Just When You Thought They Couldn't Sink any Lower

The Trump regime is rebranding American LNG as "Freedom Gas."

Mark W Menezes, the US undersecretary of energy, bestowed a peculiar honorific on our continent’s natural resources, dubbing it “freedom gas” in a release touting the DoE’s approval of increased exports of natural gas produced by a Freeport LNG terminal off the coast of Texas. 

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,” he said.

...It’s unclear if members of the Trump administration attempting to assign patriotic intentions to natural gas are aware of the silliness of the concept, but Rick Perry seems to believe in it. 

“Seventy-five years after liberating Europe from Nazi Germany occupation, the United States is again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent,” the energy secretary said earlier this month, according to EURACTV. 

“And rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquefied natural gas.”

Oh Dear. How Will Trump Square this Circle?

Donald Trump screwed up, big time. He forgot to get Congress to repeal the US Global Change Research Act of 1990. And, today, that earned the Mango Mussolini a swift kick in his climate change denying ass with the release of the programme's fourth National Climate Assessment.

From The Washington Post.


The report stands in stark contrast to the administration’s efforts to downplay humans’ role in global warming, withdraw from an international climate accord and reverse Obama-era policies aimed at curbing America’s greenhouse-gas output.

...The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of potential sea level rise as high as 8 feet by the year 2100, and enumerates myriad climate-related damages across the United States that are already occurring due to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and President Trump have all questioned the extent of humans’ contribution to climate change. One of EPA’s Web pages posted scientific conclusions similar to those in the new report until earlier this year, when Pruitt’s deputies ordered it removed.
...

The report could have considerable legal and policy significance, as the scientific matter provides new and stronger support for EPA’s greenhouse gas “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act, which lays the foundation for regulations on emissions.

“This is a federal government report whose contents completely undercut their policies, completely undercut the statements made by senior members of the administration,” said Phil Duffy, the director of the Woods Hole Research Center.

The government is required to produce the National Assessment every four years. This time, the report is split into two documents, one that lays out the fundamental science of climate change and the other that shows how the United States is being impacted on a regional basis. Combined, the two documents total over 2,000 pages.
...

Talk of Tipping Points

When it comes to rapidly escalating levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the report states, “there is no climate analog for this century at any time in at least the last 50 million years.”

Most striking, perhaps, the report warns of the unpredictable — changes that scientists cannot foresee that could involve tipping points or fast changes in the climate system. These could switch the climate into “new states that are very different from those experienced in the recent past.”

Adios "El Presidente" Perry

Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential aspirations could be over.  The New York Times reports a Texas grand jury has indicted Perry on two felony counts of abuse of power.

At the heart of Perry's legal woes is a district attorney and corruption buster, a Democrat, who was arrested for drunk driving.  Following the DA's arrest, Perry threatened to use the governor's veto power to block $7.5-million in funding for the anti-corruption unit unless she resigned.  Perry followed through with the threat.

A non-profit group filed a complaint alleging Perry had misused his powers in order to coerce a public servant.  Perry doesn't seem to dispute what happened but maintains what he did was a legitimate exercise of the governor's powers.  The grand jury seems to have agreed with the complainants.