Trump, Science and America

   (Time.com) "Soon after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the official White House website purged all mentions of climate from the site—all mentions but one, that is, if you consider a promise to eliminate the “harmful and unnecessary” Climate Action Plan. Soon thereafter, scientists and other employees of the EPA and USDA were told not to speak to the public ; a National Park Service Twitter account sent out objective facts, and had them deleted in short order; and the EPA was told to take down its climate-change page. This all hewed to Trump's campaign rhetoric, but it was shocking nonetheless. Seeing the 180-degree shift away from the science of the Obama administration was a stark reminder of the dangerous, ever-rising waters in which we now find ourselves. It isn’t just climate science. Trump may appoint an anti-vaccine activist to run a commission on immunization safety, and an anti-regulation zealot to run the Food and Drug Administration. Trump himself has called the fact that asbestos causes cancer a “con” and even refused to believe the objective scientific reality of drought in California."

        (CNSNews.com) – Nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t trust that there is a large “scientific consensus” among climate scientists on human behavior being the cause of climate change, according to an in-depth survey on “the politics of climate” released Tuesday by Pew Research Center. According to the survey, only 27 percent of Americans agree that “almost all” climate scientists say that human behavior is mostly responsible for climate change, while 35 percent say that “more than half” of climate scientists agree on this. An additional 35 percent of those surveyed say that fewer than half (20%) or almost no (15%) climate scientists believe that human behavior is the main contributing factor in climate change... Pew contrasted this to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which “stated in the forward to its 2013 report, ‘the science now shows with 95 percent certainty that human activity is the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century."

........The above quotes are more "alternative facts" by our commander in chief..and  the mistrust of science and scientists by Americans generally...really America..is this the best we can do? What or who is to blame for this widespread ignorance...our schools? Facebook? Religion? Whether or not one believes it matters whether or not the climate is changing and whether we can adapt or not, surely facts should matter in deciding our response- or lack thereof -to the scientifically measured rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last century. Yes..we Can move Manhattan eventually and relocate the population of Florida...but if the oceans acidify too much from CO2 absorption we enter uncharted territory as to the effects on global life...Below is the science of global warming for those who care..

  

--"Current rates of ocean acidification have been compared with the greenhouse event at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary (about 55 million years ago) when surface ocean temperatures rose by 5–6 degrees Celsius. No catastrophe was seen in surface ecosystems, yet bottom-dwelling organisms in the deep ocean experienced a major extinction. The current acidification is on a path to reach levels higher than any seen in the last 65 million years,^[44] and the rate of increase is about ten times the rate that preceded the Paleocene–Eocene mass extinction. The current and projected acidification has been described as an almost unprecedented geological event.^[45] A National Research Council study released in April 2010 likewise concluded that "the level of acid in the oceans is increasing at an unprecedented rate."^[46][47] A 2012 paper in the journal Science examined the geological record in an attempt to find a historical analog for current global conditions as well as those of the future. The researchers determined that the current rate of ocean acidification is faster than at any time in the past 300 million years.^[48][49]"