8 ms·

EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

88 points by fmihaila 10y ago

hplust 10y ago
What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?
- taurath 10y ago
  Nothing. It's only collective action that will solve anything, and whatever culture that pops up will get a near equal reaction from the other side. The US is trending to splitting down the middle on everything, just like our political system, a fact which is sadly getting more entrenched every day. Only thing I can think of is find a way to support independent local government officials and slowly kill the bipartisan system.
  - gavinpc 10y ago
    Regarding this "other side." Isn't there an asymmetry here? I mean, aren't the people who see climate change as a DEFCON 1 emergency way more motivated to support environmental causes than the... um people who think it's a hoax are to oppose it? Are there people (not oligarchs) who really oppose environmental causes? Or isn't it just bundled up with all of the GOP's other value propositions? And the constituents just include it because tribalism? edit: my point is that it's us versus the oligarchs. This is not something like guns or abortion or hell even fiscal policy where individuals are going to dig in their heels. This issue is less partisan in that respect. I don't think it's a big deal to the right beyond being a part of their caricature of the left. Sure, some have bought the narrative that the economics are somehow bad for US. But that's a weak and indirect point, and one that just isn't going to activate grassroots opposition.
    - aeontech 10y ago
      The opposition does not oppose climate because they are anti-environment. In their minds, as I understand, climate change is a _pretext_ for more government control, taxes, and intrusion, and those are indeed reasons that make the people dig in their heels.
      - mirimir 10y ago
        They've been conned. Burson-Marsteller developed the basic strategy, and Philip Morris implemented it as the National Smokers Alliance. It worked well enough that the Koch Brothers worked with them on The Tea Party.[0] And now we have Trump. Ain't life grand? 0) http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/23/4/322 http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/23/4/322
    - taurath 9y ago
      It's an issue that needs resources and priorities assigned to it, and in a democracy that means there must be some agreed upon basis for which to act, or the action is not taken. Worse, we switch action for anti-action every election cycle
  - guelo 10y ago
    Democracy has been proven a failure now that oligarchs have figured out mass propaganda. It will be dueling billionaires from here on out. Which is how government worked throughout most of history. The best we can hope for is a wise, benevolent king. Though unfortunately those were the rare exception.
- crush-n-spread 10y ago
  Hi, I am going to offer my opinion on how to fight ignorance for the purpose of inciting climate action. I will start by saying that my only qualifications are that I have thought about this since I was 13 years old. You can't fight the ignorance of the masses. Simply put, people don't have a real reason to care about the visibility of climate science. People all around the world are constantly struggling with the hierarchy of needs, and the invisible threat of climate-change-induced extinction is not something you can get people to care about. This is a tautology and will be one until the climate starts killing swaths of people, which may take decades to set in. Therefore, the people and the ignorance are the wrong thing to focus on. If you convince one person, there are going to be ten more people born in that time of such low socioeconomic status that your arguments that convinced the one will fall on deaf ears for the other ten. What you must focus on is making climate-friendly actions profitable and desirable. I am going to leave a link to a comment I made previously if you like what I'm saying so far. Basically, forget people. They are not going to care, and even if you convince all Americans, how will you convince China, India, Africa, etc? The answer is that you won't. I repeat, forget about the people. Here[1] is my old comment that discusses this in greater detail. Also, feel free to reply with some strawman rebuttal of this; you won't get the satisfaction of a reply from me, I've seen way too much negativity on this site (see the comments of the boring company video) to possibly care about contributing to some argument with reality-detached software engineers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175468
- Larrikin 10y ago
  Honestly, the only thing I can think of is to spend money out of your district or state.
- sfifs 10y ago
  Same as democracies everywhere. Organize and vote out the reps in the next elections. Americans are unique in how frequently you get opportunities to vote out leaders (2 years for Congress and 4 years for president) but you rarely do.
  - narrowrail 10y ago
    Sorry to nitpick, but the senate is 6 years (and the senate is part of the congress).
    - greenyoda 10y ago
      But about a third of the Senate is up for election every two years[1], so technically the original statement was correct. The voters of the states who elect senators in a particular year may have the opportunity to change which party has a majority in the Senate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Term
      - narrowrail 9y ago
        The original point being made was about turnover and being able to correct for bad choices, and no voter (unless they move) gets to vote for the same senate seat every 2 years.
- blitmap 10y ago
  Build a dome. Don't invite these people into the dome. Watch them cook, drown, or freeze upon retirement (if you have the luxury of retiring).
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  Call your Representative every day about matters of importance to you. A single call may not make a difference but thousands make a huge difference. Also, find a local group that supports the same policy aims that you have. There are lots to find, especially compared to just 100 days ago. Join up with them and see how you can help amplify each others' voices.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ximeng 10y ago
  I'm wondering if there's a better designed version of the IPCC climate change reports. Good information but presented in a massive PDF file which doesn't really lend itself to being referenced or browsed easily.
- Qwertious 10y ago
  When the next election comes up, vote for whichever candidate is willing to ditch FTPTP and make third-party candidates mathematically viable. Even if the only candidate who does so is Trump (as long as you expect him to keep that particular promise).
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    Considering that such a change would likely involve a constitutional amendment, the correct target for such voting would be the legislature (both state and federal).
kakarot 10y ago
Sounds pretty damn Orwellian when the Environmental Protection Agency isn't interested in protecting the environment anymore.
- _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
  Ministry of Love.
jamieoo 10y ago
This is book burning of the 21st century.
amenghra 10y ago
There are websites such as https://www.datarefuge.org/ https://www.datarefuge.org/ (Building refuge for federal climate & environmental data) which have archived the data. Sad nevertheless. There are also files on archive.org, but I feel they are harder to find and browse. E.g. https://archive.org/details/ClimateChangeUSEPA https://archive.org/details/ClimateChangeUSEPA or https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_JTL9-NV3L https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_JTL9-NV3L
mankash666 10y ago
History repeats itself, in an amplified manner. At least in the era of galileo the general population's prevailing world view was being challenged by new science and evidence. This is backwards, the science has been proven decades ago, countries' policies are being amended to counter the effects. Except in America, and the Middle East. Unlikely bedfellows in science denial.
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  The US government denied science before when it came gun control, birth control, abortion and cannabis, so this is just the next step backwards.
  - Sunset 10y ago
    Which "science" has been denied about gun control? The question of gun rights is a moral one not scientific.
    - gumby 9y ago
      The morality of guns is affected by their impact. If nobody every died from a gun who would if anyone owned one? But the US congress specifically barred federal collection of data on gun deaths so that no factual conclusions could be drawn.
      - manyxcxi 9y ago
        Do you have a citation for that? I've not heard of this and I follow the issue relatively closely. I also find gun death stats pretty widely available and broken down to pretty small geographical areas from various governmental (not necessarily just federal though) and non-governmental organizations. I do remember having read that a lot of law enforcement agencies don't collect, or collect in a way that makes it hard to tabulate shootings by officers- but a) I don't have a cite for that, it was a while ago, and b) that's also up to individual enforcement agencies, not federal.
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
Most Americans (70%) think climate change is real. A large portion thinks it isn't made by men though. http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2016/ http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yco...
- Qwertious 10y ago
  Specifically, 53% of people think it IS being caused by humans, whereas 32% think it's by natural causes.
  - _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
    Yes, and only 40% believe it harms them personally.
snowpanda 10y ago
Finally, lets get rid of this fake science that has never been proven to chiefly explain climate change. I applaud you Scott Pruitt.
mirimir 10y ago
Hey, no surprise here. Just gotta get to the next screen. Maybe just a 4-8 year slog. Or maybe something truly dramatic will happen. Clathrate gun, or whatever. We live in interesting times.
adwhit 10y ago
The capitalists who funded the mass propaganda effort to deny the reality of climate change - what is their endgame? Are they simply hoping to maintain the status quo as long as possible and bleed the planet (and public) dry in the meantime? In 50 years time, when things go seriously south for mankind and the history of our era is written, our children and grandchildren are going to regard us with the utmost contempt. As for the Kochs and Trumps of the world, what could possibly be a fair reaction to the people who destroyed the planet? A bloody uprising followed by a complete overthrow of the system? Perhaps the ruling class think that by that point they will have enough systems of control in place to keep themselves comfortable as civilization collapses around them, a la Children Of Men. I'm not sure the gravity of the evil has quite sunk in yet. We are witnessing the worst, most venal, most corrupt behavior that mankind has ever partaken. It is quite spectacular.
- digitalzombie 9y ago
  Well I read somewhere Human are more short term thinking than long term thinking. I think the simple answer to your questions is that they have no end game. They only have one time in mind and that's short term gain.
  - tnzn 9y ago
    That's the case when you're in real time situation and stuff like that. When you're actually thinking through a whole politics, you should be able to think past that.
- candiodari 9y ago
  Disingenuous question, let me explain why. The biggest effect by far resulting from climate change legislation has not been the reduction of CO2 emissions, it has been the migration of manufacturing from developed nations to China. Unfortunately, developed nations are mostly powered by oil with significant nuclear power added. China isn't. China is powered by coal. Coal produces something like 10x more CO2 per unit of energy (kWh) compared to oil, and about 200x more than nuclear. So climate change accords have systematically worsened CO2 output rather than improving it, while destroying already severely damaged manufacturing industries in the developed world. With predictable results: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC (climate accords were signed in 1992, 2011 and 2015) The answer to your question is to lower further damage to industries in the US and Europe and thereby will both improve the economics of the situation and actually lower CO2 output. So your question is about as fair as asking why climate activists keep destroying the world and what their long term plan is. (e.g. Here are how the people "improving" climate actually act: http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/03/paris-un-global-warming-summit-at-private-airport/ http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/03/paris-un-global-warming-su... - Claiming that these people actually care and agree that changing our ways to make things better for the environment is ... well, let's just say I see some arguments against that viewpoint)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

88 points by fmihaila 10y ago

What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?

taurath 10y ago
Nothing. It's only collective action that will solve anything, and whatever culture that pops up will get a near equal reaction from the other side. The US is trending to splitting down the middle on everything, just like our political system, a fact which is sadly getting more entrenched every day. Only thing I can think of is find a way to support independent local government officials and slowly kill the bipartisan system.
- gavinpc 10y ago
  Regarding this "other side." Isn't there an asymmetry here? I mean, aren't the people who see climate change as a DEFCON 1 emergency way more motivated to support environmental causes than the... um people who think it's a hoax are to oppose it? Are there people (not oligarchs) who really oppose environmental causes? Or isn't it just bundled up with all of the GOP's other value propositions? And the constituents just include it because tribalism? edit: my point is that it's us versus the oligarchs. This is not something like guns or abortion or hell even fiscal policy where individuals are going to dig in their heels. This issue is less partisan in that respect. I don't think it's a big deal to the right beyond being a part of their caricature of the left. Sure, some have bought the narrative that the economics are somehow bad for US. But that's a weak and indirect point, and one that just isn't going to activate grassroots opposition.
  - aeontech 10y ago
    The opposition does not oppose climate because they are anti-environment. In their minds, as I understand, climate change is a _pretext_ for more government control, taxes, and intrusion, and those are indeed reasons that make the people dig in their heels.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      They've been conned. Burson-Marsteller developed the basic strategy, and Philip Morris implemented it as the National Smokers Alliance. It worked well enough that the Koch Brothers worked with them on The Tea Party.[0] And now we have Trump. Ain't life grand? 0) http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/23/4/322 http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/23/4/322
  - taurath 9y ago
    It's an issue that needs resources and priorities assigned to it, and in a democracy that means there must be some agreed upon basis for which to act, or the action is not taken. Worse, we switch action for anti-action every election cycle
- guelo 10y ago
  Democracy has been proven a failure now that oligarchs have figured out mass propaganda. It will be dueling billionaires from here on out. Which is how government worked throughout most of history. The best we can hope for is a wise, benevolent king. Though unfortunately those were the rare exception.
crush-n-spread 10y ago
Hi, I am going to offer my opinion on how to fight ignorance for the purpose of inciting climate action. I will start by saying that my only qualifications are that I have thought about this since I was 13 years old. You can't fight the ignorance of the masses. Simply put, people don't have a real reason to care about the visibility of climate science. People all around the world are constantly struggling with the hierarchy of needs, and the invisible threat of climate-change-induced extinction is not something you can get people to care about. This is a tautology and will be one until the climate starts killing swaths of people, which may take decades to set in. Therefore, the people and the ignorance are the wrong thing to focus on. If you convince one person, there are going to be ten more people born in that time of such low socioeconomic status that your arguments that convinced the one will fall on deaf ears for the other ten. What you must focus on is making climate-friendly actions profitable and desirable. I am going to leave a link to a comment I made previously if you like what I'm saying so far. Basically, forget people. They are not going to care, and even if you convince all Americans, how will you convince China, India, Africa, etc? The answer is that you won't. I repeat, forget about the people. Here[1] is my old comment that discusses this in greater detail. Also, feel free to reply with some strawman rebuttal of this; you won't get the satisfaction of a reply from me, I've seen way too much negativity on this site (see the comments of the boring company video) to possibly care about contributing to some argument with reality-detached software engineers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175468
Larrikin 10y ago
Honestly, the only thing I can think of is to spend money out of your district or state.
sfifs 10y ago
Same as democracies everywhere. Organize and vote out the reps in the next elections. Americans are unique in how frequently you get opportunities to vote out leaders (2 years for Congress and 4 years for president) but you rarely do.
- narrowrail 10y ago
  Sorry to nitpick, but the senate is 6 years (and the senate is part of the congress).
  - greenyoda 10y ago
    But about a third of the Senate is up for election every two years[1], so technically the original statement was correct. The voters of the states who elect senators in a particular year may have the opportunity to change which party has a majority in the Senate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate#Term
    - narrowrail 9y ago
      The original point being made was about turnover and being able to correct for bad choices, and no voter (unless they move) gets to vote for the same senate seat every 2 years.
blitmap 10y ago
Build a dome. Don't invite these people into the dome. Watch them cook, drown, or freeze upon retirement (if you have the luxury of retiring).
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
Call your Representative every day about matters of importance to you. A single call may not make a difference but thousands make a huge difference. Also, find a local group that supports the same policy aims that you have. There are lots to find, especially compared to just 100 days ago. Join up with them and see how you can help amplify each others' voices.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ximeng 10y ago
I'm wondering if there's a better designed version of the IPCC climate change reports. Good information but presented in a massive PDF file which doesn't really lend itself to being referenced or browsed easily.
Qwertious 10y ago
When the next election comes up, vote for whichever candidate is willing to ditch FTPTP and make third-party candidates mathematically viable. Even if the only candidate who does so is Trump (as long as you expect him to keep that particular promise).
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Considering that such a change would likely involve a constitutional amendment, the correct target for such voting would be the legislature (both state and federal).

kakarot 10y ago

Sounds pretty damn Orwellian when the Environmental Protection Agency isn't interested in protecting the environment anymore.

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
Ministry of Love.

jamieoo 10y ago

This is book burning of the 21st century.

amenghra 10y ago

There are websites such as https://www.datarefuge.org/ https://www.datarefuge.org/ (Building refuge for federal climate & environmental data) which have archived the data. Sad nevertheless. There are also files on archive.org, but I feel they are harder to find and browse. E.g. https://archive.org/details/ClimateChangeUSEPA https://archive.org/details/ClimateChangeUSEPA or https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_JTL9-NV3L https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_JTL9-NV3L

mankash666 10y ago

History repeats itself, in an amplified manner. At least in the era of galileo the general population's prevailing world view was being challenged by new science and evidence. This is backwards, the science has been proven decades ago, countries' policies are being amended to counter the effects. Except in America, and the Middle East. Unlikely bedfellows in science denial.

spiderfarmer 10y ago
The US government denied science before when it came gun control, birth control, abortion and cannabis, so this is just the next step backwards.
- Sunset 10y ago
  Which "science" has been denied about gun control? The question of gun rights is a moral one not scientific.
  - gumby 9y ago
    The morality of guns is affected by their impact. If nobody every died from a gun who would if anyone owned one? But the US congress specifically barred federal collection of data on gun deaths so that no factual conclusions could be drawn.
    - manyxcxi 9y ago
      Do you have a citation for that? I've not heard of this and I follow the issue relatively closely. I also find gun death stats pretty widely available and broken down to pretty small geographical areas from various governmental (not necessarily just federal though) and non-governmental organizations. I do remember having read that a lot of law enforcement agencies don't collect, or collect in a way that makes it hard to tabulate shootings by officers- but a) I don't have a cite for that, it was a while ago, and b) that's also up to individual enforcement agencies, not federal.

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

Most Americans (70%) think climate change is real. A large portion thinks it isn't made by men though. http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2016/ http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yco...

Qwertious 10y ago
Specifically, 53% of people think it IS being caused by humans, whereas 32% think it's by natural causes.
- _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
  Yes, and only 40% believe it harms them personally.

snowpanda 10y ago

Finally, lets get rid of this fake science that has never been proven to chiefly explain climate change. I applaud you Scott Pruitt.

mirimir 10y ago

Hey, no surprise here. Just gotta get to the next screen. Maybe just a 4-8 year slog. Or maybe something truly dramatic will happen. Clathrate gun, or whatever. We live in interesting times.

adwhit 10y ago

The capitalists who funded the mass propaganda effort to deny the reality of climate change - what is their endgame? Are they simply hoping to maintain the status quo as long as possible and bleed the planet (and public) dry in the meantime? In 50 years time, when things go seriously south for mankind and the history of our era is written, our children and grandchildren are going to regard us with the utmost contempt. As for the Kochs and Trumps of the world, what could possibly be a fair reaction to the people who destroyed the planet? A bloody uprising followed by a complete overthrow of the system? Perhaps the ruling class think that by that point they will have enough systems of control in place to keep themselves comfortable as civilization collapses around them, a la Children Of Men. I'm not sure the gravity of the evil has quite sunk in yet. We are witnessing the worst, most venal, most corrupt behavior that mankind has ever partaken. It is quite spectacular.

digitalzombie 9y ago
Well I read somewhere Human are more short term thinking than long term thinking. I think the simple answer to your questions is that they have no end game. They only have one time in mind and that's short term gain.
- tnzn 9y ago
  That's the case when you're in real time situation and stuff like that. When you're actually thinking through a whole politics, you should be able to think past that.
candiodari 9y ago
Disingenuous question, let me explain why. The biggest effect by far resulting from climate change legislation has not been the reduction of CO2 emissions, it has been the migration of manufacturing from developed nations to China. Unfortunately, developed nations are mostly powered by oil with significant nuclear power added. China isn't. China is powered by coal. Coal produces something like 10x more CO2 per unit of energy (kWh) compared to oil, and about 200x more than nuclear. So climate change accords have systematically worsened CO2 output rather than improving it, while destroying already severely damaged manufacturing industries in the developed world. With predictable results: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC (climate accords were signed in 1992, 2011 and 2015) The answer to your question is to lower further damage to industries in the US and Europe and thereby will both improve the economics of the situation and actually lower CO2 output. So your question is about as fair as asking why climate activists keep destroying the world and what their long term plan is. (e.g. Here are how the people "improving" climate actually act: http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/03/paris-un-global-warming-summit-at-private-airport/ http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/03/paris-un-global-warming-su... - Claiming that these people actually care and agree that changing our ways to make things better for the environment is ... well, let's just say I see some arguments against that viewpoint)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]