4 ms·

One Year After the EPA Removed “Climate Change”

35 points by castig 9y ago

supreme_sublime 9y ago
Go ahead and think the EPA has done lots of good, I'm sure it has. Go ahead and disagree with what he is doing. To call what Trump is doing "censorship" is completely asinine and not at all what it is.
- frostburg 9y ago
  It's more accurate to describe it as propaganda and deception, yes.
- tc7 9y ago
  What do you think it is? (I'm genuinely curious, certainly open to alternate explanations.)
  - supreme_sublime 9y ago
    At best, shaping messaging of policy, at worst, propaganda. He isn't preventing any scientists from publishing anything. Even if he did scrub a term from the entire site personally, that isn't censorship. It isn't illegal to talk about Climate Change.
    - xbmcuser 9y ago
      I agree it's more equilant to the astroturfing done by the Chinese net hoards than censorship. They are changing the message if the it was real censorship this article itself would not be readable
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sctb 9y ago
  Hacker News readers really are here to learn, and comments need to be substantive and informative so we can do that. Could you please increase the signal a bit? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - supreme_sublime 9y ago
    Perhaps I should have kept my comment to myself. However I don't see any need to rebut such a ridiculous notion as the Trump administration not prominently using a term, being the comparable to Chinese censorship of Tiananmen Square. Can no one talk about Climate Change in the US? It is a completely ludicrous comparison that should be obvious to anyone on its face. The author of this article makes no attempt to connect the two, or show how what Trump is doing might lead to Chinese level censorship. This opinion piece is complete tripe. In my opinion, the article should be what is flagged here as there is no kind of intellectual honesty in it. It is simply a political piece with nothing interesting to say except make an outrageous claim that it makes no effort to back up.
    - sctb 9y ago
      Then the thing to do is to flag the article quietly, as the guidelines ask.
      - supreme_sublime 9y ago
        I lack the ability to flag. I suppose I don't have enough karma.
Xeoncross 9y ago
When building our house we learned about the EPA's formaldehyde limits. It's funny that for manufactured homes the levels are higher because poor people don't want to pay for "healthy" houses directly (higher cost of construction). So the manufactured housing companies lobbied for lower standards to keep costs low. I'm not able to find the original EPA guidelines due to the changes on the website now about the new pressed-wood rulings on formaldehyde.
indubitable 9y ago
It's covered in the index, along with 7 different sub topics: https://www.epa.gov/environmental-topics/z-index#C https://www.epa.gov/environmental-topics/z-index#C Alternatively, searching for "climate change" using the EPA site search yields 5,290 surprisingly well presented results. I'd agree that it should be listed as one of the main topics on the front page given its relevance. Trump's appointee doesn't because of his own personal biases. That's pretty much the end of it. Drawing an analog between it being removed from the front page drop down and China censoring Tiananmen Square is needlessly hyperbolic and sensationalistic.
- slowmovintarget 9y ago
  I suppose it could have been worse, the article tiptoed right up to Godwin's Law and said "Hi". It's trying to make a mountain out of dust bunny.
allemagne 9y ago
Apart from language cleansing on an ideological basis (which is still significant and disturbing), has any hosted data or research on climate change been affected? Are they poised to be affected? There was an HN news item about climate scientists backing up government data on climate change before the new administration took office and it would be interesting to follow up on the discussions that took place. Maybe that follow-up has already happened.

35 points by castig 9y ago

Go ahead and think the EPA has done lots of good, I'm sure it has. Go ahead and disagree with what he is doing. To call what Trump is doing "censorship" is completely asinine and not at all what it is.

frostburg 9y ago
It's more accurate to describe it as propaganda and deception, yes.
tc7 9y ago
What do you think it is? (I'm genuinely curious, certainly open to alternate explanations.)
- supreme_sublime 9y ago
  At best, shaping messaging of policy, at worst, propaganda. He isn't preventing any scientists from publishing anything. Even if he did scrub a term from the entire site personally, that isn't censorship. It isn't illegal to talk about Climate Change.
  - xbmcuser 9y ago
    I agree it's more equilant to the astroturfing done by the Chinese net hoards than censorship. They are changing the message if the it was real censorship this article itself would not be readable
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sctb 9y ago
Hacker News readers really are here to learn, and comments need to be substantive and informative so we can do that. Could you please increase the signal a bit? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- supreme_sublime 9y ago
  Perhaps I should have kept my comment to myself. However I don't see any need to rebut such a ridiculous notion as the Trump administration not prominently using a term, being the comparable to Chinese censorship of Tiananmen Square. Can no one talk about Climate Change in the US? It is a completely ludicrous comparison that should be obvious to anyone on its face. The author of this article makes no attempt to connect the two, or show how what Trump is doing might lead to Chinese level censorship. This opinion piece is complete tripe. In my opinion, the article should be what is flagged here as there is no kind of intellectual honesty in it. It is simply a political piece with nothing interesting to say except make an outrageous claim that it makes no effort to back up.
  - sctb 9y ago
    Then the thing to do is to flag the article quietly, as the guidelines ask.
    - supreme_sublime 9y ago
      I lack the ability to flag. I suppose I don't have enough karma.

Xeoncross 9y ago

When building our house we learned about the EPA's formaldehyde limits. It's funny that for manufactured homes the levels are higher because poor people don't want to pay for "healthy" houses directly (higher cost of construction). So the manufactured housing companies lobbied for lower standards to keep costs low. I'm not able to find the original EPA guidelines due to the changes on the website now about the new pressed-wood rulings on formaldehyde.

indubitable 9y ago

It's covered in the index, along with 7 different sub topics: https://www.epa.gov/environmental-topics/z-index#C https://www.epa.gov/environmental-topics/z-index#C Alternatively, searching for "climate change" using the EPA site search yields 5,290 surprisingly well presented results. I'd agree that it should be listed as one of the main topics on the front page given its relevance. Trump's appointee doesn't because of his own personal biases. That's pretty much the end of it. Drawing an analog between it being removed from the front page drop down and China censoring Tiananmen Square is needlessly hyperbolic and sensationalistic.

slowmovintarget 9y ago
I suppose it could have been worse, the article tiptoed right up to Godwin's Law and said "Hi". It's trying to make a mountain out of dust bunny.

allemagne 9y ago

Apart from language cleansing on an ideological basis (which is still significant and disturbing), has any hosted data or research on climate change been affected? Are they poised to be affected? There was an HN news item about climate scientists backing up government data on climate change before the new administration took office and it would be interesting to follow up on the discussions that took place. Maybe that follow-up has already happened.