Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition | Hacker News Reader

Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition

scientificamerican.com

78 pointssubnaught39 comments

Anyone have anything to offer on what "checks and balances" would be put in place against dismantling the little environmental progress we've made in the past 8 years?

We seem pretty screwed. This guy seems as in the industry pocket as possible.

Oh yeah, royally screwed.

But emails though

State level actions.

When many state legislatures are controlled by republicans? Good luck.

Here in New England we already have an interstate compact on climate action, so non-federal interstate cooperation is a pretty normal thing.

True meanwhile the red states will go apeshit, but we have to start somewhere.

And given that the Paris Conference will start discussing trade policy regarding non-signatory nations, I think even Trump will have to sit up and pay attention soon.

Start getting the larger population centers to refuse to do business with states which reinstitute damaging energy and environmental policies.

New York and California can move mountains here.

The only good news is that I'm so dead inside I don't think it even matters. "That's the thing, Will. Americans are optimistic by nature. And if we face this problem head on, if we listen to our best scientists, and act decisively, and passionately, I still don't see any way we can survive." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA

Less than 24 hours and I've gone from being simply stressed out about work and ready for the election to be over to general depression, feelings of hopelessness for our future, and an overwhelming urge to curl up into a ball for an indeterminate period of time.

It's 1:49PM here and I still haven't gotten out of bed. Feeling the same way as you.

Feeling the same way. I wonder, in a year, if this election outcome will be visible in suicide trends.

Sounds like November 2008 for the average conservative.

How many conservatives had their civil rights and equality consistently dangled in front of them for votes by the party that just won the executive and legislative elections?

Yeah think of all the indignities those conservatives had to suffer, kowtowing before a black man!

At this point, I just assume it will all go back to being as wacky as it was under Bush (very wacky). He threw in plenty of people that refused to acknowledge Climate Change too.

Now, its fascinating how much executive power Obama has used to push through policies that neither the House nor Senate would agree to. And yes, Trump will definitely roll them back.

I still don't understand why the Dem's didn't try and change this whole crappy process when they briefly had it all. None of these positions should be so easy to f-up with a new President. They should require actual knowledge and a proper skill-set for the people in them.

Organizations select for power-hungry behavior. Changing these processes would reduce the likelihood of them or their allies winning that power. An individual who reduces the power of themselves or their allies will be weaker/less desirable/less fit than either internal or external competition that does the opposite. It is a race to psychopathy that intensifies with competition.

It's the same for electoral reform or [insert your list seemingly irrational/bad organizational behavior here].

Trump himself said it was broken - but it doesn't matter because he won.

Any frustrations we have are irrelevant unless we have power.

==============================

Details here from a prior post:

1. Iron law of oligarchy (1911 - 1700 words on wikipedia): "all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies."

2. Dictator's handbook (2011) - Or CGP Grey's summary: rules for rulers (2016 - 18 minutes): "Bad behavior" is emergent from power structures rather than human weakness. From democracies to dictatorships, organizations select for Machiavellian and psychopathic behaviors.

I can't recommend these enough. This life altering perspective takes <30 minutes to go over - plus potentially several days of despair. The problems with the world are not user error. How can technology help?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

I think Bitcoin is right now the most powerful technology that can help... it got me out of despair when I understood it more. It can't help the climate short term, but at least restructure the power long term to people who hopefully have a better scientific understanding.

Interesting. Could you expand on that thought? I'm curious how it would be different from our current solutions. Taking the power away from national reserves?

Am I being optimistic in thinking that at some point the American public may flip on climate change and denying it exists will become very unpopular?

Where I live we've set multiple temperature records in the last few weeks and may break a record for latest first snowfall ever. Even if correlating the weather outside with global climate conditions is a flawed metric, people have to figure out what's going on at some point... right?

It'll happen - it's bound to. Progress tends to happen that way, if you look at any of the previously divisive issues.

The problem (and please don't misread this) is that when it's about eg. gay marriage or drug enforcement, it's "only" some people's lives being ruined. That's temporary and localized. When it's about climate change, it's about the long term fate of the entire planet. There's no "rolling back the tape".

It's already too late now. And the US just elected somebody who is ready to undo the past 8 years of its own progress on climate change.

The good news is, Greenland's pretty big and mostly uninhabited.

It's bound to happen eventually; the question is whether it will happen soon enough to do any good.

So much for the "outsider not beholden to politics" argument eh? This is the GOP playbook of forcing anti-science partisans into important roles and gutting environmental regulations to please industry.

Also so much for the Trump supporter excuses of "Oh, he didn't really mean that, he just said that to get elected -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge," nonsense. Clearly climate change skepticism has become a mainstream view in the US government after nearly two decades of fighting these skeptics. Its incredible how much progress was lost last night.

Remember Cheney and the secret energy meetings? Same story all over again. Probably some of the same people. Certainly some of the same companies.

Maybe it's because climate change is caused by something other than our cars.

You can fact check this in 5 seconds, but it looks like the average sceptic is not even able to achieve that simple task.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Funny how many people in tech think because they're good with computers they're somehow smarter than climate scientists.

No, it's just that no one understands the failings of computer models better than we do.

What are your climate science credentials?

Has an opinion and works with computers.

Maybe you should offer more than a tantalizing hint for why we should discount 150 years of scientific work establishing that it is, in fact, caused by our cars.

You're right!

It's also caused by, but to a significantly lesser extent, raising cattle.

(Deforestation and methane release)

Like what? All the farts of relief by trump supporters accumulating in a thick boundary layer of smug?

Disgusting. Terrifying. It was a nice planet while it lasted.

And so it begins

This was my exact thoughts upon reading the article: So much so that I just sent my spouse the same words.

What infuriates me more is the people jumping to conclusion about their futures

Good. Maybe this will help to shift the focus to real pollutants, which actually harm human health, instead of CO2.

CO2 harm to human health involves a more complex chain of causality than merely breathing it in and being poisoned by it. But it is real nonetheless.

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