Donald Trump’s advisors are saying that his administration plans to cut NASA’s space-based climate research. Their argument, as I understand it, is that empirical data collected by NASA has the unfortunate effect of confirming that climate change is actually happening, and therefore is inherently political.
It’s kind of like those annoying scientists back in the day who kept finding compelling evidence that humans and other primates have common genetic ancestors. You know, that whole evolution thing. The problem, of course, was that their research was based on actual data, which means you can’t argue with it.
In short, reality is inherently evil, and it must be stopped. Well, sure, a lot of people are likely to die unnecessarily over the next four years from Hurricanes that NASA data will no longer be monitoring, but that’s a small price to pay for waging a righteous war against the evil of inconvenient reality.
Yet I suspect that Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. For decades he has been doing his best to build or purchase tall buildings all along the east coast of the United States — a brilliant and prescient move, when you think about it.
After all, once the rising ocean has submerged Manhattan, all of his towers will become valuable waterfront property. That’s where the real money is.
That, and boats. My recommendation is to start investing in boats.
Mar-a-Lago probably floods before Manhattan does (more hurricanes down south). A few good soakings there and he’ll wake up.
The Street knows the Saudis are quietly divesting themselves out of core dependence on oil production. At the same time, they are publicly promoting climate change denial through Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s 6.6% percentage ownership of Fox, in order to keep their transition window open/ keep the party going, for as long as possible.
Expect Trump will follow a similarly cynical path, publicly denying climate change while privately selling off Mar-A-Lago on some imaginary pretense while the smart money will still bite.