When the science journal Nature surveyed more than 2,000 scientists last month about the 2024 presidential election, 86 percent said they preferred Vice President Kamala Harris over former president Donald Trump. Because of Trump’s anti-scientific views on issues like climate change and public health, these experts worried that a second Trump term would put millions of innocent lives at risk.
Now that the Republican nominee has won, scientists are bracing for the worst. Speaking to Salon, these experts reiterated one theme over and over again: This was an election between science and ignorance of science, and the ignorant side — which serves special interest groups like the fossil fuel industry — have prevailed.
Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of this is climate change. Trump himself denies that burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gasses that heat the atmosphere and ocean. His proxies, like Tucker Carlson and JD Vance, have respectively blamed abortion for causing freak hurricanes or have dismissed climate science as “weird.” Last month, climate scientists told Salon they were concerned about the future of the planet if Trump prevailed precisely because of his hostility to climate science and (perhaps not coincidentally) his coziness with fossil fuel companies.
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“There has been a huge gap between what climate scientists know and what the public knows, over decades and even under Democratic administrations,” Dr. Peter Kalmus, a NASA climate scientist who emphasized his opinions are his own. “That huge gap will grow far larger under this new administration, which will use federal resources to join the oil, coal and gas industries in spreading disinformation.”
Trump campaigned on a promise to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists, with a particular focus on those purging anyone who tells the truth that climate change is overwhelmingly caused by human use of fossil fuels. Kalmus cited this with alarm, arguing that it is done to make it impossible for environmental regulators and science educators to........