We need science more than ever, as our world is rocked by natural and people-made disasters.
Yet two words are banned the Trump administration: climate change.
Read the editorial that appeared in today’s’ New York Times.
The government is controlled by men (mostly) who are contemptuous of science and knowledge. Maybe this explains their war on education. They have reached the top without brains, why pay to develop them in young children?
The Times’ editorial reads:
“The news was hard to digest until one realized it was part of a much larger and increasingly disturbing pattern in the Trump administration. On Aug. 18, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine received an order from the Interior Department that it stop work on what seemed a useful and overdue study of the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining.
“The $1 million study had been requested by two West Virginia health agencies following multiple studies suggesting increased rates of birth defects, cancer and other health problems among people living near big surface coal-mining operations in Appalachia. The order to shut it down came just hours before the scientists were scheduled to meet with affected residents of Kentucky.
“The Interior Department said the project was put on hold as a result of an agencywide budgetary review of grants and projects costing more than $100,000.
“This was not persuasive to anyone who had been paying attention. From Day 1, the White House and its lackeys in certain federal agencies have been waging what amounts to a war on science, appointing people with few scientific credentials to key positions, defunding programs that could lead to a cleaner and safer environment and a healthier population, and, most ominously, censoring scientific inquiry that could inform the public and government policy.
“Even allowing for justifiable budgetary reasons, in nearly every case the principal motive seemed the same: to serve commercial interests whose profitability could be affected by health and safety rules.
“The coal mining industry is a conspicuous example. The practice of blowing the tops off mountains to get at underlying coal seams has been attacked for years by public health and environmental interests and by many of the families whose livelihoods depend on coal. But Mr. Trump and his department heads have made a very big deal of saving jobs in a declining industry that is already under severe pressure from market forces, including competition from cheaper natural gas. An unfavorable health study would inject unwelcome reality into Mr. Trump’s rosy promises of a job boom fueled by “clean, beautiful coal.”
“This is a president who has never shown much fidelity to facts, unless they are his own alternative ones. Yet if there is any unifying theme beyond that to the administration’s war on science, apart from its devotion to big industry and its reflexively antiregulatory mind-set, it is horror of the words “climate change.”
“This starts with Mr. Trump, who has called global warming a hoax and pulled the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change. Among his first presidential acts, he instructed Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, to deep-six President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, and ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to roll back Obama-era rules reducing the venting from natural gas wells of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas.
“Mr. Trump has been properly sympathetic to the victims of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but the fact that there is almost certainly a connection between a warming earth and increasingly destructive natural events seems not to have occurred to him or his fellow deniers. Mr. Pruitt and his colleagues have enthusiastically jumped to the task of rescinding regulations that might address the problem, meanwhile presiding over a no less ominous development: a governmentwide purge of people, particularly scientists, whose research and conclusions about the human contribution to climate change do not support the administration’s agenda.
“Mr. Pruitt, for instance, is replacing dozens of members on the E.P.A.’s scientific advisory boards; in March, he dismissed at least five scientists from the agency’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, to be replaced, according to a spokesman, with advisers “who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community.” Last month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dissolved its 15-member climate science advisory committee, a panel set up to help translate the findings of the National Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for businesses, governments and the public.
“In June, Mr. Pruitt told a coal industry lobbying group that he was preparing to convene a “red team” of researchers to challenge the notion, broadly accepted among climate scientists, that carbon dioxide and other emissions from fossil fuels are the primary drivers of climate change.
“Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, called the red team plan a “dumb idea” that’s like “a red team-blue team exercise about whether gravity exists.” Rick Perry, the energy secretary, former Texas governor and climate skeptic, endorsed the idea as — get this — a way to “get the politicians out of the room.” Given his and Mr. Pruitt’s ideological and historical financial ties to the fossil fuel industry, it is hard to think of a more cynical use of public money.
“Even the official vocabulary of global warming has changed, as if the problem can be made to evaporate by describing it in more benign terms. At the Department of Agriculture, staff members are encouraged to use words like “weather extremes” in lieu of “climate change,” and “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency” instead of “reduce greenhouse gases.” The Department of Energy has scrubbed the words “clean energy” and “new energy” from its websites, and has cut links to clean or renewable energy initiatives and programs, according to the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, which monitors federal websites.
“At the E.P.A., a former Trump campaign assistant named John Konkus aims to eliminate the “double C-word,” meaning “climate change,” from the agency’s research grant solicitations, and he views every application for research money through a similar lens. The E.P.A. is even considering editing out climate change-related exhibits in a museum depicting the agency’s history.
“The bias against science finds reinforcement in Mr. Trump’s budget and the people he has chosen for important scientific jobs. Mr. Trump’s 2018 federal budget proposal would cut nondefense research and development money across the government.
“The president has proposed cutting nearly $6 billion from the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s single largest funder of biomedical research. The National Science Foundation, a government agency that funds a variety of scientific and engineering research projects, would be trimmed by about 11 percent. Plant and animal-related science at the Agriculture Department, data analysis at the Census Bureau and earth science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would all suffer.
“It is amazing but true, given the present circumstances, that the Trump budget would eliminate $250 million for NOAA’s coastal research programs that prepare communities for rising seas and worsening storms. The E.P.A.’s Global Change program would be likewise eliminated. This makes the budget director, Mick Mulvaney, delirious with joy. He complains of “crazy things” the Obama administration did to study climate, and boasts: “Do a lot of the E.P.A. reductions aim at reducing the focus on climate science? Yes.”
“As to key appointments, denial and mediocrity abound. Last week, Mr. Trump nominated David Zatezalo, a former coal company chief executive who has repeatedly clashed with federal mine safety regulators, as assistant secretary of labor for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. He nominated Jim Bridenstine, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma with no science or space background, as NASA administrator. Sam Clovis, Mr. Trump’s nomination to be the Agriculture Department’s chief scientist, is not a scientist: He’s a former talk-radio host and incendiary blogger who has labeled climate research “junk science.”
“From the beginning, Mr. Trump, Mr. Pruitt, Mr. Zinke and Mr. Perry — to name the Big Four on environmental and energy issues — have been promising a new day to just about anyone discomfited by a half-century of bipartisan environmental law, whether it be the developers and farmers who feel threatened by efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act, oil and gas drillers seeking leases they do not need on federal land, chemical companies seeking relaxation from rules governing dangerous pesticides, automakers asked to improve fuel efficiency or utilities required to make further investments in technology to reduce ground-level pollutants.
“The future ain’t what it used to be at the E.P.A.,” Mr. Pruitt is fond of saying of his agency. These words could also apply to just about every other cabinet department and regulatory body in this administration. What his words really mean is that the future isn’t going to be nearly as promising for ordinary Americans as it should be.”
So happy you featured this. As I was reading it this morning, I was reminded of Chris Mooney’s (a proud public school graduate of New Orleans’ Ben Franklin High School) “The Republican War on Science,” I realized that it was published more than 12 years ago. He documented the origin of the politics that the NYT editorial writers highlighted today. Only it’s scarier than what they write because they don’t address the complicit Congress. Chief among them, before we lionize him for his late views on Trump, is Sen. Jeff Flake. Here’s a reminder of his complicity in this mess that was published in April 2016: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-congress-tormentors_us_570fcfefe4b03d8b7b9fbedf
Nothing will be learned . A storm starts out off the coast of West Africa its final path within a hundred miles of its predicted path. It drifts south into northern Cuba as a mega cat 5 storm. Saving Florida the worst of the storm. Next time they will ignore the warnings. Where science did fail and it is a warning , was those cranes were not supposed to fall . Neither was the one on 57th street in NY during Sandi . So if we think we will engineer our way out of Climate disaster it is highly unlikely.
But its not just the Republicans , If you haven’t seen it yet watch “Blood On the Mountain ” . Let me know what you think of Joe Manchin. Did he voice any objections to the killing of the study..
The people of West Virginia have been suffering for decades and it will continue. Until a genuine alternative to the oligarchy is presented . You see the same pattern everywhere workers are crushed . But sooner or later Oligarchies fall.
I haven’t watched “Blood on the Mountain,” but I have VERY strong opinions about Manchin. He is a smarmy, pandering politician who hides behind the mask of “independent minded” who is anything but. He will maneuver between the misconceptions and prejudices of his constituents and claim to be principled. But all he really does is ride the wave intolerance and ignorance to personal gain. I wish he would go ahead and end the charade and officially become a Republican. As I am sure you know, his daughter is the CEO of the company that hiked prices—for no explicable reason—of epipens. That apple snuggled right up to the tree. I drive, very occasionally, through West Virginia. I make sure I have all the gas and water I need so that I won’t spend a penny in the state. But then I hit SW Virginia and North Carolina and wonder if it’s worth it.
GregB
Catch the documentary on Netflix , it is a heart wrenching account of an economically and now environmentally devastated people. The perfect test tube for Trumpism . I have a problem when American Unions are too narrowly focused on self interests, under other circumstances the mine unions would be on the wrong side of history . . What has happened in West Virginia between strip mining, vulture capitalism and de- unionization, resembles a Dickens novel. Are these people to be faulted for turning to a fascist demagogue, when nobody is presenting an alternative. The life they are living is the alternative. I can sit here in NY and say coal is a dead industry , manufacturing a dead industry… ….. teaching a dead profession. It hurts when it hits home ! The people of West Virginia are not the problem . They are “Pawns in their Game” .
“Are these people to be faulted for turning to a fascist demagogue, when nobody is presenting an alternative.” I guess my heartless answer would be a resounding yes. Anyone who turns to support a fascist demagogue, regardless of what their personal circumstances are, is, to me, a pathetic excuse of a human being. I can envision no circumstance that would lead me to be a supporter of a fascist demagogue. And I have no respect or sympathy for anyone who would rationalize one’s own prejudices, misconceptions, or ignorance to excuse it. Their solution to their self-victimization is to victimize others in the hopes that they will profit from the deal.
GregB
And yet Greg we see this time and time again. In Nation after nation .
When was this written?
“The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class – without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.
What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style “centrist” Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by down scaled and outsourced whites.[3]
While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsources, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations’ bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let’s build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it’s evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.”….. ”
We do not need to sympathize with their behavior . But we do have to understand the causes. If we hope to reverse it. Let us also understand there are a whole lot of Trump voters who are economically very well off. Lets also understand that this is the better part of the entire party . Which is what makes Trump so dangerous . Is Pence worse than Trump. Would he or Ryan be more effective in policy that is devastating .
It is strange for working class people to turn to politicians who want tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
dianeravitch
“But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters”
Not so strange . Take a Union construction worker going up 5th ave this weekend . Oh you didn’t notice the Labor day parade was on Saturday with tens of thousands marching . Not your fault . It wasn’t the Hurricane coverage that drowned it out.
So he sees a large number of undocumented immigrants on High-rise Residential construction. He knows that this is work that he has traditionally done in the past. And some how the skills shortage of construction workers does not apply to him at his high wage. There is unemployment. .
No different than Teachers on this blog who object to less trained, less qualified ,lower paid teachers in charter schools . They object to the point that they are negative when the AFT organizes a charter school . As they also see their livelihood under attack . Public Schools closing down while charters open.
Trump is the fixer . The fact that he will destroy the union that provides that hi standard of living. The fact he as a developer built non Union where ever he could. That even in NY he used Polish guest workers in the late 70s to Demolish Bonwit Teller and make room for Trump Tower . Violating overtime and labor laws in the process. This happening at a time, no one dreamed of doing that in Manhattan .
All of that is in another compartment. …… ……
And there are as many politically uninformed teachers as construction workers or factory workers. Perhaps less that voted for Trump but I would love to have those figures on a state by state basis.
There you go, Joel, you cast me off, then you reel me in again. Both your concluding paragraphs plus Diane’s comment, taken together, make me do a Texas two-step. On the one hand, but on the other. I still stand by what I wrote above, but I am open to your arguments. Where we all agree, as always, is that those who vote against their interests need to be educated and convinced that they are doing so. I am confused and befuddled. I think I’ll take some time to listen to Dale Watson’s “I Hate These Songs” and see if I can figure it out.
The wars on democracy, education, and science are all of a piece.
The Place Where Three Wars Meet
Yes.
Is this news , that declaration of war was issued in 1971 . Things worked out pretty much according to plan.
Haven’t you people figured out that global warming/climate change is Fake Science?!?!?!?!? Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are just aberrant events. Really.
I applaud ed reformers for finally admitting the goal is to eradicate public schools:
“By David Osborne
Sept. 7, 2017 7:25 p.m. ET
31 COMMENTS
On Sept. 8, 1992, the first charter school opened, in St. Paul, Minn. Twenty-five years later, some 7,000 of these schools serve about three million students around the U.S. Their growth has become controversial among those wedded to the status quo, but charters undeniably are effective, especially in urban areas. After four years in a charter, urban students learn about 50% more a year than demographically similar students in traditional public schools, according to a 2015 report from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
The American cities that have most improved their schools are those that have embraced charters wholeheartedly. Their success suggests that policy makers should stop thinking of charters as an innovation around the edges of the public-school system—and realize that they simply are a better way to organize public education.
New Orleans, which will be 100% charters next year, is America’s fastest-improving city when it comes to education. Test scores, graduation and dropout rates, college-going rates and independent studies all tell the same story: The city’s schools have doubled or tripled their effectiveness in the decade since the state began turning them over to charter operators.”
Bravo. No more nonsense about how they’re “agnostic”. They prefer private operators to existing public schools and the goal is to replace all of our schools with a privatized model.
Now we can have an actual debate. Here’s the question they can put to the public:
Should all schools be turned over to private contractors?
Let’s see which ed reformer is willing to put that question to a vote. My guess is “none of them are”. Why not? Because they know it would go down in flames if they allowed the public to weigh in on it.
I do think it’s great The Movement is finally, finally telling the truth, though.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-schools-are-flourishing-on-their-silver-anniversary-1504826722
Ed reform is really doubling down. Now The Movement are lobbying for every school system in the country to be composed exclusively of schools run by private contractors:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-schools-are-flourishing-on-their-silver-anniversary-1504826722
All of the people who said the goal of this “movement” was to privatize every public school in the country? They were right. That is the goal. It’s just taken ed reformers 20 years to admit the obvious.
“The teachers unions hate this model, because most charter schools are not unionized. But if someone discovered a vaccine to cure cancer, would anyone limit its use because hospitals and drug companies found it threatening?”
Here’s my question. Why are ed reformers so convinced that “teachers unions” are the only people who support public schools?
I know very few of them attended public schools and they certainly wouldn’t be caught dead sending their children to one, but lots and lots of families support public schools.
It simply isn’t true that the public opposes public schools. That’s true of ed reformers but it is in no way true of the public. Why do they take their personal and ideological animus towards public schools and project that onto “the public”?
A question I’ve asked myself so many times: “Why are ed reformers so convinced that “teachers unions” are the only people who support public schools?”
Reporters too!
I could do the same thing re: charter schools. I could write a line like “certainly billionaires support charter schools” and use that to “prove” that billionaires are the only people who support charter schools but because that’s ridiculous, I don’t.
So why do ed reformers say it with labor unions?
This is more accurate, don’t you think? “labor unions and millions of American public school families support public schools”.
I hope the Common Core doesn’t teach this kind of sloppy thinking, where one group supporting public schools (labor unions) excludes the possibility of ANOTHER group supporting public schools. There could be two or more groups!
I would say this is probably true: “charter school families and billionaires support charter schools”. That’s certainly possible. It’s not like billionaire support of charter schools acts to exclude the possibility charter school families support these schools.
Why can’t ed reformers admit a similiar situation might exist re: public schools and labor unions? Because labor unions support public schools that means I must oppose my local public school? Why?
I can’t resist spreading this joke; Betsy Devos is being guarded by marshals because someone mailed her suspicious package — it was a package of science textbooks. When I saw that go through today I did not want to share because it spreads more fear and paranoia but it is to the point and it is funny…. take it for what it is worth. I know we have the “hobby lobby” curriculum and it has already been tested out in OK… and there are corporations shipping phony science texts to classroom teachers… a world of disinformation and falsehoods
I wonder if ol Betsy received the book I sent her? Haven’t heard a thing back yet.
Not even a Thank You note? I would have thought she would at least have some Gloria Vanderbilt or Emily Post.
read some
If ed reformers reach their goal and we finally eradicate the last public school and we end up with a worse system than we have now will ANY of these people be held accountable? You all know the answer to that- it’s “no”.
The only people who are taking any risk here are the public. The geniuses who designed the privatized systems will suffer no ill effects at all because they’re insulated from risk- they don’t rely on public systems anyway.
I would add that the New Generation Science Standards have all but eliminated study of environment. Even as natural history is scorned on a college level, all but biochemical approaches to science have systematically been disappearing for two decades. Students are now not required to be able to identify the phyla or differentiate between any classifications of living things.
Somewhere in all of this seems a sinister attempt to make sure that our next generation does not know when a species becomes endangered because no one knows what it looks like. If you do not know what a towhee looks like, what will you care when the last one falls victim to the latest high rise.
If you believe in God and that God created the universe, then to be anti science is to be a hypocritical blasphemer. It is to stand solidly in denial of God’s work, of the full and complete reality of gods creation. Why, you might ask? To create the universe is not merely to creat the few things immediately perceivable by our paltry human senses but to create the vast entirety of the universe which includes all of the laws and properties governing it and of all of the mysteries yet to be understood. These are the things that science explores and explains, some of the countless details of the entirety of Gods creation. To believe in what peer reviewed, comprehensively investigated science tells us is to believe in and understand those parts of Gods plan, to deny any part of that, especially for political purposes or to decieve others for your own advantage is to reject God and instead to loudly announce your status as a servant of evil. Cherry picking things you like or need from science while ignoring the critical role science played in their existance or pretending to know more about gods plan simply because you read the bible is absurd in the extreme. The bible cannot tell you more about the nature of the universe than what has been learned by those who’ve actually studied it’s myriad details. The bible was written at a time when scientific inquiry was rudimentary at best by men who barely understood what God was telling them, if you believe that God had a hand in the writing, and it barely concerns itself with any of what science has since discovered about non human centered reality. The hypocrisy of being healthy due to modern medical advances and driving to church in a new car only to attack science when speaking over a PA system is too huge to get around. It’s long past time to point all this out to the nation as a whole and especially to the science deniers who justify their lies by hiding behind false narratives of their religion. Even if you do not believe in God or that some mystical being created the universe, you still have the right and the obligation to call science deniers out for their blasphemy and hypocrisy and lies. Again, in closing, to be anti-science is to be anti-God. There is no way around this truth.
I have only one correction to recommend. Those of who value science do not believe in it, we accept the validity of the hypotheses and conclusions it explains and clarifies. It is not a matter of faith, but of empirical evidence. When we say we “believe” in science and, for examples, the theories of climate change, we fall into a semantic trap. I can quibble with a few other minor things, but all in all, you are correct.
I don’t disagree at all with your elaboration and perhaps was not clear enough. “Belief” is for some parts of religion, accepting validly arrived at conclusions is for everything else. There are plenty of scientists among the faithful who have no conflict between these two things in their own lives because there is none to be had in the first place. I sought only to point out what seems to me to be a good way to defend the overall practice of science by exposing the hypocrisy of the falsely conservative/republican anti-science position and laying bare the evil at it’s root.
The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, is a conservative Christian. Apparently he can integrate strong religion beliefs and scientific study.
This is insanity, purposely cutting, gutting, defunding, crippling all these crucial science and health programs. Seriously, the NIH!? This is equivalent to shooting yourself in the feet, the kneecaps, the arse and the kidney just for kicks.
Absolutely! But instead of all the other body parts, I would posit that the target of the shooting is our brain/intellect.
I would add our emotions to the target list since getting people to disengage is one of the results of the emotional fatigue response to insults to our intelligence as perpetrated by those with far greater financial and political power.
Long story short, Dumpster is putting people in positions where they can gaslight the entire nation, leaving the elites in control. Destroy reality and you can advance any venal policy you desire with little blowback. What needs to be told is who is introducing and suggesting these people to 45?
I believe Pence has worked hard to get some of the unfits into their positions.
Yes, they all share Penve’s retrograde ideology
Pence
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Dump doesn’t have the brains to understand science.
Who even implied that he had brains to begin with?
Good one, Duane.
Remember, Dump actually tried to look at the eclipse without his solar glasses. Someone had to tell him to put them on. DUH…
This is one interview put out by R. Limbaugh. I’m twisting my head around in circles trying to understand the reasoning. [Trump loves people and he’s kicking out the criminals? I’ve obviously been missing something.] If you truly love Trump, let me know the reason.
……
Tammy in Naples, Florida, suggested that her friends and extended family all have basically the same attitude toward Trump, a trust so powerful that there isn’t any need to verify:
Caller: Trump was just up the street at the mobile-home park. But I called to say that my whole entire family, my brother, my husband’s family up in Pennsylvania, we all love Trump, we all trust Trump, half of us don’t even pay attention to the things he does because we know that he has a plan and I don’t think for one second he’s ever gonna lose that base unless he does something really outrageous. You know, he’s kicking out the criminals. There’s less people coming in.
Limbaugh: Tammy, time is short and I need to ask you a question. Have you ever trusted a politician before like you trust Donald Trump?
Caller: Not for one second.
Limbaugh: Sounds like it.
Caller: I’m a hundred thousand percent for him, and so is everybody I know. I’m sure there’s people, but the ones that really know that he loves people, I really believe he loves people, I really believe he sincerely tries to help people.
Limbaugh: All right, Tammy, thanks.
Caller: If the Democrats had treated him nice from the beginning, he would have been working with them from day one.
Limbaugh: That’s a good point. Good point. I gotta go on that one, but she said something, we gotta talk about this because this is why the media thinks that you Trump people are a bunch of cultists.