Climate scientists are hastily compiling scientific data, under the misguided fear that a Donald Trump administration would erase it from existence. Apparently unable to understand how anyone could disagree with their rote conclusions about an impending catastrophe, these scientists actually fear that Trump would launch “a 21st century book burning.”
“They have been salivating at the possibility of dismantling federal climate research programs for years,” Mark Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Washington Post. “It’s not unreasonable to think they would want to take down the very data that they dispute.”
“Scientists are right to preserve data and archive websites before those who want to dismantle federal climate change research programs storm the castle,” Halpern declared.
Indeed, scientists are hastily attempting to preserve data, fearful of the impending Trump Dark Age. The University of Toronto is hosting a “Guerrilla Archiving Event,” entitled “Saving Environmental Data from Trump.” The website described the event as “a full day of hackathon activities in preparation for the Trump presidency” (emphasis added).
In Philadelphia, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania joined with Open Data Philly and the software company Azavea to preserve data. On the project’s website, researchers lay out the threat they see. They quote the New York Times, writing, “With the arrival of any new president, vast troves of information on government websites are at risk of vanishing within days.” Then they specify, “Climate-data, for instance.”
On Tuesday, hundreds of scientists and supporters held a rally in San Francisco, Calif., to “champion the role of science in society” in the face of an allegedly anti-science administration.
https://twitter.com/corginaut/status/808768074249748481
Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist and self-proclaimed “climate hawk,” attacked the incoming Trump administration as “a 21st century book burning.”
This isn’t a presidential transition. It’s an Inquisition. It’s a 21st-century book burning.https://t.co/0R0HNiRI6f
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 13, 2016
But these people are off their rockers, and need to reexamine their premises.
Next Page: The response from the Trump transition team.
“There’s no merit to these wild and baseless accusations,” a source inside the Trump transition team told PJ Media in an email statement. Neither the Trump administration nor any good scientist who doubts the false “consensus” on climate change would intend to destroy government climate data.
For one thing, such an act is almost certainly illegal. “If [the data] is the result of federally funded research, [destroying it] would almost surely be a crime,” Jay Richards, assistant research professor at the Catholic University of America and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, told PJ Media. By rushing to protect climate data, these alarmist scientists “imply that they think the new administration will be committing criminal acts.”
Richards attacked the claim that “scientists are copying data to prevent it from being destroyed under a Trump administration” as “a classic case of projection.”
“Climate realists, who doubt the catastrophic predictions, love data, and insist that speculative computer models should submit to evidence, not the other way around,” the professor declared. Rather, it is the alarmists themselves who dismiss climate data, he argued.
“It is the catasrophists who occupy federal agencies, in contrast, who insist we trust the models that predict (on average) twice the rate of warming that has actually occurred,” Richards said.
“These actions also demonstrate how politicized government agencies who focus on the climate have become in the last eight years,” the professor explained. “They are literally suggesting that President-elect Trump, or his appointees, would destroy climate data. I trust he will remember this when it comes to staffing these agencies.”
Richards is right. These scientists have become so obsessed with their narrative that they cannot understand how anyone can disagree with their conclusions while still valuing their scientific data.
Next Page: How good scientists can disagree with the climate change “consensus.”
But science isn’t just about collecting data — it also involves interpreting those findings. Good scientists who have studied accurate data can indeed come to different conclusions about those numbers. In nearly every realm of human knowledge there is a great deal of disagreement, especially when it comes to applying knowledge from one realm of study (like science) to an entirely different realm (like politics).
Climate alarmism requires many different assumptions and arguments. Alarmists believe first that the climate data shows a warming Earth. From this data, they project further warming and resulting catastrophes. From this projection, they argue that government efforts to combat climate change are necessary and worth any economic cost they might entail.
Disagreeing with this final conclusion makes someone a “climate denier” and to do so is considered anti-science. Alarmists falsely believe that anyone who accepts the data showing a warming Earth must therefore believe in imminent threats and take the leap of faith required to value “green” initiatives at a high cost to the taxpayer, and to businesses in general.
Furthermore, the data itself can be suspect. Many scientists have argued that alarmists purposefully use data-collecting methods which show a warming Earth. Climate “deniers” are likely to encourage even more diverse ways of collecting data that might lead to different conclusions.
Finally, many “data-driven” climate projections have proven false, over and over again. Trusting alarmists that a catastrophe looms on the horizon unless we curb the use of fossil fuels fits the definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Which might help explain why Democrats and environmental activists are so focused on silencing dissent by any means possible, including using RICO laws against climate “deniers.”
In the end, this hullabaloo about saving climate data is likely just a smokescreen for activists to further undermine the incoming administration.
“Much of the relevant data — such as satellite data — is already held in multiple places,” Richards explained. Even if Trump wanted to get rid of it, that would be no easy task. “It’s not like climate data is stored on a single server without a modem in someone’s basement.”
If this alarm proves anything, it merely serves to underscore how insulated liberals are in their climate change bubble. If they honestly cannot imagine how a person can disagree with their conclusions while still valuing scientific data, they really need to get out more.
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