Continuing Conservative-Trump Attacks on Science

One of the more blatantly false and damaging partisan aspects of conservatism, conservative populism and the president is their rejection of science they dislike. Conservative attacks on inconvenient truths go back decades but the trend is intensifying under our anti-science president. Attacks on the EPA are not new.

The New York Times reports that the president’s appointees to the EPA posted a draft letter criticizing the president's anti-environmental policies as not supported by science. This was unexpected because Trump appointees presumably were yes-people chosen for loyalty, not adherence to facts, logic or scientific principle. Some of the scientists that the president appointed had ties to the industries they were supposed to regulate. It is reasonable to think that the president will fire and replace these scientists with scientists who will claim that modern climate science is clear that there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming or that science contradicts any regulation that the president wishes to gut. The NYT writes:

“WASHINGTON — A top panel of government-appointed scientists, many of them hand-selected by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental regulations are at odds with established science. 

Draft letters posted online Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation of waterways, an Obama-era effort to curb planet-warming vehicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations. 

A forthcoming rule on water pollution “neglects established science” by “failing to acknowledge watershed systems,” the scientists said. They found “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from protection under the new regulations. 

Many scientists on the advisory board were selected by Trump administration officials early in the administration, as President Trump sought to move forward with an aggressive agenda of weakening environmental regulations. During the first year of the Trump administration, more than a quarter of the academic scientists on the panel departed or were dismissed, and many were replaced by scientists with industry ties who were perceived as likely to be more friendly to the industries that the E.P.A. regulates.”

Regarding the president’s proposal to limit scientific data in health regulations, the EPA scientists wrote that “key considerations that should inform the proposed rule have been omitted from the proposal or presented without analysis.” The Trump administration is receiving increasing criticism that policies ignore, distort or unreasonably downplay scientific data despite contrary environmental, public health and legal requirements.

This is more evidence of the corrupt, irrational ideological anti-science corruption that our president brings to bear on policy. Under Trump, the office of the US presidency has become an immoral disgrace.