EPA Scrubs Mention Of Human Caused Climate Change From Its Website

The EPA in recent weeks has scrubbed their websites 
of pretty much any information that climate change
is caused by humans. It's denial, and a way to 
help the fossil fuel industry. 

Once again, the Trump administration has wildly concluded that eliminating mention of human-caused climate change will somehow "prove" that it doesn't exist. 

Never mind that anybody with half a brain understands that by far the main driving force behind our warming world is us humans. 

The latest censorship and anti-science move is on an EPA website, on the page that explains the causes of climate change. Though it no longer accurately does that. 

Oh, on this page, climate can change, alright, the EPA admits. But whoever revised it is Mr. or Ms. Excuse coming up with all kinds of reasons the climate changes. Like these:

The Earth's orbit and rotation can change.

There's variations if solar activity.  

The Earth's reflectivity changes.

Volcanoes can blow up and the stuff they belch into the atmosphere changes the climate

There might be natural changes in carbon dioxide concentrations. 

They're so, so, close on that last one. As everybody except the Keystone Kops of the Trump administration know, humans are increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide, and that's making the world warm up. 

There's even a chart, right there, under their reasons for climate change list, that shows atmospheric carbon dioxide rocketing upward like mad since the Industrial Revolution started.   

On the social media site Bluesky, climatologist Daniel Swain wrote how he was able to compare the EPA web site that was up on October 8 with the current iteration. 

Human-caused warming was removed from the causes of climate change page that I described above. Swain also noted that there used to be "indicators of climate change" pages on the EPA website that have been scrubbed entirely. "The pages no longer exist; there are numerous dead links on the current/live EPA site, and no indications they have been moved to a new URL" Swain said. 

Other pages that describe how climate change can affect children's health and low income populations are also now gone, as the Washington Post notes. 

Not only is climate information deleted from the EPA sites, the web pages out and out lie. Earlier versions of the web site say the buildup of greenhouse gases have resulted in "dangerous effects" to humans and the ecosystem. Now, the pages say the greenhouse effect "is natural and necessary to support life."

Sure. unless you let the greenhouse effect spiral out of control via all us humans belching fossil fuel emissions. 

 Swain, wearing his Captain Obvious hat, had this to say:

"...it is still profoundly alarming that the primary regulatory body for environmental protection and pollution control in this country is not actively ignoring scientific evidence. This will end poorly."

The response at the EPA of these questions raised by Swain, the Washington Post and others is typically juvenile and nonsensical of the Trump administration. 

Hold your nose as you read this missive from EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch. :

"Unlike the previous administration, the Trump EPA is focused on protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback, not left-wing political agendas.... As such. this agency no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult."

It's always a projection from Trump and MAGA, isn't it?  Our minion Brigit describes solid science as a cult. Meanwhile, MAGA seems to be like the ultimate cult.  

The recent revisions on the EPA site might well be an effort to tee up a move to get rid of something called the endangerment finding. 

That's a legal and scientific foundation for standards and rules put in place back in 2009 that serves as a legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. 

That's because Trump, and by extension EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, want to gift the oil and gas industry with more ways to make money atop their already record profits. 

The EPA, at Trump's behest. also wants to roll back controls enacted in 1990 that limited sulfur dioxide pollution. Sulfur dioxide in the air causes smog and acid rain. 

By the way, I did see little "oopsie" they left in at the top of their "climate change causes' page:

"Natural processes are always influencing the earth's climate and can explain climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s. However, recent climate changes cannot be explained by natural causes alone."

Looks like one of the climate deniers over the EPA didn't proofread as much as Trump might have hoped.  

Zillow Drops Climate Change Information From Listings;

Zillow has dropped climate change information from its
real estate listings. Reportedly at least in part due to
resistance from the real estate industry

More than a year ago, Zillow, the big online real estate marketplace, began providing climate change risks in their listings.

They were responding to a willing audience, which for the most part really wanted that information to judge the risks of buying a home in a particular area. Especially now that climate change is upping the risk of disasters. 

A 2023 survey conducted by Zillow indicated 80% of buyers now consider climate risks when shopping for a home. 

But, as always, the moneyed class getting more money is far, far more important than those lowly home buyers. The climate change info is no longer on Zillow listings. 

According to realestatenews.com:

"Home search leader Zillow has changed the way that it shares climate risk information -directing visitors to the website of data partner First Street rather than surfacing it on Zillow home details page.

'This update ensures consumers continue to have access to important information to help them consider factors such as insurance, repair costs and long-term homeownership planning, and reflects our long-standing commitment to empowering consumers with transparent information,' a Zillow spokesperson shared with Real Estate News over email when asked about the move."

Well, at least you can get the information.You have to really dig for it, but I suppose it's there. 

The real estate industry appears to have helped kill Zillow's climate information sharing. As The Guardian explains it:

"....Zillow has deleted this climate index in the wake of complaints from real estate agents and some homeowners that the rankings appeared arbitrary, could not be challenged and harmed house sales. The complaints included those from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service, which oversees a database of property that Zillow relies upon."

It seems like the climate change information on Zillow fell victim in part to profit margins. People who want to sell homes, the real estate industry and insurers. There's a lack of affordable housing. There's been climate-driven disasters that have destroyed thousands of homes. 

"All of that adds pressure to close sales however possible....Climate risk data didn't suddenly become inconvenient. It became harder to ignore in a stressed market," said Matthew Ely, founder an chief executive of First Street, as Mother Jones reports.

First Street officials,  the Zillow data partner that compiled the climate risk information, said removing the information from Zillow website will leave many buyers"flying blind" at a time when the effects of extreme weather are messing with the real estate market in the U.S, Eby said. 

"The risk doesn't top away; it just moves from a pre-purchase decision into post-purchase liability....Families discover after a flood that they should have purchased flood insurance, or discover after the sale that wildfire insurance is unaffordable or unavailable in their area."

Of course the First Street climate risk data that was until recently on Zillow probably had some margin of error. The science of tagging individual properties with exact levels of climate risk might not be completely there yet. 

If these assessments are wrong, they could perversely make people doubt climate change, as the Mother Jones article notes. 

Meanwhile, other real estate sites are still showing climate data in their home listings. An example is Redfin, which said in a statement that they "will continue to provide the best-possible estimates of the risks of fires, floods and storms."  

Don't Say "Climate": Trump Administration Scrubbing Climate Information From Federal Websites,

Don't say climate change!  Trump administration scrubs
mention of it from everywhere, because if you don't 
see the words then it doesn't exist, apparently. 

 If you don't say "climate change" then it doesn't exist.  

That, apparently is the logic of our lovely Trump administration as federal websites across the board remove pretty much all references to climate change over the course of his first month in office. 

Trump's first term played fast and loose with lots of information including items related to climate change. 

But this time, it's a full throttled Orwellian vision in which "facts" are whatever the Trump administration wants them to be. Reality is besides the point.  

This post isn't even talking yet about anticipated firings at NOAA and NWS that will hobble the nation's weather forecasting and warning system. That' update is coming in a future post arriving pretty soon. I'm just talking in this post about the Trump administration's thought that if you don't ever think about climate change, then it will never be a problem. 

Or something like that. 

Among the harmful firings at the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA are staffers that worked on climate change related issues. Since climate change affects the severity, location and types of disasters the U.S. faces, you'd think you'd need these staffers,

You know, to anticipate where and how disasters might strike so the agency can more readily help victims of these calamities. 

But I guess not 

The sprawling federal Agriculture Department has been ordered to scrub references to climate change as well, as Politico reports. 

The directive "could affect information across dozens of programs including climate-smart agriculture initiatives, USDA climate has, and Forest Service information regarding wildfires the frequency and severity of which scientists have linked to hotter, drier conditions fueled by climate change."

For now, some climate related material is still available from the Agriculture Department. USDA Climate Hubs, for example, was still up as of Wednesday (FEB5

NASA's Global Climate Change website is about to transition away, it it hasn't already.    It's been a handy source of climate information, including a dashboard on the home page that gives you the current amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere and their trends, global temperature and its trend and what direction Arctic sea ice is headed. Spoiler: Down.

There's now suddenly a disclaimer on the NASA Global Climate Change website that says "NASA's Global Climate Change website is going to look a little different in the coming months because we're headed to a new home, a more integrated portal on science.nasa.gov. Keep your eyes on our new space as we transition."

Yeah, love the attempt at the PR language (eye roll).  I'm not going to make a definitive conclusion on what the Trump administration is going to do with this site, but I bet it's not good. 

Climate information is disappearing from a lot of federal government websites, not just NASA. As Inside Climate News reports:

"The Trump administration is also removing climate information and documents from the U.S. State Department website, which (several days ago) had a climate section filled with documents related to U.S. climate policies aimed at meting the terms of the 2014 Paris climate pact, as well as materials outlining reaching plans to cut emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, including methane.

But searching the current State Department website for the term 'global warming' just now leads to a long list of non-functioning links, with the Biden-era climate materials relegated to archives that have to be searched for separately."

 Even experienced scientists are now beginning to have trouble finding climate info on government websites. As Inside Climate News reports:

"Some of the changes may already be making it harder for U.S. climate scientists to collaborate internationally. 

David Ho, a University of Hawaii at Manoa climate researcher, said last week he found an error message when he tried to look for reports related to his work on ocean carbon cycles on the White House Office of Science and Technology website."

There are efforts to preserve web material that already exists before it is completely scrubbed. There's End of Term Web Archive, which is a collaboration of nonprofit groups, universities and two federal agencies to preserve scientific data. 

Other organizations have been combing government websites, preserving science data before it can be scrubbed by the Trump administration. 

I worry it's a matter of time that we won't be able to see basic climate data like the monthly reports NOAA"s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) regularly releases.

Or even just the huge waves of routine daily data all the National Weather Service offices release. After all, some rogue scientist could use and compile that data to find temperature trends (which is part of what the NCEI does now.

Guy Walton, the dude from Guy on Climate agrees, as this lack of information hurts everyone, from citizen scientists like me to experts like Walton. 

"....if the NCEI surface temperature records site gets taken down, I can't do my research. Only a few months ago, ,I was thinking that after the election of Kamala Harris, the NCEI record site might be improved with some of my input. Now I will feel fortunate if it and other tools for research used by many other scientists are not touched. We will see." 

Any truthful information is suspect in the Trump administration. You probably don't even have to use "banned"words or phrases like climate change or global warming. 

Merely mentioning a record hot day, month or season might well get you in trouble 

Even collaboration of any kind is out. As CBC reported, any cooperation between Canadian scientists or Environment Canada and NOAA are pretty much verboten. 

NOAA scientists now just submit for review if any discussions with Canadians include climate, energy, offshore wind, ocean mapping and exploration, competitive seafood, aquaculture, ocean plastics, the World Meteorological Organization, Arctic security and Arctic energy, notes CBC. 

A side effect of all this would be a brain drain from the United States to Canada and European countries, perhaps Asia too.

Most scientists want to seek the truth of the world around them. If that becomes impossible to do in the United States, then do it elsewhere, right?

The Trump administration's scrubbing away of any references to climate change won't just hurt Americans subject to the direct disasters and dangers created by global warming. Our economy, our innovation, our safety, our own wallets are all at risk. 

All because the merry band of oligarchs want to make a few more trillion dollars. 

 

Trump Intensifies Threats Against FEMA And All Aspects Of Disaster Relief As Calamities Continue To Mount

President Trump wants to get rid of FEMA and let
states handle disasters on their own, but that
could further harm the people he claims to champion.

President Trump on Friday doubled down on his idea to get rid of FEMA as he toured disaster sites in North Carolina and California. 

He also continued to float other ideas that will make life much harder for victims of weather disasters, which are increasing in number and scope due to climate change and increasing populations in the way of such calamities. 

Trump said instead, the federal government could provide money directly to the states, but I'm unsure how exactly it would work. 

Though all states have emergency plans for disasters, simply throwing money at states without resources in place to deal with the immediate aftermath of an emergency is dangerous. 

FEMA is rightly criticized for its performance with long term recovery that is supposed to kick in after the immediate emergency has passed.  Disaster victims deal with long waits and a miserable bureaucracy trying to get aid to rebulld homes, businesses and infrastructure. 

Where FEMA usually shines is during and in the hours and days immediately after a catastrophe like a flood, hurricane or wildfire.  Sure, local and state resources immediately respond in a disaster, but if the emergency is huge, states would be left scrambling with short supplies and manpower when time is of the essence.

The sooner and more complete a response happens in a disaster, the more lives are saved. Trump is threatening to upend all of that initial response. 

Also, disasters often cover wide areas, often multiple states at once. These emergencies create a whole bunch of issues that need involvement from federal agencies.  The Army Corp of Engineers might need to step in with debris removal. The Environmental Protection Agency might have to deal with toxic debris and residue after a disaster. 

What if more planes, trucks and emergency vehicles are needed than a local government or state has?  This is where FEMA comes in to help. 

Disbanding FEMA would probably hurt the working class that Trump tries to champion, as people with low and moderate incomes are far less likely to easily recover from disasters than people with more cash lying around. 

Contrary to probably his own beliefs, Trump can't just erase FEMA with the wave of his magic wand.  Congress would have to vote to disband the agency. 

Since an increasing number of disasters are hitting both blue and red states, there is bipartisan support for FEMA, regardless of any real or alleged flaws, as the Washington Post reminds us. 

OTHER TRUMP ISSUES

As expected, Trump has not been kind to weather and climate disasters and issues since he took office this month. 

California Aid

While Trump contemplates getting rid of FEMA, he's still on his kick to attach strings to any aid to recover from the horrific wildfires there. 

As The Hill reports, Trump wants to force California to institute Voter ID before it gets disaster aid. Never mind that Voter ID has nothing to do with the disaster and several other states lack this law.  Trump is also demanding California turn on this mysterious spigot that would allow lots of water to flow to southern California.

Such a big giant spigot does to exist. 

There's actually plenty of water stored in southern California reservoirs at the moment. Hydrants did go dry in the Palisades wildfire because so much water was being used all at once. Sounds like the hydrant system needs to be redesigned and improved, but that can be done without any fictitious spigots. 

Paris Climate Accord

This wasn't a surprise, but Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, just as he did during his first term. (President Biden got us back into the accord during his term).

Under the Paris agreement, nations around the world agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming. Trump keeps saying the Paris accord burdens the U.S. economy. 

For their part, reports NPR:

"Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement, said in a statement that the U.S. pulling out of the deal is unfortunate. But, she said, international climate action 'has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country's politics and policies."

Exiting the agreement will probably harm the United States more than it harms the world as a whole.

NPR again, quoting David Waskow, who leads international climate policy and politics at the World Resources Institute: 

"Leaving the accord could prove damaging, Waskow said, by potentially sidelining the U.S. from some clean energy and and green tech markets and reducing leverage with other countries. That could hamper some of Trump's broader economic goals for the U.S."

Other Ideas

Trump has always been obsessed with wind turbines. He hates 'em.  The theory is they installed turbines off the coast of Scotland offshore from one of his golf courses and he thinks they're ugly. So he hates 'em all. Anyway, Trump has imposed a moratorium on new wind projects on all federal lands. So far, Trump hasn't been able to do anything about turbines on private land. 

Trump might hate offshore wind turbines, but he loves offshore oil drilling, despite the obvious environmental dangers.  

Finally, Trump figures if he somehow makes information about an issue go away, the issue itself goes away. Case in point: A page on the White House that dealt with climate change has disappeared now that Trump is in office.