- How Kamala Harris defended fracking and did not properly address climate change;
- How nothing about science came up in the debate;
- Short items: How MAGA will fall for anything; how Trumps confessed he’s unprepared; how the GOP has become the party of racist memes; how voodoo is real; how MAGA doesn’t acknowledge that Trump sucks; how Fox is more concerned about “vibes” rather than actual falling crime rates; and another lie about Usher endorsing Harris.
In the fallout from the Harris/Trump debate the other night, a couple substantial items came up today. And there’s also another batch of dispatches from crazy-land.
Salon, Matthew Rozsa, 12 Sep 2024: Harris may have “won” the debate, but Americans “lost on fracking,” climate experts say, subtitled “Climate change scientists reacting to the Harris-Trump debate say we can’t keep propping up fossil fuels”
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that as humans continue burning fossil fuels, our collective emissions of greenhouse gases are unnaturally warming the planet. If this trend is not quickly stopped (and, if possible, reversed), humans will face existential threats including deadly heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme storms.
During Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, only Harris acknowledged these scientific facts. But critics say she didn’t exactly lay out a sound strategy for addressing it, either.
…
“There was so much bluster and falsities from Trump that those who are not informed may think are they are valid,” Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who has published more than 600 articles on climatology, told Salon. He added that Harris did not rebuke Trump’s misinformation as effectively as she could have, instead seeming to focus on scoring with her own talking points.
He echoes a point made by scientists confronting creationism. Remember also the Gish Gallop.
“I have been in ‘debates’ with deniers of climate change and it is impossible to win because they tell lies and you cannot bring up the evidence to show they are wrong,” Trenberth said. “The listener is the loser. I stopped participating in such debates long ago. Now if the debate is about what to do about something, then maybe.”
No politicians are doing enough. Harris was only OK.
“I think it’s very telling that when they were actually asked a question, late in the debate, about climate change, she provided a thoughtful, coherent answer, underscoring the damage that climate is already doing, the pain that Americans are suffering from its impacts, and the urgency of taking action, pointing out the progress made over the past four years in moving toward a clean energy economy, a path she intends to follow,” Mann said. Trump, on the other hand, “had nothing to say at all about climate change. He didn’t even attempt to refute the point she made about Trump dismissing climate change as a hoax.”
While Trump…
Trump, insanely, would clearly do his best to heat the planet as much as possible…
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The larger issue of course is that for all the advancements humanity has made in recent centuries, learning about the universe, building a vast interconnected technological civilization, most people are ignorant of these matters, and prefer to live by ancient religious parables. They don’t believe in the very concepts that have made our civilization possible.
This next headline is startling because the world of politics, and the world of reality and science, seem never to intersect.
The Atlantic, Daniel Engber, 12 Sep 2024: Does Kamala Harris Believe in Evolution?, subtitled “In another election, she might have been asked.”
The piece begins by recollecting an earlier debate where an actual scientific question was brought up. I confess I don’t remember seeing this.
On a presidential-debate stage 17 years ago, a moderator posed what was then a kind of gotcha question: “Do you believe in evolution?” he asked John McCain. The senator froze for a moment before delivering a “yes.” Then, after several other candidates expressed their disagreement, he clarified: “I believe in evolution,” he said, “but I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there.”
Pandering to the masses, I would say. Yet there’s this.
Soon after McCain laid out his theory of the divine canyon-maker, Barack Obama was faced with a similar challenge at a live CNN event. “If one of your daughters asked you—and maybe they already have—‘Daddy, did God really create the world in six days?,’” a moderator asked him, “what would you say?” Obama gave a waffling reply: “My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live—that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true,” he said. “Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don’t presume to know.”
Waffling, but still pandering. No intelligent person in this, the 21st century, gives any credence to Biblical fables. But you can’t win elections by admitting that.
And the article recalls something called a Science Debate, which eventually evaporated, as recent presidential nominees seem to have no interest in discussing scientific issues.
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Still, politics is the art of the possible, and no politician will ever win an election in the United States by challenging religious or business verities. Working toward better, more realistic options is a long, slow process. There is progress, and shift, especially in the rise of the “nones.” It will be happening, very slowly, but no politician can say it out loud.
- NYT, David French: MAGA Will Fall for Anything. French asks, “Why is MAGA so gullible?” Free link; read at will.
- LA Times: Column: At the debate, Trump confessed he’s unfit and unprepared. Because about health care the best he could come up with was “I have concepts of a plan.”
- Vox, Zack Beauchamp: How the GOP became the party of racist memes against Haitian immigrants, subtitled “Back in 2016, the alt-right tried to normalize joyful bigotry. It worked.” It’s not just the traditional fearmongering about immigrants, it’s “the glee with which Republicans are spreading an obviously bigoted lie, the joy in demonizing a vulnerable migrant population.” (Remember: The Cruelty Is the Point.)
- Marianne Williamson: Dismissing “Eating Cats Issue” Will “Backfire On Smug Elite Jerks As Voodoo Is Real”. Comment: for some inoperative meanings of “real” perhaps.
- TNR: MAGA Has a Pathetic New Conspiracy After Trump’s Terrible Debate Night, subtitled “Donald Trump’s biggest fans are doing anything they can to avoid facing the truth: Their candidate just sucks.”
- Media Matters: Fox’s “crime crisis” narrative imploded at the debate and the network is furious. ABC pointed out that Trump’s claim that crime is at an all time high. Get this: “The co-hosts of Fox & Friends responded the next morning by arguing that data that shows violent crime has fallen is irrelevant in the face of the vibes.” (And who’s responsible for those vibes, Fox?)
- Cultists Share Edited View Clip Claiming Pop Star Usher “Refused” To Endorse Harris (He Happily Endorsed Her). Lying again.
