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Comment by Johanx64 | Hacker News Reader

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I reject the premise of your entire comment. Of course they can hide actual scientific data and replace it with their own version. They will tell anyone and everyone over and over that their version is the truth and people will believe it as such. They will also believe that anyone trying to dispute it is wrong and vilify them.

This has already happened in 1.0, and plenty of other examples of it from history. But one would have to crack open a history book to know about that, and the populace is trending to banning books rather than opening them.

> Of course they can hide actual scientific data and replace it with their own version.

They'll just break out the magic markers on all the dis-favorable weather reports.

After a few sips of bleach things tend to get blurry

Well, you see laws of physics and periodic table doesn't swap out every time there's a change in administration. Neither are field effect transistors swapped out for vacuum-tubes with a different ruling party.

That makes a pretty good first order approximation of what is and isn't scientific, and worth spending taxpayer dollar on.

Science isn't prescriptive (doesn't tell you what to do), it's descriptive. Prescriptions are policy and have nothing to do with science.

There you go trying to apply logic to where it is not welcomed. The people that try to squash science and promote whatever notions they prefer do not care about descriptive vs prescriptive. They will push their agenda regardless of facts. It just happens the periodic table doesn't threaten their agenda. These are the same types that threaten to jail those that disagree with them.

Well, they do deal mostly with prescriptive policy things given the global context.

Namely, do the "green" policies make sense given that:

1. China will only increase it's total energy and resource consumption

2. And so will India and rest of the developing nations (unless you want them to be relegated to being perpetual backwater shitholes?)

All these will result in ever increasing CO2 output and pollution as these and other countries develop and transition. Many "green" products - solar panels, inverters, etc are made in China. And they are gearing up to be a very strong competitor in electric vehicles too. Which will futher increase the trade deficit and directly subsidize the competitors.

Most sensible discussions - as far as I can tell - deal with these realpolitik considerations first and foremost.

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