A Trump team member just compared climate science to the flat-Earth theory

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

A Trump team member just compared climate science to the flat-Earth theory

By Chelsea Harvey December 14 at 5:06 PM

@chelseaeharvey
http://twitter.com/chelseaeharvey

An adviser on the Trump transition team turned heads Wednesday when he likened modern climate science to the ancient belief that the Earth was flat.

I know that the current president believes that human beings are affecting the climate, Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the president-elects presidential transition team executive committee, said Wednesday on CNNs New Day program. There are scientists that believe that thats not happening.

Scaramucci, a founder of SkyBridge Capital and co-host of Fox Business Networks program Wall Street Week, appeared on the program Wednesday morning to discuss the incoming administrations stance on climate change and the transition teams recent request for the names of Energy Department employees who have worked on issues related to climate change.

Scaramucci continued, There was an overwhelming science that the earth was flat and there was an overwhelming science that we were the center of the world. We get a lot of things wrong in the scientific community.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/14/a-trump-team-member-just-compared-climate-science-to-the-flat-earth-theory/?utm_term=.b1b2ba9b0c3d

---

"We get a lot of things wrong in the scientific community"?

I'm having a hard time thinking that this guy is in any scientific community.

The ancients knew that the world was round. All you have to do is to look at a lunar eclipse, and you can figure it out. This has been settled for millennia.

I fear for our country when it's being handed over to these idiots.

Why do Republicans hate science?

[Xipe Totec]

1. In the universe of projections, this is the Mercator. nt

[Mc Mike]

19. Top notch one-liner. Flawless. nt.

[briv1016]

2. $$$

[rurallib]

3. don the con probably thinks this guy is a genius.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

4. "We get a lot of things wrong in the scientific community"

1. What exactly qualifies him to identify himself as part of the "science community"?

2. Science is a slow-moving process, but when it reaches a conclusion you can pretty much rely on it. And unlike religion and politics, it's willing to change its mind when faced with evidence that contradicts the currently held theory.

3. Environmental scientists who aren't in the employ of the fossil fuel industry are in nearly unanimous agreement about human-caused global warming. Other scientists might disagree, but their opinions carry the same weight as political scientists.

4. We are in for a long, long four years of this shit.

p.s., Not only did the ancients know the world was round, they made a pretty close estimate (6,000 miles) of its diameter.

[Lithos]

6. I suggest an edit

4. We are in for a long, long four years of the stupid

[groundloop]

10. This STUPID SHIT

I'd say that's pretty accurate.

[arithia]

5. They don't hate science so much as

they hate critical thinking skills. Those and science tend to go hand in hand.

[briv1016]

11. They hate science that gets in the way of profit. On the other hand, they love DARPA.

[0rganism]

7. in the immortal words of Upton Sinclair

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

how many climate deniers are in this position? is it any wonder "rolling coal" is a thing?

[Mendocino]

8. I saw it

this morning. It's amazing how he and all the other trump mouthpieces get so agitated when confronted. I thought Scarmucci was going to pop a vein.

[Thinkingabout]

9. They think we are FOX news followers, they believe anything. They are going to have to get better.

[resistance2016]

12. I wish aliens would come and rescue the world's children and animals

Human civilization has never come so close to complete destruction. I'm not sure we'll even see 2018 at this point...

[47of74]

14. Hell I wouldn't blame the aliens if they did a Base Delta Zero on us.

[ThoughtCriminal]

13. Actually knowledge that the Earth was not flat goes back to the very early scientists

Eratosthenes accurately calculated it's circumference in the 3rd Century BC, and most educated people knew that well before the 15th century.

So yes, it is a perfectly shitty example of how scientists get things wrong.

[LuckyLib]

15. An even bigger question is why when such lunacy

is put out there, are there so few in the public eye who will call it what it is?

[demon in basement]

16. wait a sec

Are you telling me a REPUBLICAN acknowledges that Earth is round???

[niyad]

22. welcome to du--astonishing, is it not??

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. That shows a truly profound lack of understanding of any kind of science.

A huge part of the problem is that science is very badly taught in many public schools. All too often the high school biology teacher is also the football coach who only ever studied biology himself back in high school. Couple that with a genuine fear of teaching real science, such as evolution (OMG! The horror!). So there's a lot of pussy-footing around actual verifiable science. And people come out of high school with almost no real understanding of science, the scientific method, what constitutes proof, what is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory, or how we determine what is verifiable. It also doesn't help that a lot of public schools only require one or two years of science to get a high school diploma, usually a year of some kind of general science and a year of (watered down) biology. They don't take chemistry. They don't take physics. They're never exposed to any kind of rigorous thinking about anything, how to analyze an argument, how to figure out what's true and what isn't.

And so we get people elected to public office who haven't any clue the difference between an opinion and a verifiable fact.

Sigh.

Not to mention it doesn't help that TV and movies all too often present demonstrably wrong things as if they're true. Example: someone in DC will rush off to DCA to take a plane somewhere, and they then show a 707 taking off. Ummm, 707s have NEVER landed or taken off at that airport. This may seem trivial, and I'll spare you several dozen additional examples, but all too often when they show something I know something about, they get it wrong. Heck, people who should absolutely know better get it wrong: Stephen King in his novel "The Stand" has Boulder, Colorado, snowed in all winter. He lived in Boulder for a year. I've also lived there. Boulder does NOT get snowed in all winter. Even if they get three feet of snow in one snowfall, it will all be melted off inside of 48 hours, because the sun comes out and it warms up to 50, maybe 60 degrees. I suppose a snowed-in Boulder works for the vast numbers of people who have never been there in the winter, but why the falsehood? He didn't need a snowed-in Boulder for his novel to work.

And I don't want to be jumping all over King, because he's the least egregious example of this sort of thing. Meanwhile, people who've never flown in or out of DCA think 707s land there. And people who've never been to Boulder in the winter, well you get my drift. I've long thought that actual truth is far more interesting than fiction.

But back to my original point. Too many people not only haven't a clue that there's a difference between reality and fiction, they assume that anything they see on TV or in a movie must be accurate, doesn't need to be fact-checked, and are easily convinced that things like climate change aren't real.

It's beyond discouraging.

[hunter]

20. Hah, the television show "Psych."

Oh, man... my wife enjoyed that show but it grated on me a little.

The central premise of the show was that Shawn Spencer wasn't really psychic, it was an act. Unfortunately the physical reality of the show was just as bizarre as any any universe where psychic powers might be real. Worse, having been a frequent visitor to Santa Barbara as a kid, having lived there occasionally, having visited British Columbia a few times, it was hard for me to get past the actual filming location of White Rock, British Columbia. I cannot unsee British Columbia, and the harder I try the worse it gets. The stock film footage inserts of Santa Barbara didn't help, they only made it more incongruous.

(I have a similar problem with digital compression artifacts. I trained myself to see them, and to hear them, and now I can't help but notice them... It's like knowing about the horizontal support wires on the old Sony Trinitron televisions. I worked in a place with expensive Sony studio monitors, really beautiful things, until some jerk pointed the wires out to me...)

I'm very sensitive to film locations. Another common mislocation is using various Southern California ranches and small towns to represent the Midwest. I've lived in downstate Illinois. Southern California is nothing like it.

And then there are the films, the Westerns, that will put up plastic Saguaro cactus to represent the Arizona Wild West; in Southern California, in Southern Italy, or my favorite, barren old mines and quarries, some located in wet climates.

My "willing suspension of disbelief" works much better on silly superhero action movies and space operas even though the physics are entirely unbelievable.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

23. I watched the first two episodes of that

show on the recommendation of a friend, and although the premise was an excellent one, I agree that the physical reality of the show made little sense.

I likewise am sometimes very aware of a show being filmed in one place when it's supposed to take place somewhere else. I live in NM which is often used for filming TV and movies these days. Recently saw Hell or High Water which is intended to take place in Texas, but I had no trouble whatsoever recognizing the New Mexico locations.

Even though I don't work in TV or movies, I understand certain logistical issues in location filming, but it can be jarring when you notice the discrepancies between where the show takes place and where it was filmed.

A while back I was watching a "Man From Uncle" episode. Didn't know there were palm trees in Berlin.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. The Doomsday Clock was 3 minutes to midnight last year

Due to this election, they BETTER move it to at least 30 seconds to midnight.

[Mc Mike]

21. Repug projection, of course. But a special example.

Normally, they scream accusations of guilt at their opponents, about something the repug accusers are guilty of themselves.

Like Christie screaming 'lock her up' when he should be in prison for corruption, dRump screaming 'Dems are rigging it' while his people are rigging it, etc.

But Christie (Giuliani, dRump, etc) projectively lied to leverage their way into power, avoid legit criminal charges against themselves, make people think "Christie says Clinton should be jailed" whenever people were thinking about the two subjects "Christie and Jail". And make us think "Drump says Dems are stealing it" when thinking about "dRump and election theft".

The act of projection was separate from the aim of the projection.

But on this one, the objective of the projection is included in the act used to attempt achieving the aim or objective. "I'm proudly anti-science, so I'll attack scientists, without using science, attack them for being "anti-science", and say scientists are like my science-hating philosophical forbears and me, and I'll do this to promote my anti-science agenda."

Very deep. Fascinating. Profound. They must've had a team of monkeys working around the clock on this one.

It's a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop of nazi repug insanity.

Does he believe his lie? Who cares. Reality and reality-dwellers know it's a lie.

It reminds me of how the righties over at the froggie post-ing sister site started accusing Dems of projection, about 18 months into that site's existence. Hurling projective accusations of projection at their opponents. It took them quite a while to gear up on that one, because they had to first figure out what projection was, and then attempt to devise a plausible argument to counter normal people pointing out their acts to them with that one word.

[awoke_in_2003]

24. They don't hate all science...

only science that interferes with profit.