Facts and Earth science are not political. They shouldn't be treated as such.
The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee is Lamar Smith.
The official Twitter account last year linked to a Breitbart article that was not true:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-9-best-reactions-to-the-house-science-committees-breitbart-tweet/Lamar Smith said this
last month:
"Better to get your news directly from the President. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth."
At the press conference Thursday Trump said that both the leaks are real and the news is fake. Both cannot be true.
Transcript of Trump's press conference:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/16/donald-trumps-grievance-filled-press-conference-annotated/Trump continues to tout his electoral victory, often saying "we had a massive landslide victory".
It wasn't:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/dec/12/donald-trump/donald-trumps-electoral-college-victory-was-not-ma/But at the press conference when confronted about how his victory compared to Presidents since Reagan, he simply said "I was given that information."
People can put facts or lies in front of him and he'll read it. But he doesn't need other people to suggest things to him, he lies and misleads well enough himself. Is that political to say? He does. It's a fact. No President has ever lied anywhere close to how much Trump has. It doesn't make you not a democrat or independent if you criticize him for it. In fact some republicans criticize him because they know he is actually damaging the republican party. (but that gets off into politics and I don't want to go there)
I don't want to get into all the lies that have been told. You can start here:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/Not a complete list.
A simple Google search will tell you all about Trump's business ties in Saudi Arabia:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Saudi+Arabia+Donald+Trump+businessDonald Trump and the current administration does not accept facts they don't like. This is an administration that prefers to often go by what people believe, rather than what is true.
Earlier this month Trump tweeted this:
"Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting."
Yesterday Trump tweeted this:
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!"
A historical look at the term "enemy of the people":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/18/trump-called-the-news-media-an-enemy-of-the-american-people-heres-a-history-of-the-term/Nixon also tried to discredit the news media, though nothing like this.
"Q. Mr. President, you have lambasted the television networks pretty well. Could I ask you, at the risk of reopening an obvious wound, you say after you have put on a lot of heat that you don't blame anyone. I find that a little puzzling. What is it about the television coverage of you in these past weeks and months that has so aroused your anger?
THE PRESIDENT [to Robert C. Pierpoint, CBS News]. Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger. [Laughter]
Q. I'm afraid, sir, that I have that impression. [Laughter]
THE PRESIDENT. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects."
From:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=4022All of this is not about politics. It's about what is true and what isn't.
Science is being attacked by this administration. From someone who might be Trump's new science adviser, who met with Trump last month and said this in an
interview:
"'There's a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,' Happer told the Guardian. 'It's like Hare Krishna or something like that. They're glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.'"
Scott Pruitt will now head the EPA. Some fact checking about him:
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/12/facts-trumps-epa-nominee/And from the New York Times:
"Already, Mr. Pruitt has begun work to reshape the environmental agency. Among the candidates he has interviewed for top positions are several former senior staff members in the office of his fellow Oklahoma Republican, Senator James M. Inhofe, who has become known as Congress's most prominent denier of the science of global warming."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.htmlWho is Senator James M. Inhofe?
The man who said climate change is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people". And that guy who once through a snowball in the Senate. He doesn't differentiate between weather and climate.
More:
http://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/This is a snapshot of what we are dealing with. There is a massive amount of things going on right now.
We can't debate what is fact and fiction. A fact is true. You can spin it how you want and that gets into politics. Previous administrations start from the truth and work from there. This administration is skipping the first part. Whatever people believe is just fine.
John McCain said this today:
"When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I'm not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I'm just saying we need to learn the lessons of history."
Last week Trump tweeted out a link to an article about a poll, with 617 voters, that found that "Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media".
That's not something to celebrate, that's a freaking nightmare.
The media tries to be truthful and corrects themselves when they are wrong. Trump often does not try to be truthful. See Politifact, he's only true or mostly true 16% of the time on what they have fact checked.
It's best to try to keep out the ordinary political issues between democrats, republicans and others. Those are ordinary issues. We live in extraordinary times that are defined by people celebrating the fact that sometimes more people believe lies than the truth.
When an administration lies about something as easily fact checked as crowd size, on the very first weekend was in office, you know it's a difficult road ahead. There was no more give Trump a chance.
Trump is putting people in charge of science related agencies that don't believe in science. I guess you could say they believe in 'alternative science' if you want to spin something from Kellyanne Conway's famous quote. How well do you think all of this will go for the scientific community? If the people in charge don't believe in certain areas of science, why would they continue funding these areas? All of this is absolutely related to weather, climate and science in general. There has never been such an attack on what scientists do in this country. There will be marches across the country on Earth Day for
March for Science.
Obviously if this was during hurricane season when hurricanes were threatening, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
You haven't really joined the discussion, but what do you think about the administration's positions on science and the people who are being put in charge? Do you think it will have an impact on climate research? Satellites? Ocean monitoring?