Day of Destruction, 68th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb)  I got my walk in today, a 9.7-mile Harrison, almost a Tyler, despite 90° temperatures and 95° heat indices. Humidity was 60- to 70-percent during my walk, certainly the most unpleasant conditions I've walked in this year, and I was soaked in sweat when I got home. 

This week, the EPA announced a proposal to undo the 2009 endangerment finding which allows the agency to limit greenhouse-gas pollution from cars and trucks, power plants, and other industrial sources. When finalized, and it will be finalized because these are the times we live in, the proposal will topple virtually all US climate regulation. In support of the move, the DOE has released a 150-page report claiming scientific concern about the climate crisis is overblown. 

“Climate change is a challenge - not a catastrophe,” wrote the Energy secretary, Chris Wright, in the report’s introduction. Wright claims the report pushes back on what he called the “cancel culture Orwellian squelching of science,” but the report's real purpose is an attempt to justify the scientifically unjustifiable. Climate scientist and activist Michael Mann said the report was something one might expect from an AI bot if you "trained it on the top 10 fossil fuel industry-funded climate denier websites.” 

“This is an agenda to promote fossil fuels, not to protect public health and welfare or the environment,” said Rachel Cleetus, a director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Climate scientists have roundly condemned the report as distorted and inaccurate. The report was written by five authors handpicked by DOE for their fringe or contrarian views, scientists who are "outliers in their arguments for climate change,” according to Natalie Mahowald of Cornell University. Additionally, the report was published without peer review, leading to conclusions that deviate, sometimes wildly, from the scientific literature. Many of its claims are based on long-debunked research promoted for years by climate deniers.

“It is shop worn, decades-old, discredited climate denier talking points, dressed up in the clothing of some sensible new set of revelations,” Michael Mann said. 

The report claims, for just one example, that crops will flourish with the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, carbon dioxide fertilization is largely irrelevant to how increasingly extreme heat and intense drought will impact crop yields, something the report conveniently overlooks.

We still have 3½ more years, at least, of this moronic Stable Genius administration. Maybe more if the Republicans get their way and future elections are either cancelled or rigged. We are so very, very fucked as we boil to death with all the other frogs in this jacuzzi.