All of these changes that Trump is making in his first week are making me wonder: what's the population limit, really, for a well functioning democracy? I'm no historian, but didn't the United States go around saying how great democracy is? I don't know about you, but to me it definitely feels like it doesn't work quite as intended.
As for the article at hand, all I can offer is this" Trump's blatant distrust for climate change is just mind boggling. What exactly is he afraid that'll happen? [1] Why all of the resistance? These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm genuinely curious.
This isn't just Trump's work, though. He can do "whatever he likes" because both houses and the senate are all red. If he changes his mind halfway through and becomes a liberal, watch him become somebody who cannot do whatever he likes.
This just makes it worse because I've seen so many people defending Trump, or adopting a "what's the worst that could happen?" attitude because they are used to a president who, for 7 years, 10 months and 2 weeks didn't have an ounce of power in congress.
Trump can do what he wants because his party now has control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House, AND the Supreme Court.
It was a huge, overarching win granting Republicans unprecedented power. Much like Obama's 2009 win which gave Democrats a ton of power.
There's nothing "single person" about Trump's victory. The fact of the matter is that Republicans won more States, Representatives, and Senators in local elections across the country. So yeah, the Democracy is working fine, as long as you sorta ignore the electoral college stuff.
Believe it or not, that's what people "wanted". The Democrats IMO were just too lazy with the get-out-to-vote attempts and support Clinton. The Republicans wanted victory more, and managed to pull it off.
Continuing to ignore rural America will only make them more angry and continue to vote in assholes like Trump. Clinton lost precisely in the rural states that mattered: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc. etc.
As long as liberal Americans are unable to understand that coal miners are literally losing their jobs and dying in their hometowns, then the discussion will not move forward.
The numbers aren't pretty for rural America. It's a legitimate problem, and those citizens are blaming the EPA.
Clinton was the only hope at defeating Trump. I cast my vote multiple times against Trump (in the primaries AND in the final election). I am personally outraged that Trump won this election.
In any case, Clinton's failure to rally rural America to her side cost her the election. She tried of course. In any case, you gotta offer something to the Coal Miners.
They're not stupid ya know. They know that pro-environmental policy is hurting their jobs and they voted somebody in to push back against the EPA. Seems like a legit strategy to me.
These jobs might actually come back, but the cost for upgrading coal plants to use modern techniques like chemical looping make it a bit unviable at the moment (or maybe not I'm not sure). If we ever got a carbon tax in place, then the market could sort itself out in that regard.
There is some argument here that the coal jobs being proposed are related to "clean coal tech" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal_technology). Given that most of our energy comes from coal in this country, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that those jobs could be created in this sector.
Judging from the research, the approach for sequestering is quite expensive. In addition, pumping CO2 into subsurface layers of the earth only increases the risks of leaks.
Basically, this is probably where the industry is headed and some states are probably going to go full board with this approach while others will pursue renewables.
I will say, despite the issues I've seen regarding climate change denial - it is promising to hear the use of "clean coal" tech, as much as I cringe hearing it. Seems to imply that there is at least some level of concern for the environment - rather than none at all.
He has been a climate change denier for a long time now. I think he genuinely believes -and surrounds himself with people that believe- that climate change is a disputed fact.
Show me a photo of water side cities or homes that have changed at all in the past 100 years. Google can show you dozens whose waterlines have not changed at all.
Climate change is about changing temperatures. Not necessarily about changing water-lines.
We've got over 150 years of solid temperature measurements. We can reach into historical measurements of varying accuracy as well (such as that Japanese ritual where they measured an ice bridge for the past 600 years for religious reasons).
The average temperature of the world has rose by approximately 1.5 degrees Celsius since the 1850s. Do you agree or disagree with this fact?
Around man-made structures you'll not appreciate it because the trend is the opposite, we usually gain land to the sea with construction. Shoreline of San Francisco in 1900 probably reached far beyond the actual point in the developed areas.
Water lines are not necessarily indicative and we didn't have satellite pictures or detailed measurements 100 years ago but you can definitely see the sea rise affecting some areas in the world, like islands in the Pacific Ocean or the extensions of salt water marshes. In satellite pictures is posible to appreciate the change the shape of the shores in some points of the globe, if you have a good resolution capture, comparing pictures of just a decade ago.
Here's the kicker. You don't even need to see pictures. We have constant detailed measurements of sea levels (better than water lines) taken all around the planet going back to several decades.
Wrong. There are 175,000 coal miners in entire of U.S.
Who voted for Trump? Basically every single demographic group. The country has collectively lost its mind when the candidate is astoundingly unqualified...
Did you know 54% of white women voted for trump? That's right, more white women voted for Trump than Hillary Clinton.
It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. I wouldn't chalk this one up to a design issue, rather implementation (in this case, weighting votes by geographic region).
It's also worth noting the first past the post system encourages duopolistic government (Almost China and NK's monopolistic government ;) ) People vote against their sincere choice by voting for one of the two most popular candidates instead.
That's one of the most perniciously false equivalence I've seen in a while, and that's saying something. The US has elected congressmen, elected senators, elected governors and an elected president. Even the top two presidential candidates are chosen from a wide field in primary elections. Portraying that as a stark choice between only two options and saying it's practically the same as China and North Korea, which provide no choice whatsoever, is really pretty disgusting.
And the US has primaries. Last year there were 17 Republicans all trying to win their party's nomination in a series of open votes; out of those, the eventual winner, Donald Trump, was perhaps the candidate least liked by the party establishment.
If anything, the problem was too many candidates, combined with a first-past-the-post system. The majority of primary voters disliked Trump, but were split between several preferred candidates (who I group because they were far more similar to each other than to Trump). Trump got a certain segment of the vote all to himself.
Joke or not, the comparison to China or North Korea is awful, and not at all close to accurate. For example, when the BBC went to report on an independent candidate in China, plainclothes policemen blocked them from entering the building[0]. North Korea is at least an order of magnitude worse off.
I was pointing out that China and North Korea are monopolistic. Of course they don't allow more than one party with the system they set up.
Look at USA, it's duopolistic due to the system set up. There's only republicans and democrats.
What's funny is that China (Don't know about NK) brags that anyone can run for government but people only vote for one party. Just like USA brags that anyone can run for government but it ends up becoming republican/democrat.
Do you see the monopolistic/duopolistic point I was making?
Campaign trails are also designed with the electoral vote in mind. Saying Hillary would have won if the election was based on popular vote, is not necessarily true.
This is a good point. If it was known to be a popular vote from the beginning, the strategy of the campaigns would have been different, so it's difficult to tell what would have happened. It seems common sense, but thanks for this input because it pulled my brain out of a bubble for a moment.
The electoral college is not the problem. If we remove that, than states that lose representation they were promised when they joined should have the right to secede.
The electoral college is antiquated and premised on an idea that didn't pan out. Specifically that people would have a primary allegiance to their state and not the federation. This was true since World War I at the latest, and Reconstruction at the earliest.
Quite frankly it's asinine that my town has more population and less representation than 6 states.
As a non-American, I have to ask why the large, liberal states don't embrace States' Rights? I know that historically, "States' Rights" has been a codeword for racism, but times change.
Why don't liberal states push for a smaller federal government, and more power for their own governments? Mitt Romney introduced a law to that became a blueprint for Obamacare, when he was governor of Massachusetts..if Trump were to abolish Obamacare, why couldn't states introduce their own programs? Similarly, if Trump appoints a conservative who wants Roe v Wade overturned, states that want to maintain abortion could do so, right? States that value clean water could enact regulations protecting their water supplies, while those that value economic growth sacrifice the health of their residents a little. And citizens could vote with their feet. If a state like Kansas ended up gutting its government by cutting taxes (as it has), surely the problem would self-correct at some point, and set an example for other states?
Pollution is often a cross-border problem, but why couldn't states sue each other to enforce pollution controls? Why couldn't liberal states impose taxes and fund their own EPAs (perhaps with bigger budgets, since federal taxes would be cut), or do interstate compacts to fund agencies for basic science that would be too expensive to fund alone?
The constitution and Bill of Rights would still be in force, but it seems like the federal government's actions seem to lead to great unhappiness, from both sides, when the other party is in power. Why is there such opposition to cutting the power of the federal government, from liberal Americans?
I'm not an American, but I do follow US politics somewhat closely, and I'm genuinely perplexed by this.
American here, and I completely agree. I would love for my state to legalize marijuana and not be beholden to the whims of the current president (since it's still illegal at the federal level). Another thing I'd like to try would be a basic income guarantee with corresponding removal of minimum wage (but again, there's a federal minimum wage).
> Similarly, if Trump appoints a conservative who wants Roe v Wade overturned, states that want to maintain abortion could do so, right?
Yeah, but a lot of people aren't content with that. Some people want to force it to be legal everywhere, even in states that wouldn't otherwise want it.
>The electoral college is antiquated and premised on an idea that didn't pan out.
It absolutely panned out. Smaller states joined a union they would not otherwise have joined. To change the system requires 3/4ths of the states to sign on, too, so it's not going to change.
All the states admitted to the union with one notable exception were territories controlled by the United States, and all were dominated by American citizens. These populations had nowhere else to go. Do you honestly think that Idaho was going to join Canada, or strike out on its own? Of course not.
The idea that people would have a primary allegiance to their state absolutely did not pan out. No one puts South Dakotan at the center of their identity in 2017, but in the late 18th century they certainly did. For evidence look at how many signers and organizers of the revolution failed to bother to show up to the constitutional convention. There was no United States or national identity at the time. At best, it was like claiming to be a citizen of the European Union today.
>All the states admitted to the union with one notable exception were territories controlled by the United States, and all were dominated by American citizens. These populations had nowhere else to go. Do you honestly think that Idaho was going to join Canada, or strike out on its own? Of course not.
They could have created a different union, or struck out on their own. The idea they had no other options is, well, ahistorical.
>There was no United States or national identity at the time. At best, it was like claiming to be a citizen of the European Union today.
>They could have created a different union, or struck out on their own. The idea they had no other options is, well, ahistorical.
Bullshit. The land is owned and controlled by the United States government. Do you really think a bunch of settlers were ever going to take up arms against government? No. Furthermore there is no evidence that anything else was even considered.
What US government? Prior to the constitution there was only the articles of confederation. There was no US.
What happened as new states got added was irrelevant - the constitution already existed by then. It was the smaller states of the original thirteen that had to be convinced, not territories. And yes, they had a number of options, and that's why the more populous states acceded to a bicameral legislature and the electoral college.
This is a silly argument. Trump and Clinton competed for the electoral college, not the popular vote. Which means that Trump spent a lot of time campaigning for one electoral vote in Maine and almost none in courting millions of people in California and New York. It's impossible to say what the outcome would have been if the popular vote would have mattered, because both campaigns would be run totally differently.
The parties may of run entirely different candidates if it was a popular vote as well. They would likely hold entirely different policy positions as a party.
Actually, no it's not. The electoral college was setup in 1787. What it has to do with politics two centuries later in the age of the internet seems out of date. Yet it's the rules we live by, not the rules we like.
Since 2000, it's clear that voter majorities have been underrepresented in presidential elections. And as we claim to be the world's largest democracy, we have been, in fact, the world's largest republic.
I'm highly amused that you start with "actually, no it's not", implying that you are going to disagree with my comment, because you don't actually address anything I said. Did you even read what I said?
> It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary.
She has, in many respects, just as many problems as Trump. If the US used the popular vote, we would just be screwed in a different manner.
This is not a "patchable" problem with some implementation detail. It's a fundamental problem with trying to force hundreds of millions of people with dozens of vastly different cultures to live under the same overburdened legal and regulatory system.
I was 4 when such a system collapsed around me in the Balkans. It was interesting, I don't remember much, but 25 years later a lot of the politics still revolve around it.
Arguably the US 2 party system is still better than the Yugoslav 1. And while the multiparty system common in much of EU is crazy inefficient, it sure makes This Current Problem high unlikely.
The situation in the EU is a lot better in many ways because the EU has much less purview than the US federal government. When you do less stuff, you're less likely to piss off people with irreconcilable cultural differences.
Right now, the electoral college lets large metro areas override the preferences of rural voters in their state. The rural voter in Michigan gets outsized representation, the urban voter in California gets downsized representation, and the rural voter in California gets no representation at all.
That isn't the alternative. The alternative is to let the sum of each equal individual vote determine the outcome. Metro areas don't vote. Neither do farms. People vote. Just like most of us presumably agree that gender, ethnicity, etc. shouldn't affect the impact your vote has, I don't think that the amount of land you own or the population density of the area you live in should affect the impact of your vote.
This is how you get the Roman/Parisian mobs that were the downfall of the Roman and French Republics. All you have to do is promise the mob everything and they'll give you the support to suppress the provinces. The Founders had the Roman example to draw on, as well as Venice's devolution into an urban oligarchy.
With the electoral college al you have to do is appeal to the mob in the swing states. Then you give that select group of voting Americans the ability to suppress the rest of the population.
How is that any better?
These things aren't static- the South (and the major religions) used to be solidly Democrat, California gave us Reagan, etc. This changed in my lifetime and I'm not that old. You start taking your base for granted,you end up wondering how you lost.
You need to review your Constitutional history. The Constitution mandates that the president is elected by the states, via electors who are selected in each state "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." It's not a direct popular vote and never has been.
"most of the rest of the country" by square miles, perhaps, but citizens are not square miles. Why should someone's vote count less because they happen to live in a more densely populated area?
Because one person, one vote. I don't give two shits how many acres you own, you should get one vote (and that was the justification from the beginning -- a compromise so slaveholding scum would be overcounted). The country would have been so much better had Sherman executed the treasonous slavers, rather than burning the land. But alas, the story of the US is "well-meaning moderates" bending over themselves to placate backwater racist scum.
Slavery was added to the Articles and Constitution because South Carolina's support was deemed as critical to the rebellion against Britain.
The other colonies begrudgingly added this, opting for changes to the wording of the clause to enshrine slavery into the constitution, and did everything they could to violate their constitution until South Carolina wrote them back saying it is best if South Carolina exited.
More likely it might make it worse. In US political scene, people are divided strongly and therefore moderates gets to chose in the end. This is better and keeps extremist grabbing the power (well, most of the time). With range voting, power of moderates would diminish and it would be matter of which side has slightly higher number of extremists.
I think what would improve US elections is rather this:
Publish results in real time. Most people don't seem to realize consequence of not voting . If results comes in real time then people who are lazy might get extra prode. If 95% of the population votes, there is less likelyhood of nasty surprises as opposed to say only 60%.
A true popular vote would be just as horrible... minority interest gets buried...
But honestly, its the size of the nation thats the problem. People in the northeast have fundamentally different beliefs than those in, say, Alabama and california... and trying to rule over all of them as a single government is only going to cause pain...
That has nothing to do with size. When the system worked the federal government was really only concerned with national level things - war and trade, mostly. Over the years more and more power got transferred to the national level, and now we're at the point that states are pretty much satrapies of the federal government. Now the system doesn't work, because the Alabama voters have a big impact on California and vice versa.
The United States can't be a functioning democracy not because of it's size but because our actual political rules are awful. The electoral college, built in gerrymandering, weak restrictions on lobbying, the rules of our democracy are immensely undeomocratic when compared to other first world nations.
It's also difficult to get consensus when you have several large demographic groups with radically different cultures.
To take the South as but one example, the average African-American lives in a world that is completely different than your average white Southerner. The interaction on political, social and even geographic levels is extremely limited. They may as well live in different countries.
Then there's regions like New England that don't interact with the Southern group, and the West Coast which does its own thing as well. You're left with these quasi-independent groups of states that are thrown together under a single national banner and forced to pick who gets to drive every four years.
Spain has a similar problem, as does Belgium, and in more extreme cases such as Iraq where stark religious and tribal differences make conflict very difficult to reconcile.
It's not population, it's consensus, and that gets harder and harder to achieve when you have large, demographically incompatible groups.
No amount of fussing with the rules is going to fix this. Weakening the Federal government and empowering the states could alleviate some of the pressure, but it also puts a lot of people in a very bad place: They have to pick between living with their family in the place where they have a lot of roots, or cutting loose like some refugees for another state that will treat them better.
This is related to an observation I've made before.
Name any country that's been as functional as the United States has been, given our size, and especially given the enormous amount of diversity we have?
We've been doing the grinding, painful and hard work of real national diversity, at scale, for hundreds of years.
We've gotten it wrong a lot; we're still getting a lot of it wrong.
But here we are, perhaps the most vibrant, large population in the world. We have a lot of problems...more problems now than we had 10 or 15 years ago.
But damn it, looking back, it's really an amazing thing we've accomplished.
Trump seems to be, more than anything, an agent of chaos. I suspect his presidency will harm us. But we've handling a lot worse in the past, from within and from without.
Indeed, I like to think that the beautiful and painful results of our centuries long diversity have made us exceptionally strong.
The United States is an anomaly. It's a series of lucky breaks that resulted in an exceptional country being created and maintained.
It started as a series of colonies that could have agreed to disagree. It grew through lucky aquisition: Florida from the Spanish, Alaska from the Russians, Louisiana from the French, Texas and California from Mexico. It split up, the Confederate States left, and was unified at great risk and even greater cost. If any one of those things hadn't happened the very concept of America would be fundamentally different.
It's also a country flanked by two relatively agreeable nations, Canada and Mexico, so there's little risk of armed conflict. This gives the country disproportionate control over its home turf. Even regional powers like Germany still have to answer to their neighbours, squabbles have gotten ugly and expensive.
It was also extremely lucky to have such a ridiculous abundance of natural resources. With perhaps the exception of Canada, and to a degree Russia no other country in the world has massive reserves of fresh water, prime agricultural land, lumber, fish, coal, copper, iron, oil, nuclear fuel, and a long list of other things. Name a resource and the US probably has it in a massive quantity. I don't think most Americans realize how blessed their country is.
It's amazing how much political cohesion you can have when resources are abundant, cheap, and there's no reason to fight over them. This could change as fresh water becomes more scarce and states start to bicker over who gets what. When there's not enough to go around things could get very, very ugly and America's entire character could change.
I agree with everything you said. We have been exceedingly lucky.
At the same time, we have gone through the hard and painful process of trying to make diversity work as I described, though it has been slow, incremental and still incomplete.
I don't know of any other nations that have done that.
Compared to some nations the US is extraordinarily diverse: Ireland, Norway, Fiji.
Compared to others it's practically homogeneous: India, Papua New Guinea.
For an example closer to home: Canada is probably more ethnically diverse than the United States and, Quebéc aside (which is sort of our lone-star province) has a lot more political cohesion. Toronto is vastly more ethnically diverse than New York City today despite New York having representation from every country in the world.
Similar factors are in play, though: Generally there's enough resources for everyone, so there's no need to fight for scraps.
The US has a lot of work to do to bring itself truly together. I just worry that things are going in the opposite direction now with infighting being encouraged to divide and conquer all those opposed to the current administration.
> Compared to others it's practically homogeneous: India, Papua New Guinea
I think think about and study that, thank you.
> I just worry that things are going in the opposite direction now with infighting being encouraged to divide and conquer all those opposed to the current administration.
Aye..I think we're on the cusp of taking some steps back.
> What exactly is he afraid that'll happen? [1] Why all of the resistance?
He is afraid of being proved wrong. It's a very common problem with climate change deniers. Facts and figures keep piling up but they always grasp any possible alternative explanation. The longer they sustain their position, the fooler the look if they backtrack, so they tend to become more and more entrenched in their opinions. Trump just happens to have the opportunity to silence government funded organizations.
When you say he denies climate change, are you referring to climate change itself, or man made climate change? I know man made climate change deniers who fully believe in climate change. But the term "climate change denier" gets thrown around so loosely (sometimes I wonder if that's intentional), that I don't know what people are actually referring to.
I think most, when referring to "climate change denier" mean to say "anthropogenic climate change denier". Most people who are "climate change denier"s in the above sense do actually believe in climate change in general just not the fact that we have influenced it.
>You'd be surprised the amount of people who very seriously say "Global warming isn't real! There's snow outside!".
That's because, in a mistaken campaign to get people motivated, AGW activists say "See how hot it is today? Global warming is the reason!" Remember how the northern ice cap was supposed to be gone by 2013? Polar bears extinct?
If you don't want people on the other side to make arguments based on today's weather, you have to call out the people doing it on your side.
Man made climate change, AKA, the extreme levels of change in temperature, atmospheric composition and acidity levels in the oceans we are experiencing right now.
I think splitting hairs over the term is unnecessary. I'm sure there are people who believe earth's climate has always been the same but they are probably very few. The most popular position among climate change deniers, as far as I know, is that this changes are part of the natural cycle and humans have little or no impact.
"Man made climate change, AKA, the extreme levels of change in temperature, atmospheric composition and acidity levels in the oceans we are experiencing right now."
"Climate change denial" is not a coherent platform. There may be some who hold logically consistent views (whether they are real or not), but they are not necessarily consistent with each other, and in any case the majority of people don't care.
As long as one can say that mankind should not take any action to avert climate change, most "climate deniers" are happy, and whether the myriad of supporting arguments contradict each other is not their concern.
For example, what's Trump's opinion on whether the Earth is warming or not? Does he even care?
Nop. There is huge amount of vested interested in denying climate change. All the big industries including oil, gas, coal have regularly sponsored "studies" that would twist facts and have spent enormous in lobbying to push back on climate change theories. Many other industries such as automotive has interest in curbing regulations that says reduce pollution by x% by y year. Climate change affects almost all of the manufacturing in one way or another.
Thing is that once you accept climate change as man made event, the immediate consequence is asking all the businesses to spend extra on minimizing impact. That never goes well with businesses. My theory is that republicans initially started denying climate change due to lobbying and then they had to take that as religion because science doesn't support it.
My understanding is "denying climate change" is less so about the science of it and the reality that it's a nod to supporting industries that would be regulated away due to their climate impact.
I've always found it interesting that the civil war occured when the population was about 30 million, the war for independence at about 3 million, and colonial rebellions at about 300,000. The country is at about 350 million now.
If you ever meet one of these people, their thesis is usually that that "liberals" think climate change is real, therefore climate change must be false.
What if I were to suggest that blaming climate change denial on "profit" resembles a conspiracy theory in every way? If it were an emergent phenomenon of hyperpartisan craziness instead, would that suggest different efforts in response to it?
> what's the population limit, really, for a well functioning democracy?
I think that's the wrong question but it leads us to the corrective answer.
The founders provided us with a Bill of Rights, a constitution, separation of powers, and democratic processes for 2 of the 3 branches.
Of these, the first two scale to as large a number as you wish. We need to start insisting on a robust interpretation of our civil rights. That was always the intended protection mechanism.
I am more interested in a single paper which really proves either point, or at least presents compelling evidence. Im sure there are a bunch out there, so id like to read some of them.
Note that the natural science doesn't work as "proving the theorems" (mathematics even isn't natural science) but as "establishing the facts." It's like a doing the detective work, collecting "exhibits" and then bringing it to the jury, the jury then can decide which exhibits are valid etc.
The jury is the total community of the scientists who devoted their lives to learn as much as possible about the topics they judge.
If you ask "as a beginner" you should first learn about the
If it's too hard for you to grasp how it functions, imagine that you cover yourself with the invisible plastic bag. The bag won't produce any heat but it would prevent the heat from your body to dissipate as it would otherwise, effectively warming you up. The same way function the greenhauses. CO2 has that effect for Earth, known since 1824 and elaborated since.
Im fine with compelling evidence, but I just want to read something that demonstrates a high likylihood that there is in fact global warming and that it is caused by humans.
I figure that there have to be 2-3 solid research papers on the subject.
It's simple: CO2 greenhouse effect is proven, the concentration of CO2 is measured and is increasing, the temperature is measured and is increasing. Clever science can figure out even CO2 concentrations and temperatures of the times when nobody measured.
All the scientists of the world organized the production of the reports together since 1990, supported by almost all governments of the world, including those who would otherwise benefit from bigger fossil fuel use. The conclusion is: human-made climate change, and if nothing is done, the effects are dire.
Note: there was no scientific valid input that would disprove the human-caused climate change, and believe me, different countries would push hard had they been.
The first report was produced 1990, the fifth, updated 2014, here it is the full "synthesis" part of the report, PDF, 14 MB:
Additionally, it is proved, by looking at the yearly reports, year after year, that Exxon finances the "deniers." Just to give you the idea how you can possibly doubt: when there's a TV show to be made, there's one real scientist, to represent all the scientists of the world, and on another side a paid pre-selected person to pose as the "alternative view."
So the public sees "oh, it's 50:50." It's not, it's rather more like 99.9:0.1. You can always find some extremists, even among the scientists. But even those found "denying" are typically from some other branch of science, effectively out of their range of expertise.
The another reason for what appears to be 50:50 is that the politicians of a whole big US party, almost without the exception, identify themselves with the financiers and "dance the denial."
The big interested financiers can't disprove it, but they can produce enough confusion to prevent some political decisions to occur, and that is good enough for them. Relatively little money (for them) gives them a lot. That the whole planet is affected, they don't care.
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Edit: answer to your "ocean temperatures":
Now, it's really measured. For the past, a lot of work:
To understand why people are obsessed with "just around a degree" of observed change, see this xkcd comics to get an idea how fast the change is compared to what we know (and we, be sure, do!) about the past:
The United States isn't a democracy. It's a Republic. A lot of the apparent jingoism was first WWII propaganda, then cold War propaganda. Prior to that, Americans simply considered the rest of the world to be mostly irredeemably corrupt.
I don't know if we can determine Trump's actual opinion on climate change. He's opportunistically jumping on a bandwagon.
North Korea is a Republic. Communist China is a republic. The Soviet Union was a republic. Russia is a republic.
None of them are democratic.
Canada is not a republic. The United Kingdom is not a republic.
Those countries are democracies.
The United States is a republic... And a democracy.
All that being a republic means is that you are not governed by a monarch. Whether or not you are a democracy is completely orthogonal to whether or not you are a republic.
Pedantic correction, just because we are dealing with a topic where specificity matters and nuance can mean the difference between "acceptable" and "not allowed".
The United States of America is formally a constitutional republic.
"Democracy" just means "government by the people". That's why we have different types of democracies, to tell them apart.
If you actually meant a direct democracy, then you should have said it. Don't expect people to be able to read your mind and then get mad and snarky when they don't. We can only interpret what we read, so being specific that you mean a direct democracy when you say the word "democracy" in a political thread is really needed.
Dude you can debate until you're blue in the face but in the end, it's called a representative democracy for a reason. That's an accepted term in politics.
We have given you all the actual definitions on these terms and they show clearly that you're wrong. Just admit it and stop arguing this pointless debate. It's not that hard to do.
Democracy is the people rule themselves through voting.
Democracy comes in two flavors. Direct democracy is where the people vote on the laws directly. Indirect or representative democracy is where the the people elect representatives to vote on laws for them.
A republic is a government without a king. The United States, Germany, France, and India are examples of democracies that are republics (also known as democratic republics). Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain are examples of democracies that are not republics, as they all have a king. All of these are indirect democracies.
An example of a non-democratic republic would be North Korea.
An example of a country that is neither democratic, nor a republic, would be Saudi Arabia.
BONUS ANSWER!
Some countries have powers devolved to independent subnational governments. This system is called federalism. The opposite is a unitary state. The United States and Canada are both federal democracies, while France and Spain are not. (And to reiterate on the previous point: The United States and France are both republics, while Canada and Spain are not.)
Seriously, we went over this stuff in 5th grade social studies. People only unlearn this stuff when it becomes politically convenient to unlearn it.
The democracy is nominally functioning "by design" and by that I mean the law is still being followed.
I'm convinced there are spiritually two Americas here and I'm not sure the founding fathers could have forseen that. There are slow-motion economic wars happening. They are happening at a global level between China and the US and they are happening at a national level in the US between the red and blue states.
I don't think the founding fathers could have forseen the exponential growth in the haves and have nots.
Please don't create throwaway accounts purely to engage in political debate with general ideological/philosophical comments. HN is not primarily a political site, and the HN community benefits from consistent account usage (even if its pseudonymous).
Like it or not, increasing fossil fuel extraction and cutting environmental regulations is now the policy of the President of the United States. The public communications of the executive branch are under his authority and he's not just going to let the EPA run its public relations and releases contrary to his agenda.
Like others have pointed out, there are other ways the public can get the information. But it won't be the EPA running a press office counter to the President's.
For policy statements, yes. But scientific reports, from agencies that have a scientific civil service, like the DoE, NASA, EPA, DARPA, etc. are traditionally considered to be different from policy statements, and lots of them are released every month by low-ranking scientific staff without needing approval from the administration's political appointees.
I don't like it. I don't really understand the point of your comment, you seem to just be summarizing some of the article. Do you have something substantial to add?
Seems like an interesting similarity to the Soviet 'politruk'[0], a Communist Party official assigned to maintain the political control of the armed forces. A familiar example is the politruk who voted to launch nuclear warheads during the Cuban Missile Crisis with his submarine Captain, but First Officer Vasili Arkhipov voted to wait for orders from Moscow.
Similar functions also existed in their academic structures, but the official-ness of this order certainly smacks of the politruk.
It feels like such a strange time to be alive. Even if you disagree with the concept of man-made climate change the distortion of scientific studies seems like something that everybody can agree is wrong. So much of science is funded by govt grants. The idea that everything must conform to the view of the current administration or it is not worth funding seems dangerous and economically limiting.
If the staff of any government agency is increased by 1000, will results improve? How about by 10,000 or 100,000? Does it take 1 Million? Is there anything wrong with cutting what isn't helping or is redundant and applying those funds where they are needed more?
I think many would make the argument that not enough is being done environmentally and that more action needs to be taken. Cutting funding to the EPA and lifting restrictions are reversing the progress that we have made environmentally in the past couple decades.
No one is talking about staffing. We're talking about the executive gag order and similar policies. The number of employees is irrelevant if they aren't allowed to communicate their findings in a transparent way.
Except the manipulation is mostly in the other direction. For example, data sets from NASA suddenly changed on year showing increased in temperatures where previously there had been none. The current administration would argue that they're unpoliticizing science. If you're going to manipulate the data to help your side you can't complain when the other side does it. Unfortunately, the chance to have an honest discussion about the climate was destroyed by those climate zealots "hiding the decline".
If you or anybody else cannot imagine succumbing to this sort of blind rejection of scientific studies and would like to experience it firsthand, consider your attitude towards research into the relationship between race and IQ.
We've already asked you to stop abusing the site with primarily racial ideology, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post within the guidelines in the future.
Surely you can understand why I might not want this attached to a normal account- I've had people harass my employer before over this.
I don't think I've been uncivil or unreasonable towards other users, and you don't seem to be saying as much. Is there a way to discuss this concept without breaking site rules, or is the concept itself what is prohibited?
I believe the Republican skepticism of climate change is not born from disagreement but from the monetary influence of businesses who would be adversely affected from regulation and change.
I don't think many people disagree that climate change exists. What's debated is what the proper solution is. Throwing public money necessarily diverts private resources. Who is to say gov't has a better solution? Would you really trust a bureaucratic monopoly led by Trump to come up with the best policy for energy? I don't think gov't should be in charge of picking favorites with regulations and grants.
Well depends on your definition of many. Seems like 35% of Americans dont believe climate change is man made. So I don't think this can be framed as just a debate between people wanting public vs private counter measures. There is also still a very large group of people (including many in the Trump administration) that are skeptical of the whole concept.
Having a large group of people (including the Trump administration) not "believe" (in this case, beliefs shouldn't matter, we should be looking at facts) climate change is exactly why this should not be a public issue.
Once it's public, people vote for a blanket solution or government officials (by no means environment experts) decide what to do. Private companies should be free to innovate and try multiple different solutions where the best one sticks.
Honest question: what incentive would private companies have to address climate change? It strikes me as a perfect example of an externality that these companies wouldn't be incentivized to change.
These agencies exist as an extension of the executive branch of government. Having them run independently with their own policy agendas can be just as dangerous or economically limiting depending on the policy positions of the time. Lucky for us, since we don't live under a regime, these policy changes allow us to refocus our efforts where necessary. I have a biotech friend who says that new grant directions will likely be directed towards infrastructure and defense. What is striking to me is that there is agreement that climate change can be a geopolitical issue multiplier. Effects on agriculture, ability of diseases to spread in a warming climate, mass migrations, loss of clean water, inevitable natural disaster relief expenses increasing. The evidence shows that this sort of thing should be considered a national security issue.
So I'm confused what has actually happened here. "(epa transition communications direector) said there was no mandate to subject studies or data to political review."
Then what is actually going on? This article is very confusing on that point.
Consider the source of the article. The root of modern journalism is to make a negative insinuation despite official statements to the contrary and let the reader's preconceived notions run wild.
This is very worrying as it's starting to look like the same BS that Harper tried to push in Canada. Which was just bad policy and the kind of thing that can keep scientists away from doing valuable research for years.
NYT does do that sometimes, but I think in this case the submitter probably rewrote it—which please don't, unless it's misleading or linkbait: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
This is very concerning. Something similar happened in Canada with the previous PM, Stephen Harper, whose government suppressed research which would -- directly or indirectly -- oppose their platform.
What this probably leads to is scientists losing their jobs or their willingness to work in the US. Under the current president their only option seems to be to move to another country where they can do their work and discuss their findings in public. Science with a political filter is no longer science but only politics with the illusion of factual justification...
Wow this is getting ugly. What are some actionable things we can do as US citizens to actually have some kind of an impact on this situation? Not just specifically environment, but in general.
Expand your perspective. Try very hard to get into the heads of the 40+% of the population that voted for Trump. Do this with a completely open mind.
There are reasons why all of this is happening. People like us (I guess...I don't want to define your personal echo chamber) look at those tens of millions of people and just can't understand why they voted for Trump, or why they seem to believe what they seem to believe.
But they are people, just like us, but with different and diverse backgrounds.
That's really the answer. If most or all of us can break out of our echo chambers, we might start to develop a path out of this mess.
An official at EPA who worked under Obama isn't buying into this hysteria.
> Longtime employees at three of the agencies — including some career environmental regulators who conceded that they remained worried about what President Trump might do on policy matters — said such orders were not much different from those delivered by the Obama administration as it shifted policies from the departing White House of George W. Bush. They called reactions to the agency memos overblown.
> “I’ve lived through many transitions, and I don’t think this is a story,” said a senior E.P.A. career official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media on the matter. “I don’t think it’s fair to call it a gag order. This is standard practice. And the move with regard to the grants, when a new administration comes in, you run things by them before you update the website.”
The reality is that the people coming in at the top of the Trump administration don't yet know what they are doing, and the mid-level staff who usually handle all the details are mostly not hired yet; they're behind schedule on filling those roles.
So I think it's plausible that they are mostly just trying to slow the federal machine down a lot, to make it easier for them, as understaffed newbies, to understand and manage.
That said, demanding that the government collect, use, and freely communicate accurate scientific knowledge seems idempotent: you will always get a positive result from doing it.
A friend of mine pointed out that Reagan's administration had attempted to shut down the EPA using the same tactics as Trump's administration is doing now:
He also pointed out that Louis Cordia, who was behind the Burford EPA purges, is now working at the Heritate Foundation and advising the Trump administration.
Also here is a perspective from an anonymous EPA staffer:
So I work at the EPA and yeah it’s as bad as you are hearing:
The entire agency is under lockdown, the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can’t be updated. All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released. No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.
Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which is also silenced and will give no response.
All grants and contracts are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad school students working on their thesis.
We are still doing our work, writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now.
We have been told the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration’s policy.
Feel free to copy and paste, you all pay for the government and you should know what’s going on. I am posting this as a fellow citizen and not in any sort of official capacity.
Even if you choose to disbelieve this, the actionable point right now is "if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now."
As awful as this is, it seems completely legal since the executive agencies operate at the mercy of the President. The President has the authority to tell the EPA to stop researching climate science, or to even disband the EPA.
Have we never considered this scenario before? Has there ever been an attempt to establish independent agencies, not subject to the whims of the White House? (IIRC, maybe the CIA or the FBI are independent agencies?)
FBI and CIA are under the executive branch of government and as such conduct/policies are directed by the residing administration. I don't like the idea of having an independent branch of government not subject to the executive branch no matter how terrible that administration is. I take issue with the fact that the executive branch basically writes laws now, which was never the intention and congress is too slow and partisan to pass any laws at all - that and pork barrel.
Also, there are laws in place that the EPA is responsible for. So it is highly unlikely (illegal even) to simply disband the EPA for any reason. The only way to do that is through congress by repealing a host of laws that the EPA is effectively responsible for. That is to say, the EPA is responsible for executing on those laws. If they don't, then the government could be sued - which is the purpose of the justice department. That's why we have great organizations like the ACLU and NRDC to make sure those laws get upheld in a court of law.
That being said, there are a number of laws that are likely to get axed by the new administration - probably without congress approval given how much the executive branch likes to write laws these days. Clean Power Act, Endangered Species Act..etc. Clean Power Act is likely to go I'm guessing as soon as they can get it
It's absolutely horrifying what's going on in the United States. Trying to dictate what are appropriate avenues of investigation for practicing scientists is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes (see "Deutsch Physiks" in Nazi Germany or Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union).
When you combine this with Drumpf's bigoted, Islamophobic and un-American executive order aimed at banning Muslims from the country (which substantially increases the likelihood of another terrorist attack, by marginalizing Muslims and playing right into the hands of ISIS), it becomes very clear we are facing one of the darkest times in the history of this republic.
For the sake of the world, every decent person who believes in human rights must do everything in their power to resist this tyrannical and illegitimate President. It could very well mean being imprisoned or beaten or even killed by Drumpf's thugs. But if history has taught us anything it is that freedom is worth fighting for.
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