December 17-18, 2017: Scientists Ordered Not to Cite...Science

 

12/17/17: The Thought Police are hard at work at the Centers for Disease Control. Today we learn scientists at CDC were admonished not to use these seven words or phrases in written reports: “science-based,” “evidence-based,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “diversity” “vulnerable,” or “entitlement.” Scientists will no longer blather on about “science-based” findings. 

Here's a NASA video on climate change.

(Updated to include 2021.)

 

Wow, hot enough today for you, buddy? 

In Trumpistan changing the wording passes for draining the swamp. You rebrand the swamp a “swimming pool.”  

The Thought Police have already “drained the swamp” at the E.P.A., at NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by scrubbing all mention of climate change. 

Now, government scientists may only ask in conversation or for publication, “Wow, hot enough today for you, buddy?”

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12/18/17: The Thought Police expand their efforts regarding the E.P.A. Scott Pruitt gives approval to hire Definers Public Affairs to provide “media monitoring.” Definers, which won a no-bid contract, just so happens to be affiliated with America Rising, a Republican research group.

 

America Rising spent a good chunk of 2016 submitting Freedom of Information requests demanding the emails of various E.P.A. employees who had the nerve to: 

A)    Speak up at a private lunch and say the nation might be headed for an “environmental catastrophe.” 

B)     Write a letter to Pruitt, raising similar concerns. 

C)    Attend a rally to protest budget cuts, which would very possibly cripple the agency.

March 30, 2019: Alaska Warming Fast Says NOAA - Trump Says Who?

 

3/30/19: Weekend temperatures in parts of Alaska are 50° above normal. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the state is the “fastest-warming” part of our country. On March 19, the town of Klawock reported the earliest 70° temperature ever recorded in the state. 

See if you can spot a trend: 

 

A search of Trump’s Twitter feed shows that only once has he ever cited the NOAA in a tweet. That was to show pictures of how large Hurricane Florence was. By comparison, he has discounted climate change/global warming dozens of times, typically mistaking weather for climate. For example, we had this on February 18, 2015: “Among the lowest temperatures EVER in much of the United States. Ice caps at record size. Changed name from GLOBAL WARMING to CLIMATE CHANGE.”

 

Any fool could check NASA records and discover that, globally, for the entire year, 2015 was the second hottest ever, with 2016 hottest, 2017 third and 2018 fourth. You could look up stories about the tremendous decline in ice in the Arctic Ocean. You could check NASA records for the last sixty years, noting significant ice losses in the Antarctic. Assuming you weren’t a fool yourself, you wouldn’t be fooled by Trump and the right-wingers who like to point to one NASA report that showed limited ice gains in parts of the Antarctic in 2015.

June 16, 2020: Capitalism Can Be a Soulless Beast

 

6/16/20: Proof that capitalism has no soul. You can now buy “George Floyd” running shoes. For $18, you can purchase three pairs of “George Floyd R.I.P.” underwear.

Capitalism has no soul, save profitting.

 

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Capitalism can be a soulless beast.

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This is not meant as a knock on capitalism in totality. But we need to remember that capitalism can be a soulless beast. That’s why the slave trade was legal in this country, until 1808. That’s why child labor was accepted as normal until 1908. That’s why coal miners used to die by the thousands in cave-ins and explosions yearly. It’s why, even now, that thousands of U.S. corporations claim their headquarters are in the Cayman Islands, so they can dodge taxes. 

Take, for example, the decision of Thermo Fisher, an American tech company, to work with the Chinese communist government. 

(I know, I know. Communism is a fatally flawed economic model.)

 

In the last three years, Chinese authorities have been gathering DNA samples from all males in that country. Thermo Fisher has supplied testing kits, to Chinese specifications, to make creating a database possible. 

Could you catch criminals more surely, if you had blood, saliva, hair, and genetic materials from every single male? Yes. 

Could you catch protesters and anonymous critics of the government if you had the same? You could. 

Communist leaders will no doubt abuse the system.

 

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PROOF THAT WITH the Trump administration, no matter how much you try to keep track, there’s always more sh*t to discuss. An independent panel commissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that two top officials violated the agency’s ethics code. 

How? Why? Did they steal money? 

 

“Domineering autocratic ogres.” 

If you remember:  Mr. Trump claimed that he was right when he said Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama (see: 9/5/19). Weather experts said he wasn’t. The president then produced a map “showing” that Dorian was bearing down on the state. Some poor fool had clearly doctored the map – marking a new path for the storm with a thick black Sharpie line. 

I mean, who would do that! 

In any case, two agency officials caved and backed the president. The two officials later defended themselves – said they were pressured by top Trump political appointees to bend the truth. 

Craig McClean, the acting chief scientist for NOAA, wasn’t buying. If top officials at NOAA dared not stand up to “domineering autocratic ogres,” he couldn’t muster up much sympathy. If top people at NOAA, couldn’t stand up “for the Scientific Integrity of the agency and the trust our public needs to invest in our scientific process and products,” then who would?

 

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PROOF THAT OUR PRESIDENT is an ill-informed lout, with no real interest in learning: Speaking at the White House today, Trump says he believes the same expertise that produced a vaccine to cure AIDS will soon produce a vaccine to defend us all against COVID-19. 

Tipping his hat to the scientists of this country, he says, “These are the people – the best, the smartest, the most brilliant anywhere, and they’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine. They’ve come up with ... various things.” 

This would be great news…if a vaccine to cure AIDS actually existed. Instead, it’s just more proof of how little Mr. Drink Bleach knows about the real battles to combat this new and deadly virus. 

When he talks about “various things,” you know what he’s really saying is he doesn’t know anything.

July 9, 2021: Fox News Hates Teachers' Unions

 

7/9/21: The final numbers are in. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, June sets a North American record for the hottest June ever. More than 1,200 daily highs and more than 1,500 minimum daily highs are recorded. As hotter days make the earth slower to cool – and bring relief when the sun finally sets – daily minimum highs become a greater problem. 

In some parts of the Pacific Northwest recently, temperatures soared nearly 30 degrees Fahrenheit above their average, an extreme that “would have been virtually impossible without climate change,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

 

As a “bonus,” warmer air can hold more moisture – increasing humidity and making nights muggier.

 

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Rupert Murdoch makes more than Randy Weingartern.

IF YOU’VE NEVER NOTICED, Fox News hates labor unions. Today, they decided to blast Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. A guest on Martha MacCallum’s show pointed out that Weingarten was warning against reopening schools in the face of the spreading coronavirus. The guest grumbled because the head of the union made $564,236 last year, nine times the salary of the average teacher. 

This was terrible and un-American and proved that unionized teachers hate children. Whereas when Tucker Carlson makes $6,000,000 per year, roughly two hundred times as much as the typical Fox News viewer, that is capitalism at its purest, and exactly as God intended. 

Also, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox, is worth $21.6 billion, or 38,282 times as much as the union lady made last year. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: This blogger, a former educator, doesn’t much care for Weingarten. Still, her salary has nothing to do with her concern for reopening schools. One third of teachers are 50 years old or older, and at risk of serious illness if exposed to the COVID-19 virus. Fox News, of course, doesn’t care about teachers. 

They care about ratings.

August 22, 2021: July 2021 Proves Hottest Month Ever

 

8/22/21: Despite the fact that the Afghan collapse has been dominating the news, the really big story continues to be climate change. And so long as conservative types refuse to admit we have a problem – and so long as Trump fans continue to adore a man who calls the existential crisis for humanity a “hoax” – this liberal blogger will gladly remain a liberal, heart and soul.

Melting on the Greenland ice sheet.

 

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An average global temperature 1.67° F above historic norms.

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While you might have been focused on the debacle in Southwest Asia, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the hottest month, globally, ever recorded, with an average temperature 1.67° F above historic norms. June was “only” the fifth warmest June in 142 years of records. And, because right-wingers like to find nuggets of information and argue the whole story of climate change is drummed up so liberals can knock hamburgers out of their mitts, NOAA also notes that sea ice in the Antarctic actually increased. 

Otherwise, the news so far this month has been grim. The Dixie Fire in bone-dry Northern California has reduced 721,298 acres of forest, homes, and entire towns to ash. It’s only 37% contained. That’s one fire – burning up an area the size of Rhode Island. Last week, the town of Susanville, with 15,000 residents, was endangered by the flames and had to be evacuated. 

The picture is black across much of the U.S. The Bootleg Fire in Oregon burned up another 400,000 acres before it was contained. The National Interagency Fire Center reported on Saturday that 96 large fires, as far east as Minnesota, were burning. More than 2.4 million acres had gone up in smoke. Montana, with 22 large fires, Idaho, with 21, and Washington State, with 19, have the most blazes to combat. Fires burning in other states: California (11), Oregon (11), Utah and Wyoming (3 each) and Alaska (2), Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Minnesota (1 each).

 

On the other end of the climate change spectrum, scientists note that for the first time, on August 14, it rained for hours at the highest point in Greenland, a development heretofore unknown. On that day, temperatures remained above freezing for nine hours, also unheard of, according to scientists at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. A U.S. agency I am sure most Trump-lovers did not realize existed. 

(Or Trump. Who can forget that immortal day when he suggested the U.S. buy Greenland from the Danes?) 

“That’s not a healthy sign for an ice sheet,” Indrani Das, a glaciologist with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory explained – although it’s not hard to grasp. “Water on ice is bad. … It makes the ice sheet more prone to surface melt.” A melting ice sheet in Greenland, would be bad for humanity, itself. 

“This alarming rain at the summit of Greenland is not an isolated event,” said Twila Moon, deputy lead scientist with the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

 

Along with rising floods, fires, and other extremes, it is one of many “alarm bells” signaling the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

“We really have to stay laser-focused on adapting, as well as reducing the potential for those to become truly devastating.”

 

According to Martin Stendel, a senior researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, , relying on ice-core samples, above-freezing temperatures have occurred at the Greenland summit only six times in 2,000 years. Now, there have been three events in just the last decade: 2012, 2019 and 2021.