Oil Billionaires Bet on Trump’s Energy Agenda

Stephan: 

In this article in the Murdoch-owned fascist Wall Street Journal you see how blatant corruption in the United States has become, and how criminal Trump and his varlet J.D. Vance have openly whored themselves to the oil billionaires.

Donald Trump and Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, at a 2019 shale energy conference in Pittsburgh. Credit: Leah Millis / Reuters  

As Donald Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination last Thursday, he reminded the megawealthy coterie of oil tycoons backing him why he is their man.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far, we are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy,” Trump said during his prime-time address.

The speech was music to the ears of oil billionaires Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, Kelcy Warren of Energy TransferJeffery Hildebrand of Hilcorp, and George Bishop of GeoSouthern Energy. Since March, they, together with their spouses and companies, have contributed at least $9.9 million to Trump-aligned committees and the Republican National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission data. 

Those donations make the magnates among some of Trump’s biggest donors and represent an increase from past election cycles. Their contributions and those of another oil billionaire, Tim Dunn of CrownRock, topped $16 million since October, compared with the more than $20 million the tycoons donated […]

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How Americans View National, Local and Personal Energy Choices

Stephan: 

The tragic reality of the MAGAt cult that supports criminal Trump and his varlet Vance is that they have been conned by Trump and other leaders in the cult to not believe in the reality of climate change, as reflected by their sharp decline of support for non-polluting energy. Sadly, even Democrats have been influenced by this humanity threatening thinking, as you can see in this Pew Research Center research. I hate doing these stories, but SR is about trends shaping the future. And this is our future.

The planet’s continued streak of record heat has spurred calls for action by scientists and global leaders. Meanwhile, in the United States, energy development policy is being hotly debated on the national and local levels this election year. How do Americans feel about U.S. energy policy options, and what steps are they willing to take in their own lives to reduce carbon emissions? A new Pew Research Center survey takes a look.

Among the major findings:

There’s been a decline in the breadth of support for wind and solar power. The shares who favor expanding solar and wind power farms are down 12 percentage points and 11 points, respectively, since 2020, driven by sharp drops in support among Republicans.

Interest in buying an electric vehicle (EV) is lower than a year ago. Today, 29% of Americans say they would consider an EV for their next purchase, down from 38% in 2023.

Still, a majority of Americans (63%) support the goal of the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050. When asked which is the greater priority, far more Americans continue to say the country should focus on developing renewable energy than fossil fuel sources (65% […]

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Severe turbulence ahead — how scientists can keep air travellers safe in a warming world

Stephan: 

Here is an aspect of climate change I have not seen mentioned previously. He shows that every part of our society is going to be affected, and it is just going to get worse if the nations of the world do not make radical changes. If the MAGAt cult wins that isn;t going to happen, as I showed you in the previous articles.

Credit: Martin Roll

Climate change is not just leading to more heatwaves and hurricanes — it’s making the atmosphere more turbulent, too. As I found out while flying from Kuala Lumpur to London a few weeks ago, sudden jolts from bumpy air can send your coffee flying. Riding jet streams can feel like being on a roller coaster.

Air turbulence has been in the news because dozens of passengers on a Singapore Airlines flight in May were injured and one person died when the aeroplane lost 54 metres of altitude within seconds over Myanmar. Those passengers were not just unlucky; the frequency of such events is rising, because global warming is making the air stormier.

As a researcher in fluid dynamics and climate change, I can assure you that flying remains one of the safest modes of travel. But I also know that the changing patterns of air turbulence need much more research. Scientists need to understand how climate change is […]

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Earth likely just had its hottest day in thousands of years

Stephan: 

In the MAGAt textbook Project 2025 there isn’t a word about preventive programs to reduce what climate change is doing. Quite the contrary. The Trump/Vance position is the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency should be curbed significantly or eliminated altogether. I simply do not understand how anyone with an IQ greater than their waist measurement could vote for any part of the MAGAt ticket from city council to President.

On Sunday, Earth saw its warmest day on record globally since at least 1940, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe.

Threat level: “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said.

The big picture: The record, which exceeded the old milestone set last July, came in the middle of the planet’s hottest year yet since at least the pre-industrial era, and likely for at least 100,000 years before that.

  • The past 13 months have been the warmest such period on record, and the oceans have been at record warm levels for 15-straight months.
  • This is especially noteworthy because the planet’s oceans absorb about 90% of the trapped heat from the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Zoom in: The new data is preliminary but reliable, according to Copernicus and outside researchers.

Scathing N.Y. Times column warns J.D. Vance and Aileen Cannon are working hand-in-hand

Stephan: 

I try to avoid using The New York Times, or the Washington Post because they are behind a paywall. But this article from Raw Story catches the essence of the NYT piece. I think Aileen Cannon should be removed from the bench. She is one of the worst most biased judges in American history.

Aileen Cannon, one of the worst most biased judges in American history. Credit: Creative Commons

Former President Donald Trump’s allies are working to reshape American law into a weapon to be used against their political enemies, wrote Jesse Wegman in a scathing editorial for The New York Times.

Trump’s pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) underscores this, he wrote, because Vance embodies the far-right’s commitment to a key goal of the controversial Project 2025 plan to transform the government into an authoritarian loyalty cult to the GOP.

Vance, wrote Wegman, “predicted … that the former president, who had been recently disgraced by his insurrectionary attempt to overturn the 2020 election, would nevertheless run again in 2024. Should Mr. Trump win, Mr. Vance said, he had some advice: ‘Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.’ And if the courts ruled against him? No problem, Mr. Vance said: […]

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