Trump signs order to end Obama-era flood risk building standards

By Pam Wright 15 August 2017 (The Weather Channel) – President Donald Trump revoked an Obama-era executive order that required strict building standards for all federal building projects to reduce the risk from increased sea level rise flooding. Trump signed the executive order Tuesday to end the Obama standards in order to “streamline the current […]

How fossil fuel money made climate change denial the Word of God

By Brendan O’Connor 11 August 2017 (Splinter) – In 2005, at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the National Association of Evangelicals was on the verge of doing something novel: affirming science.Specifically, the 30-million-member group, which represents 51 Christian denominations, was debating how to advance a new platform called “For the Health of a Nation.” […]

Trump Interior Department could cost taxpayers at least $60 million by rolling back Obama rule

By Dino Grandoni 9 August 2017(The Washington Post) – During his confirmation hearing for the job of running the Department of the Interior, Ryan Zinke told the Senate he wanted taxpayers to get “fair value” on resources extracted from public lands by private companies. But a recent move by him means taxpayers will get millions […]

The broken U.S. economy, in one simple chart

By David Leonhardt 7 August 2017 (The New York Times) – Many Americans can’t remember anything other than an economy with skyrocketing inequality, in which living standards for most Americans are stagnating and the rich are pulling away. It feels inevitable. But it’s not.A well-known team of inequality researchers — Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and […]

Scientists fear Trump will dismiss blunt climate report by government agencies

By Lisa Friedmanaug 7 August 2017 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration. The draft report […]

“Dodgy” greenhouse gas data threatens Paris accord – “We see methane going up. The warming impact from that methane is enough to derail Paris”

By Matt McGrath 7 August 2017 (BBC News) – Potent, climate warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found. Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy. However, the Italian submission to the […]

U.S. federal department is censoring use of term “climate change”, emails reveal – “These records reveal Trump’s active censorship of science in the name of his political agenda”

By Oliver Milman 7 August 2017NEW YORK (The Guardian) – Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service […]

U.S. notifies U.N. of Paris climate deal pullout

5 August 2017 (BBC News) – The Trump administration has issued its first written notification that the US intends to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. But in the notice to the United Nations the US state department said Washington would remain in the talks process.President Donald Trump drew international condemnation in June when […]

Top EPA official resigns over direction of agency under Trump – “The truth is there is NO war on coal, there is NO economic crisis caused by environmental protection, and climate change IS caused by man’s activities”

By Jacqueline Thomsen 1 August 2017 (The Hill) – A top Environmental Protection Agency official resigned Tuesday in protest of the direction the EPA has taken under President Trump.Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland ended her 30-year run at the agency with a scathing exit letter in which she claimed that “the environmental field is suffering from the […]

U.S. House Science Committee chair says global warming is a good thing – “Smith is slowly advancing through the stages of denial”

By Chris D’Angelo 24 July 2017 WASHINGTON (Huffington Post) – Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — who has spent his career cozying up to fossil fuel interests, dismissing the threat of climate change and harassing federal climate scientists — is now arguing that pumping the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide is “beneficial” to global trade, crop […]

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