That darn PC culture! Now we can’t even use words to deliberately punch down at less fortunate people or … ignore our role in destroying the planet we all need to live on? That last part is how the Trump campaign’s advisor on NASA, Bob Walker, feels, apparently, as he’s mentioned that they’re poised to scrap NASA’s Earth science projects in order to prioritize space exploration.
It even kind of makes sense … if you consider that Donald and friends will need to be able to fly away on a rocket ship after they turn this planet into an inhospitable nightmare by deregulating everything and walking away from the Paris climate agreement. Or not. Who knows what the next four years of the United States will look like when the campaign was based entirely on telling people what they wanted to hear and figuring out the truth later?
Anyway, as far as NASA goes, The Guardian notes that Walker has previously called NASA’s Earth science initiatives—important efforts to understand how our home planet works—”politically correct environmental monitoring.” So, if you thought “politically correct” couldn’t lose any more meaning as a phrase, it turns out that there is literally no bottom to its useless nonsense. They also report that he’d prefer for NASA to focus efforts on exploring space, with studying Earth relegated to other agencies, in an effort to make decisions “based upon solid science, not politicized science.”
The one bright spot is that Walker imagines it would be difficult to stop current Earth science programs at NASA, but a complete shutdown of future programs is not great news when NASA’s data is so instrumental to scientists’ understanding of our planet. Scientists likewise expressed to The Guardian how much of a setback it would be to lose out on data from NASA’s studies of our planet, also mentioning that shutting down such universally important programs would be a more obviously politically motivated move than keeping them going, since they’re useful for way more than just studying climate change.
Oh well. Soon we won’t need satellite climate data anyway, when the sea levels have risen uncontrollably and we’re all acting out Water World against our will (the only way anyone acts out Water World). Happy Thanksgiving!
(image via Kevin Gill)
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