The 436 scientists who spend their days testing new vehicles and enforcing environmental rules at the National Fuel Emissions Lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan, face a very uncertain future. The lab sits in the crosshairs of President Trump's proposed budget, which eliminates 99 percent of its funding, as part of a 31-percent cut to the overall... EPA’s Ann Arbor test lab threatened; emission tests in the balance
The 436 scientists who spend their days testing new vehicles and enforcing environmental rules at the National Fuel Emissions Lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan, face a very uncertain future. The lab sits in the crosshairs of President Trump's proposed budget, which eliminates 99 percent of its funding, as part of a 31-percent cut to the overall...
California began regulating vehicle emissions within its boundaries before the Environmental Protection Agency was even a gleam in President Richard Nixon's eye. Since that agency was founded in 1971 with an executive order by Nixon, the state has retained the right to set its own—more stringent—emission rules. Now, under President...
If you're a journalist, it's almost impossible to ignore political news these days. So if readers can resolutely avoid national and local coverage of politics, consider yourselves lucky. That said, sometimes a new political angle can make a dry story on car-buyer data more interesting than expected. DON'T MISS: Sales of 'green' cars remain low; is...
While much of the nation's capital is preoccupied with the unpredictable Trump administration and its possible ties to Russia, the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency generates less news coverage. That's not to say there hasn't been news. Administrator Scott Pruitt is proceeding swiftly with a radical plan to restructure—critics...
On Saturday, tens of thousands of people joined a Science March in Washington, D.C., to support use of data-based science to set government policy on climate change. The day before, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removed detailed climate data and scientific information because it appeared to conflict with the "beliefs" of the Trump...
The Trump administration is either having a robust internal debate on its climate positions or floundering incoherently as various interests vie for the president's attention. Its intentions for the Paris Climate Agreement that the U.S. signed last year remain entirely unclear. On Monday, Trump's EPA administrator Scott Pruitt reportedly asked a...
The current EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, does not accept the scientific consensus on human contribution to climate change, though he has given some contradictory statements on that matter. His views correspond closely to those of his boss, President Donald Trump, who notoriously compared the science to bovine excrement in a tweet and called...
As the Trump Administration nears its 100th day, it seems fair to say that it is still emitting mixed messages on multiple issues, from foreign policy to climate change. On that latter, it's important to reiterate that the president and many of his appointed agency and department heads deny the science of climate change. On the campaign trail, the...
It's mixed news these days for those concerned about continuing manmade climate change. On the one hand, global carbon emissions were flat for the third year in a row, increasing numbers of global corporations have lined up to support climate-change reduction efforts, and electric power is getting cleaner as coal slowly ebbs as a fuel despite the...
It is widely accepted in the energy industry that U.S. coal production will fall as a percentage of the total electric grid mix. That has little to do with its high carbon footprint per kilowatt-hour generated; it is largely due to far greater supplies of much cheaper fracked natural gas. It is also widely accepted that renewable energy sources...
The Clean Power Plan’s future looks uncertain at best under President Donald Trump. The commander-in-chief appears to be urging American utility companies to pivot back towards burning coal to produce electricity. Ending the so-called “war on coal” is intended to create jobs in the mining sector, at the expense of the...
The prospect of ongoing operations as usual continues to darken for the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a detailed internal budget document published in the The Washington Post, the Trump administration wants to eliminate virtually all federal funding for the agency’s vehicle emissions and fuel-economy testing budgets. If the...
The new U.S. president, Donald Trump, is working to eradicate every Obama policy to limit the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Having variously called the science behind climate change a "Chinese plot" to hurt the U.S. and referred to it using an expletive for bovine excrement, this shouldn't come as a surprise. He pledged to do...
It was clear well before November's election that candidate Donald Trump did not believe in the accepted science of climate change. He referred to it using an excremental epithet, and also claimed that it was a Chinese hoax created to hurt the U.S. Scientists around the world and the majority of Americans accept the science of climate change, but...
The auto industry tends to oppose, viscerally and viciously, all attempts to regulate any aspect of its products or business operations for any reason. With President Trump in the White House, the industry has succeeded in getting the comment period reopened for the EPA emission standards finalized ahead of schedule, covering vehicles in model...