Eroding decades of science-driven caution:

Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said eliminating the need to consider climate change would lead to more pipelines and other projects that worsen global emissions. It could also put roads, bridges and other infrastructure at greater risk, he said, because developers would not be required, for instance, to analyze whether sea-level rise threatened to eventually submerge a project.

“It has the potential to distort infrastructure planning by making it easier to ignore predictable futures that could severely degrade the projects,” Mr. Gerrard said.

We definitely cannot survive another four years of this jackass. And you better believe the industries that are the worst polluters will be throwing scads of money into his re-election campaign, because they've never had it so good. Previous administrations (even GOP) pale in comparison with how responsive Trump has been putting communities at risk for corporate profits, and the fossil fuel industry leads that charge:

Over half of NC's counties are drying up as I type:

Klaus Albertin is chairman of the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council . He said in a news release issued by the Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday that water supplies, agriculture, fire threat and streamflows statewide are beginning to reflect the lack of precipitation.

Forty-five counties in the western and central parts of the state are in moderate drought stage, the least detrimental of four categories used in federal drought maps. Twenty-two counties are experiencing abnormally dry conditions, which means a drought could emerge without adequate rainfall. Albertin says while Hurricane Dorian left heavy rainfall along the coast, almost none fell west of Interstate 95. He says conditions could worsen before they improve.

As I was trying to go to sleep last night, I tried to remember the last time it had rained where I live. It's been long enough that I couldn't remember not just the exact date, but how many weeks it's been. That is not good. For several reasons, but the fact we're still in the hurricane season window is a big one. When the ground gets baked dry, rainfall doesn't infiltrate the soil very well, or quickly enough. So it runs off, and flash flooding is much more likely. And as our Western counties continue to dry out, wildfires can be expected. Plainly put, we need some rain, folks. Start dancing.

But it may be small consolation:

The study, Climate Change in the American Mind, which was released in December, found that 46 percent of those surveyed said they had personally experienced the effects of global warming, two-thirds said global warming is affecting weather in the United States and more than half said warming has made natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes worse.

That change is evident in North Carolina, where record rainfalls statewide and the devastating effects of natural disasters, especially the repeated inundation of eastern North Carolina from hurricanes, has helped change the dialogue from one of questioning whether climate change is happening to what can be done about it.

Probably doesn't need to be said, but we all knew that, eventually, the catastrophic effects of Climate Change would become overwhelmingly obvious to even the most hard-headed deniers. But of course by that time, it really would be too late to stop it. I expected (maybe naively) that would happen in 2035-2040 or so. I'm afraid I was wrong. Methane buildup in the atmosphere is a game-changer:

The sheer ignorance of this man is mind-boggling:

Sunday night, Trump, in his first comments on the wildfires that have raged for weeks, said the fires had been “made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount[s] of readily available water to be properly utilized.” A second tweet, on Monday, complained that water needed for fighting the fires was being “diverted into the Pacific Ocean.” In neither tweet was there mention of lives lost, the nearly 600,000 acres of woodland so far consumed and the 1,100 and counting homes destroyed.

Dumbfounded state officials dismissed the president’s remarks as nonsense. Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency, said “we have plenty of water to fight these wildfires.”

Rivers eventually flow into the ocean. That's what they do, and that's what they have done for probably a couple billion years. Even elementary schoolchildren know this, but apparently Trump missed that somewhere between kindergarten naps and academy bone spurs. And in fact, California already has some 1,400 dams forming lakes, and would be hard-pressed to construct many more. But again, well over our President's head. It's no wonder he simply can't grasp the concept of Climate Change:

And we thought McCrory had idiotic hiring practices:

Clovis has never taken a graduate course in science and is openly skeptical of climate change. While he has a doctorate in public administration and was a tenured professor of business and public policy at Morningside College for 10 years, he has published almost no academic work.

Clovis is better known for hosting a conservative talk radio show in his native Iowa and, after mounting an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2014, becoming a fiery pro-Trump advocate on television.

You know, when I consider the NC Senate's demand that they vet Roy Cooper's infinitely qualified department heads, and then observe the menagerie of clowns Donald Trump is choosing to run the Federal government, I just want to reach in and pull my eyeballs out so I don't have to see this stuff anymore.