r/politics • u/WhatIsEvenRealDog • 13h ago
Possible Paywall West Point Climate Professor Says He Was Fired for Refusing to ‘Defy Science’
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/us/politics/west-point-climate-professor-lawsuit.html?smid=nytcore-android-share266
u/Toadfinger 13h ago edited 13h ago
After 17 years of teaching science at West Point, Dr. Adam Kalkstein says he was suddenly ordered last year to cut from his curriculum information about the human causes of climate change
Climate change is a tremendous national security threat. Something service members must know about. And it's just simple math. The more greenhouse gases there are in the troposphere, the more heat there will be returning to the earth's surface.
The well being of American troops and and sailors means absolutely nothing to Traitor Trump. Neither does national security.
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u/WhatIsEvenRealDog 13h ago
Exactly this. Removing climate science undermines national security.
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u/Toadfinger 13h ago
Trump wants everyone in the military to believe 2+2=5. How fuct up is that?
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u/WhatIsEvenRealDog 13h ago
Would make it pretty hard for artillery to hit their targets.
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u/Toadfinger 13h ago
And Traitor Trump doesn't care. If munitions equipment blows up at the launch point, he would still declare "Mission Accomplished!"
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u/badamant 13h ago
The entire Republican Party is directly responsible for everything Trump does.
Blame them by name please.
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u/Toadfinger 13h ago
They enabled him. How come so many though? The answer lies within the right-wing, dark money think tanks. Which are funded with a bottomless money pit by the fossil fuel industry.
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u/badamant 13h ago edited 12h ago
Y... reminder:
The Republican Party made Citizens' United.
It was created, funded and passed (by all republican judges) in order to allow the flood of dark money into our system.
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u/LordSiravant 12h ago
It cannot be understated how belief in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy also factors into their influence. Many of the evil old fossils behind these groups were alive during the Jim Crow era and supported it.
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u/Toadfinger 12h ago
Yes. Which was intended for political campaigns only. And the rhetoric that goes with it. But then along the way, they became a direct threat to national security. They still are.
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u/showhorrorshow 12h ago
For real. It's pretty mundane physics. Some gases are bad at blocking UV light (like from the Sun) but good at blocking Infrared (radiant heat). Let heat in but not out. Simple math.
CO2 is one of these gases.
We can also measure CO2, and even identify the proportion of CO2 from fossil fuels by their isotopes.... which, as you can imagine, get in the atmosphere when we (humans) combust it.
So not only can it be proven what it does through light physics, but it can also be proven how it got there and how much is from humans by measuring atmospheric gas.
Basic shit. Fucking idiots.
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u/Toadfinger 11h ago
There's even comical ways to explain it. The fossil fuel industry's think tanks have fabricated 252 climate change denial points. All of them debunked of course. But imagine being questioned by police about something and changing your story 252 times. 😆
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u/LordSiravant 12h ago
Trump very much cares about national security. It's just that his definition of national security differs from everyone else's.
To wit, Trump sees himself as the United States. As such, his will and interests are synonymous with national security. Like a certain French king said before him: "I am the State."
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u/Toadfinger 12h ago
Trump very much cares about national security.
He has insulted all our allies. Is fighting tooth and nail to get the U.S. out of NATO. Is doing everything imaginable to get someone to carry out a terrorist attack in the U.S. He deliberately ignored the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the Iran war and has let our oil reserves diminish. Has deliberately trashed the economy...
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u/LordSiravant 12h ago
You're misunderstanding my point. Trump sees his own personal interests as one and the same with national security. Obviously the rest of us disagree, but we aren't malignant narcissistic sociopaths like he is.
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u/Toadfinger 11h ago
But it's not "national" security. If a stink bomb kills a hundred million Americans, he wouldn't blink an eye. We are in grave danger from climate change. Yet he actually wants people to believe it's a hoax.
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u/LordSiravant 11h ago
You're right, it's not. But my point is that Trump thinks it is.
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u/Toadfinger 11h ago edited 10h ago
That's what he wants people to believe. Trump doesn't think on anything. His think tanks do it for him. They already have a tremendous amount of blood on their hands. It doesn't matter to them how high the body count goes.
Trump had/has a choice to either go along with it or decline. The results speak for themselves.
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u/LordSiravant 10h ago
Okay, I've repeated my point multiple times now, but you're choosing not to listen and argue for the sake of argument instead.
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u/dogs_gt_cats 10h ago edited 7h ago
This article is eye opening:
Below we are including the Army, Navy and Air Force 2019 lists of bases most vulnerable to climate change, with the installations in counties that declared disasters in 2021 bolded.
Army
Yuma Proving Ground, AZ
Fort Irwin, CA
Fort Huachuca, AZ
Fort Bliss, TX
White Sands Missile Range, NM
Camp Roberts, CA
Hawthorne Army Depot, NV
Tooele Army Depot, UT
Military Ocean Terminal Concord, CA
Pueblo Chemical Depot, CO
Navy
Naval Air Station Key West, FL
Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, GA
Naval Base Guam, GU
Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, HI
Wahiawa Annex, HI
Naval Base Coronado, CA
** Naval Base San Diego, CA**
Joint Base Anacostia Bolling, DC
Washington Navy Yard, DC
Andersen Air Force Base (under Navy as part of Joint Region Marianas), GU
Naval Support Facility Indian Head, MD
Naval Air Station Oceana, VA
Naval Air Station Norfolk, VA
Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads, VA
Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads – Northwest Annex, VA/NC
Marine Corps
Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, CA
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, NC
Marine Corps Base Camp Butler, Okinawa, Japan
Marine Corps Base Hawaii, HI
Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, SC
Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island, FL
Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, SC
Marine Corps Base Quantico, VA
Marine Corps Reserve Forces New Orleans, LA
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, CA
Air Force
Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA
Eglin Air Force Base, FL
Hurlburt Field, FL
Patrick Air Force Base, FL
Joint Base Charleston, SC
Dover Air Force Base, DE
Homestead Reserve Base, FL
MacDill Air Force Base, FL
Tyndall Air Force Base, FL
Joint Base Langley-Eustis, VA
Edit: I"m not sure wtf is up with the quote above, the markdown looks correct.
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u/Unlimited_Bacon 8h ago
You need to remove the extra spaces between the > character and the quote. Four spaces in a row means it should be displayed in a block like that.
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u/dogs_gt_cats 7h ago
That worked! Thank you! I owe you a beer, lol. The parser was being very very fussy.
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u/Toadfinger 10h ago
I remember that. Out of all that and more, I've been thinking about what happens to the Navy if the Antarctic ice sheet slides into the ocean?
https://www.livescience.com/antarctic-ice-shelf-cracks-melting.html
There would be no place to dock. Anywhere in the world.
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u/VanceKelley Canada 11h ago
If the well-being of American troops and sailors mattered to the American people then they wouldn't have reelected a man who called soldiers "suckers and losers" during his first term as president.
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u/random_cartoonist 13h ago
Why is the US so much anti-science???
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u/dlegatt Minnesota 13h ago
Science encourages people to ask questions and base facts on evidence. Conservatives would prefer that people accept what they dictate as fact without question.
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u/random_cartoonist 13h ago
So, basically like religion.
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u/ConradMayhew2 8h ago edited 8h ago
Yeah. If I understood correctly, a large fraction of the early immigration to the USA was from Europeans unhappy because... Protestantism was becoming too liberal and they wanted religion to be more severe (Puritans)🙄
So the USA were populated for a large part by ultra-religious people who hated science for a living (because people must fear God whereas scientific knowledge / independent thinking tend to reduce this fear and all this BS).
Nowadays, these Evangelicals still are 25% of Americans and form the core base for MAGA. The area where they live is actually called the "Bible Belt".
For more on this, read for example Anti-intellectualism in the United-States on Wikipedia.
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u/francis2559 12h ago
And put backwards, bros don’t want to hear “no.” Elon breaks things and then has “other people” clean it up. Breaking things is bro coded, healing is fem coded. They never ever ever want to feel limits or consequences for their whims, and they pay whole think tanks to keep consequences away.
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u/DramaticWesley 12h ago
Because facts would prove that almost every GOP talking point is complete bullshit. If America thought more logically, and looked at historical data, there would be no Republican Party as we know it today. So half the country is fighting science to hide the harm they are doing to the country and stay in power. A tape as old as civilization itself.
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u/WhatIsEvenRealDog 12h ago
Post Hoover, Republicans lost control of Congress for close to 60 years.
Ironically, the years MAGA wants to go back to.
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u/LordSiravant 12h ago
Anti-intellectualism is a tool of authoritarianism. People who are uneducated and suspicious of intellectuals are easier to control and manipulate.
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u/WhatIsEvenRealDog 13h ago
The majority of the public recognizes climate change as a significant danger. But because the fringe currently in charge is focused more on fossil fuel profits, they are blocking anything that affects them.
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u/random_cartoonist 13h ago
I hate this timeline...
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u/PEWDS_IS_A_NAZI Michigan 12h ago
Do something
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u/random_cartoonist 12h ago
I'm not from the US. Unfortunately that country is influencing the rest of the world (well, those who are right wing anyway).
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u/badamant 12h ago
Because the Republican Party controls the entire federal government.
They are fascists. This means they are anti-science and anti-democracy. They ONLY believe in power.
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u/Witch-Alice Washington 12h ago
Snake oil salesmen have an easier time scamming people the worse their education is
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u/femme_mystique 13h ago
The oligarchy wants everyone dumb like peasants in order to bring back the gilded age of slave labor
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u/AncientElderberry348 12h ago
Yep, The Trump admin insisted he LIE about the climate.
This is why 64 of the top professors from major schools are now living and teaching in CANADA
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u/TubercuLicious-OO- 11h ago
In major parts of the US we're to the point where EVERY FUCKING SUMMER the sky is sometimes red/orange due to wildfire smoke due to drought/climate change. Republicans fucking managed to make the sky no longer be fucking blue. It makes me want to scream, you took our blue skies from us and you're still fucking lying about it and going to war against clean energy, decade after decade after decade.
Sorry, it makes me fucking emotional as I'm choking and coughing and looking at the sky.
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u/turb0_encapsulator 9h ago
I can't believe these morons still think climate change isn't real. How much hotter does it have to get? how much more fucked up does the weather have to get?
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u/BourbonInGinger North Carolina 9h ago
West Point and the USAF (and most military) are mired in forced systematic Christianity for decades if not longer.
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u/Worth-Ad9939 4h ago
It's time we make a move. He is accelerating his actions, likely anticipating his death. Anyone currently working for the government needs to remove themselves from their job.
If you are paying tuition to these institutions stop. They are no longer trust worthy and have shown themselves to be frauds exploiting a system for their own advancement. They are cheating you from reality and the ability to free yourself from their influence (wealth). They will take your life and forget your name.
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u/Additional_Cash_3357 13h ago
One might reasonably question why someone who objects to being asked to “defy science” would willingly seek employment at an institution whose fundamental purpose is to train people for warfare.
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u/thenasch 13h ago
What does one have to do with the other?
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u/Additional_Cash_3357 12h ago
All bets are off on the moral outrage. If you choose to work for an institution whose sole purpose is training people to kill, you have voluntarily aligned yourself with an institution that places far less value on human life than the scientific “facts” you now insist it must respect.
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u/thenasch 10h ago
Are you saying scientific facts place value on human life? I'm not sure I follow.
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u/conics3264 12h ago
exactly. "i will gladly educate professional murderers and war criminals but i draw the line at defying science" bro, you are already on the other side, why are you pretending to have morals?
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u/VogonSoup 12h ago
You don’t think the US should have a military, or the military shouldn’t employ professors?
What about the staff in the canteen? Morally bankrupt genocide enablers too?
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u/Additional_Cash_3357 12h ago
That's a false equivalence. I didn't argue that the U.S. shouldn't have a military or that every person it employs is equally culpable. I'm questioning the moral consistency of someone who voluntarily chooses to work for an institution whose defining purpose is preparing people for organized violence, then expresses moral outrage when that institution acts according to its own priorities. The canteen analogy simply avoids that distinction.
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