Donald Trump finds a whole new way to sink to an evil new low
Let’s be clear on one thing. The propositions that the earth is flat, that the moon landings were faked, that a coalition of Jewish businessmen together with the George W Bush administration caused the September 11 attacks – none of these things are “controversies.” They are not open to debate. They are not matters that need to be addressed. They are pure, unadulterated, unequivocal crap.
The rise of Donald Trump and his league of evil goons would have been made far more difficult were it not for the already built in propensity of many Americans to believe in stupid, contemptible crap like that. It’s a sad reality these days how quick people are to believe in harebrained conspiracy theories on the strength of “evidence” that is both paltry, inept, and frequently refutable with five minutes of competent investigation on Google.
Anthropogenic climate change, for example, is established science. And no, the fabled 97% of the earth’s climate scientists who support its conclusions are not receiving regular paychecks to say so. (I’m actually embarrassed that I had to write that previous sentence. There exist actual people, in large numbers, who are stupid enough to believe that a monstrous conspiracy of that magnitude could actually be pulled off and kept secret.) But what’s really happening is not only plausible, it’s in its way far more sinister, and happening right now under our very own noses.
It wasn’t enough for the Trump “administration” to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and roll back a wave of Obama-era environmental regulations. Now they are also trying to limit the language of the National Climate Assessment, a government-funded climate change document published every four years. Since this document is an actually scientifically produced result, its findings are scientific and not ideological. As such it doesn’t square with what Trump and company wants it to say. And, as is usually the case, whenever reality and Trump are at variance, according to Trump and his snivelling lickspittles anyway, it’s reality that’s got it wrong.
The latest requirement of Trump’s criminal gang is to insist that the National Climate Assessment omit any worst-case scenario projections. In other words, Trump and and his pirate ship of losers want any future reports to omit the most alarming consequences of climate change. This is the equivalent of preventing, by legal decree, Adventure Consultants, the Mount Everest expedition company, from ever warning its clients that ascent up the world’s tallest mountain can sometimes be fatal. That would constitute a statute of criminal ramifications. And when it’s applied to climate science, it’s even worse than that.
Climate change science is economically inconvenient to Donald Trump and his evil paymasters, and so they have elected to promote and weaponize the nefarious conspiracy that it is a hoax. They can get away with it because so many Americans are deficient in critical thinking. This cynical manipulation is being carried out by people who think they are largely immune to the worst consequences of climate change because they’re rich. Well, the joke’s on them. Climate change will eventually get them too. Or, at the very least, their children.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.