Earlier in August, The New York Times published a 669-page draft of the government’s latest climate change report after it was leaked amid fear among scientists that the current occupant of the Oval Office would order the final version due in 2018 heavily redacted. Given the surreality of the Trump regime so far, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the authors might be commanded to remove all mentions of “climate change” from the climate report. With the report in the public domain, however, the view was that any watering down could not be concealed.
But some people involved in the project now fear the leak may have the opposite effect, pushing the White House to adopt the “red team” approach to challenge the climate science consensus that underpins the draft report and make big changes between what it says ultimately and what it says now. With Environmental Protection Agency-hating Scott Pruitt at the EPA helm, the red team could easily be packed with climate science deniers with itchy “delete” fingers.
The assessment is the fourth in a series launched by a 1990 law establishing the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Previous assessments have all been completed under Democratic administrations.
Andrew Revin at the investigative site Pro-Publica writes—Trump Has Broad Power to Block ClimateChange Report:
... the Trump administration has broad authority to review its findings. Any one of a number of government agencies can block its release, which is ultimately subject to presidential review. [...]
Despite the requirements of the 1990 law, the White House has substantial power to derail such assessments, said Nicky Sundt, who managed communications for the global change program office through most of the two terms of George W. Bush. The law, for instance, doesn’t specify the scope or nature of the periodic assessments, said Sundt, who is now a senior fellow for climate at the Government Accountability Project, which in 2005 released documents showing that a political appointee had edited a different government climate report to soften its findings.
The climate science report at the center of the current dispute is being managed by a subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council, a body established in 1993 by President Bill Clinton through an executive order to coordinate science policy.
That body, in theory, is chaired by the president or a designated proxy, Sundt said. The subcommittee managing the report, she said, operates by consensus, with anyone from a host of agencies able to block approval. “That opens up the possibility of all sorts of delays and changes,” she said.
And the president has the final say on what goes forward.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. [...]
It is a mark of our intellectual backwardness that these monumental achievements of Labor are still only dimly seen, and in all too many circles the term “Union” is still synonymous with self-seeking, power hunger, racketeering, and cynical coercion. There have been and still are wrongs in the Trade Union Movement but its share of credit for triumphant accomplishments is substantially denied in the historical treatment of the Nation’s progress.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr., October. 7, 1965 (speech to convention of the Illinois AFL-CIO)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At on this date in 2013—GOP senator howls about the 'environmental jihad':
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson may not be up for re-election until 2016, but he is not letting a League of Conservation Voters ad against him go without a bout of whining—and fundraising:
“The League of Conservation voters is not an organization with a balanced approach to a cleaner environment,” states the email from the Johnson campaign. “They are an extreme left group on an environmental jihad.”
The email, which also solicited donations from supporters, denounced what Johnson said was an “unholy alliance” between LCV and the Obama campaign that gives the green group “unlimited resources and campaign expertise.”
Ah, yes, the "extreme" "unholy" "jihad" of the League of Conservation Voters, with their ads filled with facts about severe weather's cost in human life and property damage, Johnson's big donations from oil and gas, his votes in favor of continuing pollution, and his general record of climate change denial. Those scoundrels. Send Ron Johnson money, so he can "respond to their attack ads with the truth." Is he implying that he actually doesn't deny the reality of climate change, or is that the truth of ... him being a giant climate change denier, but with an explanation of how he's proud of his position because capitalism?
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: We’re not quite done with Nazi Sergeant Pepper yet. Did Russian hackers screw with NC’s bluest county on election day? Perv-a-Lago doesn’t even try to hire Americans. Another conflicted Trump DoJ nominee. Still more possible Russian banking connections.
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