Cool and nice this late-afternoon Sunday — the in-between day of the holiday weekend — here in California’s Central Valley as we await the sounds of fireworks exploding in the minds of our dog and cat population, and probably other animal types, too, but I’m only familiar with them.

Anyway, slow news day, and came across this good, deep-dive into SCOTUS trying to let fry our planet:

The Court had no business taking this case at all, let alone to convert the matter into a platform to enable themselves to micro-manage future EPA regulatory efforts. https://t.co/auVWEwfsLg

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) July 3, 2022

In the order handicapping the EPA in the status of emission reduction in the under-powering fight against climate change, and like it lot of other shit nowadays, the asshole so-called ‘justices’ are full of their lying bullshit.
Simon Lazarus, Jimmy Carter’s associate director of White House Domestic Policy Staff, has a must-read, in-depth look at the situation at The New Republic today — some snips:

Further, the decision manifests — indeed, as pointedly observed by liberal Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, it reaffirms — that, on global warming-related matters, these ultra-conservative justices’ modus operandi has “from the beginning” been to “obstruct” EPA, and to conform national policy to the agendas of their Republican patrons and sponsors, and the megadonors who fund those sponsors who, lest we forget, funded the campaigns that secured these justices’ nominations and confirmations.
Forget the text or purpose of relevant law, fidelity to traditional conservative “textualist” pretensions, or even the interests of relevant big businesses, in this case the electric power industry, which strongly supported EPA’s climate strategy.

However edgy these conclusions may seem to those who lionized the status quo ante, they are compelled by three undeniable — and undenied — aspects of this decision to gut the nation’s enacted program to address global warming.

First, the Court had no business taking this case at all, under longstanding conventions, embraced across the ideological spectrum, certainly by judges purporting to be conservative—let alone to convert the matter into a platform to enable themselves to micro-manage future EPA regulatory efforts.
…
Second, on the merits of its de facto advisory opinion favorable to EPA’s opponents, the ultra-conservative justices not only flouted — overtly — the actual text of the Clean Air Act, as well as the undisputed purpose of the law and its framers.
They concocted a workaround by unfurling novel doctrinal excuses for shelving the textualist-originalist credos to which conservative self-proclaimed “constitutionalists” profess fidelity.
…
The third eyebrow-raising aspect of the ultra-conservatives’ decision to bludgeon the EPA’s (and Congress’) efforts to combat global warming is the interests they deployed such brazen activism to protect. Reflecting conventional wisdom, The New York Times headlined that the decision was a victory for “business interests challeng[ing] regulations.” But, as noted in an interview by Sean Donahue, a veteran of high-stakes environmental Supreme Court advocacy, “One of the amazing things about this case is that no actual regulated entity petitioned for [the Supreme Court to hear the case] and the power industry almost unanimously supported EPA.”
Defending EPA’s approach to regulating greenhouse gases as parties was a phalanx of mega-power companies, including Con Edison, Exelon, National Grid USA, and Pacific Gas & Electric; counsel for these companies—Beth Brinkmann of the elite Washington, D.C. firm Covington & Burling, and a former senior Justice Department official—split oral argument time with the U.S. Solicitor General.

Go read the whole piece — those justices are “political hacks.”

And in frighteningly close and precarious our environmental situation was noted this past week — one aspect found in a lot of current studies on climate change are words to the effect that shit is worse than previous research had indicated/figured, and so it goes for sea-level rise due to global warming. Earth’s sea levels remain way-steady for 3,200 years — until 1900.
Maximum key point from the University of South Florida last week: ‘“The results reported in our study are alarming,” said lead author Bogdan P. Onac, geology professor at USF. “The sea-level rise since the 1900s is unprecedented when compared to the natural change in ice volumes over the last 4,000 years. This implies that if global temperatures continue to rise, sea levels could eventually reach higher levels than scientists previously estimated.”‘

Again for the CGI and not the science:

In freak-reality, a much-harder grind down, with heat domes and flooding and tornadoes and … you get the point.
Despite the obvious, once again here we are…

(Illustration out front: ‘Tower of Babel,’ 1928 woodcut by MC Escher, and found here.)