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Trump To Scrap NASA Climate Research In Crackdown On 'Politicized Science' (theguardian.com) 667

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."
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Trump To Scrap NASA Climate Research In Crackdown On 'Politicized Science'

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  • How to work an "elephant in the room" joke into the Subject:?

    This article seems to belong in the anti-news category. News is supposed to be surprising or at least interesting. At this point I see no grounds for interest.

    Will Trump survive to 2020, or will the cognitive dissonance of sometimes having to say rational things set his spray-tan on fire before that? Will he live long enough to dump Pence for Ivanka? If he makes it that far, he could abdicate the throne at any time and keep it in the Family, surel

    • Talk is expensive, but we've seen no action yet.

      This guy is an airhead and it's about time we pegged the meter all the way to the right so we can get this out of our system.

      I say to Trump, "Bring it on. Bring it ALL on. Let's get this shit out here so we can examine it up close."

      Then we can get off the fucking coke.

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Pretty sure we've already had this discussion, but if my memory is correct, then I didn't use this version of it:

        If the American political system is broken beyond repair, then it's just a question of when it implodes. I'm not fully joking when I say that Trump might convert it into a monarchy, even though Nixon failed in that ambition. Trump wants it more and the party discipline of today's so-called Republican Party is like the Bolsheviks, somewhere between Lenin's time and the end of Stalin's purges.

        If th

        • It's not the political system that's broken.

          It's the educational system.

          We're turning out cookie-cutter students who are not learning anything useful to a global market.

          That's the precise reason for the anti-globalization (it's called isolationism).

          "We can't compete so let's just quit."

          This administration isn't even in yet and the voters are having a major baby.

          Again, it's all talk for now. I'm betting nothing changes except the agitation.

        • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Thursday November 24, 2016 @12:35AM (#53352561) Journal

          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.

  • Creation theory in schools.

    God

    Damn

    • Re:Next up: (Score:5, Funny)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2016 @11:19PM (#53352229) Journal

      Creation theory in schools.

      God

      Damn

      You're too late. Today he announced an evangelical woman who hates public schools as the Secretary of Education.

      This is like in Civilization IV where the game tells you, "Your Golden Age has now ended".

      • Re:Next up: (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shanen ( 462549 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2016 @11:33PM (#53352291) Homepage Journal

        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.

        • Mod +1 Insightful from me.

        • And Trump's new Education Secretary was a huge booster of the testing aspects of Common Core, which are its absolutely worst aspect.

          No, this is bad. General Flynn is a nutjob who thinks there's a Muslim under every bed. Attorney General Sessions is a Jim Crow-era stereotype who called his black law clerk "boy" and now this Education Secretary who hates education and got her wealth from the Amway pyramid scheme. It's pretty obvious that Mike Pence is getting his way in all these choices, because there's no

      • but after that we can hamstring him with a Democratic congress (don't forget to vote in your primaries or you'll get Blue Dogs).

        And barring a war he's a 1 term president with 8 years of democrats to follow. That'll stop the bleeding. If you want the damage undone then you'll need to give the Dems a super majority in the senate and probably some state legislatures.
  • pfffff (Score:2, Insightful)

    by whodunit ( 2851793 )

    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.

  • Us humans really are dumb creatures.
  • Please get informed (Score:5, Informative)

    by XB-70 ( 812342 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2016 @11:58PM (#53352393)
    I am not pro or anti Trump but this story is full of shit. Here's why: Trump is proposing to MOVE climate research etc. to the EPA, NCAR and other agencies, NOT eliminate it. NASA will focus on hard space research. The dollars spent will not change - just the agencies.

    Secondly, the goal is to de-politicize the research so that dissenting viewpoints can be presented along with majority viewpoints.

    This is the basis of the scientific method, not of trying for outcomes that are political.

    Don't ever forget the story of Dr. Barry Warren who discovered the cure for most ulcers. Because Big Pharma stood to lose millions, his research was quashed. It wasn't until he gave himself an ulcer and cured it that the story got out.

    Same goes for climate: let's focus on proper, scientific research and NOT on opinion and emotion. This way we can arrive at empirical evidence to support solutions to climate change. Don't ever forget, it was NIXON who created the EPA. Trump may surprise with his pragmatic approach... on the other hand, he may not! LOL

    • by EmeraldBot ( 3513925 ) on Thursday November 24, 2016 @05:34AM (#53353535)

      I am not pro or anti Trump but this story is full of shit. Here's why: Trump is proposing to MOVE climate research etc. to the EPA, NCAR and other agencies, NOT eliminate it. NASA will focus on hard space research. The dollars spent will not change - just the agencies.

      Secondly, the goal is to de-politicize the research so that dissenting viewpoints can be presented along with majority viewpoints.

      This is the basis of the scientific method, not of trying for outcomes that are political.

      Don't ever forget the story of Dr. Barry Warren who discovered the cure for most ulcers. Because Big Pharma stood to lose millions, his research was quashed. It wasn't until he gave himself an ulcer and cured it that the story got out.

      Same goes for climate: let's focus on proper, scientific research and NOT on opinion and emotion. This way we can arrive at empirical evidence to support solutions to climate change. Don't ever forget, it was NIXON who created the EPA. Trump may surprise with his pragmatic approach... on the other hand, he may not! LOL

      Yeah, the EPA he wants to disband, the NCAR which makes research he ignores, and the NOAA that he refuses to fund. Without any satellites of any kind. Expecting a space agency to somehow train itself without ever using Earth's climate as a model. Because Trump is the kind of person who enjoys research and hearing other people's opinions.

      I say this politely, but I strongly urge you to take a serious look at Trump and his advisors.

    • by afgam28 ( 48611 )

      I doubt Trump will surprise. Nixon may have created the EPA, but under Trump it will be headed by Myron Ebell, who is an outspoken climate change denier.

      Let's assume for a moment that you're right, and that Donald Trump and Bob Walker just want to shuffle programs between different agencies, without changing the total dollars spent. If the goal is to "de-politicize the research", how does this reorg even achieve that? Why is NASA's research more political than the research by the EPA?

      Moving NASA's Earth Sci

  • How long this kind of nonsense is going to stay - often seems like 3rd Reich in the beginning... On the radio I even heard people shouting, after asked if they can pronounce the German word for "lying press" - where the press organs which were not in line with the upcoming movement, were constantly denounced - the crowd roared enthusiastically LÜGENPRESSE.. This may have been just a small rightest wing gathering, but Donald consistently labels anything not conforming to his "Universe" as lie again and

  • Here we go.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by beheaderaswp ( 549877 ) * on Thursday November 24, 2016 @01:06AM (#53352661)

    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.

  • by See Attached ( 1269764 ) on Thursday November 24, 2016 @01:43AM (#53352855)
    First .. Should NOAA be running the studies, and be supported by satellites run by Nasa, Funded thru NOAA? Arguable. Second .. Is climate change real, or does the President-Elect know more about worldwide weather fluctuation than all the scientists (ok 95% of them), the same way he knows more about war than generals? Honestly, I am having trouble keeping all the truthiness our President-Elect pushes out. Can we agree that he said a lot of things to get him elected, What is your favorite contradiction?
  • by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Thursday November 24, 2016 @05:05AM (#53353435)

    He's naming a guy who believes climate change to be in charge of the environment
    He's naming a creationist to be in charge of education
    He's naming a racist anti-gay to be in charge of interior
    He's also designing a special uniform for his people.

    Americans, what does it feel like to live in the early 1900s? Or maybe that's more like the 1800s?

  • by doug141 ( 863552 ) on Thursday November 24, 2016 @10:09AM (#53354467)

    If facts don't matter, why spend money for them?

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

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