4 January 2025   Leave a comment

The Trump Administration refuses to accept climate change as real. Its ignorance of the facts is breathtaking as is its determination to make sure that no agency of the Federal Government even hints that climate change is occurring. The Guardian reports:

“Donald Trump’s administration has started to remove or downgrade mentions of the climate crisis across the US government, with the websites of several major departments pulling down references to anything related to the climate crisis. Climate scientists said they were braced ‘for the worst’.

“A major climate portal on the Department of Defense’s website has been scrapped, as has the main climate change section on the site of the Department of State. A climate change page on the White House’s website no longer exists, nor does climate content provided by the US agriculture department, including information that provides vulnerability assessments for wildfires.”

“An entire section on ‘climate and sustainability’ hosted by the Department of Transportation has now vanished, with the department’s new leadership also ordering the elimination of any policy positions, directives or funding ‘which reference or relate in any way to climate change, ‘greenhouse gas’ [sic] emissions, racial equity, gender identity, ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ goals, environmental justice or the Justice40 initiative’.”

The purging of information is truly extraordinary. The White House pages on the Environment were changed in a matter of days. Trump is practicing an ancient practice of the Roman Empire known as damnatio memoriae in which the names of hated enemies were erased all over the Empire.

White House Page on the Environment after Trump’s Election

19 January 2025 and 5 February 2025

The facts, however, are hard to deny. Last January was the hottest month ever recorded, inexplicably far hotter than predicted by climate models (although 2025 is likely to be cooler than 2024 due to the influence of the La Nina emerging in the Pacific). The data about warming temperatures are compelling.

As much as the Trump Administration would like people to forget about climate change, it is doubtful that degree of amnesia is possible given the dramatic changes in weather over the last few years. Perhaps the most conccrete example of how formidable that reality is can be found in the insurance industry’s reaction to climate change. First Street, a climate risk financial modeling company, estimates that “human-driven climate change could result in $1.47 trillion in net property value losses from rising insurance costs and shifting consumer demand”. Additionally, the US now joins Iran, Libya. and Yemen as the only countries that are not part of the Paris Accords.

Posted February 6, 2025 by vferraro1971 in World Politics

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