Few signals could have been clearer that President-Elect Donald Trump is intending to undo the Obama administration’s business-crushing energy policies than the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency…after he spent a good portion of his career battling it.
Another signal is now coming from his Department of Energy transition team, which is seeking the identities of climate change alarmists who permeate that agency.
Donald Trump’s transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”Trump and his team have vowed to dismantle specific aspects of Obama’s climate policies, and Trump has questioned the reality of climate change. The questionnaire, which one Energy Department official described as unusually “intrusive” and a matter for departmental lawyers, has raised concern that the Trump transition team is trying to figure out how to target the people, including civil servants, who have helped implement policies under Obama.
Now, you would think that those who have labored under the delusion that humans impact global climate patterns in ways that can be corrected with taxation and regulation would be proud to be named. After all, Obama and his team were purportedly implementing policies to stop the seas from rising and help the planet to heal.
Yet, strangely, they are referring to Team Trump’s list of questions as a “witch hunt”.
…Coupled with calls by congressional Republicans to relax civil-service protections so that it’s easier to fire federal employees, the transition team’s demand that the Energy Department name names has some current and former workers fearing the worst.“Sounds like a freaking witch hunt,” one former DOE staffer wrote in an email.“It is a remarkably aggressive and antagonistic tone to take with an agency that you’re about to try to manage,” a current agency employee said. Another DOE staffer expressed the view that “some [of the questions] are harassment, some are naive, some are legitimate.”“Why is that important for informing the transition team?” the person said of the list of people who worked on climate issues.
Allow me to answer that last question: Because the transition team needs to identify those who help the Trump administration with its Department of Energy policies, which will be focused on allowing Americans to access, develop, and utilize all forms of energy.
As he is with NASA, Trump is returning the department back to its original mission: To ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.
Team Trump will have much work ahead trying to undo the efforts of Obama. A 2007 Supreme Court climate change ruling, Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency (i.e., “Endangerment Finding”), not only permitted the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1992 but made it feel compelled to do so.
Proper personnel selection will be key in resetting government policy, especially in regards to the Endangerment Finding.
…There’s going to have to be a massive effort to pick apart failing climate models and questionably-adjusted data. They’re going to have to find people willing to expose the current regime’s blatant abuse of logic in generating inflated “costs” of global warming, while largely ignoring the co-benefits of fossil fuel power, like doubled life expectancy and undreamt-of wealth.On one side will be a massive and entrenched establishment, defending models that we now know were (and this is truly shocking) often adjusted to give a predetermined result. On the other will be a dogged and far smaller clan, tearing apart the code of these models, much like the ENIGMA busters of Bletchley Park. This will get ugly.In nominating Pruitt, the administration is signaling that it is clearly up to such a fight — and not just over climate change.
And by promoting those within the Department of Energy who want Americans to utilize all their energy options, Trump will have more warriors for that particular battle.
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