Come on, you can admit it. I admit it. I admit that after Trump’s election victory, I secretly hoped and even though that his rhetoric was worse than its bite. He only said those crazy things during the campaign to get elected. He wouldn’t really follow through on his plans to completely gut the US commitment to keeping the Earth habitable. Oh how naive we were. Trump’s plan to fill positions in his administration shows things are worse than we could have ever feared.

According to recent reports, Trump has picked long-time climate denier and spokesperson for the fossil fuel industry Myron Ebell to head the Environmental Protection Agency transition. This basically means the EPA will either cease to function or cease to exist. It also appears that the US will pull out of any agreements to limit greenhouse emissions.



It means we have missed our last off-ramp on the road to catastrophic climate change. That may sound hyperbolic, but I study the rate that climate change is happening – the amount of heat accumulating in the Earth’s system. We didn’t have any time to waste in implementing Obama’s aggressive plans, and Trump will result in a decade of time lost.

So who is Myron Ebell? He is a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and chair of the Cooler Heads Coalition. Where did he get his PhD in science? Nowhere. In fact, he isn’t a scientist at all, but he does have a degree in economics. Yeah!

Is there any conflict that Ebell’s Competitive Enterprise Institute is funded by companies such as ExxonMobil and groups such as the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation? Surely not.

Myron Ebell is not new to obstructing action on climate change. Years ago, it was reported that he favored editing Bush-era scientists’ reports on climate change.

It isn’t just Ebell. Trump has other insiders, some of who represent fossil fuel companies, working on the transition.

What this selection also tells us about Trump is that he is surrounding himself with people who are not knowledgeable in a topic and will not effectively educate him. Not that educating Trump was ever possible. But there was always the outside chance he would take his contrarian streak to a new level and be contrarian to the contrarians. We now see that is not going to happen. If Trump listens to anyone, it will be people who think like he does and represent special interests who would be most affected by his policies. We have a fox guarding the hen house.

I know Trump won’t listen, but I have a wager for him. I could randomly pull an Earth scientist’s name out of a hat and any name I pulled would be better than Myron Ebell. I challenge Trump and his administration to actually include real scientists in forming legislation and action on environmental issues. And I am not talking about scientists that are connected to rightwing thinktank groups. I am talking about independent unaffiliated scientists. Cripes, just go down to the neighborhood university, pick anyone – they will be better than what you have now.



Or Trump could attend the world’s largest geophysics meeting, which occurs in just a few weeks (American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting). He could walk around with a TV camera and a clipboard. Ask any random 10 scientists any question on climate change. Let’s see how their answers compare to the information he is going to get from his handpicked insiders. Let’s put it on TV; Trump likes TV.

Maybe someday Trump will realize that he actually could be the savior of the Earth. Could you imagine the transformative power of a Republican president getting the Republican party to find solutions to climate change? It would fit a megalomania frame. It would be powerful and inspiring. However, the chances it will happen are about as good as the chance we can avoid our targeted 2C temperature rise (almost zero). Not if you surround yourselves with foxes as you go in to raid the hen house.

At the risk of losing objectiveness but keeping candor, we are fucked.