Joe Romm writes: In the last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to zero out all federal spending on clean energy research and development. And the plan he released would also zero out all other spending on anything to do with climate change, including the government’s entire climate science effort.

You may have missed this bombshell because team Trump did not spell out these cuts overtly. In a campaign where the media has “utterly failed to convey the policy stakes in the election,” as Vox’s Matt Yglesias explained recently, it appears only Bloomberg BNA bothered to follow up with the campaign to get at the truth of Trump’s radical proposal.

Polling guru Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com fame gives Trump a one in three chance of becoming president. So I agree with Yglesias that we ought to seriously look at the implications of Trump’s proposals  — especially since if Trump wins, he’s all but certain to have a GOP-controlled Congress to back him. [Continue reading…]