Book-Burning, Redux. Climate Wars.

[Valjean]

Climate change? What climate change? Show me the evidence.
The latest strategy in the GOP's campaign of science denial and support for its fossil fuel billionaire supporters seems to be to make the science go away -- just delete it.

Victoria Herrmann, President/Managing Director of the Arctic Institute watches as decades of arctic research and climate data disappear before her eyes:
I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations | Victoria Herrmann

At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As I watched more and more links turned red, I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.

I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.

And these shenanigans don't seem confined to the US. Canada's conservative Harper administration did the same thing -- it seems to be a right-wing phenomenon.

Just three years ago, Arctic researchers witnessed another world leader remove thousands of scientific documents from the public domain. In 2014, then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper closed 11 department of fisheries and oceans regional libraries, including the only Arctic center. Hundreds of reports and studies containing well over a century of research were destroyed in that process – a historic loss from which we still have not recovered.

The Right is beginning to look like a wholly owned subsidiary of the billionaire class.

This seems to be just one strategy in an all out war on science and progressive policies. The Trump administration has been staffing agencies with science-deniers and personnel hostile to the missions of the agencies:
Trump has launched a blitzkrieg in the wars on science and Earth’s climate | Dana Nuccitelli

Discuss.

 

[Altfish]

Welcome to 1950

 

[Alison Wonderland]

Welcome to 1950

Here's hoping the 60s are around the corner.

 

[Iti oj]

Here's hoping the 60s are around the corner.

They are

 

[Father Heathen]

It's amazing how they convinced people that every scientist ever is part of some vast conspiracy to make **** up just for giggles rather than the industry simply trying to dodge the cost of curtailing emissions. How does that make sense? Who cares! Let's go watch NASCAR and Wrestlin'!

 

[LuisDantas]

Welcome to 1950

With 2020's population levels and the attending challenges and stakes.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

America - at the intersection of willfully ignorant and woefully hateful - now serves as a stunning confirmation of the words of Wendell Phillips:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
​

It is truly sad.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

America is sinking and will take the world with it.
The rich will make a fortune from everyones suffering
They will die rich.... along with the poor.
China Russia and India. will object soon enough, as will Europe. Africa will sink too, but will be amongst the first to go under.
America Is going to have a real fight on its hands.
But it will be to0 late for the world.

All because trump is proud of his ignorance.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

If Trump were to be weighed against a couple of ounces of lead.
the balance would favour the world.

 

[jonathan180iq]

I'm attending the March for Science in DC on the 22nd. It's not much, but it's something. There will be tens of thousands of us on the Mall, making some noise.

There are 400 or so other cities around the world participating, hopefully shining some collective light of the blight of ignorance and the willful avoidance of factual information, in both individual thought and governing policy.

They probably won't change - but they can't ignore the sound.