June 29, 2019: Trump Is Running Again, and Still Doesn't Grasp Climate Change

 

6/29/19: It’s official, President Trump is running for reelection. Big Coal is saved! Planet Earth is screwed.

House sinks as permafrost thaws.

 

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“It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.”

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First, the good news, assuming you’re a right-winger. Trump is rolling back rules put in place by President Obama to address the issue of climate change. States will now decide whether they want to require stricter emissions standards for coal-fired plants. As the Associated Press explains: “The EPA move comes despite the agency’s own analysis that it would result in the deaths of an extra 300 to 1,500 people each year by 2030, owing to additional air pollution.” 

Well, screw those people – and screw the other 7,600,000,000 who reside around the globe.

 

It turns out, a research team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks has been carefully monitoring permafrost layers at three sites in the far north since 2003. 

They report that thawing has accelerated, between 150 percent to 240 percent, compared to rates from 1979 to 2000. “We were all quite surprised when we went back later and saw how the landscape had been transformed,” one researcher explained. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years,” said a second scientist. 

For comparison purposes, when Trump talks climate change, first he denies it’s happening. Then he mixes up climate change with efforts to protect clean air and water. (See: 6/8/19.)