Flat Earther

The earth is flat, the earth is flat. "There is no climate change, CO2 is not the cause, believe me, I know it to be so." saith Scott Pruitt, the EPA head whose connects to big oil knows no bounds.

Mr. Pruitt has faced frequent criticism for his close ties to fossil fuel companies. In his previous job as the attorney general of Oklahoma, he sought to use legal tools to fight environmental regulations on the oil and gas companies that are a major part of the state’s economy. A 2014 investigation by The New York Times found that energy lobbyists had drafted letters for Mr. Pruitt to send, on state stationery, to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even Mr. Obama, outlining the economic hardship caused by the environmental rules.

But in a sign of how far outside mainstream views Mr. Pruitt’s remarks on Thursday have placed him, even executives of some of the nation’s largest fossil fuel producers said they were surprised by his comments. Interviewed at CERAweek, an annual conference of major energy producers this week in Houston, Wael Sawan, an executive vice president at Shell Energy Resources, said he was “absolutely convinced CO2 can cause serious damage to not only this generation but future generations.”

What part of no doesn't Pruitt understand?

A report in 2013 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of about 2,000 international scientists that reviews and summarizes climate science, found it to be “extremely likely” that more than half the global warming that occurred from 1951 to 2010 was a consequence of human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

A January report by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded, “The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.”

Benjamin D. Santer, a climate researcher at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said, “Mr. Pruitt has claimed that carbon dioxide caused by human activity is not ‘the primary contributor to the global warming that we see.’ Mr. Pruitt is wrong.”

“The scientific community has studied this issue for decades,” Dr. Santer added. “The consensus message from many national and international assessments of the science is pretty simple: Natural factors can’t explain the size or patterns of observed warming. A large human influence on global climate is the best explanation for the warming we’ve measured and monitored.”

The basic science showing that carbon dioxide traps heat at the Earth’s surface dates to the 19th century, and has been confirmed in many thousands of experiments and observations since.

We are entering a dark age where ignorance rules for short term gains. Compromised purity of our water, compromised safety of our food and accelerated environmental degradation of our planet will be the end result of what entities like Scott Pruitt intend to do to the EPA.