DAILY TRIFECTA: Trump's Rolling Coal Down The Highway To Hell On Earth
Drill, Baby, Drill = Burn, Baby, Burn
THE SET-UP: Trump began his second Presidency by declaring a national energy emergency. No, there wasn’t a national energy emergency. To the contrary, both oil and gas were being extracted from US soil at a record rate. The price of energy, which Trump promised to reduce, reflected OPEC-Plus’s continuing decision to curtail production. It wasn’t scarcity. It was artificial scarcity. Saudi Arabia and the UAE coordinated production cuts with their Plus partner in Russia and, not coincidentally, kept the price of oil well-above the break-even price throughout Biden’s presidency. Also not coincidentally, OPEC-Plus promised to end that cap on production shortly after Trump returned to the Oval Office.
But that didn’t end the non-existent “emergency” … because the emergency wasn’t meant to be ended. It was and still is a pretext for using emergency powers granted under the Federal Power Act to “drill, baby, drill” in environmentally sensitive places protected from drilling.
However, because the US has been drilling, baby, drilling for years, and because OPEC-Plus decided to drop the price of oil when their guy returned to the White House, oil and gas companies have been reticent to drill the way Trump envisioned. It just doesn’t make sense in a glutted market to invest in new drilling … and, after all, there is no emergency.
But maybe drilling is not the point of the emergency, after all.
Maybe the emergency was the rapidly changing climate and the fact that the Inflation Reduction Act cemented climate change into US government policy. Maybe the emergency was the way it involved farmers and municipalities and doled-out money to hundreds of other participants in programs tied to the reality of a changing climate. So, maybe the point of all of this is to move beyond mere denial of a changing climate and to eliminate it as an issue. If you look at what the Trump Regime is doing on environmental issues … you will not find the Regime adjusting policy … you will find it erasing it wherever it can.
And you will find it acting in irrational, punitive ways … as if to make a point. How else do we explain Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright wielding those emergency powers to force old, outdated power generation plants to stay open just days before their scheduled retirement? Per NOTUS:
Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered late on Friday that an oil- and gas-fired power plant in Pennsylvania keep operating through the summer, citing concerns about possible energy shortages in the region.
But experts say the plant doesn’t need to remain open to meet energy needs — and that President Donald Trump’s interventions will cause further spikes in electricity bills already expected to increase significantly in some parts of the country this summer.
That’s right … keeping these dinosaurs running threatens to cause the very problem Secretary Wright claims to be preventing.
“Nobody asked for this order. The power grid operator did not. The utility that owns the plant did not. The state regulator did not,” Dan Scripps, chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission, told The Washington Post.
In Pennsylvania, the order on the Constellation plant “is likely to increase costs to PJM ratepayers by tens of millions of dollars, right at a time electricity customers are already struggling with higher costs,” said Abe Silverman, an energy researcher at Johns Hopkins University and the former general counsel for the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
…but it is par for the course…
The order followed a nearly identical directive one week earlier to keep operational a large coal-fired power plant in Michigan that was scheduled to close in May.
And why does Trump want to burn coal? Because it is dirty and it does pollute the climate. It’s defiant and recalcitrant. He polluting with a purpose. In fact, it’s kinda like he’s “Rolling Coal” on a national scale. - jp
TITLE: The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/02/1117653/the-trump-administration-has-shut-down-more-than-100-climate-studies/
EXCERPTS: Affected projects include efforts to develop cleaner fuels, measure methane emissions, improve understanding of how heat waves and sea-level rise disproportionately harm marginalized groups, and help communities transition to sustainable energy, according to an MIT Technology Review review of a GrantWatch database—a volunteer-led effort to track federal cuts to research—and a list of terminated grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) itself.
The administration has also strived to slash staff and budgets at federal research agencies, halt efforts to assess the physical and financial risks of climate change, and shut down labs that have monitored and analyzed the levels
“I don’t think it takes a lot of imagination to understand where this is going,” says Daniel Schrag, co-director of the science, technology, and public policy program at Harvard University, which has seen greater funding cuts than any other university amid an escalating legal conflict with the administration. “I believe the Trump administration intends to zero out funding for climate science altogether.”
The NSF says it’s terminating grants that aren’t aligned with the agency’s program goals, “including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), environmental justice, and misinformation/disinformation.”
Trump administration officials have argued that DEI considerations have contaminated US science, favoring certain groups over others and undermining the public’s trust in researchers.
But research projects that got caught in the administration’s anti-DEI filter aren’t the only casualties of the cuts. The NSF has also canceled funding for work that has little obvious connections to DEI ambitions, such as research on catalysts.
Daniel Nocera, a professor at Harvard who has done pioneering work on so-called artificial photosynthesis, a pathway for producing clean fuels from sunlight, said in an email that all of his grants were terminated.
The White House’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year seeks to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in funding across federal agencies, specifically calling out “Green New Scam funds” at the Department of Energy; “low-priority climate monitoring satellites” at NASA; “climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and “climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences” at the NSF.
The administration released a more detailed NSF budget proposal on May 30th, which called for a 60% reduction in research spending and nearly zeroed out the clean energy technology program. It also proposed cutting funds by 97% for the US Global Change Research Program, which produces regular assessments of climate risks; 80% for the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a global network of ocean sensors that monitor shifting marine conditions; and 40% for NCAR, the atmospheric research center.
The administration also reportedly plans to end the leases on dozens of NOAA facilities, including the Global Monitoring Laboratory in Hilo, Hawaii. The lab supports the work of the nearby Mauna Loa Observatory, which has tracked atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for decades.
Even short gaps in these time-series studies, which scientists around the world rely upon, would have an enduring impact on researchers’ ability to analyze and understand weather and climate trends.
“We won’t know where we’re going if we stop measuring what’s happening,” says Jane Long, formerly the associate director of energy and environment at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. “It’s devastating—there’s no two ways around it.”
TITLE: Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Cut a Major Ecology Program
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/climate/ecosystems-mission-area-usgs-trump-budget.html
EXCERPTS: The Trump administration’s proposed budget for 2026 ends funding for one of the country’s cornerstone biological and ecological research programs.
Known as the Ecosystems Mission Area, the program is part of the U.S. Geological Survey and studies nearly every aspect of the ecology and biology of natural and human-altered landscapes and waters around the country.
The 2026 proposed budget reflects just $29 million in obligations from the previous fiscal year, and provides no additional funds, compared with its current funding level of $293 million. The budget proposal also reduces funds for other programs in the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as other federal science agencies.
Abolishing the E.M.A. was an explicit goal of Project 2025, the blueprint for shrinking the federal government produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation. That work cited decades-long struggles over the Interior Department’s land management in the West, where protections for endangered species have at times prevented development, drilling and mining.
The E.M.A. is also a core part of federal climate research. The Trump administration has sharply reduced or eliminated funds for climate science across federal agencies, calling the study of climate change part of “social agenda” research in an earlier version of the budget proposal.
Ending the E.M.A. would waste millions of dollars and countless hours that have already been invested in long-term experiments that federal researchers are uniquely situated to carry out.
Researchers in the Southwest, for instance, have been monitoring how vegetation in arid landscapes — including rangelands — is changing under warmer and drier conditions. Simultaneously, they’ve been carrying out yearslong experiments simulating future climate conditions for native and invasive rangeland plants, information that ranchers can use to prepare for grazing.
Losing long-term experiments would deprive federal agencies of critical base-line data needed to monitor changes in the ecosystem.
“The investment is huge, and we’re going to lose it,” said Jayne Belnap, a retired soil ecologist who worked at the Southwest center for nearly 30 years.
Warmer and drier conditions and an increase in pests are making forests more susceptible to wildfires. Researchers at the Fort Collins Science Center have been assessing how climate change is driving these increases and what management practices are most effective to limit damage and economic losses from wildfires. Scientists in Alaska are studying wildfires in boreal forests, which are on the rise. And researchers in Oklahoma are exploring the risk of megafires in the Great Plains.
The Trump administration has said in an executive order that it supports treatments to reduce wildfire risk, yet defunding the E.M.A. would most likely cut crucial wildfire research that could inform fire prevention and response.
Scientists at the E.M.A. research how to monitor, treat and prevent the encroachment of invasive species and the spread of disease in fish and wildlife, as well as in plant life.
Cooperative research units in 41 states, run by the E.M.A., bring together federal scientists, states and universities to work collaboratively. Students are researching whirling disease in Colorado’s rainbow trout, chronic wasting disease in Minnesota’s white-tailed deer, levels of harmful “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, in fish and more — including bird flu, which is devastating domestic and wild bird populations.
Water supplies around the country are under strain and face threats like pollution, seawater infiltration and drought. Researchers at the E.M.A.’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center in Oklahoma study how much water crops and other plants use and investigate ways they can use less water.
The E.M.A.’s environmental health program tracks chemicals in water supplies across the country, and monitors harmful algae blooms that can release neurotoxins into drinking water.
Researchers at centers in Colorado and Montana develop early warning systems for droughts, which are useful for people who manage water supplies as well as for fisheries.
TITLE: Trump Is Going to Raise Your Insurance Premiums
https://newrepublic.com/article/195933/trump-going-raise-insurance-premiums
EXCERPTS: Through the 1980s, the United States experienced roughly three weather events per year that cost upward of a billion dollars. Over the last five years, the annual average was 24. Scientists and nonprofits are now rushing to stockpile federal climate and weather data, fearful that the administration could soon erase it entirely. That information—and the ability to reliably collect and interpret it moving forward—isn’t of interest only to researchers and green groups. Whether it comes directly from federal websites or through proprietary climate risk modeling, climate and weather data is foundational to how governments, investors, and corporations understand the future and plan to navigate it. NOAA, NASA, and other federal agencies provide the information that helps cities decide how high to build bridges and even the credit ratings that determine whether corporations and governments can finance new building projects. Federal climate data helps insurance companies determine how much to charge homeowners for new or renewed policies. The system by which all that data gets translated onto balance sheets and monthly bills was already flawed, lacking adequate accountability and coordination. As the White House declares war on climate policy, it could break down entirely.
Gathering real-time data on weather and the earth’s climate is a massive undertaking, requiring expansive networks of federal satellites, buoys, balloons, and aircraft; staff to monitor, operate, and maintain that equipment; and teams of interdisciplinary researchers to interpret and organize the information collected, align it with historical datasets, observe trends, and use supercomputers to model how the earth’s climate might behave in the future. Downstream are private companies that “downscale” that data and modeling in order to analyze how those larger patterns could affect specific assets like apartment complexes or municipal buildings. Companies offer these more boutique, “asset-level” models to customers who use them to make planning and investment decisions. First Street, for instance—among the largest of these firms—partners with Redfin and Zillow to provide information on flood risk for real estate listings.
The role federal research plays in this elaborate operation is essential. “We can’t expect the private sector to step up and replace global climate data,” said Madison Condon, an associate professor of law at Boston University who studies the market for climate risk data. Although the private-sector models can provide valuable supplements, local governments, especially—which tend to lack in-house experts to model their climate risk, and the funds to pay for those services—depend on federal research. “Town managers and local zoning commissions very regularly rely on NOAA’s sea level rise maps,” Condon explained. “City managers use the National Climate Assessment as a high-level description of what the future will look like.”
While private climate risk analysts use publicly generated data to make their models, the way those companies actually create the products they offer is proprietary. The firms operate in something of a regulatory black box and generally aren’t subject to peer review processes. Outside researchers who might want to reproduce certain models to test their accuracy generally can’t, because companies’ methodologies are protected as trade secrets. Academics have also raised serious concerns about the accuracy of translating global climate models into granular, asset-level analyses to determine whether to take out a 30-year mortgage, for example. There are very few public risk models to judge these products against, and different companies often produce divergent analyses. A 2024 Bloomberg Green analysis of two flood-risk models found that when considering the vulnerability of certain areas of Los Angeles County to a once-in-a-century flood event, the models matched just 21 percent of the time. As such information becomes an important factor for things like insurance underwriting and federal funding applications, municipal governments have a lot to lose. So do homeowners who might want to negotiate lower premiums.
Even companies in the climate risk business are wary of federal data being replicated by private companies. Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told Bloomberg in recent weeks that the private sector can’t recreate NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster database or its continuously updated maps and charts, which “are more accessible and meaningful to the public.”
Some insurers have already signaled too that relying more on private data might cause them to raise premium costs. Brian Espie—chief underwriting officer at the insurance provider Kettle—told the trade publication Insurance Business that his company “was built up around a proprietary wildfire model, and much of our data sources are from public, government-supported entities.” If those disappear, companies like Kettle will need to pay for whatever private data is available, and invest more in in-house expertise to analyze it. “Anytime you increase costs for insurers, those costs get borne … by the policyholders,” Espie added. “Over time, that is going to make insurance more expensive for homeowners and business owners.”
The stakes of accurate climate data are enormously high. As traditional mortgage lenders deny loans to prospective buyers in higher-risk areas, online “fintech” lenders have taken the opposite approach, offering financing on terms that may undercount the risk certain properties face from wildfires and other hazards. To offset their own risk, some lenders have also begun selling off their riskier mortgages, including in coastal areas, to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A coming wave of climate-related foreclosures—which First Street predicts could soar 380 percent over the coming decade, and account for up to 30 percent of foreclosures—threatens not just housing but, potentially, the financial system more broadly.
The Trump administration is waging war on climate and extreme weather data as that information becomes increasingly valuable to the insurance and real estate sectors. With few realistic alternatives to the critical research performed by NOAA, NASA, and other federal agencies, it won’t be developers and underwriters, but homeowners and renters, who pay the steepest costs for the White House’s climate denial.