Slashdot Mirror
Trump To Scrap NASA Climate Research In Crackdown On 'Politicized Science' (theguardian.com)
dryriver quotes a report from The Guardian: Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by NASA as part of a crackdown on "politicized science," his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said. Nasa's Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century. This would mean the elimination of NASA's world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. [NASA's network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division's budget set to grow to $2 billion (PDF) next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8 billion in 2017.] Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said as Nasa provides the scientific community with new instruments and techniques, the elimination of Earth sciences would be "a major setback if not devastating." "It could put us back into the 'dark ages' of almost the pre-satellite era," he said. "It would be extremely short sighted."
And quit reporting supposition as fact. Enough already!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Explore space. Let climate scientists pay for their own experiments and tools for monitoring.
Just remember Mr. Right Wing dumb ass, you're on the same planet as everyone else. Even if it is another universe.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The laws of physics are not bound by political ideology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
BREAKING NEWS: ONLY NASA IS ALLOWED TO USE DATA FROM NASA SATELLITES! NOBODY ELSE CAN HAVE THAT DATA! IS IS FORBIDDEN, AS DECREED BY PROPHECY!
Or maybe it's a complete load of horseshit, and maybe, just fucking maybe, our space agency should actually be concerned with going to space again.
Just remember Mr. Right Wing dumb ass, you're on the same planet as everyone else. Even if it is another universe.
He is what, around 70? To him climate change is fiction. He said as much before his latest flip flop half flip. He will be dead long before it matters to him and since everything about Trump world seems to revolve around him, I doubt he really cares.
If he had any decency he would apologize for all the crap he did to get elected and then beg the electors to end this nightmare. I'm sorry, but it just makes me sick to know that the person we elected to rule us is this lacking in fundamental ethics. Anyone who is willing to do _anything_ and to hell with truth, honesty, or any of the rest is someone we sure as hell should not have let win. Before someone says Clinton lies too, I suggest you look at the breath, scope, and repetition of Trump's. Clinton may have been uninspiring, but I'll take uninspiring over this.
I still remember the massive crowds that were chanting, ``Lock Her Up!''. They meant it, but he was clearly just using them and all the rest. Disgusting. It was obvious he was lying at the time, but the idiots just lapped it up. I think if I ever visit a foreign country I'll have to make up a story about which country I'm from. Some research on Canada can't be a bad idea.
That anthropogenic climate change is real and caused by humans is undisputed and has been undisputed (by the scientific establishment, crackpot conspiracy bloggers dont count) for decades. Thats not actually whats being researched. What is being researched is how bad it is, what sort of time line we are looking at, what mitigation strategies do we have, are those mitigating strategies we already have working, what are the current effects, and how do we respond to the growing deleuge of problems already starting to occur.
Its *suicidal* to defund the most important agency in the world covering it.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Yes, but where will climate change cause flooding, where will it cause draught, how much water can utilities, dams and shippers expect, how tall does this seawall need to be, and where will the best places be to build are all very important questions. Regardless of global warming being caused by man or not, better predictive models help humans plan.
Shutting down NASA Earth Science moves it over to NOAA.
...Where it should be. NASA is aeronautics and space, NOAA is oceanographics and weather. Climate is not aeronautics or space, but IS weather.
Still no "funny" mods? If I ever saw a mod point to give, I think I'd have been more likely to give "funny" to some of the "insightful" ones.
Minor substantive reply on this comment: The Secretary of Education is much more powerful than most people realize. A LOT of Trump's votes came from people indoctrinated by the public schools, which were largely reoriented by Bennett back in the Reagan days. Yeah, the same hypocrite who wrote books about "virtue" while losing millions of dollars due to his gambling habit. He's still around, he's still a right-wing lunatic, and he supported the Donald, too. Back in the Reagan days he helped divide the public schools into a tiny elite track, basically a new kind of lottery that sustained the hopeful fantasy of parents too poor to afford the good private schools, while most public schools were reoriented as obedience training for future wage slaves, prison inmates, or worst of all, Trump voters. (He also boosted the bad private schools of religious stripes.)
Reminds me of the Trump-era investment advice. Plastics are for losers. You should invest in makers of wife-beater T-shirts, anti-anxiety medications, and the for-profit prisons.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The laws of physics are not bound by political ideology.
No they aren't, but fabricating spin on the limited amount of recorded meteorological history is.
Physics may say ice-core samples indicate x, but the money doesn't come unless it says Y.
You are wrong. Weather satellites for Earth fall under NOAA, not NASA.
for pointing out your shortcomings and then try to blame them for the damage causes by your little hissy fits?
for example by clarifying that corporations are NOT human beings, but only legal fictions that must sometimes have limited treatment as juridical persons
You do realize that the current legal state of things, right? It's also true that a tightly held corporation (not publicly traded, few owners) gets treated like a partnership, and thus covered under the same first amendment protections that any small group of people has.
That's what cases like Citizens United (a corporation that existed only to pay for a film critical of Hillary - which is the only reason she's against it) and Hobby Lobby centered on.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This whole situation makes me happy to be 50 and have some health problems. Maybe, assuming things go really bad, I'll be able to get out of here honorably.
For educated people this is scary. At this point I cannot even try to explain the complexities of certain subjects to people. The anti-intellectualism runs so deep that just being an intellectual brands you as an outsider. This is not good for our society.
This is a dangerous time for smart folks. I could have easily ended up a climate scientist. Though in my case I chose systems engineering with radio as a hobby. Both rely on physics. Both require knowledge of real science.
The rhetoric I'm hearing could land some very competent and gifted scientists in some kind of detention. Defunding comes first- silencing comes second.
The American century has certainly closed.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
He isn't, he's a short sighted narcissistic fuck that doesn't give a damn about tomorrows outlook if he can scrape a buck out of it today by any means at all.
Hey, go for it!
In fact, why not eliminate the middle bits and just cut to the chase. In your next issue, just put:
"TRUMP IS INSANE"
Because he's not insane. He's a buffoon, and so pathologically needy that he will say virtually anything to anyone, but that's not news. We don't run a celebrity gossip site. And this particular story is about his advisor, not Trump himself. You see, we report actual news. Which was my original point.
What we do run is a newspaper in a part of the world that is already feeling the effects of climate change, with direct and tangible economic and social impacts. So when a top climate denier says that he intends to cut the legs out from under an integral part of the climate science community, and claims to be acting to stop political interference with climate science.... That gets a big headline. We're running it tomorrow.
And yes, editors do sometimes talk like that. In jest, but mostly because if you can't maintain your gallows humour, you won't be an editor for long.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/1968m...
Mission I: To Understand and Protect Our Home Planet
Mission II: To Explore the Universe and Search for Life
Mission III: To Inspire the Next Generation of Explorers
That was interesting.
Don't blame the people who pointed out the facts about Trump.
Look inwards: why did people like you ignore Trump's misogynistic, racist and xenophobic tendencies? Perhaps the truth is hard for you to accept?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If lying were the reason, then Trump should have lost.
She lost because Trump told the masses what they wanted to believe.
I'll bet it's like George W. Bush saying he wanted NASA to get people to Mars. Turns out you can't do it by just yelling at them and cutting their budget.
No need to guess - that's already happening. The chairman of the congressional science committee (a rabid anti-science denier from the red side of the aisle) has been hounding NOAA for ages trying to force them to stop publishing results that he doesn't like.
The republicans are getting sick and tired of scientists constantly reporting that the their bullshit climate science denial is... well bullshit. They don't want to stop spreading bullshit (there's lots of sweet campaign donations in the spreading of this particular bullshit) so instead... they are trying to silence the scientists.
It's quite ironic to hear them saying it's about ending "politicised science" ... considering they are politicians trying to interfere with science and force them to lie about the results with budget threats.
It's doubly ironic that the deniers claim the scientists only publish climate change papers to get grant money... considering that the push from congress has been consistently to take money AWAY from scientists who do that. If anything, it would be a LOT easier to get the republican congress to fund your research if you were a denier.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
He attacked men for what they did (or their disabilities/etc.), and attacked women for being women. He also said it was fine to sexually assault women if you're famous. He also wants to toughen up on abortion. If you think he's treating men and women equally you really haven't been paying attention. You'd probably not have as many upsets if you looked at the actual arguments and not some superficial appraisal.