November 26, 2018--National Climate Assessment

I for one want to thank the Trump administration for the sensitivity they showed by not publishing the latest "National Climate Assessment" until the day after Thanksgiving. 

By then at least half the turkey and stuffing I consumed had been digested and reading the report on only a half-full stomach kept me from you-know-what.

The work of 13 governmental entities, now Trump-led science and environmental entities, it is about as pessimistic and depressing as anything on the subject that I have encountered.

There is nothing to feel good about, almost nothing hopeful, and with Trump president for at least another two years, since, catering to his base, he will not agree to do anything that can slow down the doomsday climate clock, truly scary.

Half joking, when there has been a dire UN report or others by groups of concerned scientists, learning more about the unrelenting cataclysmic consequences of climate change, I have quipped, "Well, at least I'm old enough to be dead by then." 

In fact I will be, but now saying this is no longer just a quip.

Evidence of the potential political power of last Friday's release of the National Assessment is the fact that Trump attempted to bury it by having it published on the quietest news day of the year. When everyone is sleeping late, fighting off gastritis, watching football, or shopping  So there was nothing "sensitive" about circulating the report right after Thanksgiving. 

The administration's hope was that by today when things get ginned up again, along with Ivanka's emails, the results of the midterm elections, and Trump's spat with Chief Justice Roberts, it will already be old news. Which to Trump is almost as useful as labelling something threatening as fake news.

But the report about the climate got Rona and me talking more broadly about science. Particularly wondering why so many Americans, including pandering conservative political leaders, do not, as the press puts it, believe in science. "Believe" as if science is something theological. By this it is meant that these people, among other things, do not believe, as opposed to mobilizing actual facts, in evolution, cosmology, or any imputation that humans are contributing to global warming and the resulting storms and massive forest fires.

Some of this lack of belief is in fact theological. Many who do not believe in science believe that we are moving rapidly to Armageddon. A time when the world and all humans will come to the End. 

A striking number do not see these cataclysms to be undesirable but in fact, via highly-selective and distorted interpretations of the Bible, they welcome the eventual Second Coming of Christ and the ultimate Last Judgement when these folks expect they will be ushered into Heaven. 

Thus, the last thing they want is any interference in this divine plan. Particularly by governments or the "deep state," which to many is the work of the Antichrist.

Then there are others who reject science because of their lack of science literacy. They feel excluded from its methods and lessons because, sadly, they know almost nothing about science. Baffled and frustrated by relativity and quantum mechanics, which is understandable, they are even essentially untutored when it comes to knowing anything about Newton's more approachable universe.

Science, then, also contributes to the great educational and cultural divide that separates Americans by educational attainment, culture, and socioeconomics. To passionately reject science is one response by those who have been labeled deplorables or, in fear and ignorance, some claim, cling to guns and God.

And then, ever suspicious of liberals' alleged push to have big government intrude more and more in people's lives, limiting their freedom, many conservative extremists see environmental science as conspiring to tell Americans how to live. From what kind of cars to drive to forcing people to give up incandescent light bulbs. It gets that specific.

And so here we are with many of us feeling fortunate that we will have passed on well before an actual, non-millennialist End. 

But what then about our children and grandchildren? 

Put pushing back against these anti-science forces at the top of your political to-do list. I know it's a long list but . . .