Donald Trump’s Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming

[Super Nova]

What a concern this is and a major risk.

The U.S. presidential election shows how far the political conversation has degenerated from the nation's founding principles of truth and evidence

“If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
—Richard Feynman

Four years ago in these pages, writer Shawn Otto warned our readers of the danger of a growing antiscience current in American politics. “By turning public opinion away from the antiauthoritarian principles of the nation's founders,” Otto wrote, “the new science denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced before.”
Otto wrote those words in the heat of a presidential election race that now seems quaint by comparison to the one the nation now finds itself in. As if to prove his point, one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality.

Americans have long prided themselves on their ability to see the world for what it is, as opposed to what someone says it is or what most people happen to believe. In one of the most powerful lines in American literature, Huck Finn says: “It warn't so. I tried it.” A respect for evidence is not just a part of the national character. It goes to the heart of the country's particular brand of democratic government. When the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, scientist and inventor, wrote arguably the most important line in the Declaration of Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident”—they were asserting the fledgling nation's grounding in the primacy of reason based on evidence.
Scientific American is not in the business of endorsing political candidates. But we do take a stand for science—the most reliable path to objective knowledge the world has seen—and the Enlightenment values that gave rise to it. For more than 170 years we have documented, for better and for worse, the rise of science and technology and their impact on the nation and the world. We have strived to assert in our reporting, writing and editing the principle that decision making in the sphere of public policy should accept the conclusions that evidence, gathered in the spirit and with the methods of science, tells us to be true.

It won't come as a surprise to anyone who pays even superficial attention to politics that over the past few decades facts have become an undervalued commodity. Many politicians are hostile to science, on both sides of the political aisle. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has a routine practice of meddling in petty science-funding matters to score political points. Science has not played nearly as prominent a role as it should in informing debates over the labeling of genetically modified foods, end of life care and energy policy, among many issues.

The current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.
In October, as we did four years previously, we will assemble answers from the campaigns of the Democratic and Republican nominees on the public policy questions that touch on science, technology and public health and then publish them online. We will support ScienceDebate.org's efforts to persuade moderators to ask important science-related questions during the presidential debates. We encourage the nation's political leaders to demonstrate a respect for scientific truths in word and deed. And we urge the people who vote to hold them to that standard.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -alarming/

[Redneck]

Every thing about Trump is alarming in my opinion.

[IQS.RLOW]

Global warming should be put out of its misery.

Its a big govt socialist scam designed to take the flimsiest of science to provide a case for applying economic externalities that will provide a negative cost/benefit and will be rife with corruption.

Trump is correct in this case.

[Super Nova]

Global warming should be put out of its misery.

Its a big govt socialist scam designed to take the flimsiest of science to provide a case for applying economic externalities that will provide a negative cost/benefit and will be rife with corruption.

Trump is correct in this case.

What utter bs.

When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, - do you agree with this?
threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, - What's wrong with clean air and water?
and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, - do you agree with this?
we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up. - let's hope

[Super Nova]

IQ and Trump need to understand the science and keep up..

Date:August 10, 2016
Source:National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Summary:Greenhouse gases are already having an accelerating effect on sea level rise, but the impact has so far been masked by the cataclysmic 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, according to a new study.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 084619.htm

[IQS.RLOW]

You obviously don't understand hyperbole which Trump is known for, so his remarks on China are correct. The Chinese and India will never be on board the climate bandwagon and will attract capital and jobs to their market.

Global warming is dead. Time for you to mourn and get over it instead of beating that dead horse.

[Super Nova]

Global Warming is not dead.

The collective LACK of will of the human organism makes our plans of action DEAD.

We will be judged.

[IQS.RLOW]

Global Warming is not dead.

The collective LACK of will of the human organism makes our plans of action DEAD.

We will be judged.

You will be judged.

Normal people don't give a fuck and will never agree to an all encompassing lefty sin tax based on exaggerated claims.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Trump often seems alarmingly drunk for a teetotaler

[Rorschach]

Trump's LACK has to do with the vacuous space between his ears... and it's not just about science.

As for you SN and your True Belief... puhlease...