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EPA Website Removes Climate Science Site From Public View After Two Decades (washingtonpost.com)
Last week there were reports that the EPA climate change website was set to be taken down, though later the EPA denied that. On Friday evening, however, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its website would be "undergoing changes" to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information (paywalled; alternative source). From a report on The Washington Post: One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA's new administrator, Scott Pruitt. Another provided detailed information on the previous administration's Clean Power Plan, including fact sheets about greenhouse gas emissions on the state and local levels and how different demographic groups were affected by such emissions. The changes came less than 24 hours before thousands of protesters were set to march in Washington and around the country in support of political action to push back against the Trump administration's rollbacks of former president Barack Obama's climate policies.
Aaaaaand the site is going down. Which is the new direction the agency is taking.
Did Facebook block the EPA's, so-called, fact sheets for disinformation?
Would they?
Or are we all suddenly gung ho for government propaganda now?
I guess he means alternative science.
Every American should be worried about this. Aside from the health damage at a time when healthcare is threatened, and aside from the environmental damage, it's going to make it hard for America to do trade deals and export goods.
Just because Trump thinks it's a Chinese conspiracy, doesn't mean that, for example, the EU will just ignore it. If the US emits more pollution, low tariff trade deals will be impossible.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What you or I believe is irrelevent. The facts are the facts and nature will take its course regardless of what anyone believes.
The folks who have the expertise in climate science have the data and every one of THEIR predictions have com true. See, climate scientists discovered the link between fossil fuel burning and increasing temps back in the 1980s. Aside from tweets to rates, their predictions are spot on.
But, the fossil fuel industry - mostly coal - terrified of losing business, lobbied and ran advertisements and had pundits distribute misinformation to confuse the public.
And we have "skeptic's" - folks who know nothing about the issue other than the nonsense they see on TV or read on some website written by a pundit - global warming creates a LOT of web traffic ($$$$).
Considering that half the people in the USA think there is even doubt has shown how effective the fossil fuel industry's propaganda is.
The fossil fuel industry has won.
It has become politicized, because strong business interests are resisting acceptance of scientific consensus. This is nothing unusual. Business will always dispute facts that can lead to regulation costing them money. They will even claim that their cynical twisting of the facts is mandatory, because they have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.
Climate change is complicated, and no serious scientist will claim they know exactly where it is leading. What is universal among climate scientists is that human induced climate change has and is occurring. There are tentative conclusions about some of its effects, and warnings that failing to act to reduce human induced climate change risks truly catastrophic consequences. If the worst happens, it may not be for 100 years, but the earlier action is taken, the lower the cost of remediation is likely to be. The commonly held view is that it is irresponsible, and totally unfair to future generations, to dodge taking prudent steps because it will cost some businesses money.
I know right! Unless it's on Alex Jones, Rence, or Time Cube Guy's website, it's just more of those liberal fact based hit pieces!
>That's not science when even believers begin to doubt the data.
Yes, that is exactly science. Doubting your own premises, your data sources, and your conclusions -- all of this combines into the building of the large experimental knowledge base that was being developed before many of us were born. If there were only "believers", there beliefs would be political or religious or some other form of bullshit. Remove yourself from belief, doubt your own conclusions, and develop tests to further understand where your conclusions went wrong. Science!
I'll bet that after hurricane Katrina, you said, "this is going to keep happening every year and we will see more and more hurricanes, it will be horrible".
I'm absolutely certain you believed that. And you would have been Very wrong.
So why is this prediction any better...?
Personally I am not convinced either way because the climate data has become so political.
Being political just means the politicians on one side decided they didn't like the conclusions so it became a political controversy.
You have people who were all in and suddenly come out saying its all a ruse and data has been cooked to fit the political agenda.
I haven't seen any of that, at least not outside a very small fringe.
As for scientists as a whole being politicized, what else are they supposed to do? The scientists have been under a sustained political attack for over a decade, how can they defend themselves without becoming politicized.
That's not science when even believers begin to doubt the data. The problem is that political agendas don't follow data, they follow what they fabricate as the truth. What we need is more science and less trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
What we need is for the denialists to start sincerely looking at evidence and engaging with science instead of trying to blow up every hint of inconsistency.
Science is built around admitting the limits of your own analysis and acknowledging the possibility of being wrong. This puts scientists in an impossible bind, admit the error bounds in your conclusions and the denialists claim you're saying nothing, and AGW isn't happening at all. Downplay the error bounds and reality will occasionally exceed those bounds, and then denialsts say you were wrong and can't be trusted.
The right conclusion is to tell denialists to STFU until they grow up and start taking the task of public discourse seriously.
I stole this Sig
The post you responded to would have been easily refuted with a rational argument, but you felt the need to make up statements the poster never said and responded to those instead.
Do you just not see how that makes you look as childishly reactionary as the person you were responding to?
I could reduce unemployment claims to zero overnight, it's easy. Just make everyone ineligible for unemployment and POOF, no more claims.
This is why unemployment claims are a terrible measure of actual unemployment level, because it ignores everyone who doesn't (or can't) file a claim.
If the number of claims drops, does it mean less people are unemployed, or does it just mean less people are trying to claim it?
As far as the S&P goes, Trump has no control over that, and it's only a sign that corporations are seeing a far more corporate-friendly government. It also benefits the upper class far more than the middle class (the majority of capital gains are claimed by people with incomes above 200k/year)
I will give him credit for the reduction in immigration, but it's questionable if that is actually a good thing. Remember, EVERY person in America (other than the native americans) is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. If they had done something like this 150 years ago, most of us probably wouldn't exist. To say "I hate immigrants" is no different than saying "I hate my great grandparents".
Last time I checked, Berkley is a University in one city. They don't represent "Liberls" as much as the toothless wonders in West Virginia represent "Conservatives."