President Donald Trump is ordering the immediate reversal of Biden-era green energy regulations on household appliances and the reinstatement of environmental orders issued under his first term.

During his term, former President Joe Biden issued more stringent climate standards for various household appliances, such as gas stoves, washing machines and dishwashers, which energy experts and manufacturers have warned could lead to more expensive alternatives that are far less effective than current models.

Trump, in a Truth Social post early Tuesday morning, called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), led by former Rep. Lee Zeldin, to immediately undo Biden's climate mandates and return to "common sense standards."

"I am hereby instructing Secretary Lee Zeldin to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders, which were terminated by Crooked Joe Biden, on Water Standards and Flow pertaining to SINKS, SHOWERS, TOILETS, WASHING MACHINES, DISHWASHERS, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on LIGHTBULBS, that were put in place by the Trump Administration, but terminated by Crooked Joe," Trump wrote. 

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"I look forward to signing these Orders," the president said. "THANK YOU!!!"

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Republican lawmakers, who have the majority in both the House and the Senate, have also started taking actions in Congress to derail Biden's green energy standards for appliances. 

Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Oka., introduced a joint resolution of disapproval against the standards for coolers and freezers enacted by the Biden administration that were set to go into effect in February, reported first by Fox News Digital. 

Additionally, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., introduced a resolution to block Biden's ban on water heaters, which was announced first by Fox News Digital.

Also in January, the House passed the "Liberty in Laundry Act" to prevent the Energy secretary and Department of Energy from "implementing new or amended energy efficiency standards for clothes washers that are not technologically feasible and economically justified."

Judges around the country are making quick work of climate lawfare, a welcome development following the U.S. Supreme Court declining to confront the issue earlier this year.  

In recent months, three judges in Maryland and New York have dismissed climate-change lawsuits from public litigants who accuse energy companies of harming communities through emissions and concealing those harms from the public. Their decisions suggest an emerging consensus that federal law does not permit these kinds of claims, which fail on their own terms in all events.  

More than two dozen cities and states have filed nearly identical climate-change lawsuits, creating significant risk for energy companies and consumers who enjoy the quality of life cheap and abundant power provides. 

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The plaintiffs pleaded state law claims accusing the defendants of creating a public nuisance and deceiving the public. The energy companies have raised a variety of defenses. Their principal defense is that the climate claims are preempted by the Clean Air Act, which assigns emissions regulation to the Environmental Protection Agency, with limited carve-outs for states that do not apply in the instant cases.  

Taken together, the recent decisions clarify the fundamental political goals of climate litigants. In dismissing the city of Baltimore’s climate lawsuit, Judge Videtta Brown explained that a successful state law climate claim "would operate as a de facto regulation on greenhouse gas emissions," echoing the like conclusions of the Second and Ninth U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.  

The reason for that is obvious. In these cases, the energy providers face liability unbound. The prospective damages are so high that the defendants would fundamentally alter their business practices. That is the policy outcome the plaintiffs intend, which makes the preemption issue straightforward.  

Indeed, U.S. District Judge William Alsup speculated that climate lawfare threatens the continued viability of fossil fuel production altogether. When dismissing Oakland’s climate change lawsuit in 2021, Alsup wrote that the damages sought "would make the continuation of defendants’ fossil fuel production ‘not feasible.’" 

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Public reporting about the origins of the climate nuisance, fraud and misrepresentation cases fills out the picture. News accounts establish that a skillful network of academics, lawyers, celebrities and leftwing foundations are at work behind the scenes, at once incubating new legal theories and lining up financing. These facts aren’t necessarily germane for a court, but reasonable onlookers should not be obtuse about what’s going on here.  

Apart from the preemption issues, a Jan. 14 decision in New York clarifies that climate deception suits don’t meet the requirements of a misrepresentation tort. As above, the reason is obvious.  

"The connection between fossil fuels and climate change is public information," Judge Anar Rathod Patel wrote in dismissing the second of New York City’s climate change lawsuits. Courts have determined that "a reasonable consumer cannot have been misled" when the plaintiff does not identify salient facts that the defendant alone possessed.  

The climate misrepresentation claims rest on a contradiction. The plaintiffs maintain that the public is broadly aware of climate change, and that "climate anxiety" shapes economic and political choices. But those same consumers have supposedly been deceived by the energy companies and kept in the dark about the connection between fossil fuels and a changing climate. As Patel wrote, the plaintiffs "cannot have it both ways."  

Rebranding extreme social engineering as environmental or consumer protection is an old liberal trick. Ironically, the pioneer of this tactic, Ralph Nader, contributed to the current climate policy problem with his successful "pro-consumer, pro-safety" crusade against nuclear power in the 1970s.   

I am not sure that the Supreme Court is clear of climate lawfare. While most courts confronting the late wave of climate lawsuits have dismissed them, a few have allowed them to proceed to discovery and trial. The existing split in authorities thus seems like to grow. And the plaintiffs need only prevail in a handful of cases to extract the changes they seek. But it is surely positive for consumers and for the rule of law that the prevailing trend is against the plaintiffs. 

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Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with NASA contributions, has made a surprising discovery in our cosmic backyard: a phenomenon called an Einstein ring.

An Einstein ring is light from a distant galaxy bending to form a ring that appears aligned with a foreground object. The name honors Albert Einstein, whose general theory of relativity predicts that light will bend and brighten around objects in space.

In this way, particularly massive objects like galaxies and galaxy clusters serve as cosmic magnifying glasses, bringing even more distant objects into view. Scientists call this gravitational lensing.

Euclid Archive Scientist Bruno Altieri noticed a hint of an Einstein ring among images from the spacecraft’s early testing phase in September 2023.

“Even from that first observation, I could see it, but after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring,” Altieri said. “For me, with a lifelong interest in gravitational lensing, that was amazing.”

The ring appears to encircle the center of a well-studied elliptical galaxy called NGC 6505, which is around 590 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco. That may sound far, but on the scale of the entire universe, NGC 6505 is close by. Thanks to Euclid’s high-resolution instruments, this is the first time that the ring of light surrounding the galaxy has been detected.  

Light from a much more distant bright galaxy, some 4.42 billion light-years away, creates the ring in the image. Gravity distorted this light as it traveled toward us. This faraway galaxy hasn’t been observed before and doesn’t yet have a name. 

“An Einstein ring is an example of strong gravitational lensing,” explained Conor O’Riordan, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany, and lead author of the first scientific paper analyzing the ring. A strong gravitational lens produces multiple images of a background source that may appear as arcs, forming a ring like this, for example. “All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful.” 

Einstein rings are a rich laboratory for scientists to explore many mysteries of the universe. For example, an invisible form of matter called dark matter contributes to the bending of light into a ring, so this is an indirect way to study dark matter. Einstein rings are also relevant to the expansion of the universe because the space between us and these galaxies — both in the foreground and the background — is stretching. Scientists can also learn about the background galaxy itself.

“I find it very intriguing that this ring was observed within a well-known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884,” said Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid project scientist. “The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a very long time. And yet this ring was never observed before. This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well. This discovery is very encouraging for the future of the Euclid mission and demonstrates its fantastic capabilities.” 

By exploring how the universe has expanded and formed over its cosmic history, Euclid will reveal more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter. Dark energy is the mysterious force that appears to be causing the universe’s expansion. The space telescope will map more than a third of the sky, observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. It is expected to find around 100,000 strong gravitational lenses.  

“Euclid is going to revolutionize the field with all this data we’ve never had before,” added O’Riordan.  

Although finding this Einstein ring is an achievement, Euclid must look for a different, less visually obvious type of gravitational lensing called “weak lensing” to help fulfil its quest of understanding dark energy. In weak lensing, background galaxies appear only mildly stretched or displaced. To detect this effect, scientists will need to analyze billions of galaxies.

Euclid launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, July 1, 2023, and began its detailed survey of the sky Feb. 14, 2024. The mission is gradually creating the most extensive 3D map of the universe yet. The Einstein ring find so early in its mission indicates Euclid is on course to uncover many more secrets of the universe. 

More About Euclid

Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium — consisting of more than 2,000 scientists from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the United States, Canada, and Japan — is responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its service module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.

Three NASA-supported science teams contribute to the Euclid mission. In addition to designing and fabricating the sensor-chip electronics for Euclid’s Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) instrument, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory led the procurement and delivery of the NISP detectors as well. Those detectors, along with the sensor chip electronics, were tested at NASA’s Detector Characterization Lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI), at Caltech in Pasadena, California, will archive the science data and support U.S.-based science investigations. JPL is a division of Caltech.

Media Contacts

Elizabeth Landau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0845
elandau@nasa.gov

Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

A major solar power plant project that was granted over a billion dollars in federal loans is on the road to closure, with energy experts blasting the project as a "boondoggle" that harmed the environment.

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in loan guarantees to finance the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a green energy project that consists of three solar concentrating thermal power plants in California. 

The facility was touted by then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz as an "example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy." But after 10 years, the federally funded plant is now on track to close. 

"Ivanpah is yet another failed green energy boondoggle, much like Solyndra," Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Despite receiving $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees, it never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected while still relying on natural gas to stay operational."

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"Now, with its power contracts canceled, Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government-subsidized energy schemes," Isaac said.

Ivanpah consists of three individual units, two of which were contracted by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in 2009 and scheduled to run until 2039. 

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In January, PG&E announced plans to cancel its agreement with Ivanpah 14 years early, determining that "ending the agreements at this time will save customers money compared to the cost of keeping them through 2039" – ultimately putting Ivanpah on notice for closure.

"The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster," Julia Dowell of the Sierra Club, an environmental activism group, said of the power plant. 

"Along with killing thousands of birds and tortoises, the project’s construction destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat along with numerous rare plant species," Dowell said. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal."

This comes after another DOE-funded green energy project, Solyndra, went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration.

"Green projects have a long history of expensive taxpayer-subsidized disaster that is getting more so," Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute and former Trump EPA transition team member, said in a statement to Fox.

Milloy suggested that further green energy failures could come from projects funded by recent Democrat-backed legislation that aims to push the green energy agenda.

"Soon we will be looking at failures of larger magnitude than Green New Deal spending. No green project relying on taxpayer subsidies has ever made any economic or environmental sense," Milloy said. "It’s important that President Trump stop the taxpayer bleeding by ending what he accurately calls the Green New Scam."

EXCLUSIVE: Republican lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to investigate President Biden's dismissal of a lawsuit claiming millions in fraud from a green energy project the day after the 2024 election.

In 2011, President Barack Obama's Treasury Department granted Tonopah Solar Energy, LLC hundreds of millions of dollars for the construction of a green energy solar plant, the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, in Nevada.

However, the energy group was eventually sued by CMB Export, LLC for alleged fraud involving approximately $275 million of taxpayer dollars in a qui tam lawsuit, which is a case on behalf of the government claiming fraud against federal programs. The case was being investigated by the Department of Justice (DOJ), until the Biden administration filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Nov. 6, 2024 – the day after the presidential election.

In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, obtained first by Fox News Digital, Republican Reps. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, and Carol Miller, R-W.Va., are sounding the alarm over the previous administration's decision to halt the potential recovery of taxpayer funds.

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"Despite investing three and a half years in investigating this case, it is deeply troubling that the DOJ reversed its position shortly after the presidential election, claiming the dismissal was in public interest and citing undue burdens on federal agencies," the letter reads. "This decision is perplexing, given that the government stands to lose nothing by allowing CMB Export, LLC, to proceed with the case."

The letter asks that Bondi investigate the Biden administration's rationale for dismissal, potential conflicts of interest, timeline of events, and accountability regarding the possible misuse of taxpayer funds.

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"The American people soundly rejected the Biden administration's radical Green New Deal agenda and fraudulent coverups when they voted for President Trump," Miller told Fox News Digital. "Our understanding is the Crescent Dunes project was an energy proposal that cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, produced less energy than promised, and posed safety concerns for individuals working on the project. With President Trump back in the White House, transparency is now the standard for the federal government."

Biden's DOJ claimed the dismissal was "commensurate with the public interest," and that litigation obligations would impose "an undue burden" on the government, two claims that are being called into question in the new letter.

The letter asks if there is any evidence that the timing of the motion was politically influenced, coming right after the election loss, and if the DOJ’s decision to dismiss a case that seeks to recover taxpayer dollars conflicts with its responsibility to uphold accountability in cases of alleged fraud against the government.

"The allegations in this case represent not just potential financial fraud but a breach of public trust," the Republican lawmakers wrote. "The Crescent Dunes project, like other failed ‘green energy’ initiatives, has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and the dismissal of this case raised serious concerns about the previous administration’s commitment to protecting public funds and prosecuting fraud."

The lawmakers asked that the DOJ conduct an internal investigation into the case, and upon reevaluation, consider allowing CMB Export, LLC, to continue its charge against the solar company.

"The American people deserve accountability and transparency in how their tax dollars are used, especially in cases involving allegations of fraud on such a significant scale," the letter reads.

Have you ever wondered how a pine cone knows when to open and close? It's not magic, it's science. 

Now, researchers have taken this cue from nature to create something pretty cool for our homes. 

Let's dive into how this revolutionary window technology works, keeping your home comfortable without using a single watt of electricity.

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Pine cones have these amazing scales that respond to moisture. When it's damp, they close up tight. But when it's warm and dry, they open wide to release their seeds. This simple yet effective mechanism has inspired scientists to develop a smart window system that could change the way we think about energy efficiency in buildings.

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Scientists from Germany's universities of Stuttgart and Freiburg have developed what is known as the Solar Gate window facade system. It's like having tiny pinecones built right into your windows. These smart windows have special elements that curl up when it's cool and moist, letting in sunlight to warm your home. But when it's hot and dry, they flatten out to block the sun and keep things cool inside.

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The Solar Gate system consists of a gridded array of pine-cone-scale-inspired self-bending elements housed between two panes of glass in an aluminum-frame window unit. Each element is ingeniously crafted with three distinct layers, each serving a unique purpose. The bottom layer is composed of a cellulose powder and a thermoplastic blend that swells when exposed to moisture. Above this lies a middle layer made of thermoplastic, which remains unaffected by moisture.

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The top layer consists of flexible biocomposite filaments that serve to hold the entire structure together. When exposed to moist air, the bottom layer expands, causing the element to curl upwards. Conversely, in dry conditions, it returns to its flattened state. This simple yet effective mechanism allows the window to respond automatically to changing weather conditions, providing optimal shading and light penetration as needed.

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The Solar Gate system underwent rigorous real-world testing to prove its effectiveness. In a comprehensive year-long study, researchers installed 424 Solar Gate elements in the south-facing skylight of a research building at the University of Freiburg. The results of this extensive trial were nothing short of impressive.

During the cool, wet winter months, the elements responded by curling upwards, allowing ample sunlight to penetrate the building. This natural response effectively warmed and illuminated the interior spaces, reducing the need for artificial heating and lighting. Conversely, as the seasons changed and brought warmer, drier summer conditions, the elements automatically flattened out.

This flattening action served to block excess sunlight, effectively keeping the building's interior cool and comfortable without the need for energy-intensive air conditioning. The test demonstrated the system's ability to autonomously adapt to changing weather conditions, providing optimal comfort and energy efficiency throughout the year.

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This innovative approach to building technology has far-reaching implications beyond just window systems. Researchers have already begun exploring similar biomimetic principles in a variety of applications. For instance, studies have investigated the development of shading systems using wooden slats that can open and close in response to environmental conditions.

In the realm of textiles, scientists are working on "smart" clothing fabrics that can adapt to ambient temperature, providing optimal comfort for wearers. Perhaps most intriguingly, these principles are even being applied to the field of robotics, with researchers developing tiny mobile robots that can respond to environmental stimuli in ways inspired by natural mechanisms. As we continue to draw inspiration from nature's ingenious designs, the potential for creating more sustainable and responsive technologies seems boundless.

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Nature never ceases to amaze us with its ingenious solutions, and the Solar Gate window system is a brilliant example of how we can harness these natural wonders. By mimicking the pinecone, scientists have created a game-changing technology that could revolutionize how we approach energy efficiency in our buildings. It's exciting to think about a future where our homes and offices adapt to the environment just like living organisms do. Who knew that the key to smarter buildings was hiding in our forests all along?

Would you feel comfortable having windows that automatically open and close based on moisture and temperature — without any electrical controls? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

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