In a week of record flooding and tornado outbreaks, we find that the Trump administration wants to undermine the next National Climate Assessment.
According to the New York Times, the Trump administration plans on curtailing the projections used in the evaluation. (Hear no evil, see no evil...) This, of course, has the effect of making things sound better than they are, since the worst effects won't be felt until after 2040.
"What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that's consistent with their politics," Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told the Times. "It reminds me of the Soviet Union."
Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the “deep state,” and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.
I don't really care which kind of stupid and ruthless he is. I just want him to stop -- or be stopped.
The piece goes on to talk about Trump's plans to put 79-year-old physicist William Happer, a climate change denier and crank who has no training in climate science, in charge of controlling the administration's climate review. He's famous for saying the "demonization" of carbon dioxide "is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.” Happer already serves on the National Security Council as the president’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies.
Happer’s proposed climate review panel is NATURALLY backed by John Bolton, who brought the hapless Happer into the National Security Council.
Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science. The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.
By the time the rest of the country wises up, will it be too late?
