“Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference,” the Washington Post reports.
Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 192
November Surprises
Trial Balloon · Ep. 192: November Surprises
Trump Says ‘Nobody Knows’ If Climate Change Is Real
President-elect Donald Trump said that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real and that he is “studying” whether the United States should withdraw from the global warming agreement struck in Paris a year ago, the Washington Post reports.
Said Trump: “I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows. Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast. I do know this: Other countries are eating our lunch.”
Trump Picks Oklahoma Attorney General for EPA
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) is President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidate to head the EPA, Politico reports.
“Pruitt, who has bashed President Barack Obama’s EPA, is meeting with Trump at Trump Tower Wednesday. Trump’s transition is expected to announce his EPA chief imminently.”
For members: Here’s Trump’s Cabinet So Far
Gore Meets with Trump to Discuss Climate Change
“Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against climate change, and Donald Trump, who at one point called it a hoax, met on Monday in what Gore called a ‘productive’ session,” Reuters reports.
Gore “spent about 90 minutes in meetings at the president-elect’s Trump Tower apartment and office building in Manhattan. In addition to seeing Trump, he also met briefly with the Republican’s daughter, Ivanka, who attended a series of high-level meetings since her father won the Nov. 8 election.”
China Tells Trump Climate Change Is No Hoax It Invented
A top Chinese official said that China “couldn’t have invented global warming as a hoax to harm U.S. competitiveness because it was Donald Trump’s Republican predecessors who started climate negotiations in the 1980s,” Bloomberg reports.
“U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush supported the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in initiating global warming talks even before China knew that negotiations to cut pollution were starting.”
Trump Could Put Climate on Course for ‘Danger Zone’
New York Times: “Global warming may indeed be the sharpest example of how policy in Washington will change under a Trump administration. President Obama has said his efforts to establish the United States as the global leader in climate policy are his proudest legacy.”
“But if Mr. Trump makes good on his campaign promises, experts in climate change policy warn, that legacy would unravel quickly. The world, then, may have no way to avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming, including rising sea levels, extreme droughts and food shortages, and more powerful floods and storms.”
Obama Says Climate Change Is ‘Terrifying’
New York Times: “Climate change, Mr. Obama often says, is the greatest long-term threat facing the world, as well as a danger already manifesting itself as droughts, storms, heat waves and flooding. More than health care, more than righting a sinking economic ship, more than the historic first of an African-American president, he believes that his efforts to slow the warming of the planet will be the most consequential legacy of his presidency.”
He added: “What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event. It’s a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t experience and don’t see.”
Trump Says There’s No Drought In California
Donald Trump claimed that California is not facing a drought, USA Today reports.
“Trump said state officials were simply denying water to Central Valley farmers to prioritize the Delta smelt, a native California fish nearing extinction — or as Trump called it, ‘a certain kind of three-inch fish.'”
Said Trump: “If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water.”
Trump Invokes Global Warming for His Golf Course
Donald Trump says he is “not a big believer in global warming” and has called it “a total hoax,” “bullshit” and “pseudoscience,” Politico reports.
But he is also trying to build a sea wall designed to protect one of his golf courses from “global warming and its effects.”
“A permit application for the wall, filed by Trump International Golf Links Ireland and reviewed by Politoco, explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure.”
Group Seeks Evidence to Convict Snyder
“Hacking group Anonymous has set its sights on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who is scrambling to address a drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan,” The Hill reports.
“The goal of the campaign is to gather evidence against Snyder and put him in jail. The governor has been widely berated for his slow response to the emergency in Flint, where lead levels in the drinking water have spiked since officials switched the water source to a local river to cut costs.”
Public Says Climate Change Is Real
A new Monmouth poll finds 70% of Americans say that the world’s climate is undergoing a change leading to more extreme weather patterns and sea level rise, including 41% who call climate change a very serious problem.
Key takeaway: “There is a significant partisan divide in this view. A majority of Democrats (63%) and a plurality of independents (42%) see climate change as a very serious issue, while just 18% of Republicans agree. On the flip side, a plurality of Republicans (43%) believe climate change is not happening at all, compared with just 17% of independents and 10% of Democrats who feel the same.”
Trump Says Obama Is Preventing His Use of Hairspray
Donald Trump said that President Obama’s concerns about the environment were infringing on his rights to use aerosol hairspray, the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “You can’t use hairspray because hairspray is going to affect the ozone.”
However, aerosol sprays were actually phased out in the United States in the 1990s, years before Obama was president.
Paul Says It’s Impossible to Talk About Climate Change
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told the Concord Monitor that climate change is a discussion that’s impossible to have – in a logical way – in the United States right now.
Said Paul: “It has become sort of like you’re a Holocaust denier if you question any of the religious cult that says, ‘You have to believe as I do.’ I think we’re in an absurd situation.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“He’s not a scientist, he’s a religious leader.”
— Jeb Bush, quoted by the Huffington Post, dismissing Pope Francis’ views on climate change.
Senate Democrats Unveil Aggressive Climate Bill
Senate Democratic leaders “plan to unveil a measure intended to signal their full-throated support of President Obama’s aggressive climate change agenda to 2016 voters and to the rest of the world,” the New York Times reports.
“The Democrats hope that the bill, sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell, of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, will demonstrate a new unity for the party on energy and climate change, and define Democrats’ approach to global warming policy in the coming years.”
Quote of the Day
“We don’t want to destroy people’s jobs based on some theory that’s not proven.”
— Gov. John Kasich, quoted by National Journal, on whether humans have caused climate change.
Obama Could Force Climate Change Debate in 2016
“The issue of climate change played almost no role in the 2012 presidential campaign. President Obama barely mentioned the topic, nor did the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. It was not raised in a single presidential debate,” the New York Times reports.
“But as Mr. Obama prepares to leave office, his own aggressive actions on climate change have thrust the issue into the 2016 campaign. Strategists now say that this battle for the White House could feature more substantive debate over global warming policy than any previous presidential race.”
Obama to Unveil Even Tougher Climate Plan
“In the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama will unveil on Monday a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry,” the New York Times reports.
“The rules are the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources.”
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Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →