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Another presidential assault on science as fires and pandemic rage

Rogue Valley

Lead or get out of the way
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Another presidential assault on science as fires and pandemic rage

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9/14/20
A defining trait of Donald Trump's presidency is his incessant destruction of reason, evidence and science in the service of his personal whims, conspiratorial mindset and political requirements. On a day when Democratic nominee Joe Biden branded him a "climate arsonist" and global warming burst to the center of the campaign, Trump again ditched research and data for his own wild hunches and odd theories about California's wildfires. And his counter-factual tendencies, which are responsible for widespread harm but are nevertheless embraced by supporters as germane to Trump's political brand, were at work on multiple fronts Monday with America under assault from concurrent crises. For years, Trump has rejected the counsel of his own intelligence services and preferred propaganda from US adversary Russia. He pushed discredited therapies for Covid-19, such as hydroxychloroquine, that federal regulators spurned. His Environmental Protection Agency has sent a wrecking ball through regulations meant to save the planet. He withdrew from the Paris climate accord to accommodate his embrace of fossil fuel polluters and has overturned fuel efficiency standards for cars. But Trump's visit to California for a briefing on the fires that have consumed more than 3 million acres in a record year and have also ravaged other Western states was perhaps his most stunning climate change intervention yet.

Trump doubled down on his theory that a failure to rake forest floors was responsible for creating tinderbox conditions. He cited an unnamed foreign leader who he claimed said they had mitigated their "explosive trees" problem by managing forest floors.
A consensus of scientific evidence has found that while forest management is important, longer dry seasons and warmer weather, including at night, are worsening forest fires in places like California. Trump has no time for such science. Trump's dismissal of science and fact is not just a personality trait, it's also a key factor in the method he uses to build, wield and cling to power. Trump then ignored science when he pushed states to reopen before the pathogen had been suppressed -- a development that helped unleash a wave of sickness and death across the Sun Belt. Now, Trump's indoor campaign events, like a crammed rally in Nevada on Sunday, are a huge act of defiance against the scientific community and the counsel of experts -- another political play. "The nerve he has, to hold that kind of rally. I'm speechless." Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday.

With Donald Trump, his personal ignorance and affinity for conspiracy theory guide his responses to natural catastrophe rather than science and critical thinking.

Donald Trump is a modern caricature of the medieval ruler who holds the word of wizards and magic over learning and rational activity.
 
Canada has seen a decrease in forest fires. The globe isnt experiencing any increase in fires. This has nothing to do with global warming.
 
Canada has seen a decrease in forest fires. The globe isnt experiencing any increase in fires. This has nothing to do with global warming.

Wild fires in northern Siberia have been raging for months and are larger than the fires in the US West Coast.

The two largest glaciers in Antarctica are now breaking up.

It has everything to do with Global Warming.
 
The whole thing with raking forest floors is f*cking stupid.
 
Canada has seen a decrease in forest fires. The globe isnt experiencing any increase in fires. This has nothing to do with global warming.

Absurd....how about the fires in Australia. Climate Change deniers simply have gotten to the point where they just have to be ignored before they take the entire planet down.

Massive fires in the western US, floods and huge storms in the farm belt, drowning in salt water on the gulf coast and the east coast, record drought and famine around the world, melting glaciers and ice packs and these clowns STILL won't stop their denier nonsense. Time to just roll the deniers over before they take themselves and us down with them. The shame of it is that in order to save ourselves we have to save their dumbasses too.
 
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Wild fires in northern Siberia have been raging for months and are larger than the fires in the US West Coast.

They call it global warming, not California and Siberian warming.
 
They call it global warming, not California and Siberian warming.

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As NASA reports:

One of the most interesting things researchers have discovered since MODIS began collecting measurements, noted Randerson, is a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent.
 
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