Nature strikes back

The Trump administration’s every move is marked with a strange creepiness as well as confusing messages that can only mean: They don’t get it. Their nefarious ‘destroy science’ mentality promotes insane irreversible carbon emissions in good ole America, ultimately threatening the abilities of farmers to cope with ruinous global heat.

Alaskan permafrost is melting so fast that it has already hit a ‘tipping point’, meaning it emits carbon into the atmosphere in competition with human-caused carbon, hands-free, no more anthropogenic assistance required, self-perpetuating, a prelude to Runaway Global Warming (RGW), a major, very serious threat to life, especially as Trumpeters focus on making America More Drillable than ever before, feeding more, and more, and more force into gigantic arcs of methane, a molecule that is 100xs more powerful at entrapping heat in the atmosphere than is carbon dioxide during its initial stages.

Aforesaid news couldn’t be worse even if Stephen King were commissioned to write a creepy, horrifying climate change disaster film, as the horrors associated with collapsing permafrost ecosystems go far beyond the rich imagination of Stephen King.

What then are the compelling issues between Trump and science?

First and foremost, Trump distrusts, dislikes, disrespects scientists. He has a problem with well-educated people. They make him uncomfortable, fidgety, high-strung. This is only too obvious by observing his obtuse imperceptive uncultivated cabinet members, like deers in the headlights.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) including 6,000 scientists, the Trump administration has failed to embrace basic normal standards of acceptable science. Further to the point, and terrifyingly true, the administration is “attempting to decimate the scientific process.”

Is this the Middle Ages redux? That behavior is eerily similar to lowly punishment that the Church imposed on scientists that claimed the earth was not the center of the universe. All of which begs the question of how far back in time will Trumpeters go in pursuit of broad-based destruction of generally accepted norms of society.

Further to the point of killing science, newly appointed Trumpeters for science-based federal agencies are (1) unqualified, (2) conflicted, and (3) openly hostile to the mission of the agencies they lead. Not a joke, this is really happening.

Furthermore, the scientific foundation for acts and laws that have stood tests of time, like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act, are undercut and mutilated. As for example, well beyond the pale, the 115th Congress (all Trumpeters) introduced 63 separate pieces of legislation to undermine the Endangered Species Act.

Federal agency scientists have been personally attacked and censored and reassigned to meaningless tasks not affiliated with their expertise and prevented from attending crucial conferences. Funding for science has been slashed.

Meanwhile, America’s scientists are migrating to France under French President Emmanuel Macron’s Make Our Planet Great Again program, which sponsors solutions for the climate. An initial group of 18 scientists have already joined Macron’s program. Thereby, America inadvertently, probably intentionally, exports science brainpower but keeps anti-science dumb heads to run critical governmental agencies based upon science. Oxymoronic, yes!

Meantime, the critical analysis that only scientists can provide has never been more crucial to sustainability of life. Going forward, either the world community accepts leadership from science to help resolve the climate crisis or it’ll be lights out, assuming it’s not already too late.

Speaking of too late, Alaskan permafrost is coming apart at the seams, same in Siberia, where the ground has already collapsed up to 280 feet in some regions. Imagine a 280-foot gaping chasm appearing out of nowhere. That’s deep. (Source: Earth Institute, Columbia University)

As of today, nobody knows what to expect from the prodigious permafrost melt off because no one has ever experienced such a rapid rate. According to the Earth Institute, permafrost is melting at a whopping 73% rate over 40 years ago. Something’s gotta give (collapse) at that rate of increase, and in point of fact, collapses are happening throughout the northern latitudes, but there’s nobody there to see it, which is why climate change is difficult to accept. It’s most obvious where nobody lives.

This article has been excerpted from: ‘Trump Kills Science, Nature Strikes Back’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org