11 hours ago ·
We’re at Rally to Stand Up for Science in Boston, where scientists are gathering to voice their concerns about the state of science under the new presidential administration. Nicholas St.Fleur, science reporter for The Times, will be our guide.
Posted in Uncategorized
Published on Feb 19, 2017
Asked about the economic analysis behind President Barack Obama’s energy regulations, Murray said, “There’s no scientific analysis either. I have 4,000 scientists that tell me global warming is a hoax. The Earth has cooled for 20 years.” Murray Energy is the country’s largest coal miner.
Asked for clarification, a spokesperson for Murray Energy sent links to the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, which says “human-caused climate change is not a global crisis,” and the Global Warming Petition Project, a list of science degree holders who don’t think humans cause climate change.
Murray’s claim that there is no scientific analysis behind climate change is not true.
A landmark 2013 study assessed 4,000 peer-reviewed papers by 10,000 climate scientists that gave an opinion on the cause of climate change. It showed 97 percent of the authors attributed climate change to manmade causes.
His second claim that Earth is cooling is also false.
Posted in Uncategorized
Published on Feb 19, 2017
Asked about the economic analysis behind President Barack Obama’s energy regulations, Murray said, “There’s no scientific analysis either. I have 4,000 scientists that tell me global warming is a hoax. The Earth has cooled for 20 years.” Murray Energy is the country’s largest coal miner.
Asked for clarification, a spokesperson for Murray Energy sent links to the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, which says “human-caused climate change is not a global crisis,” and the Global Warming Petition Project, a list of science degree holders who don’t think humans cause climate change.
Murray’s claim that there is no scientific analysis behind climate change is not true.
A landmark 2013 study assessed 4,000 peer-reviewed papers by 10,000 climate scientists that gave an opinion on the cause of climate change. It showed 97 percent of the authors attributed climate change to manmade causes.
His second claim that Earth is cooling is also false.
Posted in Uncategorized
Published on Feb 19, 2017
Via America’s Lawyer:
With Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt set to take over the EPA, many are very concerned that the agency’s going to be run by a man with close ties to the fossil fuel industry and who sued the EPA 13 times for over-regulating oil and gas. What’s not getting nearly as much coverage is the fact that some lawmakers want to eliminate the EPA altogether. Representative Matt Gaetz is one of them. You’ve probably never heard of him. Hopefully you never will, but he’s introduced the first draft of a bill calling for the agency’s termination.
Mike Papantonio discusses this with Farron Cousins, executive editor of the Trial Laywer magazine.
Posted in Uncategorized
Published on Feb 19, 2017
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace warns viewers: Trump crossed the line in latest attack on media
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace cautioned his colleagues and the network’s viewers Sunday that President Trump’s latest attack on the media had gone too far.
“Look, we’re big boys. We criticize presidents. They want to criticize us back, that’s fine,” Wallace said Sunday morning on “Fox & Friends.” “But when he said that the fake news media is not my enemy, it’s the enemy of the American people, I believe that crosses an important line.”
The “Fox & Friends” anchors had shown a clip of Trump recounting that past presidents, including Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, had fought with the press. They then asked Wallace whether Trump’s fraught relationship with the media was a big deal.
In response, Wallace told his colleagues that Jefferson had also once written the following: “And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Context was important, Wallace said. All presidents fight with the media, but Trump had taken it a step further in making them out to be “the enemy,” he added.
“Yes, presidents have always had — and politicians have always had — problems with the press. They want good press. The press doesn’t always give it to them,” Wallace said. “But what Jefferson [was saying] is, despite all of our disputes, that to the functioning of a free and fair democracy, you must have an independent press.”
Trump’s contentious relationship with the press has again been in the spotlight in recent days after the president repeatedly attacked the media as “fake news” in several tweets. In one widely shared tweet on Friday, Trump said the media was “not my enemy” but “the enemy of the American People!”
In it, Trump tagged the New York Times, CNN and the broadcast news networks NBC, ABC and CBS. He did not mention Fox News, which has usually been exempted from his anger toward the media — a fact that Wallace acknowledged Sunday.
“We can take criticism, but to say we’re the enemy of the American people, it really crosses an important line,” Wallace said.
On “Fox & Friends,” host Pete Hegseth countered that perhaps Trump was “taking on the hidden bias” of news outlets that “tell you they’re unbiased.”
“Is there something there?” Hegseth asked Wallace. “It’s not about the independent press; it’s about the bias of the press.”
Wallace replied: “I think there’s absolutely something there, and if he had said that, you wouldn’t have heard a peep out of me. Lord knows, Barack Obama criticized Fox News. If Donald Trump wants to criticize the New York Times, that’s fine. But it’s different from saying that we are an enemy of the American people. That’s a different thing.”
Wallace finished with a word of warning to those watching who might agree with Trump because he happened to be a president who shared their views.
“And I know there are a lot of [Fox News] listeners out there who are going to reflexively take Donald Trump’s side on this,” he added. “It’s a different thing when it’s a president — because if it’s a president you like trying to talk about the press being the enemy of the people, then it’s going to be a president you don’t like saying the same thing. And that’s very dangerous.”
Wallace is the host of “Fox News Sunday” and was the moderator of the third presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus also appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” where he and Wallace sparred over the president’s words.
Priebus defended Trump by saying that he was not talking about all news but about “certain things that are happening in the news that just aren’t honest.”
Wallace pressed Priebus and argued that the president was not referring to individual stories.
“You don’t get to tell us what to do any more than Barack Obama did,” Wallace said after continued arguments with Priebus. “Barack Obama whined about Fox News all the time, but I got to say, he never said that we were an enemy of the people.”
Wallace is not the only high-profile figure to disagree with Trump’s declaration about the media. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he did not have any issues with the press and did not see the media as the enemy.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said making moves to shut down a free press was “how dictators get started.”
“In other words, a consolidation of power,” McCain told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd from Munich. “When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history.”
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Published on Feb 19, 2017
Home to countless journalists and defenders of a free press, Washington is abuzz over President Donald Trump’s increasingly ferocious attacks on America’s news media. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, U.S. lawmakers are weighing in, with Republican Senator John McCain telling a television network that cracking down on press freedom is ‘how dictators get started.’
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Published on Feb 19, 2017
We are what we are because of genes; we are who we are because of memes. Philosopher Daniel Dennett muses on an idea put forward by Richard Dawkins in 1976.
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Published on Feb 19, 2017
In January, the Israeli army said it used crop-dusters to kill off vegetation along the border with Gaza.
According to Palestinian officials, 170 hectares of land were damaged as a result, and the effects continue to be felt by farmers in the region.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reports from Gaza.
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Published on Feb 19, 2017
Panel debates the true state of affairs at the White House, as President Trump says at the Florida Rally “The White House is running smoothly…I inherited a mess,” Even as time put a disturbing graphic on its cover and lead with “Inside Donald Trump’s White House Chaos” by Phillip Elliot,
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Published on Feb 19, 2017
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency have been warned to “expect” some executive orders from the President very soon. While we aren’t sure what this means, it has been apparent from the President’s own statements on the EPA that he views them as the enemy, and these executive orders will likely reflect that. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
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Transition Studies 