Trump Transition: Conservative Christmas

Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer

Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.

Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.

Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton


Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos, has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.

Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.

Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.

Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.

As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.

Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.

Sea level rise: Global warming impact hits home

With a sea level 7.5 feet above standard high tides, a flood map shows large areas of Greater Boston under water, including Logan International Airport, half of South Boston, and most of Back Bay, East Cambridge and the South End. In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy brought 10-foot storm surges to New York City at high tide, inundating the metropolitan area, knocking out two airports and causing flood damage estimated in billions of dollars. /Boston Harbor Association image

A recent research effort attempted to forecast areas likely to experience the most severe impact from 21st century sea level rise linked to global warming. The primary finding of the research is that sea level rise will not be uniform around the globe.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact report predicts the worst sea level rise in the next 100 years will hit coastal areas in low latitudes such as the Western Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean, including India, Bangladesh, Japan, Argentina, Australia and South Africa.

There are variables that will affect the study's conclusions. A key factor will be the relative melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. For the North Atlantic Ocean, the rate of Greenland ice melt will largely determine the severity of sea level rise. Ironically, while Greenland is much closer to where I live in New England than Antarctica, the gravitational effect of losing the Greenland glaciers will partially offset the sea-level impact of ice melt pouring off Greenland into the North Atlantic.

Hurricane Sandy's pummeling of New York and New Jersey in October 2012 as well as Boston Harbor Association flood maps released in February 2013 illustrate a more stark reality: The sea level rise and increase in severe storms that we have already experienced from global warming pose an immediate threat to the vast majority of coastal cities.

Most of Boston's Inner Harbor neighborhoods would be underwater with a 7.5-foot increase in sea level above an average high tide. An increase in hurricanes and nor'easters makes this kind of flooding a prime climate change risk factor for cities along the U.S. East Coast. /Boston Harbor Association image

Lord Monckton: Right-wing extremist poster boy

Lord Christopher Monckton upped his radical fringe credentials this week with his full-throated endorsement of the Rise Up Australia party. /Image via abc.net.au


What do global warming deniers, Obama birthers and Australian racists all have in common? Lord Christopher Monckton, third viscount of Brenchley.

This week, Monckton became the most prominent supporter of Rise Up Australia, a new national political party Down Under devoted to opposing Muslim immigration in Australia and rolling back the country's multicultural policies. At an event launching Rise Up Australia, Monckton said, "It is not for me as a Brit to endorse any Australian political party, ... but I'm going to anyway."

In December 2012, the ex-journalist and adviser to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was thrown out of the United Nations-sponsored climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, after he impersonated a member of the Burmese delegation. Drawing heckling from the other delegates, Monckton told the assembly: "In the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all. If we were to take action, the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptation measures later. So my recommendation is that we should initiate a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track."

The viscount of Brenchley was not only expelled from the Doha conference but also banned for life from attending future U.N. climate change talks.

And here's what Monckton had to say in March 2012 about the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate posted on the White House website: "It appears in layers on the screen in such a way you can remove quite separately each of the individual dates. You use Adobe Illustrator and each of the individual dates is in its own separate layer. This thing has been fabricated. Sheriff (Joe) Arpaio of Arizona has had a team on this for six months. And he has now gone public and said there’s something very desperately wrong with this and of course nobody is saying anything because the entire electorate has been fooled."

Here are some historical facts to consider: racism is a scourge on humanity that has fueled the slaughter of millions, the vast majority of the world's scientists have concluded not only that the Earth's atmosphere is warming but also that carbon dioxide from human activity is to blame, and Donald Trump is the only other prominent person on the planet who believes Obama was born in Kenya.

Global warming and severe weather events

A grader clears snow in downtown Ware, Mass., on Feb. 9, 2012, as Winterstorm Nemo buffets New England. /Image via Facebook.com


Dispatch from New England: The weather here has changed significantly over the past 30 years.

I've had my eyes to the sky and glued to TV weather forecasts since Mr. Val's earth sciences class in high school. Combined with my farmer ancestry, it's fair to say I'm pretty plugged into the climate.

I've witnessed New England's increased incidences of severe winter storms and tornadic thunderstorms in the summer, and they are among the convincing signs of the dangerous effects of global warming to come.

But don't just rely on a cranky Yankee. Check out what these folks have to say:

National Wildlife Federation: "Global warming has caused more heavy rainfall events in the United States over the last few decades along with an increased likelihood of devastating floods. While no single storm or flood can be attributed directly to global warming, changing climate conditions are at least partly responsible for past trends. Because warmer air can hold more moisture, more and heavier precipitation is expected in the years to come. At the same time, shifts in snowfall patterns, the onset of spring and river-ice melting may all exacerbate some flooding risks."

Nobel Laureate Mario Molina: "People may not be aware that important changes have occurred in the scientific understanding of the extreme weather events that are in the headlines," Molina said in August 2012 at the 244th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society. "They are now more clearly connected to human activities, such as the release of carbon dioxide ― the main greenhouse gas ― from burning coal and other fossil fuels."

Union of Concerned Scientists: "One consequence of global warming is an increase in both ocean evaporation into the atmosphere, and the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold. High levels of water vapor in the atmosphere in turn create conditions more favorable for heavier precipitation in the form of intense rain and snow storms. ... As the Earth warms, the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest one percent of storms has risen nearly 20 percent on average in the United States — almost three times the rate of increase in total precipitation between 1958 and 2007."

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed thousands homes in New Orleans. /Image via globalsecurity.org