All the best science-fiction movies

PRESENTED BY KIRCHTURMFALKE

Tonight is a great night to get educated. At 6 pm, the Natural History Museum hosts The End of Green Capitalism? at the People’s Forum in New York City and webcast online, with Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Alyssa Battistoni, Brett Christophers, Ashley Dawson, and Kai Bosworth. At 8 pm, CodePink holds the webinar Disarming Earth Day: The Poison of US Bases & Global Military Presence.

At his confirmation hearing to head NASA yesterday, tech billionaire Jared “Ears” Isaacman really really really really really did not want to admit that Elon Musk was in his meeting with Trump when Isaacman was offered the NASA post. The Musk and SpaceX fanboy also refused to say “climate change” or “global warming,” but then again, only Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked him about NASA’s important earth science work; instead, every other senator wanted to know whether he wanted to go to the Moon or Mars more.

No one, for example, mentioned that Trump had just unconstitutionally eliminated the U.S. Global Change Research Program, tasked by Congress to release the National Climate Assessment every four years, or eliminated $4 million in grants to Princeton for climate modeling with the justification that the scientific projects “perpetuate narratives” about “alleged changes,” and whose “focus on alarming climate scenarios fosters fear rather than rational, balanced discussion.”

When asked about science, Isaacman revealed his sources: “All the best science-fiction movies have something like helium-3 as the economic justification for an enduring presence on the moon.”

Helium-3 mining is in science fiction movies (and books, first, but that requires reading) because it’s a looney pipe dream. Isaacman is a man-child who wants to play with giant rockets and live in a gleaming futurist movie, with the rest of us forced to deal with reality.

Trump has seriously raised his assault on climate action, trying to eliminate all state programs with a new unhinged executive order. The order specifically targets the Climate Superfund initiatives of Vermont and New York and California’s carbon cap-and-trade program:

“This is the fossil fuel industry's desperation on full display,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Make Polluters Pay. “They're so afraid of facing evidence of their deception in court that they’ve convinced the president to launch a federal assault on state sovereignty. We are watching corporate capture of government unfold in real time.”

The EO is cartoonishly dystopian, but unfortunately, it’s the cartoon we’re in.

Because it’s the health agency that oversees filtration masks, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has been effectively shuttered, with nearly all of its employees in its offices in Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Morgantown, Pittsburgh, Denver, Anchorage, Spokane, and Atlanta fired, including the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory and the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program. NIOSH’s National Firefighter Registry for Cancer has been shut down.

At 10 am, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds its nomination hearing for the aptly named pro-drilling Republican operative Wells Griffith to be Under Secretary of Energy, IBM Research director and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab co-chair Dario Gil to be Under Secretary of Energy for Science, and the aggressive oil lobbyist and Project 2025 co-author Kathleen Sgamma to be director of the Bureau of Land Management.

Also at 10, the Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing on deviations from Standard Time entitled Should We Lock the Clock? On this issue, Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Markey hold the anti-science, anti-health position in support of permanent Daylight Saving Time, and chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) invited Dr. Karin Johnson to present the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s support for permanent Standard Time.

The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee holds a nomination hearing for six candidates for HUD, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Commerce and the Senate Finance Committee holds its nomination hearing for William Kimmett to be Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and Trump’s personal tax fiddler Ken Kies to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy.

Poor Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) failed to force his Medicaid-slashing budget resolution through his caucus last night—the extremists want bigger cuts, and the (comparative) moderates don’t want to blow up Medicaid.

Former Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.), a climate advocate turned crypto shill, has launched a campaign to challenge Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

The final word goes to Dr. Michael Mann, on the destruction of the U.S. Global Change Research Program:

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  Nominations of Wells Griffith to be Under Secretary of Energy, Dario Gil to be Under Secretary of Energy for Science, and Kathleen Sgamma to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management

• 10 AM: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
  Should We Lock the Clock?

• 10 AM: Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee
  Nominations for HUD, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Commerce

• 10 AM: Senate Finance Committee
  Nominations of William Kimmett to be Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and Ken Kies to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy

Climate Action Today:

• 6 PM: Natural History Museum
  The End of Green Capitalism?

• 8 PM: CodePink
  Disarming Earth Day: The Poison of US Bases & Global Military Presence

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.