First up, obligatory Trump news- thanks to his recklessness, the Doomsday Clock has been moved the closest to midnight it has been since the US and Russia’s first thermonuclear bomb tests, write Lawrence Krauss and David Titley in a NY Times op-ed.
That’s just in anticipation of Trump. As for what he intends to do… well for one thing, scientists should read up on what happened in Canada under Stephen Harper. Then take some small comfort in knowing that any efforts to review and ultimately decide on the Paris Agreement and other international treaties are going to be significantly hampered by the fact that the entire senior management team at the Department of State has resigned or simply been fired by Trump. This exodus of top career staffers, who have served under both Republican and Democrat presidents, is unprecedented in recent memory.
The sudden and massive loss of institutional knowledge means that Trump’s various foreign policy aspirations, like building the wall (which would cause enormous environmental damage in addition to being, y’know, fundamentally stupid and antithetical to the idea of the United States as a shining city upon a hill) or re-negotiating the Paris Agreement will be all the more difficult and drawn-out. Though on Paris, E&E was told by a former transition member that the executive order issued Wednesday was intended as a rebuke to the UN generally, and not necessarily a move to pull out of Paris.
Part of the reason everyone is struggling to decipher what these EOs mean is that they are being written by advisors Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon with no consultation with the relevant agency employees and lawyers who will carry them out. So you’re not alone if you’re wondering about the implications of Trump’s “flawed orders that may be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal.” Turns out the orders have been more about appearances and rhetoric than intelligent legal strategy.
Speaking of questionable legal strategy, someone else who has recently left their job, Judith Curry, has filed an amicus curiae in the Mann v CEI and NRO case. Greg Laden has a quick post up linking to the brief, and in the comments some questions have emerged. Since the lawyers who prepared the brief for her are a Koch-affiliated group, there are questions (and parody poems) about whether she’s participating in this pro-bono, or if she’s getting compensated.
The document is not apt to sway the courts, as it asserts that the writings in question deal with the methodology and are therefore part of the normal scientific process. But in the decision issued just before Christmas last year and excerpted at RabettRun, it was ruled that the writing “does not comment on the specifics of Dr. Mann’s methodology at all.” Why they would, a month later, reiterate that struck-down claim is unclear.
Like so much else right now, we’ll have to wait and see what a judge decides.
Hopefully, the Doomsday Clock won’t strike midnight before then.
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