“It took President Trump 601 days to
top 5,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker’s database, an average of eight claims a
day… But on April 26, just 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000
mark— an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which
included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial
government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special
counsel’s report on Russian interference in the presidential election.”
Washington Post, April 29th
I suspect that more than Democrats,
criminal investigations of his administration and the
enemy-of-the-people-mainstream-media-minus-Fox, facts are the Trump administration’s greatest enemies. Whether it
may concern the fabricated or Trump-policy-induced national security crisis at
the border, the rising ill-effects of releasing industrial polluters from responsibility
from the consequences of their actions, a trade policy that is seriously
hurting American producers and consumers, a tax cut that almost exclusively
benefited the rich while adding the largest federal deficit increase ever but
otherwise with no real benefit to most of us, or the justifications (wink wink)
for polarization, racism and hate crimes that are soaring since Trump was
elected, truth negates the efficacy of just about all things Trump. Looking at
those long lines of coal miners getting their old jobs back? Oh, more mines are
closing now than ever before.
As Kim Jong-un cozies up to Vladimir
Putin and Xi Jinping, openly defying Mike Pompeo and even Trump himself, as
Trump alienates allies more than enemies, America’s future turns bleaker by the
day. For Trump and that gullible part of his base (remember that 28% of
evangelicals voted for Hillary Clinton!), as rally after rally illustrates,
they only care about what he says, write off inconsistencies to “that’s just
his style” and follow his blame for his many failures to unhinged, radical
socialist Democrats. As if most of his followers could actually give you the
correct definition of socialism anyway (where government owns and controls the
means of production).
Trump’s shoot from the hip, keep an
eye on what his base wants to hear, opinion-without-factual-basis, leadership –
the same leadership in business that generated well over 3000 lawsuits – runs
roughshod over studied expertise, scientific facts, history as well as normal
moral boundaries. It’s not as if Donald Trump is sure his assumptions are true;
that’s irrelevant. It’s simply what his bases wishes were so, so he simply says
that it is! They smile, nod at each other… but facts continue to deploy
according to historical and natural laws. And not the way the base wants! Facts
are disturbingly neutral. Politics and public opinion have no sway with facts.
When NASA threatened to launch missions
to set earth-orbital platforms more capable of ascertaining the ravages of
climate change, Trump was enraged. A total waste of money in his mind. Everyone
knows what that research will produce; the scientific community has been
generating reams of supporting data for decades. Common observations here on
here have slowly produced a ring of truth in the warnings in all but the most
diehard skeptics. Floods, fires, coastal erosion, massive storm systems,
searing temperatures, droughts, radically and rapidly altering weather patterns
and consistent global temperature rise are now patently obvious to most of us.
Even the Republican Party, noticing
that the rising generations of voters are exceptionally attuned to climate
change issues, is beginning to understand that climate change denial is no
longer a politically viable path. So Congress, with GOP support, backed NASA. “A
NASA instrument designed to track carbon in Earth’s atmosphere is headed to the
International Space Station next week, and President Trump isn’t happy about it…
He slashed funding for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 [OCO-3 – the NASA
rendering above] and four other Earth science missions in his proposed spending
plan for the 2018 fiscal year, citing ‘budget constraints’ and ‘higher
priorities within Science.’ His budget for fiscal year 2019 tried to defund
them again.
“In both cases, Congress decided to
keep the OCO-3 mission going anyway… OCO-3 was built at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge for less than $100 million, using parts left
over from its predecessor, OCO-2… Once the carbon observatory gets to the ISS
[International Space Station], a robotic arm will mount it on the underside of
the space station so it can keep a close eye on the carbon dioxide in Earth’s
atmosphere… That will help scientists answer questions about how and why levels
of the greenhouse gas fluctuate over days, months and years…
“The main purpose of OCO-3 is to make
sure we have a continuous record of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere,
but we are adding some new capabilities… One of those is to take a snapshot of
carbon levels over an area of 50 miles by 50 miles. This will feed a bunch of
science investigations of emission hot spots, like cities or volcanoes… We can
also look at how plant activity changes over the course of a day, which is
something OCO-2 could not do…
“OCO-3 is a spectrometer that looks
at Earth’s surface in three wavelengths: two for carbon dioxide, and one for
the type of light your eyes see. Every molecule has a unique way that it
absorbs light, almost like a fingerprint, and that’s what we exploit in our
instrument…If the CO 2 levels are 405 ppm, we will see a certain amount of
light change in the CO 2 band. If it is 406, we’ll see just a bit more… President
Trump tried to cancel this mission twice.” Los Angeles Times, April 27th.
And that mission is now “out to launch.”
The United States should be grateful
to California. Not only is OCO-3 the product of Southern California’s JPL, but
the state is leading the research to counter climate change. Even demon-Los
Angeles is figuring out how to deflect rising temperatures in an experiment
that might spread a small part of a solution to other cities. “The sludge
poured out of giant plastic buckets like gray pancake batter. Workers in neon
vests and spiky cleats squeegeed it across a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles,
smoothing it into a thin layer beneath a cloudless sky.
“This light-reflecting goop is part
of L.A.’s experiment to cool the city as it’s hit by climate change.
If global greenhouse gas emissions
keep rising at their current rate, temperatures in L.A. will increase nearly 4
degrees Fahrenheit by midcentury, scientists say. The metropolis is already
nearly 6 degrees hotter than surrounding rural areas thanks to its masses of
heat-absorbing buildings, paved surfaces and scant shade and vegetation.
“Mayor Eric Garcetti has pledged to
cut that difference nearly in half, reducing land surface temperatures 3
degrees by 2035. And he hopes that loads more of the viscous street-coating
mixture will help.
“Once the new coating dries, the
pavement outside an Arts District warehouse-turned-green-technology campus will
become a putty gray that reflects more of the sun’s rays than the dark asphalt
it covered up. The material — one of a handful of products the city and the Los
Angeles Cleantech Incubator are testing — absorbs less heat, and thermometer
readings show it can reduce surface temperatures by 10 degrees or more.” LA
Times.
Not only do we have to begin to mount an effective global
strategy against a climate trend that might even render vast tracts of the earth
uninhabitable, but we have to battle those who deny that there is a problem,
particularly leaders like Donald Trump. We shouldn’t have to fight to solve an
obvious problem… the biggest problem humanity has faced in millennia.
I’m Peter Dekom, and may we never have
another fact-averse president again… ever!
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