In the wake of Trump’s deadly white supremacist insurrection last week, it seems that the revolving door between the energy industry and the Trump government may finally be closing. Ben Lefebvre and Zack Colman reported yesterday for PoliticoPRO that even oil and gas companies are now cutting ties with members of the Trump administration, with one (anonymous) executive telling them that they “have discussed this explicitly… we’re not going to hire any Trump people. We’re just not going to do it.”
Another energy company executive said that the “administration didn’t even start out with the best of the best. They started out with the best of the rest. Now it’s the rest of the rest. It’s not the greatest talent pool.” For example, the story closes with a lobbyist saying that after a former EPA staffer wasn’t really able to say what they did at the agency, he asked them what they wanted to do now. Their answer? “Make six figures.”
Even given all of that, and even without any real qualifications or talent or intelligence, that may not be an out-of-reach goal for them and others who have recently left the EPA in the wake of the violence. After all, organized climate denial has no qualms with political terrorism — at least judging by CFACT’s Marc Morano, who advocated for more of this, in every state capitol, “to end Covid lockdowns once and for all.”
While other grifters tried to deflect responsibility and paint the murderous mob as antifa or enviros, Marc Morano praised the deadly domestic terrorism last week, saying “striking fear in politicians is not a bad thing,” followed by two other quotes by Thomas Jefferson that have been adopted as memes by the far-right white supremacists who staged last week’s failed insurrection. (No, not the one they chanted about hanging the Vice President, but about the “tree of liberty” being watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots, and another on the government fearing the people.)
That a hub of industry-sponsored denial like CFACT will embrace literal terrorism is good news for employees of the seditious Trump administration, like David Legates and Ryan Maue.
At some point quite recently, almost certainly after the insurrection incited by the president who appointed him, Ryan Maue unceremoniously removed the disclaimer in his Twitter bio that he works for the Trump administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and was “chief scientist” for NOAA. (And was also seen sucking up to Elon Musk.)
If he is hoping folks will forget that he should hereafter be described as "Ryan Maue, who accepted an appointment to the violently seditious Trump administration in mid-2020," his fellow deniers aren’t doing him any favors.
Because he’s one of the authors of a collection of brochures put together by David Legates, the University of Delaware professor who also accepted an appointment to the violently seditious Trump administration in mid-2020.
The bundle of boring and basic denial myths compiled to appease the deadly denial of the Trump administration was published first, it appears at least, by U-Alabama Huntsville’s Dr. Roy Spencer, who contributed a chapter. His post about the flyers was then bounced around the deniersphere, where the same audiences who gobble up unhinged conspiracies about voter fraud or satan-worshipping Democrats can eagerly read the climate denial versions of those violent fantasies.
As for the content, it’d be a waste of time to treat it as any sort of serious science, and not a distillation of organized denial’s most-common-myths. So, far from a credible counter to consensus science, the ten pamphlets are written by folks who, as the lobbyist said of the other hires complicit in Trump’s cop-killing, anti-democracy regime, are less “best of the best” and much more “rest of the rest.”
Apparently, per Spencer’s post, David Legates hopes the material will soon go up on the Trump White House website, forever shackling his work and the work of others, like John Christy, Willie Soon, Ross Patrick and Patrick Michaels, to the deadly denial of the Trump administration.
Except, despite the documents bearing OSTP’s seal, and (oddly) it’s copyright, a spokesperson tweeted that they weren’t made at OSTP’s direction, and weren’t cleared or approved by OSTP leadership. Uh oh!
Most staffers are worried about being tainted by their association with the seditious Trump administration, but climate deniers are so bad at what they do, it’s the Trump administration that doesn’t want to be associated with them!
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories:
