Now you’re just showing off. 
More seriously, I know a lot of petroleum geologists. They know anthropogenic climate change is real, even if the AAPG as an organization is equivocal.
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It’s like the Justice Department under BushII/Gonzales. They were able to find any number of new staffers among law graduates of Liberty U who also were happy to pledge fealty to GWB. It might be a little harder among actually qualified scientists, but what with the EPA budget slashed by 30% their problem will be how to get rid of people. On the other other hand, there is no doubt that existing employees are going for early retirement (actually in the federal government after a certain age you can retire or not if you have enough years in) or looking for a job in a state agency or private industry or education.
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It’s been done, most recently by the Koch’s.
As long as the Red team members are open to changing their minds, the weight of the evidence will change their minds. It’s happened many times.
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Sen. Franken smacked Rick Perry down hard when he raised this “red team/blue team” BS in one of the Senate committees earlier this week, citing a number of peer reviewed studies by name. It was wonderful to see.
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Mid- and late- career scientists are not in tremendous demand. I’m very aware of that myself, because I just went through a successful job search. I’m very happy in the new job. But in the search I was skipped over for job after job that I was fully qualified to do. I even got skipped over by CDC – told I was unqualified for their position, although I’ve worked in a similar position for years.
Age discrimination is illegal, but proving it is difficult. It’s also very real. I was prepared to collect early Social Security when I decided I wasn’t going for tenure at my old job.
Tenure-leading jobs are getting scarcer, and that isn’t going to help matters much on the education side of the ledger.
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The stupidity of the man!
He is right up there with the brain surgeon and wedding planner running HUD…
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Let me get this straight. One team will have written all the peer reviewd papers on global warming, the other team will be PR flacks for fossil fuel? More popcorn please.
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The oldest trick in the Republican Playbook: “If you can’t win on the Facts, SHOUT THEM DOWN!”
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One guess which “side” Pruitt will quote when he justifies his policy directives…
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Fuck this evil piece of shit. Sorry. I ran out of intelligent things to say about these assholes way too early today. Now I’m just winging it, because I really have nothing left except an angry ad hominem.
And now for your moment of Zen:
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Since EPA is starting " “red team, blue team” exercises to perform “at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science…"" it is only right that an appropriate federal agency start "red team, blue team exercises to test the flat earth theory against the “round earth doctrine.”
See https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Flat_Earth_Wiki:
Welcome to the Flat Earth Wiki, otherwise known as The FEW - a collaborative resource maintained by the Flat Earth Society!
This website is dedicated to unraveling the true mysteries of the universe and demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax.
Much of the experimental evidence for a flat earth is provided by Dr. Samuel Birley Rowbotham, a 19th century lecturer who traveled the isles of Britain giving lectures at many prominent universities of the day. His experimental evidence is very easily reproducible and requires only access to a long body of standing water and a little trig to conclude that water is not convex, that the surface of the earth does not curve as round earth doctrine mathematically predicts. Other experiments require only a stick and a plumb line. Each of the experiments are described in full in the flat earth literature.
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Scott Pruitt, Scott Walker, Rick Scott. Hmmm, am I seeing a pattern here?
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Great Scott! You figured it out!
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Why not throw in the NRA while you’re at it? They’re so good about objectively evaluating evidence.
Well, this should be interesting. Either it’s going to be a complete farce – climate change denialists with little to no expertise in climate science making ridiculous arguments which are then given equal footing to peer-reviewed research by bona fide climate scientists – or it’s going to be a partial farce, where the small number of bona fide climate scientists who are skeptical of the consensus are given prominence far beyond their numbers.
I looked into this in some detail about a year ago, and there are actually a small handful of bona fide climate experts who disagree with the overall “climate consensus” in one or more ways. But it really is a tiny, tiny group. And of course magnifying those dissenting voices and proceeding with the debate as if half the scientific community was on each side contains elements of farce. On the other hand, at least that’s a debate among scientists, and the truth is, science doesn’t really rely on majority support for a “consensus,” it relies on evidence.
Sadly, I think it’s more likely that we’ll get the “complete farce” version, or something close to it. Because even with a large thumb on the scale in favor of the denialist position, the scientific evidence in support of manmade climate change is just too overwhelming. So the denialists cannot win with scientific evidence, they can only “win” with obfuscation and pseudoscientific rhetoric.
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This June Tucson, where I live, experienced 14 days in a row with temperatures above 110 F. Two days got to 114 F. I’d like to have Pruitt tell me the climate isn’t warming after spending an hour sitting on my porch.
Yes I realize the difference between climate and weather. But does Pruitt? Does he understand the scientific method? Does he realize climate science has been around for decades? And that it took years to reach a consensus? Or that scientists are natural skeptics? Show us the data! And if the data backs your hypothesis then good. Science is fact, not belief, driven.
Today at 105 F its relatively balmy.
edit
One other thing I hafta post… I really really detest willful ignorance and deliberate stupidity. Especially when it’s used for a political end.
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The American people deserve a real debate on gravity. And on
eeevoelushion. Neither of those things are mentioned as created in the first seven days in The Book of Genesis…
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Pretty much never, unfortunately. Pruitt was too busy collecting campaign money from fossil fuel companies to bother doing anything in response to Oklahoma’s fracking-related earthquakes. Now he’s a cabinet member.
During Pruitt’s tenure as attorney general, Oklahoma became the most seismically active state in the Lower 48, recording three times as many earthquakes as California in 2014. Before 2009, there were, on average, two earthquakes a year in Oklahoma that were magnitude 3 or greater. In 2015, there were 890.
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I think since the Trump Administration is propagating these Bogus Presidential Commissions, they should start one to revive the Nixon Era Commission on Pornography. The Pseudo Christian Segregationists would spontaneously orgasm. It would give Donald Trump something to do all day other than watch Cable TV News, he could chair it. Other members could be Rudy Giuliani, Carl Paladino, Chuckie Grassley, Rand Paul, Scott DesJarlais. Orrin Hatch might find it interesting too.
Enlist Kobach; he’s not busy. And he’s really good at this stuff!