Chart from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. See that red line? that’s area of ice. See how it’s not going up? That’s really, really bad.

Trump is ‘transitioning’ as he gets ready to be sworn in. And his Transition team includes people who are going to throw out all efforts to measure or control global heating. He’s even sworn to pull out of the Paris COP 21 agreement, even though it will mean little in terms of sacrifice. Some politicians in EU countries (including Sarkozy in France) are threatening to impose carbon tariffs on US goods going forward if the US invalidates its promises on limiting C02.. Trump’s also moving forward with plans to eliminate the EPA, something he can’t do. But he can surely remove sufficient funding to make it impossible for the EPA to carry out its mission. W did much the same thing. The tell? He has brought in Myron Ebell to ‘transition’ the EPA. Myron Ebell is a Competitive Enterprise Institute guy whose major policy work has involved ‘debunking’ global warming. The only Transitioning expected is to throw the EPA on the scrap-heap of history by budgetary homicide.

And do not offer entreaties about the Democrats being much better. Remember, President Obama has NOT taken the kinds of steps to protect the environment that his supporters have demanded. We’re still seeing industry thugs beating up the First Nation protesters and friends at the DAPL construction site. Clinton’s  proposed ‘World War II Style Mobilization to end climate change’ was (like many of her platform statements) a sham.  Her wikileaks documents show that she had contempt for anyone standing in the way of the oil industry–and her lies on her funding from fossil fuel interests made even more people dislike her. 

What does all this mean? 

My fear is that we’ve reached a point of no return that even the plutocrats can’t ignore anymore. Rather than continuing the status quo, the plutocrats have stepped on the gas pedal. In Guy McPherson’s latest lecture video from Encitas California, he bemoans the problem with industrial civilization as being faster. Industrial civilization wants things to go faster. But going faster is what is dooming us (that and thinking that we can breed into population overshoot without running into limits on food and habitat). 

Remember, this is not a new threat to the environment. During the Reagan years, we were ‘gifted’ with the tenure of Interior Secretary James Watt, a man who was completely hostile to environmental regulations (the phrase ‘global warming’ hadn’t entered the vernacular). In a revealing conversation, Watt stated why he opposed regulations on drilling in the Arctic and offshore. He said something to the effect that he was a Christian, he believed the End Times were coming, and it was up to us to get all of the oil out of the ground (ostensibly so it wouldn’t be ‘wasted’). And what Trump (and most of our political class) seems to represent is ‘faster’.  Friends who were formerly indifferent to the loss of Arctic ice are picking up that things are out of control–when ‘fall’ hit in the Northeast and we were still having days in the high 70’s, I didn’t have scoffers who shook off my assertions that this was AGW and things would get worse. The plutocrat response to warming (which might include gaming the election) is to destroy everything as fast as possible–if the world will end in 2019, the Koch brothers want every dime that’s on the table no later than 9/2018.  They are not interested in Planetary hospice. And the Plutocrats can end the game–their candidate now owns the launch codes for missiles that could turn much of Eastern Europe into an ashtray.

Pedal to the Metal, boys.

UPDATE: This chart below is what the global ice looked like on 11/18 (the above graph was for 11/11). Look how much the volume has dropped over the course of a week. We are so screwed. 

compare to the above chart. That’s how far the ice has collapsed.

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