Day of the Brainstorm, 40th of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): While everyone else is speculating over the motives and identity politics of Charlie Kirk's shooter or fantasizing about the Epstein files, the EPA quietly announced last weekend that it will stop requiring facilities to report the amount of greenhouse gases they release into the atmosphere. 

Lee Zeldin, the unqualified EPA administrator, said “The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape,” added that ending the program could save businesses up to $2.4 billion over the next decade. The change will obviously stymie efforts to fight climate change, since EPA can't reduce emissions if they can't track where they're coming from.

About 8,000 of the country’s largest industrial facilities had been reporting data on greenhouse gas emissions since 2010. That information has helped guide federal policy and has been shared with the United Nations, which has required industrialized countries to report their emissions as part of the global effort to curb climate change under the 2015 Paris Accord. The U.S. already missed an April deadline to submit this data, and the Stable Genius began the yearlong process of withdrawing from the Paris Accord on his first day back in office.

The oil-and-gas industry has long reported releases to investors in order to demonstrate that their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are working, but without a federal database to verify the claims, the claims are less reliable. The proposal would also disrupt the system of the tax credits for companies that capture and sequester their carbon emissions. To qualify for those generous tax credits, companies must submit their emissions data to the EPA.

The Stable Genius has also asked NASA to decommission and possibly destroy two satellites that measure greenhouse gases from space.

Meanwhile, a broad area of low pressure is currently located about midway between the Windward Islands and the coast of west Africa. It is expected to further develop as it moves northwest over the central Atlantic and has a 60-90% chance of forming a tropical depression or tropical storm by the middle to latter part of this week.