From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

On November 12, 2024 — a week after the election — I had a post titled “Ideas For An Incoming Trump Administration: Climate And Energy Edition.” The first subject covered in that post was “Communications.” I stated there:

[C]hanging the communications of the prior administration should be an easy and obvious first priority. However, the Trump people notably did a poor job on this subject the first time out. The subject of climate and energy is pervasive through the websites of dozens of federal agencies.

I had followed the EPA website in particular during the first Trump term, and it had been little changed even a year after Trump took office.

This time around, Trump and his people are doing a far better job of hitting the ground running on many issues. That is notably true in the area of climate and energy communications: a week in, there are already some meaningful changes at the websites of various agencies. However, changing communications on these issues is not a small task; the government websites during the Biden era had pervasive climate propaganda in thousands of locations.

So, a week into the new administration, here are some of the things that have either changed or not so far.

Department of Energy

My November post noted that there was a big section, dominating the Department’s website, titled “Combating the Climate Crisis.” Today, if you go to the Department’s opening web page, it’s quite different. The front page headline is “Restoring Energy Dominance,” followed by “President Trump’s Day One Actions will Return the Department to Regular Order.” Here’s how it starts:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), effective today, is ending the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) pause and returning to regular order following direction given by President Donald J. Trump to “unleash American Energy Dominance.”

Another big front-page topic back in November was “Energy Justice.” Today, if you go to the link that I had then for “Energy Justice,” you will be taken back to the opening page with the headline “Restoring Energy Dominance.” The whole “Energy Justice” thing seems to have disappeared. That’s great progress. On the other hand, if you go to the old November link for “Combatting the Climate Crisis,” you will find that a page full of the old Biden-era claptrap is still up:

There is no greater challenge facing our nation and our planet than the climate crisis. That’s why President Biden has laid out the boldest climate agenda in our nation’s history—one that will spur an equitable clean energy economy and cement America on a path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. . . .

To their credit, the old links to this stuff on the introductory page are gone, and using the site’s search function doesn’t turn this up. Likely, it will be memory-holed shortly.

And yet there is still plenty of junk stuff up on this website that needs to go. As a few examples:

• A section on “Decarbonization” (“The shift to a low-carbon economy will be one of the most significant economic transformations in history. Through the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) decarbonization initiatives, the United States is poised to capture the economic and other benefits of revolutionary decarbonization technologies.”)
• A section on “Carbon Management” (“Carbon management encompasses a suite of technologies used to capture, transport, convert, and store carbon dioxide, as well as remove it directly from the atmosphere.”)
• A section on the “Floating Offshore Wind Shot” (“The Floating Offshore Wind Energy Shot™ seeks to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy by more than 70% by 2035 for deep water sites far from shore.”)
• A section on the “Net Zero Economy” (“A net-zero economy averts or removes as much greenhouse gas as it produces. Achieving this balance by 2050 is a pivotal undertaking for the United States”)

And there are many more such. So there is a long way to go. However, they have made a reasonable start. Given that it has only been a week, I would rate the effort an A-.

EPA

In my November post, I noted that there was a huge Climate Change section of the website that dominated from the opening page. Today, references to the subject on the opening page are gone. If you look under the tab “Environmental Topics” on the opening page, you will not find “climate change,” and if you try the closest topic on that tab, “Air,” you will not find “climate change” there either. They certainly are not making this easy!

However, if you type the words “climate change” into the search function of the site, the first link that comes up is https://ift.tt/V1mqIES, which is the exact same address I had back in November. It will take you to the old Climate Change section of the website that appears to be changed little if at all. It’s buried, but still very much still there. And it contains plenty of the same old nonsense. Examples:

• They continue to pretend that CO2 in the atmosphere has something to do with “human health”: Understanding and addressing climate change is critical to EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment.
• There are sections on things like “Causes” and “Impacts” of climate change that pretend that this is a huge human-caused problem.
• Endless pages on climate change “indicators” pretend to link all the usual extreme weather events, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, etc., etc., to human use of fossil fuels. (“Rising global average temperature is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns. Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change.”)

There are vast amounts of stuff here that need to go sooner rather than later. Yes, it has only been a week. Still, I rate the effort a B.

NOAA/NASA

These are the people who keep track of the weather and climate data, and are famous for scare-mongering with endless press releases and hype about “warmest day/month/year ever.” My November 2024 post had this link to a typical NOAA release from January 2024, titled “2023 was the world’s warmest year on record, by far.” That link is still live at the NOAA website.

Overall, it is not clear to me that the NOAA or NASA websites have yet changed much if at all. The “News” tab of the NOAA website has a list of “Latest News Releases” that include several last-minute initiatives of the Biden-Harris administration, including this gem: “Biden-Harris Administration, NOAA invest $15 million to help protect Western U.S. communities from wildfire.”

Go to the NASA website, and down at the bottom of the opening page you will find a link for “Earth & Climate.” At that page you will find a further link for “Climate Change,” that is as full of climate propaganda as any government page I have seen. Small excerpt:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. . . . While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years. . . . The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia.

You get the idea. Somebody needs to start paying attention to this quickly. Yes, it has only been a week. Still, I would give this effort a C at best.

I’ll be watching these pages for periodic updates from time to time. I can’t wait to see a lot of this stuff disappear.