• Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    12 days ago

    A reminder that this is still how they think.

    Here’s a fact check OF a fact check about Project 2025, something that has been stated recently will gut the National Hurricane Center.

    USA Today’s fact check of that claim

    Now when I first ran across this link, I thought, hmmm…are liberal Youtubers making up stuff to sell their position as a hurricane approaches? Maybe so. Then I read the article and actual text from Project 2025.

    Project 2025 “does not call for the elimination of” the National Hurricane Center, Heritage Foundation spokesperson Ellen Keenan told USA TODAY.

    Not in the text, this part of the fact check is correct. The text calls for review of it as well as other agencies and downsize or move resources around as needed. But then I see:

    Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.

    Well, that set off some alarm bells in my head. They aren’t actively proposing to shut it down, but there does seem to be an agenda here.

    Project 2025 accuses NOAA of “climate alarmism” and calls for it to be "broken up and downsized.” “That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions,” the playbook says of the agency.

    I read all this as exactly how MAGA Republicans in power have been treating anything tied to climate change. They aren’t completely cutting things out, only the parts that are inconvenient to their agenda. Which of course is terrible science, and will absolutely affect the ability to learn and respond to future threats.

    USA Today is a tool for them if they are marking such claims as completely false.

    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      AccuWeather’s owner and Republican megadonor Joel Myers has been dreaming for years about destroying the National Weather Service. He wants weather to be a for-profit venture (specifically his profit).

      • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        God damnit. if you understand anything about our global weather observation network you know that if America privatizes the entire world will have way way less accurate weather no matter what anyone pays.

        the only reason things work so well now is because the whole world openly and freely shares all of this data. this is important because all of the world’s weather patterns effect each other. there’s only so much data that can be collected without being in the territory as well. so much of the world’d infrastructure relies on this information being available and accurate. privatizing it would surely be massively profitable and horribly detrimental to everyone and everything. it’s one of the very few actually decent cooporative things humanity has ever done. of course rich bullies want to come and stomp it out.

        • DogWater@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          You know, I’ve never thought about this. I know there are some things that scientists from different nations work together on even if the countries don’t like each other much (like the ISS and cern) but I’ve never thought about the weather.

          That’d be insane to privatize weather data but I’m sure that’s what they want to do because they can charge for it.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Lol, “one side of the climate debate.” There isn’t debate among scientists - there’s like less than one percent of climate scientists who don’t believe that humans are putting our climate in a terrible place. So just that part the tells you the bias. It’s just like when they talk about the debate between evolution and creationism: the only debate is with people who reject the data to further their own agenda.

        • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          Right, that’s the thing.

          I honestly believe part of the problem this country is in today started when the news media felt they had to give equal time to every issue. I remember lots of segments on climate change where they had one person on each side, and I could understand most people coming away believing we just don’t know. And it’s not just climate change, they did that with everything.

          So here we are, polarized like never before, with so many believing that every opinion is legitimate. Sure, you can believe what you want, but if you believe the world was created 6000 years ago, you’re just wrong. You’re entitled to believe something wrong, but that doesn’t make it valid. A legitimate news site should reflect that. A climate denier or a creationist shouldn’t get equal time. Same with do many issues.

          • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            We can thank Reagan for the situation with the news. He got rid of the Fairness Doctrine which mandated broadcasters both present controversial issues of public importance and do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      The claim is false and we should absolutely be careful about how we word things but also the outcome will be, as you say, essentially the same.

      “…reminder that Project 2025 plans to defund large sections of the NOAA and is more worried about how facts ruin their arguments than the safety of your towns and cities.”

      A little longer but at least it’s true.

      • DogWater@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        This is only half the picture. The other half is the repeal of schedule f (I think) where the federal government hires people to serve as experts of a subject rather than working for the administration. Project 2025 wants to reclassify thousands of government jobs to allow them to be appointed but the president. Imagine NOAA, not gone, but rather ran by maga loyalists or scientists who have to shut up or lose their jobs. And tons of other places too like the epa, OSHA, nrc, and more

        • Soup@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          Wonderful! Jesus Christ I can never quite understand the capacity for evil so many people have. Absolutely vile.

    • CaptSneeze@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.

      Using recent history as context for my interpretation of this, I believe what they actually mean is “…should definitely not be presented neutrally, because doing so would rely only on the peer reviewed science which overwhelmingly agrees that climate change is definitely a real thing that is currently happening. Instead, DO adjust it to make it seem like it’s impossible to say for sure.”

      • Crismus@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        They just want climate scientists to br like the tobacco studies scientists.

        Your comment reminded me of the movie "Thank You for Smoking "

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Also it’s important to note that NOAA is often used for military purposes. Four of our six military branches (Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and the Space Force whatever they do) absolutely and unequivocally depend on their data to do their job, one just relies on it, and the sixth hitches rides on navy equipment.

      I’m not the biggest fan of the military industrial complex, but if the oceanic and atmospheric arm of one of the world’s most significant consumers of mined hydrocarbons has been sounding the alarm bells for decades I have every reason to believe them

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      12 days ago

      Which is odd because NOAA has like, no regulatory power. The regulated community kinda loves agencies like NOAA because they can tell them to pound sand over anything and that’s that

      They’re not the EPA or anything.