science – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Trump’s Science Denialism

David Posnett — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 19:32:34 +0000

“People don’t seem to understand that public health is a critical element of national security,” said Randall Larsen, a retired Air Force colonel.

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead”. —THOMAS PAINE

In just over three years the Trump administration has decisively diminished the influence of science in its priorities and policies.

Throughout his time in office Mr.Trump has proposed sweeping budget cuts at a variety of science based federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation among others.

In 2017, he cut Health and Human Services (HHS) funding, which oversees the Center for Disease Control (CDC), by 18%, Already considered “woefully” underfunded by many, CDC funding has been cut every successive year.

.—In 2018 he shut down the National Security Council’s Pandemic Preparedness & Global Health Security Office which was charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation. The elimination of this office, along with Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the CDC, suggests that he saw the fact based pandemic threats not worth his attention.

He shut down the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NCG) which informed the nations health care system on current medical advances along with science based practice guidelines.

In 2019 he ignored a joint HHS/FEMA/DHS exercise termed “Crimson Contagion Simulation”

which anticipated gross health care infrastructure preparedness problems, shortages of medical supplies, overwhelmed hospitals, and economic deterioration.

Three months before Covid-19 went global Trump ended the Pandemic Early Warning System (PREDICT).

in January and February, alone He was warned over a dozen times by researchers of a potential global pandemic and ensuing national security threat.

He calls the Pandemic the “Democrat’s new hoax…It is what it is…It’ll just go away…We’re in great shape…Don’t believe what you see…!”

Meanwhile Trump abruptly dismissed Nancy Messonie MD, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, for declaring the immanent dangers of Covid-19 and then demoted Dr. Rick Bright, one of the nation’s leading vaccine specialists, from the National Institute of Health. Their critical messaging, heralding science for the common good, clashed with Trump’s myopic political and economic priorities.

Our country is sorely reeling from this administration’s astounding and dangerous ignorance and incompetence.

To date over 175000 Americans, have fallen to Covid-19 largely due to failed, if not absent, leadership.

Last April Trump announced defunding the World Health Organization. We still have no national testing plan, no protective equipment distribution plan.

Trump’s science denialism reflects on this entire Republican party. All GOP candidates supporting this ruinous administration are accountable and should be definitively removed from office.

We need more Science and expertise in Government:
Vote Nancy Goroff PHD to replace Lee Zeldin (R).

James Ewing, Water Mill, NY

Attacks on Science

David Posnett — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 15:53:43 +0000

From Jenny Mulligan:

Attacks on Science

The Trump administration and 115th Congress have been actively dismantling science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence, and undoing recent progress on scientific integrity.

We’ve seen this movie before. And we know how to fight back. We’re standing up for science. We’re inviting scientists to securely share information on scientific integrity abuses. And we’re encouraging our supporters to watchdog this administration and Congress, as we did during the George W. Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration.

Below is a running list of attacks on science—disappearing data, silenced scientists, and other assaults on scientific integrity and science-based policy. The list provides a representative sample of threats to the federal scientific enterprise.

Beyond this list, many other moves by the president and Congress degrade the environment for science and scientists in this country. For example, the president’s Muslim ban hurts science and scientists, including those working for the federal government.These actions are also important to document, and we continue do so on the UCS blog.

Share these stories on social media. Tell us about case studies you think we should add through these encrypted channels.

The White House Suppressed Science from Congressional Testimony

White House officials stopped scientific information on climate change from being submitted in a written testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.

EPA Ignores Scientists that Say Wisconsin’s Air is Dirty and Could Make People Sick

The EPA is ignoring scientists who say that data does not support its decision that several southeastern Wisconsin counties had not violated air pollution standards.

Scientists Sidelined as CPSC Politicizes Children’s Safety

The CPSC did not consider scientific evidence in a decision to not recall a jogging baby stroller shown to harm children.

Here is what you can do about it:

share this with your friends and social media contacts
Write your member of Congress to support strong congressional oversight of agencies important to your community’s health and safety.

Tell Congress to hold the Trump administration accountable. >

Happy Valentine’s Day, Dear Earth, #LoveOurPlanetNotPollution

David Posnett — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 19:04:37 +0000

Some of us have been meeting at the Southampton library to discuss ways we can scale up existing efforts that draw down carbon from the atmosphere, based on the top 100 solutions outlined in the New York Times bestseller Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.

The book’s 100 best practices and technologies measure and model ways we are already substituting fossil fuels with renewable clean energy, being more efficient, conserving, and even sequestering CO2 emissions. It is a matter of scale. The science reveals if we scale up our best practices, big-time, we can roll back greenhouse gas emissions — reverse the buildup of CO2 — reverse global warming by 2050.

There is much laughter at the meetings, and sometimes I tear up. So, we can actually cut the gloom and doom, and see our reality as an invitation to build, innovate and effect change? A pathway for creativity, an opportunity for an economy humming with innovation, for a renewable energy future with cleaner air, better health, more involved communities?

I share this 3 minute video, a positive hi-tech and low-tech overview.

Reading Drawdown I was surprised to learn that top solutions (#3 and #4) have to do with food —what we eat, what we throw away, where we buy our food. Individually, in our families, and as a community, we can make choices that have huge impacts in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

Food waste alone is big (#3), generating 4.4 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year (8% of GHG emissions). Food waste from farm to fork generates emissions at every stage. We Americans throw out 1/3 of our food. If 50% of food waste is reduced by 2050, 26.2 gigaton emissions could be avoided, also avoiding deforestation needed for additional farmland. How? Willful food waste dominates at the consumer level. So then, eat what you buy, make delicious “leftover” soups, buy “ugly” produce, enjoy kitchen creativity — all big CO2 reducers and money savers. I can do that.

On a community level, buying locally and encouraging markets and restaurants to reallocate unpurchased food for reuse by farmers, entrepreneurs, food banks, even business or community composting efforts will reduce GHG. Can’t we do that?

Composting, by the way, is the CO2-smart way to handle any food waste. From backyard bins to commercial operations, composting creates an incredibly valuable fertilizer. Allowing your organic waste to end up in a landfill, absent oxygen, produces the potent GHG methane (34x more powerful than CO2). Note: Copenhagen has not sent any organic waste to landfills in 25 years, reaping savings, fertilizer production and carbon mitigation. Can’t we do that too?

Perhaps the healthiest lifestyle change you can make is not-doing something — what I call the Fish+Farmstand Diet, or Once A Week Red Meat. Surprise: beef cattle are 1/5 of global emissions. Eating the Mediterranean diet, more fish, fruit, veggies, grains, will keep you from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and you will feel great. Source your red meat from silvopasture farms, which reduce methane emissions 10x more than treeless farms (storing carbon in the trees and soil and 0 fertilizer use). From enriching a pasture with trees for shade to grazing in relatively dense wooded areas, Cornell Extensions across the state are helping expand silvopasturing to economically benefit farmers — a win, win, win. Why not silvopasture here?

Finally, the big accelerator for drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, the top #1 solution, is a national effort. Rather than have government subsidize oil companies as we do now, a 2019 bi-partisan bill would provide an economic incentive to substitute fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Wouldn’t that jump-start be terrific?

Updating here from a previous blog, the bill’s full name is H.R.763 – To create a Carbon Dividend Trust Fund for the American people in order to encourage market-driven innovation of clean energy technologies and market efficiencies which will reduce harmful pollution and leave a healthier, more stable and more prosperous nation for future generations. It is sponsored by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), and co-sponsored by Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) and 11 Democrats, including most recently Yvette Clarke of New York.

Carbon emissions would reduce 90% by 2050 exceeding the Paris Climate goals and the Clean Power plan. American households would receive monthly dividend checks increasing from $600, $1,400, and $2,600 for each household in the first, fourth, and ninth years of policy implementation. Yes, gas would go up 19 cents a gallon, and a Yale study found that seniors, lower and mid-income and small towns benefit the most financially. The bill is transparent, market-based, does not enlarge government, leaves energy decisions to individual choices, provides thousands of clean energy jobs, cleans the air, and gives us a dividend check, each month, for 30 years. A healthier you chooses how you spend it.

Interestingly, the Green New Deal does not include carbon pricing. As Josh Siegel of the Washington Examiner, noted in “Republican lawmakers face pressure to propose ‘Green New Deal’ alternative” this leaves an opening for Republicans like Mr. Rooney and other Floridians who have taken the lead in co-sponsoring carbon tax legislation.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/republican-lawmakers-face-pressure-to-propose-green-new-deal-alternative

More movement is taking place in Washington, as Madame Speaker Pelosi has reconstituted the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which she had created as speaker in 2007-2011.

H.R. 763 is a well-researched bi-partisan jump-start to reverse global warming and importantly gets our economy humming with innovation. The timing is good now to make it happen and Senators/Congressman needs to hear from you. Call. Write a post card. Write a letter to the editor.

More information on our local Drawdown East End effort to be posted soon!

Mary Foster Morgan

Co-Leader

Citizens Climate Lobby NYS – LI East

Trump Spurns Nobel Prize Winners—and the Feeling Is Mutual

David Posnett — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 22:59:10 +0000

Published in Daily Kos November 13

By Mark Sumner

In a White House as radically anti-science as this one, it’s no surprise that scientists are being denied the usual honors.

President Trump, breaking a tradition that stretches back nearly two decades, will not personally greet the eight American Nobel laureates this year before they travel to Sweden in December to receive their prizes.

Considering that the Trump regime has censored scientists studying health effects of coal mining, removed vital scientific data from public sites, purged scientists from its scientific advisory boards, selected an anti-science nominee to head NASA, and that Republicans in Congress have joined them in blocking research into climate change, it’s not surprising that there would be a reluctance to welcome American scientists into the White House.

But then, several of those scientists weren’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of meeting such a science-hostile group in the first place.

Two American Nobel Prize winners, when contacted by STAT, indicated they would not have attended a White House event even if invited. Columbia biophysicist Joachim Frank, awarded a Nobel in chemistry for his work in microscopy, said in an email he was “very relieved” when he learned there was no chance of an encounter with the president.

Any Nobel Winners who wander up to Washington will be thrilled to find that Michael Kratsios— assistant to Trump supporter, Silicon Valley money man, and vampire Peter Thiel—will be there to greet them. Because nothing says “we value science” like sending the deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology to show what this crew thinks a Nobel is worth. But then, Kratsios does have a BS in science. Political science.

Fake News

David Posnett — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 03:17:36 +0000

The issue of “fake news” has been bothering me: East Hampton Star under Guest Words.

Along with the disdain of the current administration for science or any real data for that matter, just consider the infantile debate on the attendance numbers at the Trump inauguration versus the D.C. Women’s March the following day. Consider the Republican’s pursuit of a health care policy that is predicted to fail and to harm the uninsured, the elderly and even our hospitals, their resistance to funding of research meant to save us from an epidemic such at the Zika virus and their unwillingness to believe in man-made climate change or to do something about it. All this is frightening. The attack on climate change includes people like Robert Mercer, the hedge fund billionaire behind the Trump/Bannon campaign. Across the country, there are even legal cases attacking science and anti-science education legislation.

Fake news fits right into this mix. But the origins are probably more complex. There has been a worldwide shift in how people inform themselves. Books, journals, newspapers are out. The internet, social media, opinion bloggers, and TV cable news are in. There are those that wish to make a quick buck by inventing fake news stories peddled on websites and promoted by Breitbart, and they are getting handsomely paid, per click, on their stories!

So where does this leave us? Asking Facebook and Twitter to edit their sites does not strike me as a feasible solution. That leaves us only with education. As stated in the East Hampton Star: “We need to educate our children, at home and in our schools, how to vet information, how to use fact-check sites such as snopes.com, how to look for confirmatory reports, and how to have a high degree of skepticism. Critical thinking should be part of every curriculum. If you are on a school board make a suggestion. We need courses on internet literacy, vetting sources, and the like. And, young minds should be warned about looking for news that confirms your own bias. They should be encouraged to have an open mind and engage in open-minded discussions with classmates”

Smoking doesn’t kill (Mike Pence) ???

David Posnett — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 18:22:42 +0000

As published in Business Insider, Jan. 21, 2017, 10:00 AM, http://www.businessinsider.com/mike-pence-smoking-doesnt-kill-2017-1 Mike Pence wrote an op-ed article in 2000 stating

“Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer.”

If 2/3 don’t die of smoking related illness, then it follows that 1/3 do die of smoking related illness and that translates into 0.5 Million every year in the US. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the US and it shortens your expected life-span by 10 years.

I recommend that you don’t use Mike Pence as your source on medical or scientific matters. Use the CDC website instead: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/

David Posnett MD