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EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

washingtonpost.com

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Re: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

#4
post #2

What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?

Nothing. It's only collective action that will solve anything, and whatever culture that pops up will get a near equal reaction from the other side. The US is trending to splitting down the middle on everything, just like our political system, a fact which is sadly getting more entrenched every day. Only thing I can think of is find a way to support independent local government officials and slowly kill the bipartisan system.

Re: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

#5
post #2

What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?

Hi, I am going to offer my opinion on how to fight ignorance for the purpose of inciting climate action. I will start by saying that my only qualifications are that I have thought about this since I was 13 years old.

You can't fight the ignorance of the masses. Simply put, people don't have a real reason to care about the visibility of climate science. People all around the world are constantly struggling with the hierarchy of needs, and the invisible threat of climate-change-induced extinction is not something you can get people to care about. This is a tautology and will be one until the climate starts killing swaths of people, which may take decades to set in.

Therefore, the people and the ignorance are the wrong thing to focus on. If you convince one person, there are going to be ten more people born in that time of such low socioeconomic status that your arguments that convinced the one will fall on deaf ears for the other ten. What you must focus on is making climate-friendly actions profitable and desirable. I am going to leave a link to a comment I made previously if you like what I'm saying so far.

Basically, forget people. They are not going to care, and even if you convince all Americans, how will you convince China, India, Africa, etc? The answer is that you won't. I repeat, forget about the people.

Here[1] is my old comment that discusses this in greater detail. Also, feel free to reply with some strawman rebuttal of this; you won't get the satisfaction of a reply from me, I've seen way too much negativity on this site (see the comments of the boring company video) to possibly care about contributing to some argument with reality-detached software engineers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175468

Re: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

#7
post #2

What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?

Honestly, the only thing I can think of is to spend money out of your district or state.

Re: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

#8
post #2

What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?

Same as democracies everywhere. Organize and vote out the reps in the next elections. Americans are unique in how frequently you get opportunities to vote out leaders (2 years for Congress and 4 years for president) but you rarely do.

Re: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

#9
There are websites such as https://www.datarefuge.org/ (Building refuge for federal climate & environmental data) which have archived the data. Sad nevertheless.

There are also files on archive.org, but I feel they are harder to find and browse. E.g. https://archive.org/details/ClimateChangeUSEPA or https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_JTL9-NV3L

Re: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

#10
post #2

What actions can I take as a US citizen to fight this level of ignorance? I feel like calling or emailing my representative will yield no results. Does anyone have some ideas on what can be done by the average Bob?

Build a dome. Don't invite these people into the dome. Watch them cook, drown, or freeze upon retirement (if you have the luxury of retiring).
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