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]]>The EPA was established to focus on industrial pollution, vehicle emissions, pesticide use, clean air and clean water, and sewage and wastewater treatment. In 2007, a Supreme Court ruling supported the EPA’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), as air pollutants. In 2009, the court supported the U.S. administration in giving the EPA authority to address six key GHGs considered dangerous to human health and the climate. This led to the regulation of chimney stack and tailpipe emissions.
As of February 12, 2026, under the current Trump administration, GHGs are no longer a danger. All regulations on vehicles, industry, fossil fuel companies, and utilities related to emissions no longer exist. Climate-heating pollution is no longer a concern of the U.S. federal government. The federal government no longer sees the smog and pollutants from morning commutes as an issue it needs to address. On X, former President Barack Obama described the repeal as one that will make Americans “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change.” He was joined by John Kerry, a former Presidential candidate and Secretary of State, who called the deregulation move “Orwellian” and one that will inflict “enormous damage to people and property around the world.”
Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, and likely a future Democratic candidate for President, calls the decision “reckless” and states, “it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide.”
President Trump and Lee Zeldin, his pick to run the EPA, in announcing deregulation, pointed to $1.3 trillion in savings from eliminating oversight of GHGs. Standing beside President Trump, he stated that the “EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated.”
Zeldin has little to no scientific or environmental credentials. His previous history as a Member of Congress has had him vote against EPA regulations and standards. He has opposed federal actions to fight climate change. In justifying his opposition, Zeldin has accused the EPA of overreach under previous administrations. He sees pollution as a matter for state and local communities to handle.
The science of climate change is “undecided,” states Zeldin, countering the definitive conclusions of the vast majority of climate scientists. For proof, he cites a recent U.S. Department of Energy report written by handpicked global warming denialists.
Zeldin’s view is that before his appointment, the EPA was “trying to please a few fear-mongering climate alarmists.”
Through irresponsible acts by the U.S. government, our world will tackle climate change mitigation and adaptation without a leading nation responsible for it. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest GHG emitter. Through climate change denial and abdication in addressing GHGs, Zeldin and Trump are being more than reckless. They are criminals.
Dystopian futures await. If you read Stephen Markley’s “The Deluge,” you may be looking at what could be a likely future. This novel, which came out in 2023, depicts a near-future America grappling with climate change. Markley weaves science, politics, and fiction into a disturbing narrative that begins with a post-Trump administration incapable of mitigating CO₂ levels in the atmosphere from climbing past 430 parts per million by the 2030s. Global atmospheric temperatures rise beyond 1.5°C. Antarctic ice sheets destabilize. The Arctic rapidly loses sea ice. America soon feels the “tipping points” of IPCC reports: prolonged heat waves, growing wildfires, extreme rainfall and flood events, Category 5 hurricanes, superstorms, and sea level rise.
Following several people still trying to live their lives, The Deluge introduces climate threats not often discussed. At the same time, the narrative of popular resistance, ecoterrorism, and suffering feels potent and almost real.
I am surprised Trump hasn’t condemned the novel on Truth Social, or that Pam Bondi hasn’t summoned a grand jury. As for Zeldin, a shill for Trump and the fossil fuel industry, little more needs to be said.
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]]>Seventeen years after the EPA was given responsibility to ensure that the U.S. was serious about carbon emissions and combating global warming, the guardrails to protect the air we breathe and the oceans of the world are being whisked away.
Surprisingly, the energy industry is not happy with this type of change, considering the commitment to present and future renewable projects. The certainty of drawing down carbon emissions has guided the sector’s infrastructure investments for more than a decade and a half. Now, the U.S. administration is telling them to “burn baby burn” when it comes to coal, oil and natural gas to feed America’s energy craving, and to forget about climate change, global warming and proven science.
Back in the 1970s, Exxon scientists already knew that their industry was causing the atmosphere to change and was responsible for the creeping increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas (GHG). They buried the evidence for years while the oil industry continued to expand and feed humanity’s fossil fuel energy addiction. It was good for the bottom line, to hell with what was good for future life on Earth. The fossil fuel industry’s good times continued to roll despite a Republican president’s creation of the EPA back then.
As more scientific evidence reveals CO2 in the atmosphere continuing to rise (see the Keeling Curve), American scientists, both unaffiliated and within the fossil fuel industry, have established a direct link between burning carbon in all its forms and rising atmospheric mean temperatures, increasing ocean acidification and extreme weather events. Today, the Keeling Curve data, tracked in Hawaii by the Mauna Loa Observatory since 1958, is about to be defunded in the new Trump administration’s budget.
This is what the Keeling data shows. The most recent CO2 reading as of July 2025 is approximately 427.5 parts per million (ppm). Other U.S. laboratory measures show readings as high as 430.5 ppm. In March 1958, the initial Mauna Loa reading was 313 ppm. That means CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen between 114 and 117 ppm in 67 years, a 37% increase.
The Mauna Loa data on CO2 correlates with global average temperature rise, which today is reaching a mean close to the lower target limit of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) agreed to by the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement. Why was 1.5 chosen? This lower threshold was seen as the fairest to allow the most vulnerable populations on Earth to continue to thrive without the threat of irreversible climate tipping points, food insecurity, global sea level rise, and reduced habitability from extreme heat.
So, what American and other scientists from around the world have discovered is no more than a “hoax,” perpetrated by Communist China, and a scam to deceive Americans. In accordance, the U.S. administration is once more withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. American exceptionalism for this administration is the fare of the day.
The official EPA rollback proposal was revealed on July 29, 2025, in Indianapolis at an automobile dealership by Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA administrator, with the hearty approval of his Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. The two have described the EPA’s regulations as authoritarian, twisted, and a “scam” with a pretext to assert control over the rights of Americans to choose what they want to buy and drive freely. EPA regulations have been sticking Americans with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every year to support a GHG emissions agenda, rather than one that fulfills America’s current and future energy demands.
It is expected that the threat to public health from ending EPA oversight of the environment will receive pushback from those defending the Clean Air Act and what remains of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act after Trump has taken a hatchet to the latter.
According to David Bookbinder, Director of Law and Policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, in response to this latest EPA announcement stated, “This baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse [gas] pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day.”
Meanwhile, the grim statistics continue to mount related to the consequences of adding megatons of carbon to the atmosphere. Here are just a few:
The future doesn’t bode well for the planet with an anti-climate change regime in charge in Washington. What should we expect in terms of short and long-term impacts?
Key consequences and implications for America include:
If power plants currently responsible for 25% of U.S. GHG emissions no longer have to implement decarbonization, renewable investments will dry up, and emission reductions by the sector will begin to creep upward again to meet rising energy demand.
If vehicle tailpipe emission standards are removed and fuel mileage efficiency standards loosened, the automotive and transportation sector, currently the largest source of direct GHGs in the U.S., will see carbon emission increases.
With the removal of other climate change regulatory limits, the risks of climate change impacts linked to extreme weather, heatwaves, and flooding will continue to increase. The cost to insure homes will continue to escalate, with parts of the country prone to extreme weather no longer insurable.
With the so-called savings that these EPA rollbacks are expected to produce, estimated at $54 billion in the budget, there will be false economies as increased emissions worsen climate-related disasters and impose higher healthcare, disaster response and environmental damage costs.
Such are the consequences of the current insanity being demonstrated in the Trump administration.
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]]>The post As The Trump Administration Defunds Science What Can Americans Do? appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>In 2014, when a Liberal-National Coalition formed the government, it disbanded the Commission and defunded the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the sanctioned arm of the government responsible for research on climate.
The new coalition government was led by climate-change deniers. The reaction of the academic and scientific community in Australia was immediate. Within five days, the scientists and academics rallied to launch the Climate Council, an independent not-for-profit led by former members of the Climate Commission. The public response saw more than 16,000 Australians provide $11 million in a 10-day crowdfunding campaign.
For the government, which claimed there was no more need to know about climate change because it already knew everything, no credible forward-seeking climate policy left it blind to climate-change-related events that plagued Australia throughout the rest of the decade, culminating with the worst wildfires in 2019 and 2020.
The defunding of climate science was accompanied by a pro-fossil-fuel policy that saw increases in coal production for use internally as well as for export. Australia became one of the worst-performing advanced nations in reducing carbon emissions. This increased public health risks and negatively impacted the country’s natural environment, including damage to the Great Barrier Reef. The government covered its tracks by issuing selective climate data to hide its poor climate performance.
The independent Climate Council took over as the voice of climate science and solutions, producing annual climate reports which it distributed nationwide. It continues to do so even with the advent of a Labor government that replaced the Liberal-National Coalition in the past two elections. Labor has renewed the federal government’s climate change file.
The Climate Council is now the science watchdog and public advocate, scrutinizing policy and pushing the government to establish stronger emission reduction targets based on climate evidence. The Climate Council has become a prime advocate for renewable and distributed energy projects. It publishes regular reports such as “Seize the Decade,” pathways for the country to reduce climate pollution by 75% by 2030, far more ambitious than the present government target of 43%.
So, why am I telling readers about Australia’s Climate Council, particularly my American readers? The administration of Donald Trump is doing what the Liberal-National Coalition in Australia did after being elected.
Trump is cutting funding to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
He is repealing many of the programs instituted by the Inflation Reduction Act that provided subsidies and incentives to companies tackling carbon emissions. He is dismantling America’s climate change initiatives while withdrawing the country’s involvement in the United Nations Climate Change Project, known as COP.
The administration recently halted work on the National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. This is a document issued every four years that represents the government’s authoritative report on climate change impacts, risks and responses. It is a useful guide for local governments when developing climate-based policies and programs. Halting its creation involved stopping the work of 400 volunteer scientists.
All of these cuts have been done in the name of cost savings, but what’s really behind the defunding of environmental, health and climate science programs is climate change denial.
Is this how average Americans want to be perceived in the global fight to stop oceans and atmospheric changes that are already impacting so many Americans and other people around the globe’s lives?
What can they do? Take a leaf out of Australia’s Climate Council playbook. General outrage from Australians, academia and former members of the government’s Climate Commission mobilized. In five days, they used crowdfunding and other public appeals to launch. Since then, public donations provide 89% of the Climate Council’s budget, with philanthropies covering the balance. No money comes from the Australian government.
There is widespread concern being expressed by academics, scientists, health professionals, and the public in the United States regarding the Trump administration’s environment and climate policies. There have been rallies and livestream protests.
Can crowdfunding, for example, restore funding to key EPA projects or fund completion of the National Climate Assessment? The EPA’s annual budget in 2024 was over $9 billion. The cost to cover the technical support and staffing for the production of the National Climate Assessment is about $7 million. The total cost of the report probably amounts to no more than $10 million.
If Americans aren’t game to crowdfund $9 billion for the EPA, indeed a very large sum, maybe they can start with something more achievable, a campaign to ensure the climate assessment report gets published? With $7 to 10 million (Australians raised $11 million in 10 days), Americans would be making a statement to the current climate change deniers leading their nation.
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]]>The EPA policy relies on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects to reduce GHGs from fossil fuel energy sources. The reality is, however, that of the 3,400 coal and gas-fired plants currently operating in the U.S., a mere handful (less than 10) have CCS installed. So between now and 2032, utilities are going to have to churn out more than one new CCS project a day to meet the deadline. Considering the regulatory environment to get approval for modifications to existing power plants let alone standalone direct-air-capture (DAC) technology, it seems the EPA is “blowing smoke.”
The EPA proposal also addresses the use of green hydrogen as a substitute in gas-fired thermal power stations. A reality check shows that total annual regional production of green hydrogen in 2022 amounted to 691,000 metric tons. That’s enough hydrogen to generate 33 megawatt hours of energy, a fraction of what natural-gas-fired plants produce at an average of between 600 and 700 megawatts.
Green hydrogen production requires electrolyzers that use renewable energy to remain green. Think about it. Why do you need the gas when you already have wind and solar producing zero-emission, renewable energy? It is adding an unnecessary extra step just because some existing gas-fired plants can be converted to use green hydrogen.
Here’s another bit of lunacy. Although the EPA has proposed GHG limits and the adoption of green hydrogen where possible, if coal-fired plant operators shut down or install CCS, total emission reduction will amount to 28% by 2032. At the same time the policy notes the need for utilities to invest and build more natural gas-fired plants as part of a “transitional energy strategy” of which we will talk more.
The legacy of natural gas as a transitional fuel from coal goes back to the administration of Barack Obama when it was first proposed. Natural gas produces about 50% less carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHG polluting gasses and particulate matter than coal.
The Obama administration became convinced by fossil fuel energy industry lobbyists and major utilities that a two-step approach involving eliminating coal and substituting it with natural gas would bend the carbon curve downward while the country could gear up its renewable and other zero-emission energy capacity. The reason for retaining the burning of a fossil fuel to produce electricity was that renewable intermittency needed a reliable legacy baseline capacity provided by fossil-fuel power.
The insanity of the policy was that it traded one polluting fuel for a lesser one while ignoring alternatives. And the Obama administration and those that have followed it have continued to the lunacy while ignoring other solutions including:
What is the estimated cost of implementing the latest EPA proposal thrashed out with the cooperation of utilities and fossil-fuel providers? It comes in at between $10 and $14 billion with retail electricity rates expected to rise by 0.2% annually.
The end result of the proposal if implemented would be a decrease in CO2 emissions by 617 million tons annually from coal-fired power plants when what is needed amounts to between 100 and 1,000 Gigatons (a gigaton is a billion metric tons) annually by 2050.
So in other words, a lot of nothing that sounds like good policy but in fact is greenwashing.
This proposed policy governing U.S. utilities is being joined by others in the global community with their own net-zero short and long-term strategies. I intend to explore what the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China and others are doing and weigh in on what will undoubtedly show the inadequacies of current activities by governments on the climate change file.
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]]>The post “The Crisis of the Day” Stated the U.S. Supreme Court When Ruling Against the EPA’s Oversight of the Environment appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>At age 13, Carson’s book left an indelible impression. Already a passionate reader and explorer of science and nature. I developed a stronger environmental consciousness. Carson’s book motivated so many others, some who had never thought about the environmental consequences of our industrial society. The result was the beginning of the environmental movement.
Carson pointed the finger at giant chemical companies of the 1960s as the environmental villains. These included Mobil, Dow, DuPont, Stauffer, Shell, American Cyanamid, Union Carbide and lesser known others who were treating rivers, lakes, oceans and the atmosphere as their garbage dumps whether through polluting manufacturing processes, or the use of their end products to further damage the air, water and soil.
DDT or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane was given prominence in the book. It was a synthetic insecticide invented in the 1870s but widely used during World War II in the South Pacific to control mosquitoes. After the war, widespread use created global environmental consequences. Studies started showing DDT in our food, blood chemistry and even mothers’ milk. It was killing more than mosquitoes. Birds and bees were its victims.
In the 1960s I remember when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire because of all of the chemicals polluting it. I remember oil spills, smog-filled pictures of Los Angeles, and reports in the papers about contaminated water sources and a growing garbage crisis.
Heightened public awareness prompted President Richard Nixon in 1970 to act. He called on the U.S. Congress to create a new federal department, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It was mandated to do the following:
At the time climate change was only beginning to be talked about in the scientific community as well as behind the scenes among researchers working for fossil fuel companies.
Climate change fit the EPA’s mandate. And unlike an oil or chemical spill, no reputable scientist would see climate change as equivalent to “the crisis of the day.” But this phrase appears in Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion justifying the decision in West Virginia v. EPA to deny the Agency its power to regulate carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants which based on the mandated powers described above is its purview (see points 3, 4, and 5).
Roberts’ opinion states “capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible solution to the crisis of the day“ but only Congress has the express authority to make a “decision of such magnitude and consequence.”
Other justices who supported the 6-3 decision claimed that the EPA was overreaching and intruding on states’ interests whose authority governed the continuing operation of coal and gas-fired power plants responsible for greenhouse gas emissions until Congress authorized otherwise.
Effectively the majority of Supreme Court justices were giving utilities burning coal and natural gas the right to continue to pollute. Was it because they didn’t think that carbon dioxide emissions could be defined as pollutants like DDT? A justice in minority dissent described the decision as “frightening” for its consequences.
“The crisis of the day” wording says it all. Here was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who clearly had never read any scientific papers describing anthropogenic greenhouse gasses and their global warming consequences. Because if he had, how could he describe the issue under consideration as “the crisis of the day.” Climate change isn’t anything approaching a crisis of the day. It is the crisis of our time and will be for those who follow us through the remainder of this century and well beyond.
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]]>The Court ruling in a 6 to 3 vote stated that the EPA’s authority was limited in setting GHG emissions standards for power plants. For the environmental movement, the ruling is as devastating as the ruling last week to reverse a woman’s right to choose in Roe v. Wade.
The U.S. is the second-largest producer of GHGs. Only China puts more pollution into the atmosphere. The U.S. government is also committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The justices on the Supreme Court breathe the same air as all of us but feel that coal-fired power plants, and coal producers have a right to pollute.
John Roberts, the Chief Justice, in the ruling who wrote the opinion for the majority noted that the role to regulate doesn’t belong to the EPA, but rather to Congress. He states:
“Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in deciding how Americans will get their energy. Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible solution to the crisis of the day but it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt its own such a regulatory scheme.”
The ruling puts the ball back in Congress to act.
The dissenting opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan stated that the EPA had already been given the power by Congress to address “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.” She went further saying that in this decision it is the Supreme Court that has appointed itself as “the decisionmaker on climate policy,” and went further stating “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader described the ruling as one that tarnishes public confidence in the Court, “setting America back decades, if not centuries.” He continued, noting that the Court ruling pushes us back to the time when robber barons and corporate elites held power and average citizens had no say.
The case for coal was argued by Republican attorneys representing West Virginia, and major coal companies operating in that state. The ruling effectively blocks the EPA from putting a price on carbon pollution, or a cap on production.
Without immediate action by the US Congress which is highly unlikely because of Republican filibustering, no new legislation will pass both the House and Senate. Who are the victims of this unprincipled ruling? They are both the youth and the flora and fauna of this planet who will inherit a warming world and its consequences. All of them have no say as to what will be their future.
Immoral, unethical, and perverse are three words to describe the ruling the Supreme Court delivered to our planet on this day.
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]]>But since the inauguration of Joe Biden in January 2021, he has made fighting climate change his top priority and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other relevant government agencies have moved front and centre to highlight the evidence.
In its latest effort to get back on track, the EPA released its long-awaited report that represents an accumulation of climate data from dozens of government, academic, and non-profit sources. The report, which had been buried by the Trump administration for several years, indicates unprecedented levels of climate change including rising atmospheric temperatures, increased ocean acidity and sea-level rise, growing extreme weather events, increases in coastal and inland flooding, and rising incidents of drought and wildfires.
The new EPA website lists indicators that provide a more granular look including:
We now know for a fact that 2020 was the second-warmest year on record, only surpassed by 2016. And we now know for a fact that heat waves which averaged two in the 1960s increased to six annually in the 2010 decade which just ended.
The EPA site is accompanied by other U.S. government agency sites equally unmasked by the Biden administration to becoming informative sources for studying climate change.
A redesigned National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate.gov site provides Americans with a global climate dashboard for reference.
And NASA‘s work on climate change is once more visible. Considering the space agency’s fleet of Earth-observation satellites, it can now reveal the detailed data it tracks about our planet’s vital signs. You can check out the scorecard which as of the writing of this post shows:
NASA provides a climate time machine to visualize the changes in all of these key metrics over time.
Back in January of this year, none of the above was anywhere evident. Now it is front and centre where it should be. Let’s hope that the policies and actions that follow will help bend the GHG curve downward so that Americans and the rest of the global community can collectively begin to heal our planet.
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]]>The post Turning Up the Heat: Is This Just a Hot Summer or is it Anthropogenic Climate Change? appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>And that’s not all. Combined with drier and warmer air weather is turning forests and brush into kindling. In Northern Ontario, not a place you normally associate with hot and dry, wildfires have been burning relentlessly. The same is true in Western Canada, parts of the Northwest Territories, and in the Western United States. Fire season in California is now almost all year round facilitated by periodic droughts and prolonged heat.
In Greece, wildfires have killed scores of people in the last week and driven others to seek shelter in the Aegean Sea to avoid rapidly advancing flames.
In Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, temperatures reached 47 Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) degrees. Now Arizona is hot in the summer and temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) are very much the norm. But even Phoenix is calling what the city is experiencing a whole new ball game. At the same time as Phoenix has been frying, Dallas-Forth Worth set temperature records of 42 to 43 Celsius (108 to 109 Fahrenheit) on four consecutive days. In fact, the U.S. this July has seen 41 heat records set across the country.
So where else are we seeing things heat up?
The two Koreas have set heat records in July with temperatures hitting 40 Celsius.
Sweden, Finland, and Norway have seen temperatures above the Arctic Circle hit 32 Celsius (90 Fahrenheit). Temperatures in the United Kingdom have reached what is called a “level three heat-health watch” exceeding 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) for entire weeks in a country used to an average July temperature of 21 Celsius (70 Fahrenheit).
On July 5th, Ouargla, Algeria set the highest temperature ever recorded in Africa, 51.3 Celsius (124 Fahrenheit). In Tbilisi, Georgia a new all-time record high of 40.5 Celsius was hit on July 4th. Yerevan, Armenia on July 2nd hit 42 Celsius, also a record high. And the world’s hottest low nighttime temperature was recorded in Oman, 42.6 Celsius.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which accumulates global temperature readings daily, in the last week, our world recorded 5 high maximum temperatures and 11 high minimum temperatures. Over the last month, there were 55 high maximums and 71 low minimums. And over the past year, 126 high maximums and 246 low minimums.
What are low minimums?
These are the miminum the temperature drops to overnight. Record low minimums means the diurnal temperature swing from daily highs to lows is becoming less. When nighttime temperatures exceed normal minimums it can be an even greater problem than scorching daytime highs. Plants and animals need the cooling off. Humans need the cooler temperatures that night brings. When it doesn’t happen it impacts health. In plants, it goes beyond health affecting their ability to retain moisture. When evapotranspiration is happening both day and night then vegetation dries out and dies. Conditions for fire are the end result.
All of this record heat being reported, both in day and nighttime temperatures, is even more disconcerting because it is happening in a year of a La Nina where mid-Pacific Ocean waters are cooler than the norm. So what will happen with the next El Nino when ocean surface temperatures heat up again?
And speaking of hot air, we have politicians like Donald Trump who are in denial and unraveling the regulations of previous administrations addressing climate change. Trump’s latest assault is an attempt to legislate away California’s environmental regulations on vehicle emissions, the toughest in the country.
Meanwhile, here in Ontario, we have our own mini-Trump, the newly elected Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, who has proclaimed that carbon taxes are anathema, an evil, a burden on the public, a violation of our democratic self-interest, rather than a way to help mitigate climate change. In the name of the people in the last week here in Ontario, our new Progressive Conservative government has introduced legislation to kill the Carbon Cap-and-Trade Program which the province shared with Quebec and California. The reasoning states Ford is to save consumers 4.3 cents per liter at the gas pumps. In addition, this new government has ended renewable energy projects near completion and ripped up previously approved licenses for increasing solar and wind energy. In addition, the government has ended initiatives to encourage consumers to purchase low-emission and zero-emission vehicles in the interest of ending “wasteful” government programs.
But I digress from my initial question reflected in the title of this posting.
Is this just a hot summer or is this the face of climate change and global warming?
This is the same question posed by Joel Achenbach and Angela Fritz of The Washington Post today. In their article, they seek an answer from climatologists. It turns out that the climate models developed over the last thirty years have predicted this summer. Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the EPA, is quoted stating “the old records belong to a world that no longer exists” in talking about the new norm in climate. Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University, describes the changing climate conditions stating that in many parts of the country global warming is hitting the “Achilles’ heel.” She points out that the issue of freshwater scarcity in the Southwestern States is being exacerbated by climate change. On the Gulf Coast, it is the intensification and slowing down of cyclonic storms and hurricanes leading to record wind, rain, and flooding. And in the U.S. east, it’s flooding “exacerbating the risks we already face today.” These two are not voices in the wilderness. Their fellow researchers concur that the weather is today reflecting climate change.
A climate researcher in The Netherlands, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, describes what happened when temperatures reached 36 Celsius (96 Fahrenheit) in the city of Gouda in the last week. “This…was a 1-in-100 year event in 1900. It’s become 20 times more likely” in the climate world of today. Van Oldenborgh’s office doesn’t have air conditioning because in the past there were few days in the summer that called for it. Now it appears to be a very much needed addition.
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]]>The post The U.S. EPA is No Longer Telling The Truth About Emissions appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>CH4 is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2) although its longevity is short-lived when compared to the latter. Where CH4’s greenhouse impact lasts between 10 and 20 years, CO2’s lasts for centuries. The fact that there is more CH4 leaking into the atmosphere from U.S. oil and natural gas operations shouldn’t be a surprise considering the expansion in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) by American energy companies. This has led to a significant growth in oil and natural gas output. It was expected, with such growth in production that escaped CH4 levels would rise and the EPA established emission inventory methods to track it. Unfortunately, the EPA has gotten it wrong.
The emissions described in this report aren’t those created by the burning of the fossil fuels, but rather, from leaks at the wellhead and throughout the supply chain. The researchers report their findings with a high degree of confidence that EPA estimates are currently way off the mark. They believe this is so because the EPA based its estimates on the sampling of conventional fracking operations rather than abnormal operating conditions which exist at many U.S. sites. These abnormal conditions have been observed in significant quantity throughout exploration, production, transportation and storage of both oil and natural gas. At 20% of storage sites, in fact, CH4 emissions are occurring at a rate four times higher than EPA estimates.
It would behoove the EPA, even under Scott Pruitt, to get its methodology and facts straight. The oil and natural gas industry is the leading source of CH4 emissions in the United States. And contrary to popular opinion, produces far more than cow farts or landfill leaks. With no guarantee that the EPA intends to correct its mistakes on CH4 emissions tracking, there is no way to know how much the additional underestimated greenhouse gas is contributing to climate change.
And maybe that’s the point of it all. If you pretend it is not there then you can deny the problem exists.
The EPA, as of yet, has not called into question or responded to the report published this month. But one would think that the remaining well-meaning scientists at the EPA will take a look at the research teams’ methodology and its conclusions which state that CH4 emissions may be even higher than the data they have gathered.
This research report is one of 33 peer-reviewed papers associated with 16 different research projects, all published in academic journals. Funding of the studies has come from the Environmental Defense Fund, a number of foundations, and the natural gas industry itself.
The final analysis in this report states that EPA current estimates of CH4 emissions from oil and gas operations. somewhere between 1.3 and 1.6% of the total volume produced by the industry is off by as much as 53%. The actual number is 2% or higher. The 2% over the 1.3 to 1.6% translates to 10 million additional metric tons of CH4 leaking from U.S. operations annually or equivalent tp not accounting for the running of more than 200 coal-fired power plants in the country year round.
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May 11, 2018 – The picture above may come from Australia where demonstrators protested their government’s climate change policies, but it represents equally the current position of the U.S. Trump administration. Climate change has vanished from the pages of the Environmental Protection Agency. Climate change has been wiped from the latest Pentagon risk assessments. And now NASA’s research that tracks greenhouse gases around the world is no longer to be funded.
The remote monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO2) has been an important tool for scientific understanding of anthropogenic climate change. Called the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), it tracked CO2 pollution flows from space. And now its $10 million annual budget is gone.
CMS didn’t just look at CO2 pollution sources. The project’s objectives included:
Now says Kelly Sims Gallagher, Professor of Environmental Science at Tufts University, “if you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement.” By agreement, Gallagher is referring to the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.
With CMS no longer funded, the ability to track flows of carbon over land and ocean is severely diminished. The website lists 13 new publications for 2018. But these appear to the be the last unless private individuals through crowdfunding and donations choose to help revive the project much in the way the Australia Climate Council operates today as a counterweight to its governments climate science denial agenda.
Who is left to continue to do the job with NASA excised from carbon monitoring? Currently, we have a single European carbon-monitoring satellite aloft. The European Space Agency is likely to build more now with NASA dropping out. States Woods Hole Research Center President, Phil Duffy, “we really shoot ourselves in the foot if we let other people develop the technology.”
A quick postscript:
That $10 million that was used by CMS is in play at NASA these days. That’s the exact amount that the new budget includes for hunting aliens. It seems far more worthwhile, don’t you think, to be looking for extraterrestrials than monitoring the health of the atmosphere of our planet. Enough said.
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