TIME

How a war on science could hurt the U.S.—and its citizens

NASA images show Qori Kalis (above), a glacier that is part of the world’s largest tropical ice cap, on a plateau 18,670 ft. (5,691 m) high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. In 1978, the glacier was still expanding. But not anymore. By 2011, it had retreated far enough to leave a lake 86 acres (35 hectares) in area and 200 ft. (60 m) deep.

THE DISCIPLINE OF SCIENCE IS ONE where the facts, once they are peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals, are fixed. They’re not open to interpretation, or at least not much. In that sense, it’s the opposite of politics, in which nearly everything can be negotiated. But as the first days of the Trump Administration have shown, many of those seemingly settled scientific facts—the ones that have informed countless policies from previous U.S. Administrations—are once more up for debate.

Within hours of President Trump’s Inauguration, the White House website was stripped of any mention of climate change or the effort

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