Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate change consistently ranks dead last on people’s list of priorities, only 36% of US people believe humans are “mainly” responsible for climate change, the USA elected President Trump in 2016, but the Washington Bubble still hasn’t gotten the message.
How bad can the climate crisis get if Trump wins again?
US greenhouse gas emissions are up since 2017 and Trump’s administration has ripped up curbs on climate polluters
Emily Holden in Washington
Sun 12 Jan 2020 20.00 AEDTClimate pollution in the US is up under Donald Trump and threatens to undermine international efforts to stall the crisis, especially if he wins re-election this year and secures a second term in the White House.
…
“What they have done is created confusion within the business community and the environmental world as to what are going to be the standards,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under the Republican president George W Bush. “Essentially every regulation the agency promulgates gets a lawsuit that goes with it, almost inevitably … that’s the only good thing you can say about it.”
Whitman called the approach “mindless” and said “whoever is a bigger donor gets to tell them what the environmental policy should be, it seems”.
…
Andrew Light, a climate negotiator for President Barack Obama’s state department, said the world is taking note of those efforts, but if Trump is re-elected “you are going to see a lot of people who are worried anew about what the US can do.”
Americans choosing Trump would send the signal that they don’t care about the climate, Light said.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/12/climate-crisis-if-trump-wins-again
Here’s my prediction for 2020 – I think Tom Steyer will win the Democrat nomination. Not because he is better or more popular than the other candidates, but because “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer might be about to obliterate most of the Democrat front row.
Steyer will run the climate change campaign he is promising to run – and will lose badly to President Trump, because Trump focuses on issues people actually care about.
Will Washington get the message in 2020?
I don’t “care” about climate — why would I, that’s a mathematical abstraction. I’ve prepared for the weather every day of my life, as prb’ly everyone has.
The Chinese Belt & Road Project plans to build 700 coal fired electrical generating plants. This is in addition to all the plants they are building in China and India. They have climate records going back thousands of years. Apparently they have made the decision that the risk is less than the reward of bringing a or so billion people out of grinding poverty.
Steyer doesn’t have a chance. Schweizer could have pictures of all of the major Democrat contenders engaging in pedophilia and bestiality, and Dem voters wouldn’t care.
icisil: Dem voters won’t care, but IMO Schweizer’s Clinton Foundation book released in 2015 had more impact on Hillary’s loss than the Russians. Not saying much, I know: Russian bots probably changed 0 votes, Schweizer a few hundred, but I think he damaged her and at least helped her lose.
What’s the reason I agree with you? Well, Schweizer’s book on Foundation came out ahead of primaries, it did not influence dem votes. And they won’t learn from their mistakes. Which may be the thing that saves us all.
Unfortunately there still are lots of Democrats who vote democrat because that’s how their family always votes. Fortunately some have woken up (as opposed to being “woke”) over the past few years and #walkaway from the insane left that has taken over the party they formerly called home.
There are also a lot of people who vote Democrat because they are the ones offering the most free stuff.
Bloomberg has been running on fixing health care and making it affordable for all. (I thought ObamaCare was supposed to do that.)
Most Americans don’t really believe in CAGW, but many virtue signal their support to avoid being ostracized by their peers.
Steyer has already blown about $50 million on his campaign, and has about as many supporters as Pelosi has in IQ points; around 50, or about $1 million/voter….
At this pace, If Steyer blew his entire net worth, he’d get about 1,700 voters nationwide….”Please clap…”
…. and that would be his immediate family and friends. I do wish the DNC would choose him though.
Rachel Maddow’s going to look like she did two loads in her pants when the results come in this time, and she still won’t understand that she was part of the cause.
It seems kind of funny to me that an old rich white guy is trying to get votes from a party whose message boils down to hating old rich white guys. How’s that working out so far, Tom?
The funny thing is, for a party that hates old white people, their top 3 front runners (Biden, Bernie, and Lieawatha) consists of nothing but old white people. (well, unless you are Harvard Law School, in which case you can list them as a Native American).
Gropin’ Joe, Bolshevik Bernie and Lieawatha walk into a bar and the bartender says, “I thought the Communist Clown Convention started next week.”
Another example of the shell game – When do you start and when do you end?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/us-emissions-are-falling-under-trump-thanks-to-frackings-war-on-coal
This says 2018 was up, but it was also colder than this past year.
Climate change does have its place in government to deflect attention on spending missteps, declining affordability of citizens, and the golden fleece potential for a carbon tax to pave over the mistakes.
Hawaii is a good lab rat experiment in progress.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/01/legislature-2020-making-hawaii-livable-again/
It is educational though to see through the political fog.
That is absolutely right, we don’t believe in the climate change hoax. We really would like to
Send that message !
Trump is a bit arrogant , but he is not horrible !
He is a Bull in the Progressive China closet , just what we need.
Now if BOJO can get on our side and tweek the noses of the Euro Elite , 2020 will be great.
So – the REAL question is what does OBAMA do now? Does he respect the wishes of the citizens, or does he ram climate legislation down our throats, by any means necessary?
Any doubts?
Joel, OBAMA isn’t in office any more. He can’t do anything with legislation, let alone ram it down anyones throats. not anymore, thank goodness.
OBAMA doesn’t NEED to be in office. His foot-soldiers are enacting his agenda and he’s got a lareg army of marching brooms.
I enjoy how Trump is driving the deranged Democrats defend the Iranian ayatollah and his murderous regime.
Climate change is a non-issue.
The climate is good. I notice the weather and act accordingly. Imagination can be good or very bad for health.
During the early years of the Obama presidency (2009-2010), Obama tried to get a cap-and-trade bill on CO2 passed, but it couldn’t pass the Senate, even though Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority at that time. Too many Democrats from coal-producing states voted against it, and it didn’t even get a simple majority of 50 votes plus Biden.
Since he couldn’t get a CO2-limiting bill through Congress, Obama tried executive action, imposing an EPA “rule” whereby new sources (including power plants) predicted to emit more than 100,000 tons per year of CO2 would have to demonstrate Best Available Control Technology (BACT) for CO2 to receive a permit, even though nobody (including the EPA) had really defined what constitutes Best Available Control Technology to limit CO2 emissions, since CO2 had not been considered a pollutant before, and nobody really developed commercial-sized technology to try to capture it.
The result of this rule was a sudden drop-off in the number of new gas-fired power plants being permitted, at a time when many nuclear power plants were being shut down, with only power plants permitted up through 2009 to replace them.
It is a well-known fact both in the industry and at the EPA that power plants using natural-gas turbines emit much less CO2 than coal-fired power plants per MW power produced, but the 100,000 tons per year limit on CO2 had some unintended consequences. The feed rate of methane that produces 100,000 tons per year of CO2 when burned has a heating value of about 130 MW, which would generate about 80 MW of power using a combined-cycle turbine at about 60% efficiency.
But most commercial-sized gas turbines are sized to produce about 250 MW, meaning that the CO2 emissions from one such turbine would exceed the limit, requiring the producer to somehow prove to the EPA that undefined Best Available Control Technology had been implemented before the permit could be obtained.
This limit led to the installation of many small “cogeneration” plants designed to generate a few megawatts from waste heat, or using steam-methane reforming to generate hydrogen for fuel cells, although such processes are much less efficient than large-scale gas turbines, effectively emitting MORE CO2 per MW produced than large-scale gas turbines, and restricting the amount of power that can be produced from natural gas, which has become abundant with the fracking of the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
If former EPA Administrator Christine Whitman wants an example of a “mindless” regulation, she has a great example from the Obama Administration in 2010!
This regulation was reversed by President Trump in 2017…
Good summary. Thanks
Thanks, Steve Z, interesting. Just another example of regulations having unintended (and inefficient) consequences. The AEC and NRC are catalogs of such handcuffing regs.
What makes you think these consequences were “unintended”?
I remember an incident back Jimmy Carter was in office.
Previous regulations had permitted plants that were built prior to the then current regulations could continue to operate. However if they made any major upgrades, they would be required to rebuild the entire plant to the new standards. Repairs and minor upgrades were not included.
A particular plant was getting ready to replace a turbine blade with a newer one that was 2 or 3 percent more efficient. Previously these upgrades qualified as a minor upgrade. Once Carter came in they were upgraded to a major upgrade. As a result the plant managers decided to forget the whole thing.
The regulators could have had a minor improvement in efficiency along with a minor decrease in pollution, instead they got nothing.
The turbine was getting old and had to be replaced anyway.
The choice was rather to replace it with one that was identical to the current turbine, or to replace it with one that was slightly better.
The old regulations it was a repair under the new regulation it was an upgrade.
He’s right. Sane people don’t fret about what they have 100% no control over but show tolerance and compassion for the mental cases that do.
But don’t let them into positions of power. Tolerance has limits.
Such a signal would mean they wised up on climate scams because they had to. Just working and paying the bills is not good enough these days with concocted policy storm clouds gathering into a super cell.
I think someone turned the light out for Mr; Light
No, Americans choosing Trump shows they don’t care about insignificant, former Obama administration officials.
Ah the old argument of – “If you disagree with me then you’re a bad person, because I can never be wrong.” That’s a political argument, not a science one.
I personally don’t care to deprive the climate of life-supporting CO2, upon which our food supply depends 100%! Anything else is pure folly!
From the article: “Americans choosing Trump would send the signal that they don’t care about the climate, Light said.”
No, it will send a signal that most Americans are not worried about the climate.
According to the survey in this article, 64 percent of Americans are not worried about human-caused climate change. As another poster said above, the 36 percent that are worried are probably mostly made up of those on the Left of the political spectrum.
The November 2020 elections will show us who holds the majority in the United States and what direction the United States takes from there.
I believe Trump/conservatives will hold a large majority of the vote, and the United States will go down the road Trump is preparing for us to a bright future free from authoritarians. A Republican-controlled Congress would make the future even more bright, and I think this will happen.
I think Trump is going to lead a lot of people in the world down the road to freedom. People in Hong Kong are waving posters with Trump depicted as a superhero, and in Taiwan, and even in Iran. Oppressed people don’t see Trump as an oppressor, as our American Democrats falsely portray him to be.
The Democrats are on the wrong side of History. That’s because they are delusional and live in a self-created false reality. A landslide political defeat in the November presidential elections might snap some of them out of their trance.
A Republican-controlled Congress would make the future even more bright, and I think this will happen.
It would certainly make such a future more likely – as long as it’s not a RINO filled Republican-controlled Congress.
I think if Trump got a Republican-controlled Congess he might do something about reducing the huge budget deficits the U.S. has acquired. The U.S. is paying something like $600 billion per year in interests payments which will only go higher if something isn’t done.
There wouldn’t be any chance of reducing spending if the Democrats were to continue to control the House.
That’s the problem. Repubs had majority in all Congress after 2016, and the swamp-member RINOS did nothing (or worse) to help Trump. Other than much of the US public, he’s pretty much on his own in the government w/just a few trusted aides/supporters. Still, he’s accomplishing alot, considering.
Exactly right beng135. The only good part about the Dems winning the house in 2018 was that it put a lot of the RINOs out to pasture. Now if only we can get enough non-RINOs back in their place in 2020….
Climate change? Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die.
Climate pollution in the US is up under Donald Trump
what is Climate pollution? she needs to define that term because if she means CO2/GHG emissions than she is wrong, as CO2 emissions have gone *down* in the US under Trump: in 2019, the third year of the Trump presidency, the U.S. reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 2.1% and per capita, our emissions are the lowest they’ve been since 1950.
Is it really 36% though? My guess is more like 15%, ‘elites’ accounting for 1% and most of the press so it SEEMS like more. And I believe the DNC will hand Bernie Panders the nomination to capitalize on his magical-thinking supporters who ignored his betrayal [33% voted Trump & more will next time] and want to relive the excitement of the last campaign. And Fauxcahontas will be his running mate, to capitalize on the [clueless] female vote.
Christine Todd Whitman is responsible for thousands of slow, painful deaths, by idiotically claiming 9/11 volunteers didn’t needs masks. Granted too many don’t think for themselves, but those who program us to not think but Obey are ultimately responsible, and quoting CTW is another globalist slap across our collective face.
The wisdom of the prairie oracle is helpful here.
The wisdom of the prairie oracle is helpful here.
oh, that “Mainly” qualifier is sneaky. From The Hill (conservative) in 2018:
The survey says that 60 percent of respondents say that global warming is taking place and that human activity is either primarily or partially why temperatures are rising.
In 2019 Pew Research (non-partisian) found:
A majority of U.S. adults (56%) say protecting the environment should be a top priority for the president and Congress, while a smaller share (44%) says the same about dealing with global climate change
How about some fact checking?
How about providing some links?
Prof. Dr. Mickey Mouse is one of the 96% of “climate Scientists who ah …”believe ” ???