Month: January 2017

Agency “Undergrounds” Fight Back

Salon:

Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, harmless tweets about carbon emissions and ocean acidity have been seen as an act of open rebellion. Through now-deleted tweets that delighted thousands of climate activists and other anti-Trump factions, the Badlands National Park’s Twitter account momentarily flouted the new administration’s gag order which prevented government agencies from using social media.

“The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93 ppm,” the first tweet drily read.

Moments later, a second message from the same account entered the Twittersphere: “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.”

 

And, just like that, a rather mundane government Twitter account carried the banner of the anti-Trump resistance. In total, four tweets about climate change emerged from the Badlands account, collecting tens of thousands of likes and retweets in the process, before the park’s account went dark and the scientific facts were purged from record.

Fake News, Alt Facts, and the Cult of Trump

inauguralphot

For those scratching their heads and wondering, “Why does Trump make such a big deal out of something that is obviously wrong?”
Here’s why.

Reporters shows almost 1400 people the pictures of comparative crowds during Inauguration.  Trump voters more likely to be unable to distinguish what is right in front of them.

Washington Post:

For the question about which image went with which inauguration, 41 percent of Trump supporters gave the wrong answer; that’s significantly more than the wrong answers given by 8 percent of Clinton voters and 21 percent of those who did not vote.

But what’s even more noteworthy is that 15 percent of people who voted for Trump told us that more people were in the image on the left — the photo from Trump’s inauguration — than the picture on the right. We got that answer from only 2 percent of Clinton voters and 3 percent of nonvoters.

This effect is known, and has been the subject of research.

You Are Not So Smart:

In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler at The University of Michigan and Georgia State University created fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues. The articles were written in a way which would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas in American politics. As soon as a person read a fake article, researchers then handed over a true article which corrected the first.

For instance, one article suggested the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The next said the U.S. never found them, which was the truth. Those opposed to the war or who had strong liberal leanings tended to disagree with the original article and accept the second. Those who supported the war and leaned more toward the conservative camp tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree with the second.

These reactions shouldn’t surprise you. What should give you pause though is how conservatives felt about the correction. After reading that there were no WMDs, they reported being even more certain than before there actually were WMDs and their original beliefs were correct.

Here, Representative Lamar Smith, Chair of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, advises Americans to ignore the “liberal media” –

“…better to get your news directly from the President, in fact it might be the only way to get the unvarnished Truth…”

Continue reading “Fake News, Alt Facts, and the Cult of Trump”

Trump to EPA: War is Peace

Here it is:

Reuters:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website, two agency employees told Reuters, the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives.

The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions. The page could go down as early as Wednesday, the sources said.

“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” one of the EPA staffers told Reuters, who added some employees were scrambling to save some of the information housed on the website, or convince the Trump administration to preserve parts of it.

The sources asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.actualthing

A Trump administration official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Continue reading “Trump to EPA: War is Peace”

I’ll Have the Brown Sauce: Jerry Brown’s State of the State of California

The movement in response to the most frightening President in American History is finding a diverse set of voices, many of whom, of all ages, were in the spotlight during Saturday’s incredible Women’s March.
The Alternative to “Alternative facts”, is, like..Fact.

Jerry Brown is a tough, successful, and prescient Politician who understands that.

First Climate, Now Renewables Disappeared from White House agenda

norenewables

Energy and Policy:

Renewable energy received no mention today on the new White House website, launched today during Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Trump pledged to include renewable energy, including solar and wind, in his energy plan while on the campaign trail last year.

After Trump met with oil and gas industry leaders in October, his campaign put out a press release summarizing his America First Energy Plan, which included the following statement:

The Trump energy policy will make us energy independent, create millions of new jobs, and protect clean air and clean water. We have one of the world’s most diverse resource bases – from abundant coal, oil, and natural gas to geothermal, solar, and wind. We are also the world’s leader in energy technologies like nuclear power.

During a September visit to Pennsylvania, Trump delivered a speech before members of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, and the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association. Here is what he had to say about his plans for renewable energy then:

Our energy policy will make full use of our domestic energy sources, including traditional and renewable energy sources.

But when a new webpage titled “An America First Energy Plan” appeared on Inauguration Day, shortly after the Trump team began its takeover of WhiteHouse.gov, it contained no mention of renewable energy, and no mention of solar and wind power. It did reiterate Trump’s pledge to eliminate U.S. climate change policies, as noted today by DesmogBlog.

Any informed plan for energy independence must recognize that renewable energy is our nation’s top new source of electricity – and a homegrown source to boot. Solar and wind power are on track to again outpace natural gas and coal for growth in 2016, based on the latest numbers from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission:

newgen

Continue reading “First Climate, Now Renewables Disappeared from White House agenda”