Guest post by David Middleton
This is the best election aftermath I have ever seen… and I’ve been voting since 1977. This even tops 1980…
In Trump, U.S. Puts a Climate Denier in Its Highest Office and All Climate Change Action in Limbo
His anti-regulatory stances, support of unfettered fossil fuel production, and his threat to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement, send ripple effects worldwide.
BY MARIANNE LAVELLE, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
NOV 9, 2016
Donald Trump’s astonishing victory has turned the world of climate action upside down, setting back U.S. environmental policy and threatening the international drive to cut carbon pollution and slow global warming.
The stunning upset by Trump, who has routinely suggested that climate change is a hoax, threatens to unravel President Obama’s climate action agenda, built on executive orders and regulations, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon clampdown at power plants. Trump has vowed to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement, but could cripple it by merely retreating from the U.S. commitment. As the world’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide pollution, the U.S. could render the global treaty meaningless, at a time when scientists are urging nations to quickly raise their ambition, or risk an escalating climate crisis.
[…]
In another disappointing outcome for climate advocates, Republicans maintained their control of the Senate, winning eight of 11 key races, as well as keeping their majority in the House of Representatives. Both chambers are strongly opposed to climate action policies.
The nation’s climate leaders were left stunned, somber, angry and reflective. They had already prepped their wish lists for Clinton that included a massive clean energy spending program, a moratorium on fossil fuel leases on federal lands and other rules…
[…]
Now, with little chance to have their agenda heard in Washington, environmental groups will be forced to play defense. At first, that will mean an effort to block Trump’s plans, perhaps by convincing Senate Democrats to block appointments or use the filibuster. Legal challenges are another avenue, but Trump will be able to quickly make his mark on the judiciary, with his appointment of a Supreme Court justice.
Trump has signaled plans to populate his cabinet with oil industry executives and allies, to eliminate the EPA, and to cut all federal spending on the United Nations climate process. Trump has claimed that he will save $100 billion over eight years, which appears to be based on a plan to end federal funding for solar and wind energy, efficiency, batteries, clean cars and climate science, wrote Joe Romm, a former Energy Department official and founder of the Center for American Progress’ Climate Progress blog.
Basically, Trump has promised an America-first, drill-baby-drill energy policy. He has promised unfettered production of coal, oil and natural gas and to “bring the coal industry back 100 percent.”
Trump said he will rescind any regulations that unduly burden energy development, including the Clean Power Plan, which, if it survives legal challenges, was to have been the cornerstone of Obama’s climate action legacy and the main policy for realizing the nation’s Paris goals.
[…]
Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer who represents coal-burning utilities and who spent four years as an assistant administrator in the EPA under President George W. Bush, said that if the courts don’t kill the Clean Power Plan, Trump will have a number of other options. “I think it’s certain the Clean Power Plan will be revoked,” he said this morning. “The only question is how.”
For his energy and environmental policy team, Trump has selected one of the nation’s most prominent climate contrarians, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to head his EPA transition. Ebell worked on policy for the tobacco industry before his years of work opposing environmental regulations and sowing doubt on climate science. Trump is also reported to be considering Harold Hamm, chief executive of fracking industry leader Continental Resources, for energy secretary, and Forrest Lucas, co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil, for interior secretary.
[…]
Trump will be the only world leader who rejects [junk] science, according to a study by the Sierra Club. This is a particularly tough pill for climate activists to swallow.
[…]
Seven of the eight Koch-backed Senate candidates were victorious; the network’s only loss was to Masto. The Koch brothers’ effort was bolstered by massive spending by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservative and anti-regulatory organizations, including the National Rifle Association.
InsideClimate News reporter Zahra Hirji contributed reporting.
Notes to Zahra Hirji:
President-elect Donald Trump is not a “climate denier.” He has never denied the climate. To my knowledge, no AGW skeptic has ever denied the climate. As a professional geologist with a fairly good working knowledge of the English language, I am fairly certain that it is both scientifically and linguistically impossible to deny the climate.
“President Obama’s climate action agenda, built on executive orders and regulations” was designed to be unraveled because he did it all with a “pen and a phone,” rather than through legislation. Anyone with an eraser and white-out can “unravel” it.
“Trump has vowed to ‘cancel’ the Paris climate agreement, but could cripple it by merely retreating from the U.S. commitment.” Well, d’uh! Since the Paris climate agreement was not submitted to the Senate for ratification as a treaty or enabled by legislation from Congress, it is nothing more than an agreement between outgoing President Obama and the other signatories. In 70 days or so, it will be null & void.
“Republicans maintained their control of the Senate, winning eight of 11 key races, as well as keeping their majority in the House of Representatives” because the voters voted for them. This ought to be a clue as to the opinion of the majority of the voters regarding “climate change action.”
“Trump has signaled plans to populate his cabinet with oil industry executives and allies, to eliminate the EPA, and to cut all federal spending on the United Nations climate process” and he still won the election by a rather wide margin (only the Electoral Vote matters, it says so in the Constitution).
“For his energy and environmental policy team, Trump has selected one of the nation’s most prominent climate contrarians, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to head his EPA transition. Ebell worked on policy for the tobacco industry before his years of work opposing environmental regulations and sowing doubt on climate science. Trump is also reported to be considering Harold Hamm, chief executive of fracking industry leader Continental Resources, for energy secretary, and Forrest Lucas, co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil, for interior secretary.” To which I say…
I am afraid that the climate crazies will just shift their focus to the individual states. It will be a problem to fight on fifty fronts.
It already was.
They haven’t made much headway in Texas. And in places like California, where they are succeeding at the moment, guess what their prize is? Less jobs, and a WHOLE lot less tax revenue for the state. Ooops, sooner or later somebodies gonna start missing all that cash.
With The Donald in, CA will rapidly run out of OPM (Other People’s Money).
And now they (California) want to secede. They’ll be broke in no time if they try.
No longer a state = no Interstate Commerce Clause = no more tariff-free electric umbilical cord to keep their Green energy dreamchild alive.
Plus, NorCal could then break from SoCal and ask to be re-annexed as its own state, like they’ve wanted to do for over a century.
So by all means, let ’em secede. May the door hit them on the way out.
Making sue and settle illegal will end the game.
Well surely there’s still enough money in the Clinton Foundation for Hillary to continue to “tackle climate” ?
She can tackle the climate just as well as Trump can deny the climate… 😉
As far as I’m concerned, she can tackle this:
[snip – policy violation -mod]
Apologies for my juvenile behavior
…Ummmmm, Phil, she may use that in a way you did not intend…it has probably been a while, judging by Bill’s habits…
Sorry mod. I didn’t realize. I’ve seen worse.
Clintons will be fine, just signed for a movie
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CC.gif
..OMG…I use to love those comedies !!! Wow, I am old….lol
Is tackling climate tougher than tackling a running back?
Not at the expense of her lifestyle, she won’t. Anyway, she doesn’t give a rat about anything but herself.
When Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in November 2013, what he did was to remove all Federal Judge and all Executive-Administrative appointments (cabinet secretaries/deputies, all the president’s political appointees to boards and commissions, etc) from the Filibuster-Cloture rule (but not the US Supreme Court Justice appointments and legislation). Thus Republicans only need 51 votes to affirm all of President Trumps’ executive branch appointments.
The US Senate will likely have 52 Republicans when the 115th Congress is sworn this January 2017.
So as for blocking appointments, there will be nothing for the Greens/Libtards/Demo-rats to do but more whining. tantrums, crying, and then blaming the Dishonest one-eyed Harry Reid for making their plight even worse.
And OBTW in a bit of even more schadenfreude, Ole One-eyed Reid, expecting for Hillary as President to follow Obama, said in October 2016 that he had laid the groundwork to further nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Too funny.
The vice president breaks ties in the Senate, so the Republicans only need 50 votes.
which is 51 votes.
I don’t think they’ve come out of denial for long enough yet to comprehend the Supreme Court nominee issue. There are other seriously old Judges on there too. It could get even more interesting.
Justice Ginsburg will be 84 in March, Kennedy 81 in July and Breyer 79 in August. Sotomayor will turn only 63 in June, but has health problems.
Is it wrong to enjoy the law of unintended consequences catch up with the Democrats? And, note, the law cannot be repealed by any Congress, nor is it subject to Judicial Review in any court.
For me it was who’s for climate change and who’s against it. There was bigger issue. A week or so ago I realized exactly what was at stake. The world was moving to a world order controlled by committee, a non elected body. That’s what Brexit was about. I saw little chance that Trump would win, the stars must have aligned. This is an American Amexit.
I’m *for* climate change. Without climate change, sedimentary geology would be very boring… It might not even exist.
The Green Blob just got its Chicxulub bolide. That first one was probably “interesting times” too.
I am stretching my mind for the details but I recall that the more biological agencies were moved to the USGS because they drifted away from their charge. It may have somewhat worked as geologists may be better glued to the earth. Wonder if they could handle NOAA, NASA, EPA, etc.?
Look at the big clean out of climate scientists that happened recently in Australia. We can expect something similar in the US. Poetic justice. It might be dawning on some of them right about now that if you stop being objective scientists and start being political activists you subject yourself to the winds of political change. Also if you go around saying “The science is finished” people may just start asking what we are employing all these climate scientists for.
Great post David. Donald Trump’s pledge can’t come soon enough. Long overdue & should be followed in the
UK.
Perhaps the alarmists will crank up the alarmism and claim an increased rate of warming with catastrophic consequences.
Oops, I see they have done that already.
The world of “climate action” has been turned upside down. Meanwhile, the world of truth, actual science, and common sense has finally been turned rightside up. The howls and tears of the Climatists just makes it all the more delightful.
Especially as they were so certain Clinton would nail it – by a huge margin too, as I remember. I haven’t stopped grinning since the 8th.
They have to keep Trump alive to establish anything and that may be tricky knowing how the Establishment works.
They’ll have to bump off not just Trump, but Pence, Ryan and Hatch, then whomever the survivor nominates as cabinet secretaries.
And then face down a second American Revolution as most of the country enters open rebellion in response.
I must admit a feeling of rightness in the world in anticipating the first steps to unravel the entire global warming movement as Trump takes his presidency. I do hope he follows through on many of the anticipated moves in energy, economy and environment policy. I fear however that there is more to do in public relations, science education and public discussion so that a large segment of the public don’t fall into a deep depression or a state of constant fear based on a belief that all of what has been predicted about the man-made global catastrophe built into climate models is true, rather than a feeble academic fantasy.
Politics is largely driven by personality, perception, and image rather than substance, though this recent election may, in some ways, break that pattern. It will be too easy however for many to see Trump’s first moves as just an extension of “science denying” republican policy rather than a very rational and beneficial reconsideration of faulty policy built on flimsy science. I think we can all agree Trump was not elected based on his charming personality and good looks, but it will take some effort to reveal to the larger public the logic of what is soon to transpire.
I would really like to see a transparent public science and policy inquest in addition to the very necessary steps of unravelling the whole policy framework based on global warming dogma. The public need to see what went wrong and why many of them came to believe something so monstrous and frightening that was never supported by a solid science foundation. Until the public see and understand how they’ve been fooled, they may not realize they have been fooled.
An old anecdote and a more recent one may be relevant. King Canute had his throne placed by the sea and commanded the tides not rise in order to demonstrate to his followers that he was a mere mortal with wet feet. When Obama was elected he said it was the moment when the rise of the oceans would slow and the planet begin to heal. He also demonstrated (in the case unintentionally) that he was a mere mortal. When Trump is president one might envision him standing on the beach gazing off to the horizons stating “nice view, now let’s get to work.”
A good first step would be an EO directing the EPA to remove CO2 from the list of pollutants within 5 working days. Then track every single derivative policy/procedure that was dependent, in whole or in part, on that designation, and cancel them.
100% agree but let’s also have an authoritative explanation for warmest believers as to why it never qualified as a pollutant
CO2 being labelled as a pollutant is just another liberal method of assigning a new meaning to a word that cannot be logically understood.
-Gay no longer can be used to be happy.
-Subsidize now means keeping some of your own money
I could go on…
Addendum, I would also like to nominate a fellow Canadian and hero of mine, Steve McIntyre to help lead the science inquest.
Mr. McIntyre and Ross McKittrick launched the first counterattack. They, along with Pat Michaels and Fred Singer inspired me to dive into the debate in Internet forums and that led me here.
Instead of having a science advisor, Trump should have an advisory committee for major issues like climate change and energy. Putting a Canadian or two on the committee would help us north of the border. Spencer, Micheals, Singer, Soon, Pielke Sr. , McIntyre and McKittrick would be a great bunch.
And Anthony Watts, clearly.
Anthony didn’t become one of my climate science heroes until I discovered Watts Up With That… 😉
Trump needs to change the hearts and minds of the cult of CAGW and the general population, as opposed to simply blocking their crazy policies.
Blocking the crazy cult of CAGW will only make them more crazy and will provide an issue for the next election.
It appears, Trump will get some help (get some talking points for the media to support the assertion that there is no CAGW issue to solve), as the planet was started to cool, due to the interruption of the solar cycle.
My point exactly but more efficiently stated. The public need to understand that what is about to happen is a really great change of direction for all of us.
I don’t think it’s up to Trump to change the Climate Crazy’s minds, nor do I think he could if he wanted to. One way or another, the CAGW Cult of Calamitous Climate is going down. De-fund them. Mock them. Destroy them. It’s go time. And yes, it’s fun to watch Greenie heads explode.
I understand the sentiment, but Trump has just 4 years till he faces the voters again and that isn’t a lot of time to prove new policy is the right policy with respect to climate and energy. I really believe some effort by a large group of scientists and educators to uncover the guts of the climate change argument and show why it is just a pyramid scheme may be worthwhile. A public trail for this nonsense and a public execution in the town sq
Got cut off too soon – A public trial for this nonsense and a public execution in the town square of the entire theory would be a good thing.
I agree it’s a lot of fun, but I also want to see a real and public examination of facts and evidence – not computer models – a a good solid debate that the alarmists are unable to run away or hide from. It would go a long way to exposing the SC@M this has always been.
Make climate scientists accountable for their words and prophesies. Watch the certainty disappear then! People will have a chance then to learn the truth. Probably not the die-hards, but then nothing will get through to them.
I agree that de-funding, mocking and ridicule should happen early and often, and also that it’s a heavy lift to change minds. But I think he should try, anyway. To them, he’s already a crazy denier, so he isn’t really risking any political capital to use his new bully-pulpit. With it he can shame the federal bureaucracy, states and local boards to stop being such scaredy-wimps, afraid of .5 degrees of warming. He should use his official power to stop giving activists and 501 groups preferential access to public employees and their work product or jobs and try to restrict \bureaucrats from attending UN or COP meetings as anything but private citizens on vacation paying with their own money. He should shame public sector unions and groups like Greenpeace to stop indoctrinating young children in CAGW or any other topic. For the school children, a memetic campaign should start that it’s science basics ONLY for children through middle school, and more abstract political sciences, public policy and environmentalism and other activism in schools is only for upper grade levels as an AP course, and then only with full balance from left and right perspectives, with old-school scientific rigor in effect if there is any science involved.
He should establish a “science court” to which appeals can be made from phony (engineered) consensus science. Example: Bad nutrition science.
“The Seirra Club said that Trumps election is a bitter pill to swallow.”
I believe it was more of a suppository.
This is what the Liberal Socialists call sane people……
Caution: The following video may cause you to spontaneously burst out laughing !
The Miley Ray Cyrus rant may be unprecedentedly dangerous to your health…. you have been warned !
https://youtu.be/grD_IINiH9c
Sounds like a good place to put all those defunct wind turbines.
Well
After 7 years of measuring I conclude there is no man made warming…
But there was abundant instruction on how WH themes and directives work.
All the evidence suggests that the climate is improving. We were that close to suffering another four years, and likely eight, of catastrophic anthropogenic climate corruption.
I hope that this will make the scientific “climate” change so that sceptical scientists can debate the real issues without be vilified.
My memory must be going, can someone remind me when “The nation’s climate leaders” were elected?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHs98TEYecM&w=560&h=315%5D
Great post, David. There is light at the end of the tunnel at last.
After so many years of making little progress against the menace of the Green Blob, I’m starting to feel good.
Nice. Thanks
I know this is way off topic, but I have to vent.
There is talk, now, that people should protest or sign petitions to convince the members of the Electoral College to vote for Hillary because she won the Popular Vote. While I can understand their frustration, this kind of initiative, after the fact, is completely unfair and unjust.
The race for the Whitehouse is a race to win the Electoral College, not the Popular Vote. If it were not about the Electoral College there would be no such thing as Swing States. If two candidates were vying only for the Popular Vote the campaign strategies of each would be vastly different. I’m sure Donald Trump did not spend any time campaigning in California, for example, because he knew that as far as the Electoral College was concerned he wouldn’t be successful there according to the Popular Vote. Since it was a Race to win the Electoral College it didn’t matter to him if he lost California by 100 thousand votes or 3 million.
If the competition were about winning the Popular Vote his strategy would have been much different. The “Game’, however, was about winning the Electoral College, not the Popular Vote. Hillary knew this too.
Here is an analogy that might be useful for describing the difference between a competition for the Electoral College and the Popular Vote:
The Electoral College is like the “scores” in a football game – touchdowns, field goals, safeties, and extra-points.
The Popular Vote is like the statistics – yards gained, number of first-downs, passes completed, quarterback sacks, etc…
Generally the team that has better statistics usually wins the scoreboard, but as any football fan can tell you, not always.
Hillary may end up having better stats, but Trump won the scoreboard. She has yards gained, but he has touchdowns.
To say that Hillary, after the fact, deserves to win this Election based on the Popular Vote is like saying that the team who had gained the most yards should be declared the winner of the football game rather than the team who scored the most points. The game was not about gaining the most yards (Popular Vote), the game was about scoring the most points (Electoral College).
Thank you for letting me vent,
Freedom Monger
It’s also the same thing as the Bremainers moaning and groaning about a do-over. Typical. If they don’t get what they want following the rules, change the rules after the fact.
All good points. Many people today (I blame our useless education system) seem not to understand the very intentional reason the electoral college system of voting exists. In the compromise of 1787, where this was devised, the small states objected to direct election of the President, as this would mean (at that time) that voters in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia would always control the Presidency and voters in the rest of the old colonies would never really matter because their populations were too small.
They made it clear that they would never join a new Union set up under those rules. Now of course, the large states wanted direct election, because it would give them great power, but they couldn’t create a new country with it. SO, a system was devised where a President would HAVE to achieve majorities in many separate regions, NOT just huge majorities in the largest urban centers. Hillary is ahead in the raw vote total because she ran up huge vote totals in LA, Boston, Chicago, and NYC. Well, so what. The system is intentionally designed so that a candidate may NOT win that way.
The real kicker is that the small states were clever enough to demand an amendment system restrictive enough to guarantee that this mechanism can NEVER be changed unless a majority of the small states agree to give away their electoral power to the big states. And of course, this they will never do.
For 230 years (give or take), the large population states have wanted direct election of the President. For 230 years, they have been disappointed. I predict with great confidence that those in favor of direct election will continue to be disappointed for the next 230 years.
Unfortunately there was a way to circumvent the wonderful constitutional election system. The bankers set up the Federal Reserve so only New York mattered, then they achieved enough power so that the president is essentially controlled by the bankers. The president doesn’t even choose the Federal Reserve head …. oh sure he makes a symbolic choice to make it look like he is in charge … but the president is told who he has to choose.
If the Indians had scored 28 runs in the World Series and the Cubs only scored 27 runs, the Indians would still have lost the series because the Cubs won 4 games. The whining about the popular vote is moronic.
While an Elector occasionally goes rogue and “votes their conscience,” there is no way these morons could overturn the Election by lobbying the Electors…
Republican Electors aren’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton, particularly since rogue Electors can be prosecuted in some States.
I’m confident you’re right, but I’m also certain that Media Propagandists will try to make it seem as though these “victims of the system” have a case.
I don’t believe that either Maine or Nebraska has ever actually split their delegation. While it could happen, it hasn’t yet. I was hoping that Trump would be able to win the rural district in Maine, but it didn’t happen.
Trump won Maine’s 2nd CD Electoral Vote.
That is exactly what happened in the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and the Pirates. The Yankees outscored Pittsburgh 55 to 27 and out hit them 91-60 but Pittsburgh won the series and the title 4 games to 3. And of course who could forget the series walk off homer by Bill Mazeroski in the bottom of the 9th. A sad day in my young life at the time.
MarkW
November 10, 2016 at 1:23 pm
Obama won the NE CD with Omaha in it in 2008. Trump won the big rural ME CD this year.
Trump dragged a whole bunch of republicans through on his coat tails and revitalised a party that only a week ago the MSM was portraying as being in dire trouble. Anyone who thinks republican electors are going to vote against that has lost their marbles.
Plus, hundreds of thousands of Clinton’s votes were fraudulent.
This reminds me of the 2000 elections. Before the election, when the polls predicted that Al Gore would win the Electoral College and George Bush the Popular Vote, we were sternly warned by the MSM that only the Electoral College mattered. When the actual election turned out the other way around, the MSM suddenly discovered how important the Popular Vote was. There was also talk then in the MSM of “flipping” some Electors to Al Gore.
I see it in much simpler terms.
USA is collection of states. Each state takes simple majority for the choice of the president they want to have. Since could be only one president and not fifty, every state according to the size of their population is given a share of the presidential throne. One out of two, three or more candidates, who gets the largest share has the honour to sit on the presidential throne. It is a simple and perfectly democratic process.
Hi Vuk,
Not quite but I understand your thought process. I would also make the distinction that there is a very big difference from “is a collection of states” (as you out it) and ” are a collection of States”.
The United States of America ARE a country, meaning that individual States make up the Country rather than the Country is divided into states. A subtle but very important difference.
Thanks Tom.
If it’s good for Bill O’Reilly: “Is the U.S.A. in good shape or going down the drain?” I thought it my be good for me, but apparently not.
Ok Tom, I take the point: American Bill O’Reilly are television host, author, journalist, syndicated columnist, and political commentator :).
Doesn’t have to be a majority. Plurality counts.
Before the Civil War and sometime after, people said “these united states”. Now it’s more common to hear “the United States”. The relation between the states and the federal government has changed drastically over the decades.
Remains to be seen whether Trump’s lust for power will allow him to return to state and local government, private associations and most of all the people the powers which the national regime has usurped.
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I have read that prior to the Civil War, the US was refered to as “these United States”. After it, the phrase changed to “the United States”.
MarkW, it could just be a matter of British English v. American English. What I noticed a long time ago is that the Brits used a plural to refer to corporate bodies (GM are) as opposed to the American singular (GM is). As far as legal theory, the US is both. Read the Federalist Papers on the original concept of the status of the Union.
Good points. The reason the Founders created the Electoral College, and decided that there should be 2 Senators per state, was so that the big states couldn’t “gang up” on the small states. If there were no electoral college, the election campaign would have been in about 15 ststes, and the heck with the rest of them.
And don’t forget that originally Senators were appointed by State legislatures not voted in by the people. The Founders did not want to give the average voter a direct say in Federal elections except for the House of Representatives where they restricted the term to 2 years in order to rapidly correct stupid voting. No way were they going to allow anyone to be popularly elected for 6 years. It also provided a valuable check on the Federal government as the Senators were accountable directly to their State and not outside influences. Pretty smart bunch those Founders.
The flaws in the system were lifetime judge appointments and no sunset clause on DE, RI, and DC.
I’d roll DE, NH, VT and RI into one state. Perhaps ME and MA as well.
In most of the rest of the country, they’d barely qualify as counties anyway.
To elaborate slightly on Tom in Florida’s point: The House of Representatives was intended to be the vehicle for the direct expression of the popular will. The Senate was intended to be the vehicle for the expression and protection of states’ rights. Senators were supposed to enforce the provisions of the 10th Amendment. It made perfect sense for the Senators to be determined by the governments of the state they represented, and to be subject to condign removal if they strayed from their task.
Monger,
One WA elector, and maybe another, have sworn not to vote for Clinton, ie to be “faithless”, so ardent were they for Sanders.
If, as looks likely, Trump should win MI but lose NH, he’ll have 306 EVs. Should all of the electors from states Clinton won vote for her, she’d need 38 faithless Republicans to win in the Electoral College, or 40 given two defectors from Washington State. That seems improbable.
Thanks Chimp, that’s good to know.
Freedom Monger November 10, 2016 at 10:53 am
easy does it friend. Each states popular vote elects a slate of electors. The states that are won by republicans
send their parties chosen slate to Washington D.C. Same for Dems.
You may get one or two ever few elections that just put their foot down and say heck no. The only case I know of from this election is a past Bernie supporter from Washington state who stated he will not cast his electoral vote for Hillary.
Trump’s lead is great enough that one or two defectors won’t matter. And the efforts to play that card (popular vote) is just going to tick people off. The ppm in the popular vote would not equal a extra vote in the electoral college.
Maybe just to be fair the Trump electors could clip their nails and donate them to the Dems to give them equal “weight”
michael
But these people don’t understand ppm.
Plus, the popular vote hasn’t even been fully counted yet. It’s being projected that Trump will ultimately win the PV also.
Trump is going to get a lot done in the first 100 days because so much of what Obama did was with executive orders outside of Congress and the courts. That includes major parts of ACA implementation with subsidies only in certain states as well. Get ready.
And exceptions and exemptions for the privileged.
Wouldn’t it be icing on the cake if we achieved a retreat from the policies and then the reported global temperatures when into a steady decline over the next 4 to 8 years… and the sea level reduced it increases…
Re: Trump … Climate Denier, 11/10/16
Cut ‘em a little slack, Middleton. In their world, Climate means Climate Change which is synonymous with Anthropogenic Global Warming. So it is in their world that the vector of racism is one way: whites against blacks. Hence, Affirmative Action is not racism. In the proper, highly vaunted election-aftermath speeches, coming together means you come around to agreeing with me, that’s all — up and down the line. Throughout the years, every civilized person wished the new President success. That was the test for being civilized. Just one caveat: not necessarily with his agenda. Wink, wink; nudge, nudge. He who controls the vocabulary wins the argument.
In the last few days, I caught a nameless comedian on TV observing sarcastically that Republicans don’t believe in evolution! Indeed, some don’t. I can testify to that. Some Republicans profess a belief in God, too. Really! Not so much Democrats, though. But they accept evolution complete with Darwin’s supernatural selection! Democrats to a man (note that we can now be politically incorrect, h.t. to Trump) believe in AGW! Some pretty fair scientists, quotable ones who testify before Congress, won’t deny it! Ignorance is contagious. It is spread by schools, and no party or politician has a natural immunity.
When Trump liquidates $100 billion from the climate scare, and retiring the EPA, he can turn his attention to closing the Department of Education. He might even find room for his plan to rebuild the U.S. “infrastructure”. Except for one little thing …
The service used to relish the expression, Overcome By Events — in military lingo, Oscar Bravo Echo, a noun or verb. Trump is going to wind up Oscar-Bravo-Echoed. Restoring confidence, he’s going to kick off a pent-up recovery from the Great Recession of 2008. The velocity of money is going to increase. The $10 trillion of new money the Fed created for Obama by buying bonds (Quantitative Easing) to keep interest rates down — inflation baked into the cake — will flood the marketplace. It will materialize as double digit price rises, then immediately in double digit interest rates, followed by widespread bankruptcies as the present value of financial paper sinks. A better bet than improving our infrastructure and rebuilding our military is that Trump will be supervising a few more multi-trillion-dollar federal bailouts, and another round of Nixonian price and wage controls.
Which takes us back to the sub-theme of ignorance: The failure of DJT’s Presidency is baked into the cake, too, and it will land squarely in his lap. Carter all over again. The Dems ought to start grooming his replacement for 2020. The seat will be theirs for the taking.
Evolution is not something in which you believe any more than is gravity. It’s an observation, ie a scientific fact. In the 19th century, it was an insight supported by evidence, as was in the 16th century the theory or hypothesis that the earth orbits the sun while rotating on its axis, facts not directly observed until the 18th and 19th centuries. But in the 20th and 21st centuries evolution has been repeatedly observed and created in the wild and in labs.
Natural selection is entirely natural, being a consequence of reproduction. So are all the other evolutionary processes.
Chimp, 11/10/16 at 6:23 pm:
Evolution is not something in which you believe any more than is gravity. It’s an observation, ie a scientific fact. … Natural selection is entirely natural, being a consequence of reproduction. So are all the other evolutionary processes.
The beliefs of a Chimp on evolution! How perfectly adorable.
Much as Jello used to come in six delicious flavors, science and (biological) evolution each come in two. For the former, it’s Modern Science and its deconstruction, Post Modern Science. MS eschews belief; PMS doesn’t care.
Humans are free to believe what they choose. They may be denied the right to express certain beliefs, as in totalitarian systems, including the milder form of political correctness, but denying them personal acceptance or rejection of MS, PMS, AGW, evolution, or religion as a belief is not physically possible.
As to the facets of evolution, first is speciation, not fact, but a theory based on fact. Second, is natural selection, once a conjecture, now seen as outside science (MS only). Here’s a relevant post, which links to other posts and argument on the topic:
Darwin’s Natural Selection … has the power to collect incremental changes to help life survive. It has the power of recognize the pattern of where life is going, and to give evolution direction. It has the power to coordinate mutations and adaptations into genetics. The answer is that Darwin’s Natural Selection does not fit the offered definition of science. There is an alternative, which I call Darwin 2.0.
Google for it, Chimp. Darwin modeled natural selection after animal husbandry (see below), but not satisfied just to anthropomorphize it, he deified it. In the ensuing argument on the climate blogs, some expressed not just doubt, but denial that Darwin gave natural selection direction. They needed citations, though the effort was, of course, wasted on them. For those similarly disinclined actually to find citations, consider this sampler previously offered on Judith Curry’s blog:
I attribute the passage of a variety, from a state in which it differs very slightly from its parent to one in which it differs more, to the action of natural selection in accumulating (as will hereafter be more fully explained) differences of structure in certain definite directions. Bold added, Darwin, Origin of the Species, p. 29.
Not that, as I believe, any extreme amount of variability is necessary; as man can certainly produce great results by adding up in any given direction mere individual differences, so could Nature, but far more easily, from having incomparably longer time at her disposal. Id., p. 40
Thus it will be in nature; for within a confined area, with some place in its polity not so perfectly occupied as might be, natural selection will always tend to preserve all the individuals varying in the right direction, though in different degrees, so as better to fill up the unoccupied place. Id. , p. 48.
Therefore I can see no difficulty, under changing conditions of life, in natural selection accumulating slight modifications of instinct to any extent, in any useful direction. Id., p. 101.
These properties of natural selection contain, for all to see, the essence of Darwin’s deification of evolutionary causation, his supernatural selection.
Whoops! I wrote PMS doesn’t care about belief systems, which is quite wrong. PMS exploits them!
I think that there is evolution, and that we were dropped off here. There is also no reason to think that an alien race couldn’t tamper with the DNA. I clearly remember the incident of Betty and Barney Hill. No one on this planet had access to the technology to analysis DNA. And no one had even thought of amniotic synthesis. And there it was in complete detail .
We do it with animals and plants. In fact the first manipulation of DNA occurred during early biblical times. And is so described in the literature.
..Trump’s agreement to the American voters…
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/trade
If Trump does nothing else, this action should put him into the Presidential Hall of Fame immediately.
Does this mean there will be some review of grant applications in NSF funding for the psychological effects of climate change? Or EPA mining engineer misadventures? or NASA climate studies while we have to hitch rides on Russian rockets?
That’s great news. Hopefully, true science will get a chance to advance now, instead of climate fraud.