Things Trump deregulation gave us

[Tero]

Ecoli
https://www.wired.com/story/the-science ... g-us-sick/

It’s not about Trump! A new topic of his parasite friends. And fun stuff. Like asbestos.

[JimC]

Can one hope that he ingests some particularly virulent E. coli strain?

[Sean Hayden]

His wife could get it done.

What is the secret service expertise on murderous spouses? They have to plan for it. Do they start with a profile, develop the likelihood they've got a killer spouse in the White House, and choose a plan accordingly? What are the odds Melania kills Trump before 2020? If they don't have that they should get it, and we can add it to other figures we use to judge the President's popularity.

[Tero]

BIG COAL
Despite legal challenges to the Obama plan, known as the Clean Power Plan, coal plants have declined in recent years. Since 2010, more than 200 American coal plants have been retired or taken offline. In that time, other energy sources including renewables like wind and solar have become more cost-effective and reliable. Yet Trump’s rules are likely to most affect aging coal plants across the country that pollute the most, making them more cost effective to run longer.

The move is likely to have a lasting effect on climate change. The U.S. is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses. Obama’s Clean Power Plan had intended to cut U.S. emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. By the same measure, the Trump plan is expected to cut emissions only as much as 1.5 percent.

CARS TURN INTO TANKS
So Trump drivers can crash into unlimited Priuses and survive:
DOT and EPA officials cited passenger safety as their primary objective in rolling back the rules. People who owned more efficient cars would drive more, they said, putting them at greater risk of accidents. They also said that cars with better mileage would delay people from getting new cars with enhanced safety features. Some experts interviewed by the New York Times expressed skepticism at these explanations.

NASA to SHOOT STUFF INTO SPACE forget OTHER STUFF
WHITE HOUSE CUTS NASA CLIMATE MONITORING PROGRAM
May 9, 2018

Science magazine reports that the Trump administration has ended NASA's Carbon Monitoring System, a $10-million-per-year effort to fund pilot programs intended to improve the monitoring of global carbon emissions.

Congress directed the CMS's creation in 2010, but as Science reporter Paul Voosen notes, the March 2018 spending deal didn't specifically dedicate funds to the program—giving the White House sufficient latitude to wind it down
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... vironment/

[Joe]

Let's not forget that a little radiation is good for you, according to Trump's EPA.

Trump’s EPA moving to loosen radiation limits, experts say

The EPA is pursuing rule changes that experts say would weaken the way radiation exposure is regulated, turning to scientific outliers who argue that a bit of radiation damage is actually good for you — like a little bit of sunlight.

The government’s current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical workers doing X-rays and CT scans, people living next to Superfund sites and any members of the public who one day might find themselves exposed to a radiation release.

Not a surprising move for the clowns who proposed cutting the budget for cleaning up one of the world's most dangerous nuclear waste sites.

Trump administration proposes $230M cut for Hanford Nuclear Reservation cleanup

The Trump administration is proposing a $230 million cut in cleanup spending at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in fiscal 2019.

The budget request released on Monday cuts $61 million from the budget for Hanford's Office of River Protection, and $169 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Richland Operations Office.

The two offices would receive about $2.1 billion combined for the fiscal year

Hanford for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons. The site near Richland is now engaged in cleaning up a huge volume of radioactive and hazardous wastes left over from plutonium production.

Critics have said Hanford's budget must be dramatically increased to some $3 billion a year to achieve legal cleanup milestones.

Fortunately. Congress rejected the budget cut.

[Tero]

The fires: it’s complicated.

There is room for discussion in forest management. Trump badly mangled the message. We may indeed need to burn some dead stuff in order to keep old forests standing. You burn some in order to keep a bigger part growing. Dry and dead wood burns easily. Lumbering puts in logging roads, as in Finland, and these provide breaks that the fire does not cross.

I was in the Rockies last summer. There was a lot of dead wood in national forest. It seems to relate to global warming in a way. The snow needs to melt later innthe spring than it does now, to provide water for growing trees. Water falling on mountains irrigates the West side well enough, but the East sides are now getting drier.

Burning is managed in grassland, which is part of the California situation, and a crew can easily burn some areas as needed to keep native prairie species there (a small overall area of unconnected prairies, Google for a map of national grasslands) by preparing the land beforehand. Ranchland in the plains can be native prairie or managed to grow other grasses. The ranchers that were in jail in Oregon for a while mismanaged their burn on public land (they never got a permit). The edges of the planned area have to be cut or plowed so as to give an area where there is nothing to burn.

[Tero]

The legislation would have gone into effect earlier this year based on criteria drawn up by the Obama-era Food and Drug Administration. As Wired reports:

But six months before people were sickened by the contaminated romaine, President Donald Trump’s FDA – responding to pressure from the farm industry and Trump’s order to eliminate regulations – shelved the water-testing rules for at least four years.

Despite this deadly outbreak, the FDA has shown no sign of reconsidering its plan to postpone the rules. The agency also is considering major changes, such as allowing some produce growers to test less frequently or find alternatives to water testing to ensure the safety of their crops.https://www.gq.com/story/fda-policy-ecoli-romaine

[Scot Dutchy]

Brings it inline with Mexico.