A Liar for Trump is Put in Charge of Denying Climate Change

Over the weekend, our climate science denier president quietly installed a climate science denier in a senior position (deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for environmental observation and prediction) at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). We can expect that environmental observations and predictions will probably be much rosier than now. The Washington Post writes:

"The Trump administration has tapped David Legates, an academic who has long questioned the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global warming, to help run the agency that produces much of the climate research funded by the U.S. government.

Legates, a University of Delaware professor who was forced out of his role as that state’s climatologist because of his controversial views, has taken a senior leadership role at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The agency, which oversees weather forecasting, climate research and fisheries, has until now continued its climate research and communications activities unfettered by political influence. For that, NOAA stands in stark contrast to the Environmental Protection Agency and science agencies at the Interior Department, where the Trump administration has dismissed and sidelined climate scientists or altered their work before publication.

Legates was formerly Delaware’s state climatologist, a position from which he he stepped down in 2011. He had come under pressure from then-Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D), because of his fossil fuel industry-funded research casting doubt on the science showing that burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels is the main factor behind heating the planet and would lead to dangerous effects such as sea level rise and extreme weather events. 

Legates is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank funded in part by the fossil fuel industry that supports research arguing that human-caused climate change is not a serious threat. 

“And we have the climate data. We’ve got years of data,” they wrote. “The data show the models don’t match reality,” they wrote, despite numerous peer-reviewed studies showing otherwise."

So once again, our corrupt, incompetent president has installed another crackpot liar in a senior position in government. His mission is to serve the president, not the people or the constitution. To do that he will deny science and lie, lie, lie.

A German university is awarding $1,900 scholarships for 'doing nothing,' and all applicants have to do is answer what they won't do and why

• HFBK University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany, is offering three people a $1,900 scholarship if they can come up with a good reason to do nothing.
• The university's "Scholarships for Doing Nothing" program was announced on August 25, and submissions are open until September 15.
• Applicants must answer four questions about how their plan to not take action could be beneficial.
• The scholarship was created by a professor in hopes of encouraging students to strive for "a lack of consequences" rather than success.

• One university is offering students from around the world the opportunity to win a $1,900 scholarship for doing nothing at all.

  The unique scholarship program — called "Scholarships for Doing Nothing" — is offered by the HFBK University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany.

  The application opened on August 25, and submissions are accepted between now and September 15. Applicants are required to create a proposal based on this central question: "What action might I refrain from performing in order to prevent my life from having negative consequences for others?"

  Friedrich von Borries, a design professor at HFBK, created the scholarship to challenge social perceptions of achievement and success.

• "The world we are living in is driven by the belief in success, in growth, in money. This thinking was leading us into the ecological crisis — and social injustice — we are living in," Borries told CNN.

  "We wanted to turn that upside down — giving a grant not for the 'best' and for 'doing a project,' but for doing nothing," he added.

• 
  Scholarship winners will have their ideas showcased at Hamburg's Museum of Art and Design. 

• To apply, students must submit answers to four questions: "What do you want not to do? How long do you want not to do it for? Why is it important not to do this particular thing? Why are you the right person not to do it?"

  Borries said that his idea was partly inspired by the lack of activity during COVID-19 lockdowns.

  
  

• "During COVID, we stopped being busy not only to protect ourselves but to protect others. That is something I find very important and I hope we will be able to transfer this attitude into the post-COVID times," he told CNN.

  Applicants from around the world, not just students of the Hamburg-based university, are encouraged to apply for the scholarship.

  The three winners of the scholarship will have their ideas featured in an exhibition at Hamburg's Museum of Art and Design called "The School of Inconsequentiality: Exercises for a Different Life" from November 5 until May 9, 2021.

  Friedrich von Borries and representatives for HFBK University of Fine Arts in Hamburg did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

• https://www.insider.com/win-scholarship-doing-nothing-university-germany-hamburg-2020-8
  

 

What Happens to Facts & Truth When Liars Control the Source of Information

Context: What’s on my mind today

In her masterpiece of history and political theory, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1951 that her analysis of both mass murdering, kleptocratic totalitarians and merely murdering, kleptocratic tyrants showed that they both heavily relied on propaganda. It was a key tool to, e.g., deceive and then divide, confuse/demoralize, instill irrational fear, distract and ultimately conquer and subjugate. I call propaganda something that is intended to deceive, divide, make irrationally fearful, confuse/demoralize, conquer and/or subjugate “dark free speech” (DFS). In the legal and social context of modern America, it is mostly (~99.9% ?) legal, protected free speech. American courts gave up on trying to deal with DFS at least as early as 1945 the Thomas v. Collins supreme court decision.[1]

What happens to facts & truth when liars control public health messaging

The New York Times writes:

“WASHINGTON — Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to revise, delay and even scuttle weekly reports on the coronavirus that they believed were unflattering to President Trump. 

Current and former senior health officials with direct knowledge of phone calls, emails and other communication between the agencies said on Saturday that meddling from Washington was turning widely followed and otherwise apolitical guidance on infectious disease, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, into a political loyalty test, with career scientists framed as adversaries of the administration. 

They confirmed an article in Politico Friday night that the C.D.C.’s public morbidity reports, which one former top health official described on Saturday as the “holiest of the holy” in agency literature, have been targeted for months by senior officials in the health department’s communications office. It is unclear whether any of the reports were substantially altered, but important federal health studies have been delayed because of the pressure.

The reports are written largely for scientists and public health experts, updating them on trends in all infectious diseases, Covid-19 included. They are guarded so closely by agency staff members that political appointees only see them just before they are published. Health department officials have typically only received notice of the titles of the reports. 

The New York Times interviewed five current and former federal health officials on Saturday with direct knowledge of efforts to warp the weekly reports. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly discuss internal deliberations at the Department of Health and Human Services. 

In an email obtained by Politico and confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the message, Dr. Alexander accused C.D.C. scientists of trying to “hurt the president” with the reports, which he referred to as “hit pieces on the administration.” Dr. Alexander asked Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, to edit reports that had already been published, which he believed overstated the risks of the virus for children and undermined the administration’s efforts to encourage schools to reopen.”

So, once again, new evidence bubbles up from the black cauldron that our corrupt, incompetent, immoral president and his authoritarian enablers have no qualms about lying, deceiving and unjustifiable emotional manipulation for the president’s personal political and financial gain. The president and his enablers do not even care if the lies and deceit cause innocent, deceived people to die. As the court said in 1945, every person must be his own watchman for truth. In my opinion, that is more true now than it has been for a while.

Footnote:
1. The Supreme Court gives up (again?): “But it cannot be the duty, because it is not the right, of the state to protect the public against false doctrine [lies]. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion. In this field, every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.  West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). Nor would I.” U.S. Supreme Court in Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945) (Robert Jackson writing in concurrence) (brackets [ ] are mine)

DFS is ancient, not new. The destructive power of DFS has been documented for millennia. Arguably, the vicious tactic goes back to some of the earliest written records that humans ever produced. Mass slaughter at the hand of man tends to focus the mind. It seems to attract the attention of both pro- and anti-slaughter ancient historians, sort of like murder and mass slaughter movies and TV shows do the same with enough of the modern public to keep the murder and mass slaughter coming. For better or worse, the power of DFS to win hearts and minds is a reflection of the heritage humans got from evolution.

Change is NOT in the air…

What’s something that everyone agrees we should change, but somehow it never changes?

And, why doesn’t it change?  What’s the problem??

 

Thanks for thinking about it and posting.  And recommending.