Republicans Are Focusing on a New Economic Threat: ESG Scores



Zach C. Cohen
Thu, August 11, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- To Blake Masters, the newly minted Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, ESG scores are an existential threat to the US economy along with inflation -- an issue worth campaigning on as ardently as securing the border, preventing voter fraud and challenging Big Tech.

“They represent a further merger of government and corporation,” Masters said, comparing ESG scores to the tactics of the Chinese Communist Party in a statement to Bloomberg Government on Wednesday. “These scores have absolutely no place in our country.”

Masters’ advocacy is part of a growing movement among Republicans to make ESG scores -- the grading of companies’ performance based on their environmental and societal effects, as well as their governance structure -- a cultural issue alongside Democrats’ social justice and environmental advocacy. Those Republicans could seek legislative avenues to limit use of the scores if they take control of the next Congress.

Masters, who’s challenging Sen. Mark Kelly (D) in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, has blasted ESG scores at least 10 times on the campaign trail in recent months, according to audio and video recordings of Masters’ speeches reviewed by Bloomberg Government.

“I think we need to ban ESG scores,” Masters told the City of Maricopa Republican Club last month. “And that’s my pledge to you. We’ll try to figure out how to do it.”

Addressing the Mohave County Republican Committee Picnic last month, Masters called ESG scores one of the country’s “new and modern threats.” In May, he warned the SaddleBrooke Republican Club of ESG scores as “new stuff coming across the transom” worthy of conservatives’ attention.

“We have to not just defend against this stuff, because we’ll lose,” Masters told a July meeting of Sedona-based conservatives called Citizens for America. “We have to affirmatively take back from the left.”

Effort in Congress

If elected, Masters could seek to limit the incentives for companies to value factors other than their bottom line.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has oversight of some firms that offer ESG scores and a Democratic chairperson, is unlikely to ban the scores or severely restrict firms that offer them. But a Republican-controlled Congress could pressure the agency to ramp up its scrutiny of the ratings or stop it from taking actions to encourage ESG scores, which socially conscious investors use to compare companies.

ESG scores have been around for about two decades but only attracted negative political attention more recently. One of ESG’s most prominent critics is Republican megadonor Peter Thiel, who is backing Masters’ campaign. Masters’ refrain on the campaign trail may be replicated by other like-minded candidates.

Masters started speaking against ESG on the campaign trail after Thiel railed against the scores at a Bitcoin conference in April.

At the conference, Thiel, for whom Masters worked as COO and who funds a pro-Masters super PAC, called ESG “the real enemy” of the biggest cryptocurrency in a market that’s largely escaped government regulation. Cryptocurrencies, which largely escape government regulation, tend to receive low scores because of their electricity demands for production.

“ESG is just a hate factory, it’s a factory for naming enemies,” Thiel said. “We should not be allowing them to do that.”

Days later, Masters, who along with his wife owned at least $1.5 million worth of cryptocurrency as of his latest personal financial disclosure last fall, began raising ESG scores on the campaign trail. He promised Fox News in April that he would “ban ESG scores” as well as “wokeness in the Fortune 500.” He made similar comments to Fox News again in May and when he appeared on the podcasts of conservative radio hosts Steve Bannon, Jesse Kelly, Mike Russell, and Rob Hunter.

Legislative Avenues

Republicans have turned back a Labor Department nominee in protest of the Biden administration’s advocacy for prioritizing ESG in retirement investing. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a member of the Banking Committee, recently asked the SEC to bar its recent former employees from helping companies comply with new ESG regulations.

Lawmakers have also used legislation that funds the SEC to discourage ESG rulemaking. The agency for years has been subject to appropriations bills that have barred it from creating rules that would force companies to disclose their political spending.

Other lawmakers have sought standalone measures, such as Rep. Troy Nehls’ (R-Texas) bill that would bar requirements that publicly traded companies disclose or provide greenhouse gas emissions (H.R. 8507).

At a primary debate hosted by FreedomWorks, Masters used his opposition to ESG scoring to set himself apart from his opponents, calling himself “the only candidate that understands and is addressing the new and modern threats we face.”

“Pretty soon, you watch, we’re going to have a young and dynamic America First caucus in the US Senate,” Masters said. “We’re going to change the way that place works.”

Masters told the City of Maricopa Republican Club that he’s already made inroads with one of Congress’ most strident ESG opponents, discussing with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) ways to hamper ESG scores. Cotton last week declined to comment on his conversations with Masters, and a spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

ESG raters operate in a gray regulatory area. The US doesn’t have specific rules for ESG scores.

Firms that provide credit rating services are required to register with the SEC and make disclosures about their activities in an effort to root out fraud. These firms include Moody’s Corp. and S&P Global Inc., which offer traditional credit ratings along with ESG scores. But ESG score providers such as MSCI Inc. aren’t required to register with the SEC under credit rating agency rules.

SEC examiners earlier this year reported they’ve seen potential conflicts of interest and other risks at credit rating agencies that provide ESG products. The agency also has warned investors to be cautious about considering ESG scores when investing.

(Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg Government, offers sustainability ratings and data. Additionally, Bloomberg has a partnership with MSCI to create ESG and other indexes for fixed-income investment.)

Recent SEC Enforcement Hints at Looming Crackdown on ESG Claims

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Aug. 10, 2022, 3:00 AM

• SEC chair faces pressure to fight misleading ESG disclosures
• Agency’s ESG Task Force has helped on at least three cases

A new SEC task force to police corporate environmental, social and governance disclosures is gradually ramping up enforcement, putting companies on notice.

The Securities and Exchange Commission created its Climate and ESG Task Force a year and a half ago. The unit has mostly kept working behind the scenes. But in the last four months, it has helped bring at least three enforcement actions, according to agency records.

Companies that have faced allegations of misleading ESG claims include Bank of New York Mellon Corp., health insurance distributor Benefytt Technologies Inc., and Brazilian mining company Vale S.A.

The SEC is working on new rules to combat bogus ESG claims by investment funds and to force companies to disclose how climate change affects their operations. New rules or not, SEC Chair Gary Gensler is facing pressure from Democrats and investor advocates to guard against misleading corporate disclosures about climate change and other ESG issues.

The task force’s actions, which started to become public this spring, are likely just the beginning, with more cases expected soon, corporate lawyers told Bloomberg Law. SEC investigations often take more than a year to complete, they said.

The SEC’s fiscal year-end in September traditionally brings a flurry of cases, said Kevin Muhlendorf, a Wiley Rein LLP partner and former agency lawyer, who advises companies on ESG matters.

“I don’t think it’s all bark and no bite,” Muhlendorf said of the task force. “Anytime you create one of these task forces, there’s going to be actions.”

More enforcement actions also may come with help from the SEC’s Divisions of Corporation Finance and Examinations. The units are busy reviewing company disclosures and investment firms with an eye on what’s said about ESG, said Amy Greer, a former SEC lawyer and co-chair of Baker & McKenzie LLP’s North American financial regulation and enforcement practice. The staff in the units can send information about potential wrongdoing to the SEC’s Enforcement Division, which must use existing rules to bring ESG cases since the new regulations are still not in place.

“The fact that things are not out there for public consumption in a meaningful way does not mean that the regulated community does not have the message because it does,” she said.

An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment.

‘Stepping Up’

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. may be the task force’s next announced case.

The SEC is investigating claims the banking giant’s funds didn’t align with ESG metrics touted in marketing material, Bloomberg News reported in June.

The report came after the agency announced in May that BNY Mellon agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle claims of ESG misstatements concerning its funds, without admitting or denying any wrongdoing.

Former Acting SEC Chair Allison Lee launched the task force with 22 members in March 2021, as newly empowered Democrats and investor advocates pushed to put ESG at the top of the agency’s agenda. The SEC soon after told fund managers it saw problems with how they handled ESG issues.

The task force was directed to find public companies that dupe investors about their environmental risks or engage in other ESG-related misconduct.

The agency credited the task force for assistance in bringing lawsuits against Benefytt and Vale.

“I’m pleased to see the talented staff in the ESG Task Force stepping up its efforts to help the Enforcement Division combat fraud in this growing space,” said Lee, who left the SEC in July.

Quantity v. Quality

Some corporate lawyers told Bloomberg Law they question whether the task force is fully living up to its expectations.

A July SEC order settling the Benefytt case didn’t mention ESG. The only reference to ESG came in a press release that said the task force assisted with the matter.

Benefytt and its former CEO, Gavin Southwell, hid tens of thousands of consumer complaints from investors when it was a public company known as Health Insurance Innovations Inc., the SEC said.

Southwell and Benefytt agreed to pay more than $12 million to resolve the matter, without admitting or denying any wrongdoing.

Greer, who represented Benefytt, said the task force’s involvement with her client’s case was a “head-scratcher.” She said she hopes the SEC focuses more on cases that have what she sees as stronger links to the space.

“Don’t go for quantity over quality in an area that’s this important to you,” Greer said.

The SEC was more explicit about ESG-related allegations in its complaint against Vale filed in April.

The iron ore producer deceived investors about the safety of its dams before one collapsed in 2019, the SEC said in the complaint. The collapse killed 270 people and caused “immeasurable environmental and social harm,” according to the complaint. Company sustainability reports and ESG webinars claimed safety auditors hadn’t found any problems with its dams, the SEC said.

Vale has disputed the allegations. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Few Tools

The SEC has few tools designed to bring ESG cases. No rules specifically ban misleading or incomplete ESG disclosures.

The agency invoked broad antifraud laws to help bring cases against Benefytt, Vale, and BNY Mellon. The SEC also has climate disclosure guidance at its disposal. The 2010 guidance reminds companies to make disclosures about climate change, if material to their businesses.

But the SEC’s proposed ESG rules may give the agency more ammunition. Some rules, which could be finalized in the fall, would require companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and make other climate disclosures. Other rules also in development would require ESG-focused funds to have at least 80% of their assets aligned with that strategy.

“What the rulemaking will help with is putting all those disclosures in a consistent, comparable format that would allow us to more easily further our investigations,” SEC Enforcement Division Director Gurbir Grewal told lawmakers in July.

Shoehorning Cases

Sanjay Wadhwa, the task force head, has long been known as an extremely aggressive SEC lawyer, said David Kornblau, a Dentons partner and former SEC lawyer.

Wadhwa, who also is the SEC Enforcement Division’s deputy director, has racked up a lengthy list of victories in cases over insider trading and other corporate wrongdoing since he joined the agency in 2003.

The SEC lawyer has a “tenacious approach” to enforcement, Grewal said when Wadhwa was promoted to deputy director last year.

Wadhwa now is tasked with rooting out wrongdoing in a space without tailored rules and a clear target. The SEC’s 2021 risk alert to fund managers said it defined ESG “in the broadest sense to encompass terms such as ‘socially responsible investing,’ ‘sustainable,’ ‘green,’ ‘ethical,’ ‘impact,’ or ‘good governance.’”

“They will be on the lookout for cases that can be shoehorned into an ESG theme,” Kornblau said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Ramonas in Washington at aramonas@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Roger Yu at ryu@bloomberglaw.com, Melissa B. Robinson at mrobinson@bloomberglaw.com

'Unruly Planet' explores the human meaning of 'home' and what it will take to defend ours


Joan Meiners, Arizona Republic
Wed, August 10, 2022 

Suzette García's drawer cabinet stands amid rubble from her destroyed mobile home in south Scottsdale

Madeline Ostrander's "At Home on an Unruly Planet" is a breath of fresh air in a world increasingly polluted by fossil fuels, a moment of calm in our most tempestuous existential crisis.

Through chapters chronicling four challenges Americans in different parts of the country are currently experiencing as a result of climate change, the Seattle-based journalist documents our unraveling natural world in narratives that feel like a bedtime story, interspersed with essays about the future that feel like hope.

In Part One of the 352-page book, released August 2 by Henry Holt and Company Publishers, readers learn about a community in Washington state that comes together to study and respond to worsening western wildfires; about historic preservationists in Florida racing to save one of America's oldest cities from being claimed by rising seas; about an Alaskan village forced to flee its eroding river banks; and about residents trying to thrive amid sun-eclipsing refinery explosions in the shadow of northern California's Mount Tamalpais.

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Part Two navigates how these regions are working to solve their problems, experienced so far in a global patchwork but created primarily by richer nations burning fossil fuels for energy, emitting greenhouse gases into the shared atmosphere that raise its average temperature.

Ostrander punctuates these somber chapters with meditations on the meaning of "home" throughout history, for both humans and other animals. In between introducing us to a community trying to avoid burning down and one struggling to stay above sea water, she walks us through the etymology of homesickness.

The term "solastalgia," for example, invokes a combination of a sense of nostalgia for the past, the solace of a familiar place and the loneliness of being estranged from one's homeland (even if you don't leave but it, instead, becomes unlivable around you).

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Every chapter — nearly every page — is rich with facts, context and compelling real-life characters that help drive home the point that these situations are becoming more dire and common and that, in many cases, available solutions have been blocked or overlooked.

The book is a road map to climate empathy and an instruction manual on how and why we must all do better, together, before these carbon-driven catastrophes start lapping at the rest of our doorsteps.
Details of a disaster

With wildfire, Ostrander explains how factors dating back to Columbus' 1492 arrival on the continent and introduction of Old World diseases resulted in Indigenous knowledge about management of wildfire-adapted ecosystems being lost, ignored or usurped.

Native populations have traditionally limited the potential for deadly and destructive wildfires by conducting purposeful, smaller burns — also called prescribed fire, Indigenous burning or good fire — to clear the landscape of the undergrowth that fuels larger modern fires.

"It's humans' responsibility to manage fire on our landscapes," a California ecologist told Ostrander. "It's how we manage for future generations. We don't leave them a fuel-choked tinderbox."

Many Arizona experts have echoed this evaluation as wildfires have increasingly become a social and economic burden across the West. Ostrander writes about how the 2011 Wallow Fire, still Arizona's largest, invoked a resurgence of the term solastalgia, as interviews with survivors unveiled layers of climate grief and environmental melancholia for the sense of home that had been lost.

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The story at the opposite corner of the country is no less fascinating or fretful. In St. Augustine, Florida, Ostrander's protagonists convene experts on sea level rise in an effort to collect ideas on how to save historical buildings from worsening hurricanes and rising tides that are caused by warmer temperatures energizing storms, melting sea ice and expanding the ocean volume all at once.

At stake are several historic cemeteries that cannot be relocated, an old Spanish Fort living on borrowed time thanks to a protective sea wall and ruins of the lesser-known and less-preserved Fort Mose. The first legally recognized free Black community in what is now the United States, freedom seekers who reached Fort Mose received some measure of protection from the Spanish before St. Augustine fell to the British in 1763.

"In about two and a half decades, roughly 136 billion dollars' worth of real estate on both the East Coast and the West Coast could suffer from chronic flooding, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists," Ostrander writes.

It will be impossible to save all of these structures, especially older and more delicate ones or those belonging to people with fewer resources. But engineering and climate solutions can buy communities like St. Augustine valuable time to strategize and prioritize the preservation of "home."

Tracking and tackling the threat

Next, Ostrander whisks us back across the entirety of the diverse United States to a village out on Alaska's remote Y-K Delta that is being washed away at an unsettling rate by an increasingly turbulent Ninglick River.

Newtok was one of the early communities that introduced the world to the concept of climate migration, where rising average temperatures and associated weather abnormalities force people out of traditional homelands rendered increasingly unsafe for human habitation.

Across repeated visits to Newtok during which Ostrander slept on the floor in a storage room at the school building, she gets to know the locals and record how their emotions about being forced to abandon the buildings that house their family memories ebb and flow. She sees the river advancing and chipping away at the land separating these homes from its banks, first by 20 feet, then 4 feet, then by just two steps.

On her final visit, villagers had started to leave unstable structures behind and relocate by boat to the foreign-feeling spot named Mertarvik, which the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had decided would be their new home.

Climate series beginning: Phoenix isn't what it once was because of climate change. But it's not too late to save it

In her fourth and final climate vignette, Ostrander walks us through the troubled history and modern gardens of Richmond, California, where a hardy group fights to tend their local family roots, in spite of explosions at the nearby Chevron oil refinery that cast doubt and soot over what makes a place eventually unlivable.

In Part One, a Richmond community leader watches for the second time in her life as a black plume of smoke blots out the sun and rains down ash onto her home and community urban garden initiative. Frustrated at the lack of accountability and the environmental injustice of fossil fuel pollution affecting poor and minority communities most, she asks "Who owns the sky?"

Cassandra Steeno clears debris off the roof of her father's home on Melody Lane in Gilbert on July 14, 2022.

In Part Two, Ostrander offers an answer to that question: The global atmosphere is a shared resource. But whereas the author of the "tragedy of the commons" concept would have us believe that selfish human nature will inevitably result in the destruction of any shared commodity, Ostrander offers hope.

To counter the eugenics-infused ideas behind tragedy-of-the-commons predictions, she references work by Elinor Ostrom, who compiled success stories from around the world detailing situations in which humans were able to share a natural resource while protecting it. This fresh take on an age-old human problem won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, the first awarded to a woman.

This is exactly the kind of fresh viewpoint the global community will need to bring into focus if we're going to survive the climate crisis and protect those most vulnerable, Ostrander implies. While the soot-clouded reality in Richmond is distressing, this broader outlook suggests a sunnier path forward, if we choose to take it.
Cultivating connection in chaos

Taking that proactive path forward will involve not only the democratic removal of political barriers to climate action and the immediate and widespread adoption of existing climate change solutions recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but also, according to Ostrander, a deep global meditation on the ways we have "cultivated a tendency to shut off our feelings and distract ourselves from what is, in truth, horrifying."

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There are a lot of books about climate change already on the market. Evidence-based information outlining patterns, problems and solutions, from experts and activists and innovators and journalists, is available in spades. And yet we fail to rise to the occasion at a pace commensurate with the furious firestorms, surging seas, turbulent tides and spoiling skies.

The front door of a home near the corner of 43rd Avenue and East Union Hills Drive went ablaze overnight on Thursday, July 14, 2022, in Phoenix. More than 50 firefighters responded to the first alarm fire at the home which had a propane tank and downed power lines.

For me, this book brought home the urgency of our predicament better than most, by centering the need to act around the non-tragic human instinct to create and protect a collective sense of "home" — a term the author examines and redefines throughout.

By appealing to our place-centered community identities and desire to defend a shared homeland, whatever the boundary of that may be, Ostrander's bedtime-story tone resonates with our good side. In her preface, she notes that her decision to constrain her case studies to within the United States aimed to target this country's slow response to the climate crisis, especially given its role as the largest historical emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gases.

I grew up in the West, watching wildfire size records and acres of forest I loved fall. The Girl Scout Camp where I spent summers as a child, a strong sense of home-away-from-home for me, narrowly escaped the Hayman Fire, the largest in Colorado state history in 2002 at just under 140,000 acres.

I went to graduate school for ecology in Gainesville, Florida, when Hurricanes Matthew and Irma blasted through the region and exacerbated St. Augustine's flooding problem. These were also years during which Gov. Rick Scott banned the term "climate change" from official use, in what felt like the most blatant possible example of burying one's head in the sand in hopes that a problem might just go away.

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During a break from graduate school, I spent a summer living in a remote native Alaskan fishing village near the Canadian border. Residents dried fish and moose meat all summer to prepare for frigid and barren winters, and they showed me the former location of their village, now only accessible by boat.

Thankfully, I don't have personal experience with oil refinery explosions. But I've seen — and investigated — the damage their pollution does to minority communities. I also drive a gasoline-powered car and like to travel when I can. We are all intertwined, via various touchpoints in time and space, with the problems and the fate of our shared skies.

Pick up a copy of "At Home on an Unruly Planet," and I wager you'll feel that deep, meditative connection between the frightening but solvable realities of climate change and a place that you have once called "home," too.

Joan Meiners is the Climate News and Storytelling Reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in Ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles or email her at joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com.

Artificial intelligence and why astronomers don’t look through a telescope anymore


Daniel Godines

Las Cruces Sun-News
Wed, August 10, 2022 

As a child I had the opportunity to utilize the two-meter Faulkes Telescope in Siding Spring, Australia. I remember it was a very thrilling experience seeing the telescope move via a live webcam. I would input sky coordinates, and over the course of a minute, the telescope would slowly tilt toward the object. I couldn’t wait to become an astronomer and spend countless nights at the actual telescope sites — Hawaii, Chile, Spain, these are all locations with powerful telescopes that I wished to use one day.

But little did I know, the era of manual observations was coming to an end.

My first professional research experience occurred when I was hired as an intern at the Las Cumbres Observatory, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, my hometown. Though it is called an observatory, no telescope is actually located there. Las Cumbres comprises over 30 instruments across the world, with the mission of always having a telescope in the dark, ready to make observations at a moment’s notice.

Daniel Godines

Their telescope system is very streamlined, and is a prime example of how astronomical observations function today. The telescopes are all controlled robotically, requiring almost no human intervention, except for select engineers responsible for instrument maintenance. The scheduling is also controlled robotically, and while astronomers can request observations during certain nights, the observations are ultimately booked and controlled by an automated system that is programmed to select the best targets, according to instrument availability and weather conditions across all sites; an analysis that is performed in mere seconds.

It is indeed becoming increasingly rarer for astronomers to visit sites and perform actual observations, as manual control of telescopes, when necessary, is often done remotely from the comfort of one’s home; and any collaboration is simply done via zoom. Gone are the days of Edwin Hubble, who would effectively live for extended periods of time on the mountain, observing night after night, collecting plates of data one at a time.

While I do think it’s a little sad that such days are behind us, there is a silver lining to it all. With the technological advances in both telescope instrumentation and software capabilities, it became necessary to revisit and streamline the observation process. We had no other choice, as humans are prone to error, certainly, but they also need to sleep, eat and socialize, whereas a machine can go on working nonstop for decades so long as electricity is provided. As an astronomer, I value the science over everything else and would happily choose an increase in quality data over the opportunity to live on a mountain and perform manual observations, as mystical and dreamy as that may have been.

Machine learning has been used as a tool to optimize manual procedures since the 20th century, in fact, my colleagues always used to joke that the USPS mail system had been using machine learning since the 1960s to help sort the mail, whereas astronomers have just recently come to appreciate its application in our field due to the big data transition we are in. The James Webb Telescope, for example, will produce more data than could ever be visually inspected. There are images that exist today that no one in this world will ever see, and with the commissioning of new telescopes in the coming years, more images will fall into the category of data inspected only by emotionless machines.

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope combined the capabilities of the telescope’s two cameras to create a never-before-seen view of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this combined image reveals previously invisible areas of star birth. What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region known as NGC 3324. Called the Cosmic Cliffs, this rim of a gigantic, gaseous cavity is roughly 7,600 light-years away.

In short, machine learning is the employment of differential calculus to identify optimal patterns in high dimensional data. A 50-by-50 pixel image, for instance, can be represented in 2,500 dimensional space. But what are these “optimal patterns” that the machine identifies? Unfortunately, there is no answer to it. Truly, machine learning is often viewed as a dark art. Even if we could visualize the connections made by my machine learning engine, it would have been futile, as we ultimately would have made little sense of it. The correlations the machine found through numerous iterations are simply too intricate for our minds to comprehend. It is very much a black box — data goes in, we don’t know what connections the machine learned during training, but good results come out, and we are happy.

As astronomers we use machine learning for object recognition, signal predictions and even as a tool to manage our instruments. It would take me my whole life to inspect two million astronomical objects, yet I have a machine learning algorithm that did it for me in less than 30 minutes. These developments have led to the creation of broker systems that take in telescope data, apply machine learning to distinguish certain objects, and then forward along the information to science teams interested in the particular phenomena.

Much data in the coming century will go unnoticed, even with the help of our machine learning programs; but I suppose that is a beautiful thing — anyone can do astronomy by simply downloading public data from their computer. We need all the help we can get, because while machine learning has tremendous utility, in its current state it still cannot be compared to the eyes and brains we are gifted with, of which there are simply not enough.

Daniel Godines is a PhD student in astronomy at New Mexico State University. He can be reached at godines@nmsu.edu.

Oil and gas industry attacks New Mexico's air pollution controls as feds step in



Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus
Wed, August 10, 2022 

Attempts by New Mexico regulators to limit air pollution from the oil and gas industry drew immediate backlash as they took effect last week, with a trade group representing the state’s smaller producers looking to the courts for solace.

The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico (IPANM) announced the day the rules went into effect that it filed an appeal with the New Mexico Court of Appeals, and expected technical arguments in the case to be presented within 30 days.

Executive Director Jim Winchester said the rules would not improve the environment enough to justify the economic hardship they could bring onto New Mexico oil and gas companies.

The Association represents smaller operators in the state, which critics of the rules argued would struggle to meet the cost of compliance.

“At a time when the public supports responsible domestic production to reduce gasoline prices and a decrease in our dependency on foreign sources of energy that are unquestionably worse for the environment, IPANM strongly feels this is the wrong rule at the wrong time,” Winchester said.

The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), after an about two-year rulemaking process and approval from the State’s Environmental Improvement Board, enacted regulations applying to oil and gas facilities that would limit the emission of pollutants known to form cancer-causing ground-level ozone.

More: Air pollution from oil and gas in Permian Basin leads to feds investigating via aircraft

The rules taking effect on Friday added requirements for operators to detect and repair air pollution emissions, report such releases to the State and use more modern gas-capturing technology like low-bleed pneumatic valves throughout the fossil fuel supply chain.

This applied to areas of the state, including the southeast New Mexico Permian Basin in Eddy and Lea counties, known for elevated ozone levels in excess of the federal National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS).

Operators in the gas-producing San Juan Basin were also subject to the new rules, as were areas in Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Dona Ana and Valencia counties – all known for ozone levels exceeding the NAAQS.

It’s part of the administration of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s broader agenda to crack down on climate change impacts from the state’s energy sector, which leads the U.S. as the second-highest producer of crude oil.

Upon taking office, Lujan Grisham signed an executive order that called on state officials to devise ways to reduce their impact on the environment, including forming a Climate Change Task Force made up of NMED and the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD).

EMNRD’s Oil Conservation Division last year enacted its own emissions restrictions, banning flaring – the burning of excess natural gas – while also making spills illegal and requiring all operators capture 98 percent of produced gas by 2026.

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NMED reported its rules would reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and oxides of nitrogen, which form ozone when interacting with sunlight, by about 260 million pounds each year, while cutting methane emissions annually by 851 million pounds.

But Winchester said the NMED’s new rules, although devised with industry input, would serve only to put small oil and gas operators out of business.

“While IPANM does support a fair and balanced Ozone Precursor regulation, we have no choice but to appeal this version of the rule that will force operators to plug still-productive wells and will inflict economic hardship on New Mexicans with little to no gain for the environment,” he said.

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Another industry group Power the Future voiced support for the Association’s challenge of the rules, as Santa Fe-based spokesman Larry Behrens said they would only raise energy costs for New Mexicans during a time of nationwide pain at the pump.

“This rule will not only raise the cost of living on our families, but it will place a massive burden on the remaining small businesses that are already struggling,” he said. “This appeal is a critical first step to stopping Governor Lujan Grisham from taking unilateral action to raise the cost of gas even further.”

But environmentalists in the state celebrated the new rules as needed action to address pollution and its effects on the climate, pointing to extreme weather events like the wildfires raging throughout the state this spring and worsening drought.

More:Permian Basin oil and gas could be on the decline as prices fall, market struggles

Samantha Kao with Conservation Voters New Mexico said the rules were “nation-leading” regulations that could provide a template for other states and the federal government to reduce the environmental impact of energy production.

“As New Mexico continues to identify pathways to comprehensively address climate pollution, the ozone precursor rule is a critical next step in meeting the state’s goals to address carbon pollution economy-wide,” she said.
Federal government taking action to cut oil and gas pollution

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in June it was considering listing the Permian Basin region in New Mexico and Texas under “non-attainment” of federal air quality standards, which would slow the permitting process for oil and gas operations in the area.

More:Oil and gas operations blamed for earthquakes in Permian Basin. New Mexico takes action

The agency also announced it would conduct aerial surveys throughout the region in August, seeking to find which companies are polluting the air the most and potentially issuing fines and other punishments for non-compliance with federal law.

Upon the EPA’s announcement, NMED Cabinet Secretary James Kenney said the ozone rules were intended to avoid such a listing by the EPA which planned to rule in September.

He blamed the industry for failing to reduce its emissions enough to prevent federal action.

"A designation is coming. I’m 100 percent certain they’re going to do that. The science indicates that’s where we are. The rulemaking is catching up,” Kenney said. “We won’t see the benefit of our rule going into effect in lowering ozone levels in a way that is meaningful to the EPA.”

The U.S. Department of Energy also hoped to take up the effort of reducing air pollution from oil and gas methane emissions nationwide, announcing Friday a $32 million appropriation to devise new technology to do so.

Projects across the country can apply by Oct. 4 for part of the funding to improve gas capture at abandoned oil and gas wells, pipelines, compressors and other industry facilities the DOE estimated emit about 8 million tons of methane every year.

"Methane is more destructive than carbon dioxide to our health and environment, so it’s crucial we develop solutions to identify and mitigate leaks at their source,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a statement.

“Today's funding bolsters DOE’s efforts to advance next-generation technologies and systems to help make the natural gas infrastructure leak-tight, which will dramatically reduce methane emissions across the country and deliver cleaner air for all.”

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Oil and gas industry attacks New Mexico's air pollution controls

HE WAS GOING TO SELL THEM

FBI sought nuclear documents in search of Trump's home -Washington Post


 U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks about the

 FBI's search warrant served at the home of former

 President Donald Trump in Washington


Thu, August 11, 2022 
By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. federal agents were looking for documents relating to nuclear weapons when they raided former President Donald Trump's home in Florida this week, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

It was not clear if such documents were recovered at the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, the Post said. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

The U.S. Justice Department asked a judge on Thursday to make public the warrant that authorized the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, after Trump, a Republican, portrayed it as political retribution.


The request means the public could soon learn more about what investigators were looking for during the unprecedented search of a former president's home.

The move was part of an investigation into whether Trump illegally removed records from the White House as he left office in January 2021, some of which the Justice Department believes are classified.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, the country's top law enforcement officer and an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, told a news conference that he had personally approved the search. The Justice Department also seeks to make public a redacted receipt of the items seized.

"The department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken," Garland said.

His decision to publicly confirm the search was highly unusual. U.S. law enforcement officials typically do not discuss ongoing investigations in order to protect people's rights. In this case, Trump himself announced the search in a Monday night statement.

Garland said the Justice Department made the request to make public the warrant "in light of the former president's public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances and the substantial public interest in this matter."

A source familiar with the matter said the FBI retrieved about 10 boxes from Trump's property during the search.

Trump was not in Florida at the time of the search.

WILL TRUMP'S LAWYERS OBJECT?

It was unclear whether Trump's legal team would object to the release of the warrant.

The government has until 3 p.m. ET (1900 GMT) on Friday to let the court know whether Trump's attorneys will object to unsealing the warrant. The case is before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who reviewed the warrant to ensure the Justice Department had sufficient probable cause for the search.

While seeking to unseal the warrant, the Justice Department has not asked the judge to unseal the sworn statement in support of the warrant, the contents of which could potentially include classified information.

Two of Trump's attorneys, Evan Corcoran and John Rowley, did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement on his Truth social network, Trump said: "My attorneys and representatives were cooperating fully, and very good relationships had been established. The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it."

ESCALATING PROBE

The unprecedented search marked a significant escalation in one of the many federal and state probes Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business, including a separate probe by the Justice Department into a failed bid by Trump's allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election by submitting phony slates of electors.

The investigation into Trump's removal of records started earlier this year, after the National Archives made a referral to the department.

Former Archivist David Ferriero has previously said that Trump returned 15 boxes to the government in January 2022. The archives later discovered some of the items were "marked as classified national security information."

A couple of months prior to the search, FBI agents visited Trump's property to investigate boxes in a locked storage room, according to a person familiar with the visit.

The agents and Corcoran spent a day reviewing materials, the source said. A second source who had been briefed on the matter told Reuters the Justice Department also has surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago in its possession.

Garland's Justice Department has faced fierce criticism and online threats since Monday's search. Trump supporters and some of his fellow Republicans in Washington accuse Democrats of weaponizing the federal bureaucracy to target Trump.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday, an armed man suspected of trying to breach the FBI building later died following an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement officers, an Ohio State Highway Patrol official said.

Garland condemned the threats and attacks against the FBI and Justice Department. "I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked," he said.

Some Democrats have criticized Garland for being overly cautious in investigating Trump over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld; additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, David Morgan, Mike Scarcella Kanishka Singh, Eric Beech, Steve Holland and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Scott Malone, Daniel Wallis, Howard Goller and Leslie Adler)

FBI warrant for search of Trump home may involve suspected violations of Espionage Act, former chief of DOJ national security says

Michael Isikoff

·Chief Investigative Correspondent

Tue, August 9, 2022 

The former chief of the Justice Department’s national security division said Tuesday that the FBI warrant for the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., suggests prosecutors believe they have probable cause that there may have been violations of the World War I-era Espionage Act.

That law has traditionally been used to target government leakers, such as former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But it also “actually has provisions that apply to essentially the mishandling [of classified material] through gross negligence, permitting documents to be removed from their proper place, or to be lost, stolen or destroyed,” Mary McCord, a veteran federal prosecutor who headed DOJ’s national security division in the closing years of the Obama administration, told the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast.

McCord said that the Espionage Act is one of two federal crimes that prosecutors may be focusing on in their warrant to search Trump’s home. The other, she said, is another federal statute that targets anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys public records.”

McCord noted that the decision to search Trump’s home could only have been conducted with the approval of a federal judge based on an affidavit from the FBI that there was evidence of a crime at Mar-a-Lago at the time of the search.

“So it couldn’t be, ‘We thought the stuff was there a year ago, but not now.’ It would have to be probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime exists in that location at that time,” McCord said. “And that means that the Department of Justice, probably at the highest levels, probably all the way up to the attorney general, agreed that this was a step that was not only legally supportable, but also important to take.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Hilton Anatole on Aug. 6 in Dallas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

One factor that McCord suggested would be on the minds of DOJ national security lawyers is what Trump might have done with the highly classified material that was still believed to be at Mar-a-Lago. “Are we worried that some of this information would actually be shared outside of Mar-a-Lago, potentially with foreign adversaries? I’d be really concerned about that,” she said.

What follows is an edited conversation of the interview with McCord conducted by “Skullduggery” co-hosts Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman and Victoria Bassetti.

Isikoff: So rather striking news last night that the FBI has raided the home of the former president of the United States. And according to Trump, broke into his safe. What do you make of this?

McCord: First, I would quarrel with two terms you just used. "Raid" and "broke into his safe."

Isikoff: I said, "according to Trump."

McCord: OK, fair enough. Because this was of course a court-authorized search warrant that would've had to have included the safe within the terms of the search warrant. It's a very overt step for the FBI to actually execute a search warrant that signals to the whole world that they had probable cause — that a federal judge agreed with — to believe that the evidence of a crime would be located in the premises to be searched at the time it was searched. So it couldn't be, "We thought the stuff was there a year ago, but not now." It would have to be probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime exists in that location at that time. And that means that the Department of Justice, probably at the highest levels, probably all the way up to the attorney general, agreed that this was a step that was not only legally supportable, but also important to take.

U.S. Secret Service and Mar-A-Lago security staff at the entrance of former President Donald Trump's house at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Isikoff: What are the potential crimes here?

McCord: There's a variety of different possible crimes, but I think the two that are probably worth focusing the most on are 18 USC 2071. This really applies to any federal government employee who, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys public records, right? Records that are public records. Another potential crime is actually under the Espionage Act, which is 18 USC 793. And that actually has provisions that apply to essentially the mishandling through gross negligence, permitting documents to be removed from their proper place, or to be lost, stolen, or destroyed. There's also conspiracy provisions within that 18 USC 793. But certainly gross negligence could be proved by willfulness, because that would be even beyond gross negligence.

Klaidman: Does that suggest possibly that they had information that there was some kind of obstruction going on?

McCord: I think one of the things that is significant here to me is the fact that after it was revealed, however many months ago, that documents had been taken, presidential records had been taken to Mar-a-Lago, 15 boxes were returned [to the National Archives], right? This is a result of consultations with the archivist. Because even if [the removal of the documents] was all an accident, it's been called to the president's attention. It’s been called to the president's lawyers' attention. There was an actual collaborative effort to round up the documents, the presidential records that had been mistakenly taken, and then return them. But this idea that, "Oh, it was a mistake." He [Trump] doesn't really have that anymore. I think that's significant because it shows, "OK. You had your chance. You argue mistake. The department obviously has probable cause to believe you still have documents." And so, the question is why. Right?

Bassetti: The New York Times is reporting that in June, multiple officials from the Department of Justice, including the chief of counter-intelligence and export control [Jay Bratt] visited Mar-a-Lago to check the documents, and see where some of them were being stored. What does it tell you that someone at that rank, and in that position, went to Mar-a-Lago?

Then Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., in 2017. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

McCord: So I do think it's significant. I mean, that's the litigating division within Department of Justice that investigates mishandling of classified information. And the fact that we have a national security division lawyer such as Jay Bratt, the head of counterintelligence and export control, does mean that we're talking about national security implications, not simply presidential records that aren't classified.

Bassetti: When you were the head of the national security division, what sort of evidence would you have wanted to see before you would have signed off on a search warrant of a potential suspect?

McCord: So I think what you're really asking is what prudential concerns would go into it, particularly in a sensitive case like this, where we're talking about a former president. And there's also prudential concerns about danger to national security. I would also be thinking down the line, am I going to be able to make a case in court? Because is the national defense information so sensitive that the equity holder, the national security agency whose information it is, is never going to let me put it in court, is never going to say to me, "It's OK, prosecutor, to prove up that this is national defense information." The very nature of which means it would cause substantial damage to U.S. national security, if it were disclosed. Admitting that is actually admitting to things that sometimes our national security agencies don't want to admit to. So there's all kinds of prudential things you'd be looking at in terms of the former president. That's what's unprecedented here. And so it would be more than just you have probable cause. It would be, "Where are we going from here? If we find the things we're going to find, are we going to be seeking an indictment from this? What are the different things to weigh?" To me, that would depend on how significant are the documents, right? How sensitive is the national security information? Are we worried that some of this information would actually be shared outside of Mar-a-Lago, potentially with foreign adversaries? I'd be really concerned about that.

Former President Donald Trump's residence Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)

Isikoff: I asked you before about Justice Department precedents for cases such as this, and the one that leaps to mind is Sandy Berger, who was Bill Clinton's national security adviser, and then after he leaves office, he goes into the National Archives while he was preparing for his testimony before the 9/11 commission, and outright helps himself to classified documents, stuffs them in his socks and his pants, and gets caught red-handed. He gets prosecuted. He doesn't get prison time, he gets fined and community service, gives up his law license. And there's some other cases of just outright theft by people who just take bucketloads of old Civil War documents from the archives, and try to use them for financial purposes. Those are cases that clearly meet the willfulness standard that you're talking about. But it's hard for me to see a set of circumstances involving Trump that meets that kind of standard here.

McCord: This is where I pointed out the whole background history here, right? Of being put on notice that there were documents missing from the archives. His own attorneys, and his own consultants, packaging up 15 boxes, in coordination with the archivist about the missing records, and sending them back. I'm sure his own attorneys advised him of what the laws are, and it was widely reported — many, many lawyers and others talking about what the laws are that prohibit the taking of presidential records, and certainly prohibit them as handling of classified information. So you know, I can tell a tale here that wouldn't sound that much different than stuffing [classified documents] into your pockets. You're put on notice that you may have classified information that needs to be returned, and then you make some decisions about what to keep and not return. I don't know that that's so much different than going into the archives and walking out with [documents]. You have now taken what you've been told is not yours to take.