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Government agencies spent $4.4 billion on self-promotion between 2009 and 2013, potentially against federal rules

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An aerial view of the Pentagon building in Washington, June 15, 2005.

The Obama administration got its hand slapped last year with the revelation that government agencies had spent literally billions of dollars promoting themselves with the public and news media in contravention of federal rules against just such activities.

A Congressional Research Service study revealed that the administration had spent at minimum a total of $4.4 billion on outside advertising contracts between fiscal 2009 and 2013 – including $419 million for the Pentagon, $197.4 million for the Department of Health and Human Services and $128.8 million for the Department of Education.

More recently, The Washington Post reported that an agency of DHS had contracted with the Edelman public relations firm “to refine their agency messaging” with reporters.

Now we learn that the Environmental Protection Agency spent public funds as part of a “covert propaganda” campaign to promote a controversial proposed Clean Water rule.

According to a new ruling by the Government Accountability Office, EPA employees made wide use of social media to urge the public to get behind President Obama’s new rule, which was designed to protect the nation’s streams and surface waters.

The New York Times, which first reported on the controversy, said on Monday that the GAO’s findings “served as a cautionary tale to federal agencies about the perils of getting to active in using social media to push a cause.” But it also highlights an anything-goes attitude within the administration about using public funds to promote the interests and agenda of the president.

“GAO’s finding confirms what I have long suspected, that EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its activist environmental agenda,” Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Jim Inhofe (R-OK), said in a statement Monday.

While there’s nothing wrong with agencies tooting their own horns about services they provide and policy initiatives, it is against the law for them to engage in sub rosa lobbying, propaganda or grass-roots efforts to promote new policies without disclosing the source of the advertising and lobbying.

According to GAO, EPA officials launched a sophisticated social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Thunderclap to overcome opposition to its clean water rule. The EPA said the rule – now under legal challenge – would prevent the pollution of water sources. However, farmers, business groups and Republicans denounced it as another example of the president’s executive overreach.

The EPA hasn’t quantified the amount of public funding that was spent on employees developing the lobbying effort and posting messages on social media platforms – only that the agency had spent $64,610 on video and other graphic assistance in making the government’s case.

The GAO has requested that the EPA go back and calculate the total cost to the taxpayers of the illegal conduct.

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Volkswagen may be prepping a massive buyback of some of its dirty diesel cars in the US

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Volkswagen emissions

Volkswagen may be prepping a buyback of thousands of its diesel-engine vehicles in the US.

The plan is one of several options being discussed between the German automaker and the US Environmental Protection Agency, as part of Volkswagen's effort to correct a massive emissions scandal that rocked the brand in September.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the carmaker could buy back diesel-engine Volkswagen vehicles that were rigged to cheat US emissions regulations, and are too difficult to fix.

Talks of a potential buyback come as Volkswagen and federal regulators discuss ways to bring the more than half-million affected Volkswagen cars in the US up to current emissions standards.

For its part, Volkswagen has been working to get the affected diesel cars repaired. Volkswagen passenger cars chairman Herbert Diess noted this week that repairs of 8.5 million of the 11 million affected cars worldwide will begin soon.

VolkswagenDiess made those comments at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday. He opened his keynote that night with an apology, saying "We disappointed the American people and our customers," before highlighting the ongoing talks with the EPA.

Later in the presentation, Volkswagen executives announced the company's new commitment to building electric vehicles.

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Some of the groundwater in China is so polluted, it’s unsafe for humans to touch

Environmental groups are suing over pollution from US airlines

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airplane

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to press for faster action in setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. aviation industry.

Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, filed the lawsuit to force the agency to complete its so-called "endangerment finding," a step in the EPA rule making process that would allow the agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. aircraft.

Any "unreasonable delay" in setting emission standards for airlines violates the law and the EPA's duty under the Clean Air Act, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court.

The EPA was expected to finalize a proposal for an endangerment finding in mid-2014. But last June it issued only a preliminary scientific finding on the emissions.

The environmental groups want the agency to publish its final finding, opening it up to a public comment period, before President Barack Obama leaves office.

The agency has said it plans to implement a global carbon dioxide emissions standard being developed by the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization.

The Environmental Protection Agency was not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit.

"The standards he (Obama) is prepared to accept for carbon pollution from airplanes are embarrassingly low,” said Sarah Burt, a legal expert on aviation for Earthjustice.

The standards expected to be adopted by the ICAO later this year are aimed at makers of small and large planes alike and would apply to all new aircraft models launched after 2020. Some older, fuel-guzzling designs would be exempted from the standards until 2028.

Environmental groups have argued that the standards would make barely a dent in emissions from the aviation sector, one of the fastest-growing carbon emissions sources.

Carbon dioxide emissions raise average temperatures, contributing to climate change. Emissions from the aviation sector are projected to triple by 2050 without regulations.

"We have to push them to issue a final (endangerment finding) and CO2 standard so we can have a conversation about what the standard should be," said Marcie Keever, legal director for Friends of the Earth.

"We wish the EPA wasn’t defaulting and deferring to ICAO, and instead would lead the way," she said.

(Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Tom Brown)

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The EPA paid a convicted child molester $55,000 to retire

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environmental protection agency

It happened again. This time, it’s a convicted child molester who’s been earning a salary for years, despite the fact that officials at the EPA knew about his unforgivable crime.

To finally get him to retire, the agency paid him an additional $55,000 to retire.

This case—one of more than 90 pending EPA employee misconduct cases—was detailed in the EPA inspector general’s report and discussed Wednesday at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

EPA officials tried to fire the molester, but the Merit Systems Protection Board stepped in and overturned the decision.

Committee Chair, Jason Chaffetz, (R-UT), said, “It's just pretty stunning. How do...we need to change the Merit Systems Protection Board, because we're not protecting the American taxpayer and we're not protecting the employees who have to sit next to this freak of a pervert."

It's been clear for years that it’s almost impossible to fire a federal employee, no matter how egregious the behavior or the performance. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.

The EPA has been accused of having systemic personnel problems. In one case, Allan Williams, deputy assistant inspector general for investigations, said that an EPA manager allowed an employee to stay home and not report to work for 20 years.

The auditor said it started as an accommodation to work at home due to a medical condition, but then apparently escalated into full-blown fraud. The doctored records showing the worker was on the job cost taxpayers a cool $500,000. (The Department of Justice declined to prosecute.)

Then there was the employee who confessed to spending two to six hours a day viewing pornography while working. He, too, was paid during his tenure at the EPA.

John C. Beale

One of the more bizarre stories belongs to John Beale, who swindled the EPA out of nearly $900,000. Beale was a highly paid senior policy adviser in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation who claimed he was doing “intelligence work for the CIA in Pakistan.”

He would be gone for months on his missions when in fact, he was in at his vacation home in Cape Cod. His $200,000 a year salary allowed him to defraud the government out of more than $900,000.

You’d think his boss would look into an 18 month lapse and question why her agency was paying his salary when the CIA should have picked up the tab. But no questions were asked.

Beale was convicted of fraud on December 18, 2013, and sentenced to 32 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and 100 hours of community service for each of those two years. He also paid back $886,186 and was fined an additional $507,207.

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A climate change skeptic is leading Trump's EPA transition — but these charts prove that climate change is very real

Trump is taking advice on the future of the environment from a man who denies basic science

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sea level louisiana

President-elect Donald Trump has said that he does not believe the planet is warming as a result of human activity — despite the research-backed consensus reached long ago by researchers across the globe.

He tweeted in 2012 that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive." More recently, Trump has pledged to roll back President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan — a set of rules that requires states to substantially reduce their emissions over the next few decades.

Right now, his transition website says, "America's environmental agenda will be guided by true specialists in conservation, not those with radical political agendas."

The implication seems to be that researchers who accept climate science will have no place in his Environmental Protection Agency, or perhaps his government.

So what will Trump's actual environmental policies look like? Here's what we know.

EBELL copyTrump has picked a man named Myron Ebell to oversee the EPA transition.

Ebell is not a scientist and has no degrees or qualifications in climate science. But he serves as director of global warming and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, DC.

In practice, that means he spends his time rejecting and trying to discredit scientists who work to understand the global climate.

Ebell believes climate scientists are part of a coordinated 'global warming movement'

In an interview with Business Insider in August, Ebell repeatedly referred to climate scientists as "global warming alarmists" and suggested that climate research is in fact an arm of a coordinated political movement.

"I think that the global warming movement has three parts," he said. "One is to exaggerate the rate of warming, one is to exaggerate the potential impacts of warming and how soon they may occur, and the third is to underestimate wildly the costs of reducing our emissions by the magical amount that they have picked."

Business Insider spoke with several climate scientists who described Ebell as a kind of gadfly — someone's whose views they must occasionally stoop to address in forums and debates where he's brought in to represent a discredited anti-climate-change perspective, but not a particularly serious person.

"He doesn't really know anything about science," said Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a top Earth scientist at NASA who has faced off with Ebell in the past. "He uses science like a talisman."

Ebell's technique, Schmidt said, is to point toward "some little fact" and use it to extrapolate some larger irrelevant and scientifically incorrect point.

Even if Ebell's scientific claims may not sit well with actual scientists, there are those who have found his perspective valuable.

CEI used to rely significantly on funding from ExxonMobil. As The Washington Post reports, it now receives funding from Donors Trust.

You know, [Trump] said he was going to drain the swamp in Washington, and instead he's put Myron Ebell — a swamp rat, a DC insider lobbyist — in charge of the transition at the EPA.

"The Virginia-based organization," Post reporter Brady Dennis wrote of Donors Trust, "which is not required by law to disclose its contributors, is staffed largely by people who have worked for Koch Industries or nonprofit groups supported by the conservative Koch brothers."

Good news for deniers, terrible news for environmentalists

Speaking with Business Insider in August before his selection, Ebell outlined his views on the appropriate direction for the EPA.

"When economies get richer, they not only make people wealthier, they generally provide immense environmental benefits," he said. "And so if you actually believe, if someone actually believes that global warming is a crisis that must be addressed ... I think it would be much better to free up the economy and get rid of the EPA rules and a lot of the Department of Energy programs and let the economy boom forward."

Ebell's fellow professional climate science skeptics seem cheered by his selection.

"Ebell is an old friend of mine who works on climate and energy issues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,"wrote Breitbart's James Delingpole, who regularly publishes posts trying to discredit climate science, in a November 9 article declaring that "the left just lost the war on climate change."

"The fact that he's an old friend of mine probably tells you all you need to know about where he stands on global warming," Delingpole wrote.

He concluded: "Yup, greenies. That climate change gravy train you've been riding these last four decades looks like it's headed for a major, Atlas-Shrugged-style tunnel incident."

Dan Lashof, COO of the environmental group NextGen Climate America, was as concerned as Delingpole was thrilled.

"Myron Ebell is a libertarian ideologue," he told Business Insider. "Having him lead the transition team at the EPA is literally putting a tobacco lobbyist in charge of America's lung protection agency. It's not normal."

Lashof said he expects a Trump administration with a Ebell-staffed EPA to work hard to roll back environmental regulations — just as the president-elect's website promises.

Myron Ebell protest"You know, [Trump] said he was going to drain the swamp in Washington, and instead he's put Myron Ebell — a swamp rat, a DC insider lobbyist — in charge of the transition at the EPA," Lashof said.

Death to 'politically correct technologies'

You won't hear any disagreement from the right that Ebell will push for killing environmental regulations to benefit fossil fuel businesses.

Patrick Michaels, who works for the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, DC — and, like Ebell, has made a reputation for rejecting the consensus on climate science — told Business Insider that Ebell's selection represents a victory for the idea that removing air pollution rules would in fact lead to cleaner air.

"Rich societies are cleaner," he said. "If you want efficient technologies to come online, the best way to do that is to have a vibrant economy, because that capital will be directed toward producing things with less energy and producing things that use less energy to appeal to consumers."

This position is intolerable to Lashof.

"This is putting somebody who just denies basic scientific facts in charge of a federal agency," Lashof said. "We will lead a resistance against the federal government. We will work with state governments to push back and keep progress going based on state policy."

He said he's confident there will be economic limits on Ebell's and Trump's ability to fight clean energy.

Solar and wind power "are actually cheaper than continuing to run existing coal in a lot of locations," Lashof said. "That depends to some extent on a federal tax credit, which early indications suggest that Congress and the Trump administration are not likely to try to roll back."

Both Ebell and Michaels scoff at the idea that either solar or wind power will play a significant role in the energy future of the country. (Michaels calls them "politically correct technologies.")

"I think in particular I would say the emphasis that the global warming movement or alarmist community or whatever you want to call them on renewables, namely solar and wind, is really short-sighted," Ebell said. "I think that those two technologies, particularly wind, are dead ends."

It's worth noting though that Ebell may have tweaked his public position on this issue in the last couple of months. He told National Geographic after the election that "we love wind and solar." But he clarified that he doesn't think the government should get involved in supporting either.

Ebell argued that any reduction in US emissions in the Obama era is the result of a "stagnant economy," not policies designed to push renewable energies.

"We would like to get rid of all of this stuff," he said. "And we think that the use of energy will become more efficient just through the innovations that will occur in free markets when people are allowed to invest their money in things that can make money."

How does climate denial even work?

Asked to explain why someone would reject the scientific consensus that humans are dangerously warming the planet, Michaels simply denied that any such consensus exists.

For evidence that climate change has been largely falsified, he pointed to an October 28 article by the reporter Paul Voosen in the journal Science.

The argument he drew from the Voosen article is a good example of the approach professional climate deniers like himself and Ebell use to undermine science, so it's worth taking a minute to think about.

"Take a look at the Voosen piece and read between the lines," Michaels said.

Michaels argued that it shows the many models researchers use to understand the climate have been rigged with "fudge factors" to produce incorrect results, and that "scientists are deciding a priori what the answer is."

Here's what Voosen actually reported:

"For years, climate scientists had been mum in public about their 'secret sauce'; What happened in the models stayed in the models. The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning [models to real world results] to seed doubt about models — and, by extension, the reality of human driven warming. 'The community became defensive,' [scientist Bjorn] Stevens says. 'It was afraid of talking about things that they thought could be unfairly used against them.' ...

"But modelers have come to realize that disclosure could reveal that some tunings [of models] are more deft or realistic than others. It's also vital for scientists who use the models in specific ways."

Voosen's article does not state or suggest any evidence of rigging to falsify warming. Rather, he reports that there has been an effort to bring models in line with observed reality, and that a transparency movement is enabling scientists to more rigorously audit each others' models for quality.

But Michaels finds a nearly opposite interpretation.

With Ebell on the rise, the question than becomes: Are these sorts of denials valid?

"It's complete bollocks. You can quote me on that. It's just rubbish," Schmidt said of Michaels' argument.

"So it's basically a shoot the messenger strategy that they've been pursuing for decades, but most actually scientists have been ignoring them for about the same amount of time."

Schmidt said there is "enormous consensus" among scientists about three points: Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will warm the planet, human activity is increasing their presence in the atmosphere, and that activity is responsible for almost all or all of the warming the planet has seen since the 19th century. This is true.

Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said there's no longer a serious question to ask about the validity of climate change.

"We understand the physics of what's happening pretty well now," he said. "If you load the atmosphere with a greenhouse gas, it will induce a warming. It's all based on an understanding of how electromagnetic radiation and matter interact. It's a very mature science. If you are going to deny that somehow, you'd have to deny that your microwave oven works."

He added that he invites people to come to the NSIDC to download snow and ice data and do their own analysis if they want, though deniers rarely take him up on it.

"People like Michaels and Ebell have been saying that climate modeling isn't science for decades," Schmidt said. "And what they really mean is, 'We don't like the outputs from those climate models, and so therefore instead of trying to demonstrate why they're wrong, we're just going to try to dismiss them out of hand.'

"So it's basically a shoot-the-messenger strategy that they've been pursuing for decades, but most actual scientists have been ignoring them for about the same amount of time."

'Nothing he does affects the science'

Schmidt works for NASA, and Serreze works for the NSIDC. That means they rely on federal funds for their research. Trump has made it clear that scientists who accept the consensus position that human activity is causing climate change will not be welcome in his government, or at least his EPA. And his selection of Ebell only reinforces that point. But neither researcher said he expects to lose his ability to pursue science.

"I'd be lying if I said that there wasn't some level of concern," Schmidt said. "But the federal government is a very, very large place. And the number of appointees is very small."

"During the [George W.] Bush administration, we had climate skeptics rewriting reports and trying to control what's said to the media," he added. "But the planet kept warning. We kept reporting on it. We kept improving the science that underlies our understanding of why it's changing. And we will work to continue to do so."

Serreze said: "I think we remain optimistic that wise heads are going to prevail here. There were concerns in the previous Republican administration under George W. Bush. We got through that. I'm confident we'll get through this."

As for Ebell's newfound power to push his views onto scientists, Schmidt said he's not overly concerned — in part because the EPA has never done much research on its own, but also because Ebell lacks the wherewithal to do so.

"He's not a serious person when it comes to the science," Schmidt said. "Nothing he does affects the science."

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Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency is currently suing it

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pruitt trump tower

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, to lead it, a move that has encouraged the agency's critics and provided worry to environmental groups.

Beginning last year, Pruitt joined several other state attorneys general in suing the agency over the Clean Power Plan, a policy drafted under the Obama administration that is designed to reduce pollution from the electricity sector.

That lawsuit is ongoing, as The Washington Post has reported.

And it's not the first time Pruitt has been down this road.

A self-described"leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda," Pruitt has brought lawsuits against the Obama-led EPA several times.

His approach drew the attention of The New York Times, which in 2014 published a story examining what it called the "unprecedented, secretive alliance" between Pruitt and several other Republican attorneys general and some of the top US energy companies to push back against the Obama administration's regulatory agenda.

The Times investigation uncovered emails in which the leaders of these energy companies drafted letters for Pruitt to send to the EPA — letters that essentially asked for "actions that could help increase the company's profits," as The Times put it.

In one such letter, Pruitt accused federal regulators of overestimating the amount of air pollution being emitted by energy companies that were drilling natural-gas wells in Oklahoma. Emails uncovered by The Times revealed that the letter was originally drafted by lawyers for one of the largest oil and gas companies in the state, Devon Energy. It was then "copied onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent ... to Washington with the attorney general's signature," according to The Times.

David Rivkin, a constitutional litigator at the international law firm Baker Hostetler who represented Pruitt and the state of Oklahoma in the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan, recently told The Post that he felt Pruitt would help ensure the EPA continued protecting the planet's natural resources while reducing federal overreach.

"General Pruitt has been the leader among the AGs in defending federalism, the key feature of our constitutional architecture," Rivkin told The Post. He also said he felt Pruitt would "ensure both environmental protection and constitutional fidelity."

You can view the letters on The New York Times here.

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Democratic senators are pressing Trump to disclose his EPA chief pick's energy industry ties

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Scott Pruitt

Democrats on the U.S. Senate's environment panel on Wednesday asked President-elect Donald Trump's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency to disclose his ties to the energy industry ahead of his confirmation hearing early next year.

The six senators sent a letter to Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma Attorney General led several lawsuits against the Obama administration's EPA to block its environmental rules, to ask him to list his connections to energy companies to weigh whether these ties will influence his ability to run the agency.

"What that conduct says about your ability to lead EPA in a manner that is not beholden to special or secret interests is a subject that we expect will receive a full airing during your confirmation hearing," the senators wrote in the letter.

The senators raised concerns about a 2014 New York Times report, which found that Pruitt's close ties to Devon Energy Corp were reflected in his policy positions as Oklahoma's top attorney.

For his part, Pruitt said to newspaper The Oklahoman that Devon Energy was a constituent that he represents and the company made people aware of the government's regulatory overreach on fracking.

The senators also said Pruitt's involvement with the Rule of Law Defense Fund, which they said supports initiatives by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, who have opposed the EPA's climate change regulations.

They asked Pruitt to submit details about his connections and contributions to the Fund, his communications with the fund and a "list of all federal and state legislation or regulations the Fund has taken a position on."

Donald Trump

"The confirmation process, starting with your responses to Committee questions before your hearing, is an opportunity for you to dispel the notion that the advocacy you have undertaken on environmental issues as Attorney General of Oklahoma has been directed by and for the benefit of the energy industry," the senators wrote.

A spokesman for Pruitt was not immediately available for comment.

The Democratic Senators who sent the letter are Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse, former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Oregon's Jeff Merkley, New Jersey's Cory Booker, Massachusetts' Ed Markey and Maryland's Ben Cardin.

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Trump's EPA pick, Scott Pruitt, has filed 14 lawsuits against the EPA

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Scott Pruitt

Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's state attorney general and Donald Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), faces the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday.

Pruitt has said of the EPA that "what they do is a disgrace" and argued that the administration over-regulates the economy. As Attorney General, Pruitt sued the EPA many times.

Not surprisingly, Pruitt has faced sharp opposition from environmentalists and their allies on the Senate committee. Here are some key things you need to know about Pruitt and his policy views:

  • Before his election as attorney general in 2010, Pruitt served in the state senate for eight years from 1998 to 2006. Prior to politics he worked as a lawyer in private practice.
  • Pruitt has said he believes, like many other people in the Republican Party including the President-Elect, that the EPA under President Obama has wildly exceeded its authority as a regulatory body. The job of a regulator, Pruitt said in his opening statement to the committee, is to "make things regular," and "should not be for or against any sector of the economy," be it fossil fuels or renewables.
  • He has filed 14 lawsuits against the EPA (some of which are ongoing) during his time as Oklahoma state attorney general and broadly opposed EPA air quality and other environmental efforts across the country. In 2014, for example, Pruitt joined 20 other state attorneys general in an amicus brief opposing a cleanup of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay — 1,400 miles from his home state.
  • Pruitt has more than once sent letters to the EPA on official attorney general letterhead that were written by oil companies. (Senators Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker have raised these letters in the hearings.)
  • He acknowledges that the climate is changing and that humans play some role in it, he said in his opening statement, but maintains that the details, severity, and consequences of climate change are "up for debate."

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Trump plans to ban the EPA from funding science, report says

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pcb contamination pollution epa

Donald Trump plans to ban the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from funding science, and "overhaul" its use of science from outside groups, according to a Monday report published in Axios.

The EPA is the agency charged with protecting America's clean air and water, and under former President Barack Obama, it took significant steps to combat climate change.

Axios reporters Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen say they got a "sneaky peek" at the Trump transition team's action plan for the agency. They did not publish the full plan, but summarized it and included this key excerpt:

"EPA does not use science to guide regulatory policy as much as it uses regulatory policy to steer the science. This is an old problem at EPA. In 1992, a blue-ribbon panel of EPA science advisers that [sic] 'science should not be adjusted to fit policy.' But rather than heed this advice, EPA has greatly increased its science manipulation."

In response, Swan and Allen write, Trump's team plans to ban the EPA from funding its own science, and set new rules about how science can be used in policy decisions.

It's not immediately clear who wrote the action plan, though Axios sources it to the transition team. Trump's transition team was led by Myron Ebell, a man who has made a career denying the science of climate change.

This report landed on the same day as an article published in The Wall Street Journal that reports Trump plans to stop federal agencies from studying the greenhouse gas impacts of new projects.

As Axios notes, all of this overhauling may not be as easy as it sounds. Some EPA rules can't be changed without support from Congress. Furthermore, Trump's administration could face pushback from current EPA staff in disagreement over the proposed direction of the agency.

In November, then-president elect Trump told The New York Times, "Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important."

You can read Axios' full summary of Trump's EPA plan here.

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The EPA, which protects Americans from poison and pollution, has been frozen under Trump

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Scott Pruitt

The Environmental Protection Agency has frozen all new grants and contracts and barred its employees from talking about it with the press or public.

That's according to reports from ProPublica and The Huffington Post as well as information passed anonymously from EPA staff to Business Insider.

Business Insider reached out to the EPA to confirm the reports, as well as a report that President Donald Trump has barred the EPA from funding its own science, but did not immediately receive a response.

The EPA's core mission is to protect Americans from poisons and other dangers in their air, water, and soil. Much of that work happens through private contractors hired by the EPA for services like water-quality testing and cleanups.

With all new grants and contracts frozen, it's unclear how work will continue. Here's what still a mystery:

  • Does the freeze affect the $6.4 billion in active contracts the EPA already has in place?
  • Is the freeze indefinite or temporary?
  • Should we expect a shift in the kinds of projects the EPA takes on or how it handles them?

The Trump administration apparently doesn't intend to answer those questions yet.

EPA employees reportedly received a memo from a member of the agency staff instructing them not to talk to the press or public. It bars employees from issuing press releases, sharing information on agency social media, blogging, putting new information on the agency website, or sending messages on agency listservs, because those messages might leak to the public.

The memo also says that all speaking engagements by agency employees are on hold, pending a review. (You can read the memo in full at The Huffington Post.)

As Business Insider has reported in the past, federal agencies are big and mostly staffed with nonpolitical civil servants. That can provide cover for scientists and other staff members who want to work on controversial issues like climate change, even when a new presidential administration is hostile to their work. There's simply too much going on in too many places for politicians to snuff it all out.

However, the Trump administration has been particularly hostile to the EPA. Trump's pick to lead the agency, Scott Pruitt, is involved in active lawsuits against EPA activities across the country. Pruitt argued in his confirmation hearing that the EPA had far overstepped its bounds as a regulatory agency.

Further, Trump's transition at the EPA was led by Myron Ebell, a man who has made a career of denying the science of climate change.

Ebell, who no longer works with the transition, told ProPublica, "They're trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don't want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first."

SEE ALSO: Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, has said he doesn't believe that smoking kills

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NOW WATCH: A climate change skeptic is leading Trump's EPA transition — but these charts prove that climate change is very real

The Keystone XL Pipeline, which Trump just advanced, will carry the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet

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Tar sands oil canada

President Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders Tuesday to advance construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline.

Activists had previously successfully fought both pipelines — the protest at Standing Rock, which was led by the Native American community, made headlines in 2016.

The Keystone XL Pipeline is slightly older news — Obama blocked its construction in 2015— but it's worth remembering why it made environmentalists so worried.

What is the Keystone XL Pipeline?

The Keystone XL Pipeline would carry Canadian tar sand oil 875 miles from Morgan, Montana to Steele City, Nebraska.

Built by TransCanada, it would allow the company to move its raw product from tar sand extraction sites in Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas.

Tar sand oil is the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet

Tar sand oil does not sit in a cavern underground, waiting for someone to stick a long straw in and suck it up. Instead, the oil is mixed up with the dirt in Alberta's boreal forest (underneath a bunch of trees) which makes extracting it very difficult.

There are two main methods for getting it.

in situ oil sandFirst, there's mining. This covers all the oil sitting in sand near the surface Alberta's oil companies strip away the local forest then dig the sand out of the ground. But the clumpy, sandy mixture would constipate an 875-mile pipeline, so the companies mix it with water diverted from the Athabasca river. Each barrel of bitumen (that's the technical term for the tar sand) gets soaked in 2.4 barrels of water.

Once it's used in mining, much of that water is too poisonous to return to the river, so adds up to billions of gallons of waste. The contaminated liquid ends up sitting in "tailing ponds," where it leaks into the local environment and increases the rate of cancer among people who live nearby.

A second method, billed as greener by the Canadian government and oil interests, is "in-situ" extraction.

In situ extraction actually refers to any method that pulls up bitumen without digging up the earth around it. But the only approach currently in use is Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). SAGD drilling lets oil extractors get at the 80% of the bitumen that's too deep to mine. They pump steam underground through long pipes, which separates bitumen from its surrounding soil. Then they are able to suck it up to the surface through a deep well. Right now, the SAGD method accounts for 53% of production, according to the Canadian government.

SAGD extraction carves up less of the surface than mining, but it comes with its own problems. The biggest is greenhouse gas emissions; All that steam has to be heated, and oil companies do so by burning natural gas. That's burning one fossil fuel to access another.

Meanwhile, the Athabasca River only has so much water to offer, and there's a real threat that the oil sand mines will overuse it without monitoring.

The larger issue for environmentalists? SAGD opens up far more bitumen to extraction than even mining, meaning more carbon-emitting fossil fuel in the pipeline.

The climate risk is severe

AP_080625047842The biggest problem with tar sand is also the reason people who make money from the fossil fuel industry love it: There's a lot it.

If companies extract all the oil that today's technology allows them to, burning it would add 22 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. If technology improves to the point where companies can extract every drop of oil bound up in bitumen, that total would increase to 240 billion. The Alberta tar sand project alone could lead to a global temperature increase of 0.4 degrees Celsius.

Tar sand spills are harder to clean up

Oil pipeline spills are bad, and they happen all the time. They poison drinking water, pollute farmland (which in turn kills farming jobs), and wreck local environments.

But tar sand pipeline spills are worse.

To pump tar sand crude along a pipeline, extractors mix in natural gas liquids to act as a kind of crude laxative.

In 2010, that bitumen-natural gas mixture spilled from a Canadian-owned pipeline into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The liquefied natural gas turned to gas and blew through nearby neighborhood, forcing residents to evacuate. The bitumen sank to the bottom of the river, poisoning 40 miles of water and 4,435 acres of coastline. Five years and $1.2 billion later, it still hadn't been cleaned up.

Even if everything goes as planned, there will still be environmental impacts

Tar sand extraction and refinement is a dirty process, even when there are no spills. In addition to the poisonous water sitting in Alberta, the refinement process produces a black dusty substance called "petcoke." That petcoke piles up in places like Southeast Chicago, waiting to be burned as a cheaper, less efficient coal substitute. And on windy days, those piles get blown around, coating anything nearby in black dust.

If the Keystone XL Pipeline does get built, it will fall to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect Americans from all of these risks. At the moment, however, the EPA isn't issuing any new grants or contracts, and is not responding to inquiries from the press.

Update Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 11:10 am: This article has been updated to include information on SAGD.

SEE ALSO: The EPA, which protects Americans from poison and pollution, has been frozen under Trump

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows all the major oil and gas pipelines in the US

The Trump administration has told the EPA to remove its climate-change data from its website

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Environmental Protection Agency climate change

The Trump administration told the Environmental Protection Agency to take down its website with educational resources and links to climate-change data, according to a Reuters report.

The EPA, a federal agency charged with safeguarding clean, livable air and water, funds and conducts research into the effects of climate change on public health, the environment, and natural disasters.

Much of that data is available on its website and is part of the toolkit scientists use to study the health, safety, and future of the planet.

The White House has not put out an official statement confirming the order, just as it has not confirmed that it has frozen grants and contracts at the agency, that the agency is not allowed to communicate with the public, or that the EPA will be barred from funding original science.

A later report, based again on anonymous sources, suggests Trump's team is "standing down"— for now — from the order. What does that mean? I have no idea!

Reuters writer Valerie Volcovici reported on Wednesday that the news agency heard of the order to take down the website from two agency employees who were defying the gag order.

Scientists are not resting easy. There was a significant effort before Trump took office to download climate data from government websites to private servers. It is not clear whether all of the key data on the EPA website is backed up elsewhere, and researchers encouraged one another over Twitter on Wednesday morning to continue copying as much as possible:

 

Update Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 12:15 p.m.: Inside EPA is reporting that the Trump administration has decided to "stand down" on the website removal plans for now. 

SEE ALSO: The EPA, which protects Americans from poison and pollution, has been frozen under Trump

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NOW WATCH: Volkswagen faces a possible $18 billion EPA fine for cheating on emissions tests

Protesters say a leak in the Dakota Access pipeline, which Trump just advanced, could be a 'death sentence'

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A woman prays in front of the North Dakota State Capitol building.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed executive orders to advance construction of the Dakota Access pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline.

Activists had fought against both pipelines — the protest at the Standing Rock reservation over the Dakota Access pipeline that was led by Native Americans made headlines in 2016. In December, the US Army Corps of Engineers rejected the permit that the project needed for its completion.

But on Tuesday, Trump signed a series of directives aimed at speeding up the pipeline's approval process. One of them ordered an end to what he called "incredibly cumbersome" environmental reviews. Those reviews are seen by many government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as environmentalists, as cornerstones to ensuring the environment is taken into account when new construction projects are ordered.

#NoDAPL and what's to come

aries yumul and friend from the Lummi reservation

Beginning in September, thousands of protesters, including representatives from more than 100 Native American tribes, camped out in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where they endured freezing temperatures and the powerful sprays of a "water cannon" to protest the pipeline's construction.

The project is a proposed 1,172-mile pipe that would shuttle half a million barrels of North Dakota-produced oil to refining markets in Illinois. Proponents of the pipeline say it would lessen dependence on foreign oil while creating jobs and growing domestic industry.

As proposed, the pipeline would pass through North Dakota's Lake Oahe, a burial site sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and a major source of drinking water for the community.

"The main reason it's such a big deal here is that it's going to affect our water supply," Aries Yumul, an assistant principal at North Dakota's Todd County School District and a self-identified water protector with the Oceti Sakowin, the proper name for the people commonly known as the Sioux, told Business Insider in November.

So protesters, whose rallying cry on Twitter was marked by the #NoDAPL hashtag, were joyous when the Army Corps of Engineers, which was in charge of permits for the project, appeared to move against it in December. But as I reported in December, it may have been too early to celebrate.

Here's why environmentalists and people who live and work near the proposed pipeline are so concerned.

Contaminated water is a massive health problem

Should the Dakota Access pipeline leak or burst, the effects could be devastating.

And leak pipelines do. Since 1995, there have been more than 2,000 significant accidents involving oil and petroleum pipelines, adding up to roughly $3 billion in property damage, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration analyzed by The Associated Press. An average of 121 accidents happened in both 2013 and 2014.

oil spill

An in-depth report in 2010 from Worcester Polytechnic Institute that looked at the effects of three major oil spills found increased incidences of cancer and digestive problems in people who had ingested the oil directly (in drinking water) or indirectly (through eating the meat of livestock exposed to the oil).

In addition, people who had used contaminated water for bathing or laundry appeared to experience more skin problems, ranging from mild rashes to severe and lasting eczema and malignant skin cancers.

Most large-scale environmental projects require extensive legal review — and that is what Trump is targeting

The Army Corps of Engineers must comply with several environmental laws in permitting the pipeline, including the National Environmental Policy Act.

Passed in 1970, NEPA basically ensures that the government considers the potential environmental effects of any federal project, like a new highway or airport, before building it.

The Standing Rock Sioux say that the Dakota Access pipeline's review process was not done properly. In a lawsuit it filed in July against the Army Corps of Engineers, the tribe said the permit process was rushed and undertaken largely without its input.

If the pipeline were to leak or burst, it would send oil deep into the Missouri River, the Standing Rock Sioux's primary source of water, which the tribe relies on for everything from bathing to drinking.

For that reason, the tribe says the Army Corps of Engineers could violate not just one, but two laws: NEPA and the Clean Water Act. The 1972 Clean Water Act makes it unlawful to discharge any pollutant from a single identifiable source — such as a pipe — into certain bodies of water without a permit.

Dakota Access oil pipeline UN Summit

"The Missouri River is the tribe's only source of water,"Devashree Saha, a senior policy associate at the Brookings Institution, told me in November. "If this leaks, it is going to spill into the river. So the tribe's legal stance — that they were not adequately consulted, that there are potential water issues here — their legal concerns are strong."

Dakota Access, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, responded to Business Insider's request for comment last fall in an email, saying: "Crude pipelines in the country have a very specific review and approval process that must be followed. Crude/oil lines are approved at the state level, which is why all of the review and environmental analysis was done by the four states through which this pipeline passes. The exception to that is the crossing of waterways and federally owned land, which are under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers to review and approve."

That "specific review and approval process" is precisely what Trump's most recent directive appears to target.

Trump also owned stock in Energy Transfer Partners, according to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The Times added that a Trump spokesperson said last month that Trump had sold all of his stock during the summer, yet Trump has failed to provide any documentation proving the sale.

Signs left by protesters demonstrating against the Energy Transfer Partners Dakota Access oil pipeline sit at the gate of a construction access road where construction has been stopped for several weeks due to the protests near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S. September 6, 2016.  REUTERS/Andrew Cullen

The pipeline was originally designed to run much farther north — near Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. But as Bill McKibben wrote in The New Yorker, officials rerouted it when people there raised concerns that it could jeopardize the community's water supply.

But now, instead of risking Bismarck, the route could threaten the Standing Rock Sioux.

"Our aquifers and rivers are fed by this river," Yumul said. "If it were to get contaminated, it would affect all of the tribal nations. The idea of that ... it would be a death sentence at this point."

SEE ALSO: The Army is exploring alternate routes for the Dakota Access Pipeline

DON'T MISS: The EPA, which protects Americans from poison and pollution, has been frozen under Trump

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows all the major oil and gas pipelines in the US


The Trump administration plans to approve the EPA's scientific findings one-by-one before releasing them

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The Upper Tularik Floodplain in the Bristol Bay watershed in Alaska is seen in an undated handout picture provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Courtesy of Environmental Protection Agency/Handout via REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientific findings by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff will likely face a case-by-case review by the Trump administration before being released, a spokesman for President Donald Trump's transition team told NPR in an interview published on Wednesday.

Doug Ericksen, who oversees communications for the administration's EPA team, said agency scientists were expected to undergo an internal vetting process but did not give specifics.

He also did not say whether such a review would be permanent, according to the interview with National Public Radio taped late on Tuesday.

"We'll take a look at what's happening so that the voice coming from the EPA is one that's going to reflect the new administration," Ericksen said.

According to NPR, any review would violate the EPA's scientific policy published in 2012 that prevents the suppression of agency findings.

Erickson's comments come amid reports that the Trump administration has moved to muzzle employees across a range of federal agencies, seeking to curb the flow of information from several government agencies involved in environmental issues.

The White House also removed former Democratic President Barack Obama's climate initiatives from the website.

Two EPA employees also told Reuters that administration officials have also ordered the agency to remove its webpage on climate change, leaving some workers scrambling to try and save related data.

The moves have alarmed environmental advocates, who also criticized the president's move on Tuesday to clear the way for two controversial oil pipelines: the Keystone XL and Dakota Access projects.

During his campaign, the Republican president called global warming a hoax perpetrated by China and has cast doubt on the degree to which human activity causes climate change. This week he told executives that while he is an environmentalist, related regulations have gotten "out of control."

Some, but not all, of his Cabinet nominees have also cast doubt on climate science. Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said earlier this month that climate change did exist but did not say whether it was related to human activity.

Earlier on Wednesday, protesters with the environmental activist group Greenpeace unfurled a large banner from a construction crane that could be seen from the White House that read "resist."

An adhoc group of scientists is also planning an upcoming protest march in Washington, the Washington Post said in a report on Tuesday.

SEE ALSO: The Keystone XL Pipeline, which Trump just advanced, will carry the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet

DON'T MISS: The EPA, which protects Americans from poison and pollution, has been frozen under Trump

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NOW WATCH: Volkswagen faces a possible $18 billion EPA fine for cheating on emissions tests

We still don't have a clear idea about what Trump is planning to do with the EPA

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Anonymous leaks, rumored gag orders, and apparent threats to basic science have created lots of drama in the first days of Trump's control of the EPA.

But the Trump administration, outside a few less-than-clear comments from Press Secretary Sean Spicer, hasn't actually explained what's going on.

The agency hasgone dark. It's largely stopped answering questions from reporters, cut off online communications, and cancelled public appearances by its staff — apparently due to an alleged gag order from the White House (though Spicer denied Wednesday that any such order exists.)

In the meantime, information leaks out in dribs and drabs from anonymous sources within the agency:

Trump wants to ban the EPA from funding science; he's frozen all EPA new contracts and grants; he's ordered the agency to take down its climate change data; his former transition head says probably just the links are coming down, not the data; actually he isn't taking down the data after all.

Meanwhile, the only sign of life we do get from the agency is a plan to delay 30 regulations from the Obama era for Trump's team to review, including the renewable fuel standard.

How big a deal is all of this? Should you be worried? What the hell is going on? It's literally my job to follow EPA news, and yet myself and other reporters are still in the dark. So it's hard to imagine an average citizen knows what's going on either. 

We do know a little about Trump's feelings about the EPA. Whitehouse.gov's "America First Energy Plan" page promises that, "President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water," which is just vague enough to offer no specific answers to any of these questions, while suggesting that radical enough changes are coming that any leak seems at least plausible.

Scientists, businesses, and people who want to drink clean water are waiting on news about what's going to happen to the agency. Right now, anonymous leaks are controlling the narrative. Trump and his administration could do himself and everyone else a favor by telling us what, precisely, is going on.

SEE ALSO: The EPA just delayed 30 environmental regulations created under Obama — here's what that means

DON'T MISS: Scientists around the world are worried about a Trump team proposal to ax NASA's 58-year mission to study the Earth

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NOW WATCH: This startling animation shows how much Arctic sea ice has thinned in just 26 years

Trump might be backing down from plan to scrub climate data from the EPA's website

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On Tuesday night, Reuters broke the news that the Trump administration had instructed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to scrub its climate data (or at least its links to its climate data) from its website.

Scientists and people interested in climate science reacted strongly to the news, stepping up efforts to download EPA data before any the apparent takedown.

(As of this writing, the page is still up.)

Environmental Protection Agency climate change

The warning of a data wipe came from two anonymous EPA employees who leaked the plan to Reuters, and tracked with previous reporting from other sources like Inside EPA.

But now it seems that the Trump administration has silently backed down, for now, from the secret plan to scrub climate data from EPA.gov.

Inside EPA reports that the administration has decided to "stand down"— for now. 

As we've written before, there's still plenty of looming questions concerning exactly what is going on within Trump's EPA.

SEE ALSO: The EPA just delayed 30 environmental regulations created under Obama — here's what that means

DON'T MISS: The Keystone XL Pipeline, which Trump just advanced, will carry the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet

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NOW WATCH: This startling animation shows how much Arctic sea ice has thinned in just 26 years

The EPA just delayed 30 environmental regulations created under Obama — here's what that means

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Scott Pruitt

The Environmental Protection Agency published paperwork Wednesday to delay 30 environmental regulations created under the Obama administration until March 21.

All 30 regulations were written into the Federal Register before President Donald Trump took office and were due to go into effect before March 21. (Writing a regulation into the Federal Register is a step on the way to making it enforceable.)

The new paperwork, which will also be written into the Federal Register, updates that schedule, citing Trump's freeze on all new regulations.

The delay will offer the Trump administration the opportunity to review all 30 regulations and potentially to take action to block some (or all) of them.

One impact of the delay could be an immediate change to US policy on greenhouse-gas emissions. The renewable-fuel standard, a rule designed to curb greenhouse gasses and support renewable fuels, is among the 30 delayed regulations.

Typically, any new rule in the Federal Register requires a period of public notice and comment — which would apply to the new delay on existing rules. But the EPA cites an exemption for "good cause" in the federal rulemaking procedures. So the delay will happen without public comment.

There have been instances in which good-cause exemptions have been successfully fought in court. In 2004, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a Department of Energy rule delay that cited the good-cause exemption. The DOE wanted more time to review its fuel-efficiency standard without public comment, but the court ruled that "an emergency of DOE's own making" didn't count as good cause.

The delay of these 30 regulations is a rare sign of life from an EPA that has largely gone dark and frozen under the Trump administration, and may no longer be funding science or even sharing climate data with scientists.

SEE ALSO: The Trump administration has told the EPA to remove its climate change data from its website

DON'T MISS: The EPA, which protects Americans from poison and pollution, has been frozen under Trump

AND: Trump is taking advice on the future of the environment from a man who denies basic science

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NOW WATCH: Greenpeace activists scaled a 270-foot crane to hang a gigantic 'resist' banner in plain view of the White House

Big changes could be coming to the EPA — but no one is sure what

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Scott Pruitt

What's happening at the EPA?

It's impossible to know for sure. The agency has stopped all public communications, and is not responding to requests from journalists for information.

What information does reach the public arrives via anonymous sources from within the agency.

Some of it, like a temporary freeze on grants and contracts while the new administration reviews them, has been  confirmed by multiple media outlets (including from an anonymous tip from an EPA staffer passed to Business Insider).

Another claim — that Trump's political staff will review EPA data and findings before they're released — has been refuted by Doug Ericksen, communications director for President Donald Trump's transition team at the EPA.

Some claims appear to go back and forth. Reuters reported on Wednesday morning that Trump's team intended to take down a portion of the EPA's website with scientific information about climate change, sending scientists into a frenzy of downloading data. By the afternoon, Trump's team appeared to "stand down" from the decision, according to online environmental news website InsideEPA. For now, the pages appear to still be up. (Except this one, for some reason. You can see the archived version here.)

There haven't been any meaningful public statements from the administration or the agency on the reports, which may not be wildly unusual in the early days of a new administration. But the mix of silence and disturbing leaks leaves scientists and others who rely on EPA grants and data worried.

"The biggest thing is just not knowing," Charlyn Partridge, a geneticist and ecologist at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, told Business Insider.

One of Partridge's lab's projects is to study and remove "Baby's Breath," an invasive plant species that has colonized dunes of Lake Michigan in western Michigan.

Trump Air Force OneA grant from the EPA pays for the equipment, travel, and labor necessary to collect and remove the plants, and the research helps inform lakeshore restoration projects. Like all EPA-grant funded researchers, her work is subject to a strict auditing process to make sure the money is spent properly.

Another grant's approval is still pending. Partridge said she's heard nothing, except news reports, about what she and the students in her lab can expect to happen to her funding.

"Scientists are used to adapting, whatever happens. But when you have no idea what you're supposed to adapt to, that's when it becomes a bit more complicated," she said.

Other researchers reached for this story said, similarly, that they don't know what to expect. But, given the administration's hostility to climate science, they worry that projects with the word "climate" in their titles are in the most danger.

It's also possible that profound changes are coming to the structure of science within the EPA itself. A transition document obtained Monday by Axios stated that the "EPA does not use science to guide regulatory policy as much as it uses regulatory policy to steer the science."

Republicans, and Trump, have long criticized the EPA. For example. the 2016 Republican Party Platform attacks the agency as being based in "shoddy science, scare tactics, and centralized command-and-control regulation."

A senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who asked to remain anonymous, told Business Insider that scientific researchers in other agencies are watching events at the EPA carefully. But, the scientist said, even senior scientific staff at far-removed wings of the federal government are not yet sure that a purge or scientific censorship won't come their way as well.

Meanwhile, Myron Ebell, the former head of Trump's EPA transition team, called Thursday for cutting the EPA staff from 15,000 to a Nixon-era 5,000. Ebell is the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and has repeatedly called climate scientists "global warming alarmists."

It is as of yet unclear to researchers and the public whether scientists working on climate science, or any other issue, within the EPA, are about to lose their jobs. 

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