Websites Hosting Major US Climate Reports Taken Down (apnews.com) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Websites that displayed legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments seem to have disappeared, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their backyards from a warming world. Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the U.S. Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within NASA to comply with the law, but gave no further details. Searches for the assessments on NASA websites did not turn them up.
"It's critical for decision makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States," said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report. "It's a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available," Jacobs said. "This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people's access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts."
"This is a government resource paid for by the taxpayer to provide the information that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who's trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate," said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report. Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in NOAA's library. NASA's open science data repository includes dead links to the assessment site. [...] Additionally, NOAA's main climate.gov website was recently forwarded to a different NOAA website. Social media and blogs at NOAA and NASA about climate impacts for the general public were cut or eliminated. "It's part of a horrifying big picture," [said Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was President Obama's science advisor and whose office directed the assessments]. "It's just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure." National climate assessments are more detailed and locally relevant than UN reports and undergo rigorous peer review and validation by scientific and federal institutions, Hayhoe and Jacobs said. Suppressing these reports would be censoring science, Jacobs said.
"It's critical for decision makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States," said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report. "It's a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available," Jacobs said. "This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people's access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts."
"This is a government resource paid for by the taxpayer to provide the information that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who's trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate," said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report. Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in NOAA's library. NASA's open science data repository includes dead links to the assessment site. [...] Additionally, NOAA's main climate.gov website was recently forwarded to a different NOAA website. Social media and blogs at NOAA and NASA about climate impacts for the general public were cut or eliminated. "It's part of a horrifying big picture," [said Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was President Obama's science advisor and whose office directed the assessments]. "It's just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure." National climate assessments are more detailed and locally relevant than UN reports and undergo rigorous peer review and validation by scientific and federal institutions, Hayhoe and Jacobs said. Suppressing these reports would be censoring science, Jacobs said.
The book burning has begun (Score:1)
Goose step. Goose step. Everybody together now.
Re: (Score:3)
The witch burning has begun as well. The book burning is largely strategic; but the burning of witches has everything to do with superstition and the utter denial of reality.
For "witches" you can substitute "scientists", "professors", "foreigners", and any of dozens of other possible bogeymen. Arthur Miller chose the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism. I think there are important parallels between the McCarthy era and the Trump era.
Re:The book burning has begun (Score:5, Interesting)
"Those who burn books will in the end burn people"
https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
They can build concentration camps in a week while stepping over homeless citizens in the street.
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That's your problem, Archie, the trump party delivers. The Democrats could not.
So the brave and the free flock to the winner.
A behaviour as Amurrikan as the Mickey D apple pie.
Re: The book burning has begun (Score:2)
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Why would I be crippled by higher costs on everything?
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Ultimately, I agree with you.
The dems, crippled by an attachment to donors who hate what democratic voters want are strategically incapable of anything besides bare-minimum maintenance of the empire and its alliances. Their major accomplishments of the last 30 fucking years are all center-right patches on immense status quo problems: NAFTA, welfare reform, obamacare, *vague hand gesture* "infrastructure"
Trump, on the other hand, totally satisfies republican donors with two words "tax cuts", and can execute
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The dems, crippled by an attachment to donors who hate what democratic voters want are strategically incapable of anything besides bare-minimum maintenance of the empire and its alliances.
Not sure exactly what you are implying here.
However, the impression in the minds of many Americans is that the Dems are more concerned with undocumented immigrants and transexuals than blue-collar working class - the alleged core Democratic voter.
At the very first Democratic 2020 primary debate the first question was will you provide health care to undocumented immigrants. All 10 candidates raised their hands! My jaw dropped at that response. I know many working-class people who can't afford Health Care and
republicans don’t want to know (Score:5, Insightful)
so weird. they did the same thing with covid. seems like if they can’t predict something bad is gonna happen, then it won’t happen.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
If we stop testing then the number of reported cases will go down, dontchaknow?
When are people going to realize that this American government actively gets off on harming and killing people? Or do people actually realize it and just shrug because so do they?
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it seems they're afraid. of their own people. wonder why.
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We do know Reuplican voters are dumber and the MAGAs are the dumbest of the dumb. This is just one more indicator.
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We do know Reuplican voters are dumber and the MAGAs are the dumbest of the dumb. This is just one more indicator.
I assume "Reuplican" was clever wordplay and not a typo, but either way, it definitely works...
As for GOP voters and MAGA voters being dumb: I think some in those camps are smart but misled. Decades of propaganda can bypass intellect.
Re:republicans don’t want to know (Score:4, Insightful)
The Common Stages in the Life Cycle of a Cult
1) The Big Idea. A leader or leaders propose a new transcendent idea that promises a panacea solution for alienated and vulnerable people. This big idea promises to solve all problems; to end loneliness, isolation, and a sense of personal failure. It makes vague promises of meaning and salvation. There is usually a charismatic leader or a single text with its own coded language that spreads the big idea.
2) Love-Bombing. Cult leaders and early devotees recruit from the wider population through love-bombing and promising a new start, a hope for a future of love, belonging, and salvation within a living community of people who all believe in the big idea. As a new recruit, you become one of the chosen to whom ‘the truth’ is revealed. You are loved and 'saved.'
3) A New Life. New recruits are inducted into a secret language of signs and symbols. They're encouraged to identify as victims of the world outside and are promised a rebirth, a new body or identity within this life, or an afterlife. Recruits are taught to see the world as black or white, good or evil, us or them; and this creates tight group unity which is enforced by rote learning of the cult’s slogans. These beliefs are often illogical as a test of ‘true belief.’ New recruits experience euphoria as part of a 'chosen' secretive group.
4) Growth. As new recruits move into greater commitment, the cult enters the ‘expansion phase’ and looks outwards. The new task is to recruit ever more people. Love-bombing and promising a new life are used on outsiders, and the young and needy are targeted. The cult expands rapidly with its promises of future rewards, be they spiritual, sexual, or political. Mantras and slogans replace all individual thought and offer collective 'one-ness.'
5) Rites of Passage. Allegiance is sworn through acts such as renouncing your own family, past life, and past name. New members are separated from all past support systems and become dependent on the cult. New members are tested by having to transform their identity, body, language, and even sexual behaviours. They must ‘don the robes’ and declare to the world that ‘I am no longer who I was, I am now part of group X.’
6) Isolation. The cult becomes too large to control and has to prevent influences from the outside world from weakening its power over members. The leaders ban acts of individual free will. The cult isolates its members from the world beyond, depicting the outside as corrupt, evil, and violent. This increases bonding as members see themselves as ‘threatened victims’. Language control and growing paranoia make questioning the cult impossible. Mantras and slogans silence doubts and dissent. Internal repression grows.
7) Hate Bonding. The cult reaches its size limit and problems arise from failures in its ‘plan for all.’ But the cult cannot admit errors. It starts to feed on hatred of the outside world. It evolves rituals of hatred, building a deeper ‘unity of the persecuted.’ One stratum of society is usually the target of all hatred and they might be given a coded name. Members are encouraged to share their hatred in ritualised forms.
8) Traitors. Afraid of the growing hate culture, some members question the leaders but they are thrown out or made to do penance. The contraction phase begins and leads to a clampdown on any freedoms within the cult. In the face of internal persecution, a senior member often leaves and becomes a ‘traitor.’ Gaslighting, peer pressure, and groupthink prevent others from leaving. A few are helped to leave the cult by family members or forced out by cult deprogrammers, but such acts only fuel the cult's conviction that it is under attack.
9) Witch Hunts. Internal trials within the cult weed out all potential traitors. Doubters are shamed into falsely accusing others. The remaining members are forced into committing acts of personal supplication
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Looks like we're currently at number 9.
Looks like it, yes. What I do not get is why people continue to fall for this crap when information on how this works is readily available. People must be even more stupid than I thought and my opinion of the "average" person is already very low.
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It was a typo. The spell-checkers over the different browsers and systems I use are now _very_ inconsistent and sometimes I forget.
As for GOP voters and MAGA voters being dumb: I think some in those camps are smart but misled. Decades of propaganda can bypass intellect.
I simplify that as "dumb". If you have mental capability, but do not use it, this could also be "dumb by choice" or "intentionally dumb", i.e. not a fate but a choice and hence with full responsibility. Which is worse.
As to the effects of propaganda, just look at the diverse cults and (misnamed) "religions". But again, at least in the west, people generally chose to be part of s
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fuck - /. has turned into a bunch of retarded people
Yes, Mr. Coward, it does seem that there is a predominant trend toward the right wing amongst the general /. populace, but we don't use the r-word anymore, you know; call them willfully ignorant instead.
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Now do the peer reviews for those articles.
What a lovely legacy (Score:2)
History remembers fondly the people responsible for burning the Library of Alexandria right?
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Or the book burnings in 1930s Germany by the Nazi party. The historical parallels with 1930s Germany and the fall of the Wiemar Republic are quite striking.
Re:What a lovely legacy (Score:4, Interesting)
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"making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their backyards from a warming world." Its probably gonna get warmer. Then colder. A LOT colder. The Maunder minimum is a Solar cycle that WILL come again. Global "Warming" won't be on anyone's lips when that happens again ;-D
And yet it will, because it will continue to be a real thing. And even in the perhaps-extreme scenario where the continually warming oceans do end up resulting in a partial or full collapse of the AMOC, quite probably triggering a new Little Ice Age in Europe, the words "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" will, once again, continue to be on the lips of those who don't think they know better than the subject matter experts.
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The Maunder minimum thing is junk science pushed by denialists. It happened to overlap with the Little Ice Age in Europe, so they declare it must have been the cause. But in fact the Little Ice Age started well before the Maunder minimum, and the consensus is that it was caused by volcanic activity. It also was a local event, not a global one, which argues against it having anything to do sunspot activity.
We're cooked (Score:3)
The rise of glorified stupidity (Score:3)
This article below applies to practically everything about America right now, from adding trillions to its debt to the anti-vaxx shite, to this latest thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thebu... [reddit.com]
Trump Brand Idiocracy (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And? (Score:2)
So another thing that MAGA gets butt-hurt over has been disappeared. Is anybody surprised? What Was the excuse? Purging satanic anti Trump commie moose-lamb science?
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Congrats on finding the real culprit of climate change.
You heard it here people, Trump is fighting climate change by shutting down a few servers.
Glory to our Dear Leader. Ignorance is Bliss motherfuckers, welcome to the land of the Free(*)
(*) Only applicable to some citizens approved on a case by case basis by Our Dear Leader or one of his holy Goons
The Revenge of Of the Sharpie Master (Score:2)
Remember when someone took a weather forecast map and altered it with a sharpie pen to make a political point?
Didn't work so well.
This is revenge for that.
Re: (Score:2)
Like when the Catholic church banned books (Score:2)
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum [wikipedia.org] was a list of books deemed heretical. The idea was to stop people from reading things that might give people ideas that the Church did not like. Taking down these web sites is much the same thing: stop people getting ideas that those funding Trump do not like.