1 mm a year deluge catastrophy didn’t happen.
Climate science is completely irrelevant when it comes to individual value judgements about economic and political decisions. Their desperate lie that their draconian political “ideology” of death is “scientific” is just a plain copy of Marxism. Another Soviet project which also failed and has disappeared. This gang never learn. And when the tax money is taken away from them, they will all suddenly forget about the climate fraud, just like they forgot about the Soviet Union over night. They’ll instead jump on the astrological Nibiru train and lie about another cause of the doomsday they fear monger.
Yada Yada. Do you have anything scientific to prove your statements, other than your feelings?
Because you know, I heard the same story about Vaccine Conspiracy (TM), Cigarettes Scaremongers (TM), Secret Ultimate Cure for Cancer, AIDS and diarrhea etc. etc.
All of it is still delivered by shills and snake oil marketers.
Don’t you think that Trump will cut off all financing of the climate fraud? Perry as minister of energy, Rex Tillerson. These appointments show that he is very serious about abolishing the climate panic fraud. It is not as if the doomsday parasites are capable of financing their failed forecasts themselves. They will have to get real jobs instead.
So how much are you willing to bet?
24 months is a nice fixed term for the bet. Say 1/1/2019? And “It will quickly cease to exist”, “All the doomsday prophets will shut up”, “will now completely cease to exist.”, can be turned into a reasonably concrete wager.
Certainly! It is happening. The doomsday fraudsters are having panic themselves now. Trump couldn’t have appointed more anti-climate panic people. My gain from the bet is the preservation of industry, energy, transports and agriculture which the doomsday fraudsters will not be able to destroy in order to prevent their imagined deluge.
Are you willing to bet that your prediction will come true by 1/1/2019?
I say it will not.
How much are you willing to bet? Actual money.
(You’re so confident, you must be willing to give odds as well? 2:1? 5:1? 10:1?)
One of Trump’s pets has already called for the reopening of the actual HUAC.