The Right Hand Knoweth not what the Extreme-Right Hand Doeth

So, then.  Donald Trump looks set to appoint a noted climate-change sceptic denier to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency when he assumes office in January.

Joy.

On Facebook, Robert Reich gives a quick précis of Scott Pruitt's credentials.  They... um... they aren't convincing:

1. As attorney general of Oklahoma Pruitt is a close ally of the fossil fuel industry. A 2014 investigation by The Times found that energy lobbyists drafted letters for Pruitt to send to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, criticizing Obama's environmental rules. The close ties have paid off for Pruitt politically: Harold G. Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Energy, an Oklahoma oil and gas company, was a co-chairman of Mr. Pruitt’s 2013 re-election campaign.
2. Pruitt shares Trump’s view that Obama’s signature global warming policy, the Clean Power Plan, is a “war on coal.”
3. Pruitt has been a key architect of the legal battle against Obama’s climate change rules -- spearheading a 28-state lawsuit against them. A decision is pending in a federal court and is widely expected to advance to the Supreme Court.
4. Pruitt shares Trump’s view that the established science of human-caused global warming is a hoax. “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” Pruitt wrote in National Review earlier this year.
5. Pruitt also shares Trump’s view that the Paris accord, committing nearly every nation to taking action to fight climate change, should be canceled.
6. Pruitt is well positioned to help Trump dismantle the E.P.A. altogether. Like Trump, Pruitt doesn't believe the federal government has a role in setting environmental policy.

What could possibly go wrong?

Now, I'm going to leave it to other people in other posts to take Pruitt's and Trump's positions apart forensically.  Rather, I'm going to nod towards this story, from the BBC website:

Green Delight as Trump's Irish Wall Plans Withdrawn

This does not refer to any plan by the incoming regime to emulate the Mexico wall by building one along the Emerald Isle - though there's a nice historical echo about the idea of a wall being built to separate green and orange.  No.  This is it:

Donald Trump's plan to erect a huge sea wall at his Irish golf course has been withdrawn in the light of stiff opposition.

The original application cited rising sea levels as a result of climate change as a key reason for the protective barrier.

The emphasis there is mine.  A man who has just appointed a climate-change denier to the EPA, and who is at best lukewarm on the matter himself, has been citing climate change as a reason for building a wall to protect a golf-course.  Good lord.

OK: I admit that one can accept the reality of climate change without having to accept that humans have anything to do with it.  But since there's a good overlap between the climate scientists who present the evidence for global warming and the climate scientists who present the evidence that it's human activity that's making the overwhelming difference, it takes some significant mental gymnastics to pare the two.

Moreover, while there are some impressive mental gymnasts out there, Trump isn't one of them.  That is to say: by "mental gymnastics", I mean the ability to hold to p and the apparently contradictory q in a manner that is coherent, thereby showing that the apparent contradiction is nothing but apparent.  Trump might hold p and q, but this is because he appears not to give a stuff about remaining coherent.

And so we have the sight of a man seeking to protect one of his commercial holdings from the effect of an environmental problem that will be exacerbated by his own policies.

Bravo.