“The Trump administration is canceling funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the entity that produces the federal government’s signature climate change study, according to three federal officials familiar with the move.
The move, which had been widely expected, is a potentially fatal blow to the National Climate Assessment, the study that Congress mandated under the Global Change Research Act of 1990 be issued every four years to ensure the government understands the threats that rising temperatures pose and what is driving climate changes. The report is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive look at climate change and serves as a crucial guide to state and community efforts to prepare for the effects.”
“The Trump administration has upended what it calls “blatantly unfair” talks to set a carbon tax on international shipping and has vowed “reciprocal measures” to shield U.S. ships from any fees, according to a letter seen by POLITICO.
The International Maritime Organization’s Maritime Environmental Protection Conference (MEPC) is taking place in London this week and aims to reach a deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from shipping.
“President Donald Trump is throwing the weight of the Justice Department against the last bastion of U.S. climate action: states and cities.
In a sweeping executive order signed late Tuesday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to “stop the enforcement of State laws” on climate change that the administration says are unconstitutional, unenforceable or preempted by federal laws.”
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“The move came as Trump presided over a White House event Tuesday aimed at reviving the coal industry, which has withered against competition from less expensive natural gas and renewables.
He pledged to a row of coal miners standing behind him that he’d direct the Department of Justice to “identify and fight every single unconstitutional state or legal regulation that’s putting our coal miners out of business.”
Some legal experts said the White House’s executive order would be “toothless,” though climate advocates worry about gambling with a judiciary dominated by conservative appointees. And in a statement, Democratic governors said Trump would not intimidate them from climate action.”
“Human-caused climate change made the Los Angeles-area fires more likely and more destructive, according to a study”
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“The study — from an international group of 32 climate researchers — shows how climate change fits into the myriad factors that made the multiple blazes one of California’s most destructive and expensive wildfire disasters on record.”
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“The scientists found that low rainfall from October through December is now more than twice as likely compared to the climate that existed before humans began burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas for energy.”
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“the LA fire season is becoming longer, with “highly flammable drought conditions” lasting about 23 more days now than during the preindustrial era.”
The left needs to be focused on competence in government not identity-based social causes, and the right needs to recognize that competent government requires funding and taxes and leaders who care about the organization’s mission and whose main qualification isn’t loyalty to a politician.
“2024 was the hottest year in the instrumental record. How hot? Last year the global average temperature rose more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 19th century pre-industrial mean, according to most of the scientific organizations that track global temperature trends. This exceeds, for the first time, the aspirational goal set forth by the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Each of the 10 hottest years have come over the past decade.”
“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Tuesday evening he had terminated $20 billion in climate change grants issued by the Biden administration under the Inflation Reduction Act, escalating a legal conflict over whether the Trump administration was encroaching on the authority of Congress.
Zeldin has spent the past month criticizing the spending and contending without evidence the program was rife with fraud. His latest move comes just one day before a federal judge will hold a hearing in a lawsuit brought by one of the grant recipients seeking access to the funds held in a Citibank account that the Trump administration had frozen while it probed the program.”