Donnie "Bonespur" Trump is shutting Down the E.P.A.
We talked a lot about Donnie Bonespur
Trump making a declaration that the climate crisis is a hoax and essentially gutting the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to at least mitigate the progression of the climate crisis. We talked about more than that, but in the time I have to get this Web page posted I'll have to settle for that part. I plan to update this Web page pretty soon.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held Wednesday March 11, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had a LSB meeting this past Wednesday night February 11. A lot of the time was taken up with people trying to change the way that the Public Comment section of the meeting is done. I also had to remind everyone that a standing committee does not need to be renewed every year.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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Trump has officially declared that global warming and the climate crisis are a hoax.
Apparently this shuts down the federal government's legal authority to control the pollution that is causing the global warming! And the Environmental Protection Agency just isn't in the business of protecting the environment anymore. At the announcement ceremony Trump said, We are officially terminating the so-called
In fact Richard Nixon understood that global warming was a future danger. And we are in that future now! President George Bush senior signed the international climate treaty about climate change.endangerment finding,
a disastrous Obama-era policy.
The the endangerment finding Trump referred to was a scientific conclusion reached in 2009, that greenhouse gas emissions posed a danger to Americans' health and welfare.
To add literal insult to literal injury that idiot Trump has called climate scientists stupid people.
If someone were to have written a science fiction horror story with all of these details in it 20 years ago it would have been rejected by just about any editor as too far out, too implausible for readers to be able to willingly suspend their disbelief.
On a certain right-wing TV network Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said that, CO2 was never a pollutant. When we breathe, we emit CO2. Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more CO2.
Which is a way of deluding the stupid people who voted for Trump and who do not understand the science of this at all.
President Barack Obama wrote on social media that the repeal of the endangerment finding means, We'll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change - all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.
And that's the crux of this problem. It's about other billionaires lobbying Trump and the rest of the right-wing to keep them making huge profits. I have to wonder how these people think about the future. Some of the must have children and grandchildren. Those grandkids are especially going to be living in a world that's going to be very different from this one due to the climate having changed, and by the end of this century the entire planet's climate is going to be doing negative things that no one can predict. A big part of this climate change disaster is that while scientists can predict certain things that will change there are other things that will surprise everyone. And these can be surprises that will cause bigger problems than anyone had predicted.
One thing that's not going to be a surprise will be that the state of Florida is going to suffer a great deal from the climate crisis getting worse. That state's low elevation is going to get overtopped by the rising sea levels. Also, Florida is mostly sandy soil over limestone. That limestone is susceptible to acidified water dissolving it. That limestone is the accumulation of the mostly microscopic skeletons of ancient sea creatures. Florida is already full of sink holes and underground rivers. With that extra CO2 that Interior Secretary Burgum talked about being so harmless in the atmosphere the gas is dissolved in water and forms carbonic acid. This acid, which in the usual concentrations doesn't hurt you and is in fact commonly consumed as seltzer, reacts with the basic limestone, which is calcium carbonate and dissolves that limestone. So with Florida's vulnerability to sea level rise and its underlying limestone being slowly dissolved that red state will ironically be very badly hit by the climate crisis which the right-wing is denying is happening, again due to the political influence of fossil fuel industry profits.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said, If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide,
and so he has filed one of the legal challenges to Trump's attempt to use climate change denial to wipe out controls on the types of pollution that cause the climate changes we're only just starting to see. Others are suing as well.
According to Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service the Earth has warmed by about 1.4° C of 2½° F. Since the start of the Industrial Age about 200 years ago. And as things have gone on the effect has accelerated. The amount of heat trapping gases that were being pumped into the atmosphere in the early 19th Century are very tiny compared to what's being pumped into it at the start of the second quarter of the 21st Century. It is being predicted by some scientists that the Earth will warm by 2.6° Celsius, or 4.7° Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st Century.
Part of why this repeal of the endangerment finding is so bad on into the future is that if the repeal is upheld in the Supreme Court, where we can be certain it is going to land, it might also prevent future administrations from restoring regulations to curb greenhouse gases.
So this is very bad and we can only hope that the 120th Congress, which will show up on January 1, 2027, will stop this nonsense and that in 2028, a much more intelligent executive can be elected. If not then people under the age of about 50 are going to suffer greatly when they get to be my age, and their children will probably curse the antics of the early 21st Century.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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