Author’s note: With a horde of narcissists, racists, fascists, Christian nationalists, criminals, and professional liars — aided and abetted by a swarm of groveling enablers and admirers — trashing the United States, we find ourselves at a critical crossroads. Do we support fascism or the Greatest Generation that beat this disease? I choose the latter. In light of that, I asked our editor if I could write a twice-weekly column. While I certainly don’t believe my humble words are going to produce significant change, if any at all, I hope they add some weight to the pushback against this hostile takeover and provide a voice for concerned others who don’t have such a platform.

No two snowflakes are alike, unless they are of the MAGA variety. This quick to melt mixture of toxicity and ignorance is so frightened of climate change — not the crisis, but the word “climate” — their king is scrubbing the seven-letter vulgarity from government.

One environmental scientist told The Guardian a grant that had previously been awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation for climate research was withdrawn until the work was retitled to remove the swear.

“The explanation was that the priorities of the current administration don’t include climate change and other topics considered ‘woke,’” the scientist said.

The Mad King, who has called the climate crisis a “giant hoax,” has already stripped mentions of climate change from government websites. A widespread funding freeze for federally backed scientific work has also been imposed.

Let us wallow in stupidity.

The regime’s hostility toward letters and vowels extends overseas, via the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, which offers some 8,000 grants annually to American and foreign teachers and scholars. The chancellor of the University of Helsinki told The Guardian that descriptions for Fulbright grants have been changed to remove the phrases “climate change,” “equitable society,” “inclusive societies,” and “women in society.”

At the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that supports science research, teams have been combing through active projects looking for dozens of words, including “women,” “biased,” and “equality,” that may violate the regime’s sensibilities.

The Mad King’s limited vocabulary is having real-world impacts. A lawsuit filed last week claims the U.S. Department of Agriculture broke the law when it purged government websites of climate-related information and disabled access to key datasets, making it hard for farmers to access information on climate adaptation strategies and financial assistance.

MAGA snowflakes are terrified of knowledge, expertise, people of color, and women. They love spewing idiocy.

Take the Mad King’s Department of Energy secretary, whom seven Democrats supported. The former head of a fossil fuel company recently told the regime’s propaganda division there are upsides to raising the planet’s temperature to levels not reached in 125,000 years.

Chris Wright said a warmer planet with more carbon dioxide is better for plants. He failed to mention it’s worse for humans. Plants also like water, but most don’t want to be swimming in it. And, unsurprisingly, the science isn’t that simple.

In fact, the planet is losing its appetite for soaking up carbon dioxide, according to research published last month. Analysis of atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements show that Earth’s plants and soils reached peak carbon dioxide sequestration in 2008 and absorption has been declining by an average of 0.25% annually for the past 17 years.

David Des Marais, an MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering who studies how plants respond to their environments, has noted that plant growth is too complex for one-size-fits-all assumptions.

Last year Des Marais told the MIT climate reporting team that the geologic record from hundreds of millions of years ago shows the planet had an atmospheric carbon dioxide level in excess of 2,000 parts per million, compared to around 280 in pre-industrial times and about 420 now.

Although plenty of plants lived through that period, humans did not. If our bipedal predecessors had been around, the would have had to survive year-round scorching temperatures. “This is not a period we would ever want to visit,” Des Marais said.

By the way, if humans breathe in too much O₂, it leads to hyperoxia and can cause oxygen poisoning.

Wright also said cold kills more people than heat. Perhaps we could get Snow Miser and Heat Miser to test his theory with a fight to the death. (If you have never watched The Year Without a Santa Claus, I don’t want to talk to you.)

The climate crisis, of course, also kills via floods, wildfires, more intense and severe weather, infectious disease, vector-borne disease, prolonged drought, malnutrition, and conflict. Research published in January reported that without extreme mitigation efforts the rise in heat deaths will substantially outweigh the decrease in cold ones.

Advantage Heat Miser.

Wright, a fossil fuel addict, concluded this about the climate crisis: “The bottom line is, it’s just nowhere near the world’s biggest problem today. Not even close.”

On this we agree. The biggest problem we face today is the Mad King and his court of jesters, of which Wright is one.

A few days before his appearance on Fox Business, Wright spoke remotely at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London. It’s an event and an operation run by climate deniers. The windmills-cause-cancer crowd.

Wright again downplayed the climate crisis threat, and claimed that climate action is part of a plot to “grow government power” and “shrink human freedom.”

MAGAs exhibit little self-awareness.

“The world today runs on coal, oil, and gas, and it’s been a tremendous success,” Wright exalted, urging that we “… get out of the way of the production, export, and enhancement of our volumes of coal, oil, and gas.”

One early MAGA, who would later fall out of favor with the Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight because he was an inadequate bootlicker, blamed sea level rise on the eroding California coastline and rocks falling off the White Cliffs of Dover.

“Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up,” Rep. Mo Brooks, MAGA-Ala., said during a 2018 hearing held by the House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Erosion is a symptom of sea level rise, not a cause. The science-fair flunkies nevertheless persist.

The MAGA zealot now in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, whom three Democrats supported, has called for a rewrite of the agency’s finding that determined planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health, according to The Associated Press.

In 2024 two-thirds of the planet’s surface was scorched by record-breaking heat for much of the year. In oceans and on land worldwide, records for the monthly average temperature were repeatedly smashed — in some cases by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit.

Global heating is accelerating the melting of Earth’s mountain glaciers, according to a study published last month. The extensive research found them shrinking more than twice as fast as in the early 2000s.

I can feel my freedom shrinking.

Besides words, phrases, and facts it finds unnerving, the regime is against building codes that protect the public from a raging crisis. The Mad King has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop construction standards that help houses survive hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes.

MAGAs like to attack FEMA and building codes, claiming such regulations are burdensome. Of course, the strengthening of building codes to match a rapidly changing world are opposed by the homebuilding and construction industries. Profit over safety. (Research has found modern building codes have saved billions of dollars in damage from natural disasters.)

A recent Mad King executive order has appointed a review council to examine FEMA’s work, which he accused of political bias and of denying aid to his supporters.

During another Oval Office temper-tantrum, the Baby-in-Chief recently ordered the U.S. General Services Administration to disconnect its electric vehicle charging stations.

Would someone please check the Mad King’s diaper. I think it needs changing. And check the walls for ketchup.

Note: Yale Climate Connections has reported cuts to weather and climate research could put public safety at risk, slow emergency disaster response, and weaken resilience efforts.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.