HAPPY NEW YEAR – 2025: With only 19 more days until Donald Trump is inaugurated, let’s get this New Year jumping. I think we can all agree it’s going to be good times for climate deniers of every kind.
If you
believe in the threat posed by climate change – because you are not a complete
dolt, and you understand science, consider Team Trump 2.0’s candidates who will
be addressing the issue over the next four years. Which most of this sorry crew
deny is happening, or if it is, it’s going to be great for people who want to
live closer to beaches. On a scale of 1-10, with “10” being best, we rate
Donald’s choices.
Elon
Musk
(5): “We shouldn’t be complacent about changing the chemical constituency of
our atmosphere & oceans, but climate change definitely will not end the
world as we know it! If people keep pushing hard, humanity will solve the
sustainable energy problem in time.” — Sept. 10, 2023, post on X
___
Vivek Ramaswamy (1) was asked about the problem during his longshot campaign for president:
ABC News: “Do you believe in climate change?”
Mr. Ramaswamy: “Well, I think that with due respect, I’ve
talked about this in other forums, ‘Do you believe in climate change?’ is not
really a meaningful question, because climate change has existed as long as the
Earth has existed. Do I believe it is a fact that global surface temperatures
are rising over the course of the last century and the last half century? Yes,
I think that that is an established trend.”
ABC News: “As president, would you do anything to try to
buck that trend?”
Mr. Ramaswamy: “No is the answer.” — ABC News interview, September 2023
___
Sen. Marco Rubio (2): In 2010, Rubio denied that climate change was real. In 2018, while running for reelection, he admitted it was real, but studiously avoided mentioning a cause. Too many people leaving their ovens open?
More
recently, he told The New York Times, “The climate has always been
changing, and no matter what, we have to mitigate against it. No matter how
well you think you know the causation.”
___
Pete Hegseth (1): “Whether it’s hot or cold, the enemy is here, as far as liberals are concerned. And it’s all about control for them. That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it, no matter what’s happening.” — “Fox & Friends” 2019
With
that, Pete went back to his favorite pastimes – cheating on his wives (in sequence)
and sexually harassing women.
___
Elise Stefanik (6), before she became MAGA. Now (1).
Before:
“Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is misguided, and harms the ongoing effort to fight climate change while also isolating us from our allies.” — 2017 statement
Now:
“Americans have had enough of Joe Biden and far-left
Democrats’ anti-American energy policies.” — March 20, 2024, statement
___
Lee Zeldin, who will head up the Environmental Protection Agency, pre-MAGA (7), currently (2).
“I think that there is more of an awareness and a willingness to recognize that climate change is real, and Congress is more and more open-minded toward identifying those solutions.” — 2016 interview in “Years of Living Dangerously,” a documentary television series
“There are regulations that the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction.” — Nov. 11, 2024, Fox News interview
Now, as head of EPA – which is about protecting the environment, he says he’s going to push for “energy dominance.”
Criticizing
left-wing policy is legitimate; forgetting what your basic task is, should ring
alarm bells.
___
Doug Burgum, Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Interior (5): When asked by CNN what he thought about human-caused climate change, he responded:
Burgum: “Well, I know the climate is changing, we know
that. And I’ll tell you in North Dakota, we’re the only state that set a goal
of being carbon neutral by 2030. But we’re not doing it with a bunch of
regulations. We said we can get there through no new mandates, no new
regulations, all through innovation. And that’s happening in North Dakota right
now. And again, I think if people want to have a discussion, if they think
CO2’s the cause, then let’s get serious about what we can to reduce that. Again,
there’s all kinds of things we can do that are more effective than the crazy
plans that are in place now.” — CNN interview, July 2023
___
Chris Wright will head the Energy Department. He’s the chief executive of a fracking company, and his nomination is supported by the oil tycoon, billionaire Harold G. Hamm. That may be good for the development of energy.
On
climate change, however, he’s a (1), only because we can’t go lower. “We have seen no increase in the
frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite
endless fear-mongering of the media, politicians and activists,” he insisted in
a LinkedIn video in
2023.
___
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (5) warned as recently as April, “I believe that climate change is existential.”
Now he insists “this crisis is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls.” In announcing his choice for Kennedy to serve as head of Health and Human Services, Trump admonished him, “you can’t touch our liquid gold.”
RFK Jr.
will have to content himself with getting rid of vaccines and bringing back
measles and polio.
___
Sean Duffy, most recently a Fox Business co-host, will head the Transportation Department (1).
“If you say the climate’s changing, is it
coming from CO2 or is it coming from the sun? Where is — why is the climate
changing? And then you would say, let’s have a rigorous debate about what is
causing it, or what are all the factors that bring us to climate change? And
when you have the left that says ‘we’re gonna shut down alternative science or
science that challenges our narrative,’ I think it makes people go ‘maybe there
is a different set of priorities here as opposed to climate change, maybe it
actually is an agenda of control.’” — Nov. 11, 2024, Fox Business
Live
In other words, Duffy will spend the next four years tap dancing around the issue, unless we get lucky and a super-charged hurricane carries him away, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
___
Okay, we’re running out of Trump choices we can hope will address this overarching issue.
We have left:
Scott Bessent, to head Treasury. Nope. (1): His focus will be on boosting fossil fuel production. As he told Fox Business in October: “We’re also going to have a massive deregulatory program, and we’re going to have energy dominance, so cheap energy, deregulation and a low tax rate –what’s better than that?”
(Not broiling the brains of
future generations, maybe?)
___
Brooke Rollins will head up the Agriculture Department … and
… ah, hell (1): This goes back a way, but in 2014, she was still claiming, “There’s been no warming in over 17 years. So
all of this discussion about shutting down certain parts of our energy industry
is nothing short of a disaster for the economy.” – 2014 Texas Public Policy
Foundation event.
___
And we can’t ignore The Big Dumpling, himself, Donald J. Trump. This brain-dead fool gets a (1), on the strength of such statements as, “Climate change is a hoax,” and, “Climate change will create more oceanfront properties,” and “Windmills are terrible because they cause cancer.”
In
fact, Donald has had eight years in office, or running for office, and he still
doesn’t know the difference between climate and weather.
Fun with numbers.
The ten hottest years ever recorded, globally, are:
1. 2023
(with a global surface temperature 2.52°F above average).
2.
2016
3.
2020
4. 2019
5. 2015
6. 2017
7. 2022
8. 2018
9. 2021
10.
2014
For even more fun, we can safely announce that when the final figures for 2024 are in, 2023 will be knocked out of first place, and 2014, will be displaced from the list.
My oldest grandchild will be twelve in September 2025, meaning she will have lived through the hottest eleven years on record. It’s going to get worse for all the children and grandchildren of the world in decades to come..
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