Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThe GOP's Science Problem - Which Is Far Older And More Malignant Than You Might Think
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Once Trump became president, disbelief mutated into something more dangerous: an aggressive federal effort to suppress scientific knowledge. In an extensive account of such efforts, based on a survey of scientists at sixteen federal agencies, the Union of Concerned Scientists noted in 2018 that many survey respondents . . . report censorship of their work, especially work related to climate change.
This included deleting references to climate change from websites and reports, and insinuating denialism into government documents. Of a government warning that unchecked warming could devastate the economy, Trump said, I dont believe it. One result, reports the New York Times, is that parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet. . . Forget the overwhelming consensus of scientists that accelerating climate change could soon become catastrophicor the evidence of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, proliferating droughts, burgeoning wildfires. Suppressing climate science propitiates important Republican constituencies: the fossil-fuel industry; a donor class exemplified by the Koch brothers; and base voters resentful of perceived elites.
COVID-19 has dramatized this subordination of knowledge to politicsincluding Trumps dismissal of repeated scientific warnings. As of today we have suffered more than 84,000 deaths. Yet little more than two months ago, Trump was describing Democrats critiques of his COVID-19 response as their new hoax, bragging that we have lost nobody to coronavirus, and predicting that the number of cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.
Once again, Limbaugh and Foxparticularly Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannityderided science as a hoax. Once again, partisans believed them: Polling throughout March showed that most Republicans dismissed COVID-19 as a major public health threat. Events proved otherwise. In late April, Vox reported a sophisticated statistical analysis by three economists from the University of Chicago which suggested that, in the early stages of the pandemic, areas with more Hannity viewers had more cases and deaths from COVID-19. As death enveloped us, Trump resorted to anti-scientific magical thinking. One of his quack cures, hydroxychloroquine, seems to increase fatalities; another, self-injecting cleaning products, surely would. Yet many of his followers swallowed this dangerous nonsensesome literally.
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https://thebulwark.com/the-pandemic-and-the-gops-science-problem/
Botany
(70,516 posts)" ... areas with more Hannity viewers had more cases and deaths from COVID-19."
So much of this goes back to Reagan getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine and this has
allowed a large % of Americans to bath in misinformation for the past 2.5 generations.
https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2020/05/12/the-long-strange-history-of-bill-gates-population-control-conspiracy-theories/
The Long, Strange History of Bill Gates Population Control Conspiracy Theories
How the billionaire philanthropist displaced George Soros as the chief bogeyman of the right.
Three months into the global pandemic, Bill Gates has displaced George Soros as the chief bogeyman of the right.
In April, dozens of Texans crowded around Infowars host Alex Jones at an anti-shutdown demonstration in Austin, Texas, chanting arrest Bill Gates. A New York-based tech nonprofit falsely rumored to be working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to implant vaccine microchips in people received so many death threats that it contacted the FBI. And a White House petition demanding the billionaires foundation be investigated for medical malpractice and crimes against humanity amassed half-a-million signatures in three weeks.
Gates, who has announced that his $40 billion-foundation will shift its total attention to fighting COVID-19, has been accused of a range of misdeeds, from scheming to profit off a vaccine to creating the virus itself. On April 8, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Attorney General Bill Barr speculated about whether Gates would use digital certificates to monitor anyone who got vaccinated.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,005 posts)A "Fairness Doctrine" could be used to give climate deniers equal time, which would not be fair.
Or anti-vaxxers equal time, which would be deadly.
Climate denial is deadly enough.
Imagine giving Alex Jones equal time to deny Sandy Hook.
Turbineguy
(37,343 posts)We know how that ended.
LastDemocratInSC
(3,647 posts)Ideologues always try to force-fit reality into the confined and oddly shaped spaces of their beliefs.
hatrack
(59,587 posts)The better to plant those frigid, acidic soils of the Virgin Lands with!
Turbineguy
(37,343 posts)nuclear power plants....
hatrack
(59,587 posts)pscot
(21,024 posts)for toxic levels of malignant dumbfuckery.