Energy Department Bans Words Related To Climate Change, And Embraces (Cough, Cough) Coal As America's Energy Future

Energy Secretary Chris Wright doesn't want you says
"climate change" but he'll be thrilled if you
talk about coal around him. 

Once and if the government shutdown ever ends, employees at the Trump U.S. Energy Department are faced with a list of words they had better not use or ELSE!   

The Trump administration figures any words that are even sort of related to climate change just can't be uttered or written down, or his world would just end.

Or something like that.  I don't know how people will get around this one, but the Trump U.S. Energy Department has a new list of banned words that employees can't use when communicating with each other or to the public. 

Those banned words that Energy Department employees can't use when talking to or writing to teach other or the public include "climate change," "green," "energy transition," "sustainability/sustainable,: "clean" or "dirty" energy, "Carbon.CO2 footprint," "decarbonization" and "tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies." 

"Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid - and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration's perspectives and priorities," said Energy Department Director of External Affairs Rachel Overbey.

Kinda weird if you ask me. And unwieldy. Even if you drank the Kool-Aid and are a real Trumpian "climate change is a hoax" type of guy or gal, how do you rail against climate change if you can't even say the words?

Will even Donald Trump be reduced to referring to climate change as "that thing that Democrats think is making us sweaty." 

To be honest, he has said stranger things than that in the past. 

To be fair, I doubt anybody at the Energy Department will complete avoid using these words and terms. Sometimes it's unavoidable.  I mean, "emissions" can be used a lot of ways to describe Trump.  

Trump has certainly got himself a loyal minion in Energy Secretary Chris Wright, to help carry out the ban. Wright, along with the Orange One, insists that climate change is not a thing. 

Wright, a former CEO of the nation's second largest fracking company, says we should rejoice in the "benefits" of a warmer world. 

Wright was pretty haughty  himself when talking about allegedy haughty opponents to more coal mining and burning. He had this to say to, as JoeMyGod accurately put it, MAGA scream queen Maria Bartiromo on Fox: 

"We're announcing today expanded programs to help the American coal industry. We're helping it because for years it has been under assault. It as out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado and New York City. Coal just makes the world go round and they tried to strangle it, particularly with the Biden administration. We're stopping the strangulation. Let's stop pretending it's going away," he said.  

Say what you wail about Wright, he puts his money where his mouth is. Or more accurately, our money.  The Department of Energy recently said it will spend $625 million to "expand and reinvigorate" the U.S. coal industry. Wright called it "beautiful, clean coal," as "essential to powering America's reindustrialization and winning the AI race."

Christmas is coming up in a couple months. Wright could sure use a lump or two or more of coal in his stocking comes holiday time!  

 

Trump's Department Of Energy Apparently Has Never Heard Of Batteries For Clean Energy

If you take Trump's Department of Energy at face
value, then they apparently are unaware of the
concept of batteries. 

 Let's check in with those electricity generating wizards at the U.S. Department of Energy, shall we?

They had this to say on X

"Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it's dark outside, and the wind is not blowing."

Hoo boy. 

Could it be that the fine Trumpian folks at DOE have never heard of this nifty gadget called a battery?

They're amazing! The sun's out, and the wind is blowing and all those solar panels and wind turbines charge up those nifty batteries. 

Then the sun goes down and the wind goes calm, and those batteries supply electricity until the wind blows and the sun shines again. 

Those DOE guys and gals should check those batteries out! 

I'm sure DOE loved the community post on the X pointing out batteries exist in the real world, if not in the MAGA atmosphere.

 The comments on that @Energy post are pretty withering, as you can imagine. The first comment I saw when I last looked at it came from Josh Morgerman (@icylcone) who wrote, "This is quite possibly the stupidest tweet I've ever seen from any government account, in any country, anywhere on Earth."

Can't argue with that! 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he does so much, couldn't resist the urge to troll DOE, and by its extension Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Newsom's staff posted the following on X: "We're excited for the Trump administration to learn about BATTERIES(we have them here in California and they've helped the Golden State shift to green, clean energy AND keep the lights on)."

Even Elon Musk weighed in, pointing out the availability of batteries. His response to the @Energy tweet was "Um....hello?"

Then again, a some named Emily on X (Emnode) wrote "It's crazy how much money Elon Musk spent to buy the United States government and leave us with a Department of Energy that doesn't know batteries exist."

By the way, people use electricity during the day,  believe it or not, so those solar panels come in handy on sunny days, with or without batteries.  And, believe it or not, the wind sometimes blows at night. 

Of course, we actually doubt the people at the Department of Energy are as stupid as they pretend to be.  (Quite an aspiration, pretending to be as stupid as Lauren Boebert).

We're picking on Wright and his department for stupidity, but they know what they're doing. I'm quite sure they are aware batteries exist. OK, I hope they really understand batteries exist. 

This ignorant posting is all about a larger Trump administration effort to spread misinformation. And to turn the public away from clean energy. 

After all, the official Trump position is that climate change is - against all evidence - a hoax and therefore clean energy is verboten. 

There's a percentage of Americans who don't understand solar and wind power and how they relate to batteries, so Wright is appealing to that base,

What the Department of Energy and its Secretary Wright and his Department of Energy is doing is blasting misinformation to convince people who don't have a lot of knowledge about clean energy.

For the rest of us, the misinformation is meant to make the rest of us mistrust solar and wind power. They hope enough to turn the majority of the public against it, so that climate changing fossil fuel will reign supreme. 

Wright, after all, is the former CEO of two former fossil fuel companies, specializing in shale gas and oil.   

 I don't have a problem with people questioning the efficacy of solar and wind power. As long as the questioning is based on reality and facts. Questioning anything when it's based on facts is a great way to make things better, no matter what you're talking about. 

But as climate change continues to take its worsening toll, we'd better be promoting and improving clean energy. Trump and his minions live in the 1950s, when we didn't know much about fossil fuel and how they contribute to climate change. 

Good changes happen as society learns more information.  The Trump administration, and people who work for him, are trying to take information away from the public. Because it benefits them, and to hell with everyone else.