Sci Supp 2 Bak

i keep losing this topic?! see 819 bak on rename fail on related node220 2 maIN BLANK?!

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</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/gop-scientific-method-evidence-conspiracy/">https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/gop-scientific-method-evidence-conspiracy/</a></div><div>an 7 23 no lnx</div><div>
</div><div><div>Home | For the GOP, the scientific method is evidence of conspiracy</div><div>
</div><div>Lindsay Beyerstein July 19, 2023</div><div>A scientific paper now ranks with the grassy knoll in the minds of conspiracy theorists. “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” (2020) has become an object of obsession complete with its own rich folklore. Last week, House Republicans devoted a three-hour hearing to haranguing the scientists who wrote it.</div><div>
</div><div>Two of the paper’s authors, Dr. Kristian Andersen and Dr. Robert F. Garry, were hauled before the committee to answer for their defiance from GOP orthodoxy.</div><div>
</div><div>The GOP party line is that Dr. Anthony Fauci somehow forced a group of university professors to publish a peer-reviewed paper arguing that Covid-19 wasn’t a bioweapon or a laboratory construct. Fauci supposedly wanted to discredit the lab leak because he helped the Wuhan Institute of Virology create the virus. No, really. They get indignant when you call it a conspiracy theory, but that’s the B-movie plot they’re pushing.</div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: Did Trump let Americans die purely for political purposes?</div><div>
</div><div>The proximal origin of Proximal Origin was not Fauci’s NIAID lair, but a teleconference organized by Dr. Jeremy Farrar, then the head of a UK research charity. Farrar set the agenda, invited the guests, and even provided tech support. The witnesses testified that Fauci hopped on the call but said little of substance.</div><div>
</div><div>Andersen also testified that, far from pressuring him to debunk the lab leak, Fauci had encouraged him to publish any evidence that he might find of a leak and offered to help him share any such evidence with the proper authorities. These are not the actions of someone orchestrating a massive coverup.</div><div>
</div><div>In lab leak lore, the researchers’ open-mindedness is evidence of coercion. The subpoenaed emails show that, far from being reflexive leak deniers, the authors of this paper thought they saw features that couldn’t have evolved naturally. If they couldn’t explain how the virus might have arisen in nature, that raised red flags that it might have been engineered. But once they delved into the quirks of SCV2 and explored the weird and wonderful features of wild coronaviruses, their doubts were allayed.</div><div>
</div><div>If Fauci was orchestrating a coverup, why would he pick scientists who said they took the lab leak seriously?</div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: Ron DeSantis’ surgeon general 'personally altered' key data on COVID-19 vaccines’ safety: report</div><div>
</div><div>Another plank in the GOP conspiracy theory is that Fauci bribed Andersen to argue against the lab leak with a federal research grant. In fact, that grant was awarded before the pandemic started. As is standard for such grants, the award was based on high scores by independent reviewers, not the whims of Tony Fauci.</div><div>
</div><div>The majority falsely claimed in its report that the authors sent the paper to Fauci for editing and approval before it was published. In fact, Fauci received a copy of the manuscript that had already been accepted by the journal and didn’t offer any comments.</div><div>
</div><div>Most disturbing of all, Republicans tried to spin the scientific method itself as evidence of a conspiracy. They seized on a snippet of an Andersen email stating that he and his colleagues were trying to disprove the lab leak theory. That’s not a conspiracy, that’s science. Experimenters start with a testable hypothesis like, “Sars-CoV-2 leaked from a lab” and then they do their best to knock it down. If they can’t defeat it, the hypothesis survives to be tested again another day. As Andersen explained, they couldn’t definitively disprove a lab leak, but the evidence convinced them it was unlikely.</div><div>
</div><div>“My early hypothesis was that of a ‘lab theory’ and when I stated that we were “trying to disprove any type of lab theory,” I was specifically referring to the concept of falsification,” Andersen said in his written remarks.</div><div>
</div><div>“This is a text-book example of the scientific method in use.”</div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: 'Ignorance about the biological function': Virologist dispels testimony from GOP’s lab link 'expert'</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>Noam Chomsky sounds the alarm on the rise of anti-science rhetoric in America ›</div><div>'Bigotry and megalomania': Scientific American Editorial board warns of DeSantis’ 'antiscience agenda' ›</div><div>COVID will rage on longer because Republicans and white evangelicals refuse to get vaccinated: analysis ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>Earth science is not hard science, congressional Republicans declare ›</div><div>The Reason Some Republicans Mistrust Science: Their Leaders Tell ... ›</div><div>The GOP has a long history of ignoring science. Trump turned it into </div></div><div>=</div>michaels djt anti-science; chrlorpros sp pesticide SABdjt rolls baCK estb regs industry has no problem w/ eg mercury in coal plantsugar, sci for sale<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-march-2-2020/">https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-march-2-2020/</a>

new 9/17

<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/silence-climate-scientists-2491043851.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/silence-climate-scientists-2491043851.html</a>

<h1 class="headline h1" style=" margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">The Desperate But Effective Attempts to Silence Climate Scientists</h1>

</div>

By Jeremy Deaton

People play dirty when they can't win by playing fair. This is, more or less, the story of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a> denial in the U.S.

Scientists <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002/meta" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">overwhelmingly agree</a> that humans are altering the climate, reaping changes with potentially <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">catastrophic consequences</a>. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Climate deniers</a> can't dispute the data. They can't win on facts. Instead, they impugn the credibility of scientists, a tactic which has proved both ugly and effective.

Right-wing groups are using open records laws to obtain scientists' emails, and then misrepresenting the content of those emails to question the integrity of researchers and cast doubt on their findings, all of which has a chilling effect on scientific inquiry. But scientists have earned powerful allies in the fight to protect their research—including, by a strange set of circumstances, the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Trump administration</a>.

"Climategate" led to a wave of harassment.

The current spate of invasive records requests back to "Climategate," a 2009 controversy that erupted when a hacker obtained more than 1,000 emails sent and received by climatologists at East Anglia university in the United Kingdom. Parts of some emails, taken out of context, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?r=2" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">suggested</a> scientists had manipulated data to exaggerate the warming trend.

Climate deniers <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/11/24/john-lott-climate-change-emails-copenhagen.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">harped</a> on the leaks to paint climate scientists as ideologically motivated and dishonest. Though an official <a href="http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">inquiry</a> into the matter exonerated scientists, the damage was already done. Their calls for universities to investigate climate scientists prompted institutional <a href="http://www.science20.com/uploads/1770191916-429173860.pdf" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">probes</a> that hampered research efforts. Today, conservative advocacy groups point to "Climategate" when making open records requests.

"I think anyone who looks at the whole 'Climategate' manufactured controversy understands now that it's bogus, but that's the rationale that they've used," said Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the <a href="https://climatesciencedefensefund.org/" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Climate Science Legal Defense Fund</a>, a nonprofit working to protect researchers threatened by legal attacks.

The <a href="https://eelegal.org/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Energy & Environment Legal Institute</a> (E&E), a conservative think tank with ties to <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/02/13049/bankruptcy-documents-indicate-arch-coal-funding-climate-denial-legal-group" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">coal</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Energy%26_Environment_Legal_Institute#cite_note-16" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">oil</a> companies, cited "Climategate" as the impetus for its "transparency project." In 2011, the group sued to obtain more than 10,000 emails written or received by Michael Mann, a researcher at the University of Virginia and one of the scientists implicated in "Climategate." The Virginia Supreme Court <a href="http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1130934.pdf" target="blank" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">sided with</a> Mann, who <a href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/news/VAsupremeStatement.php" target="blank" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">lamented</a> the "coordinated assault against the scientific community by powerful vested interests."

That same year, E&E requested more than a decade of emails from University of Arizona climate scientists Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes, another researcher ensnared by "Climategate." E&E's <a href="https://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014.08.28-Petitioners-Reply.pages.pdf" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">legal brief</a> alleged there is a "climate scientific-technological elite" which has "behaved badly" in the past, a reference to "Climategate." In a gesture of surprising candor, E&E acknowledged that it was searching for emails to "embarrass both Professors Hughes and Overpeck," whom it characterized as "academic climate alarmists." That suit continues to this day.

The University of Arizona <a href="http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2016/06/22/az-court-reverses-protection-for-climate-scientists/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">case</a> volleyed back and forth between the trial court and the appellate court, which recently determined the trial court had failed to consider a <a href="http://www.azleg.gov/ars/15/01640.htm" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">statute</a> that protects "unpublished research data, manuscripts, preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers" and other documents produced by researchers at Arizona public universities.

Now the case will go back to the trial court, which will reevaluate the records request in light of this statute. The ruling is a pyrrhic victory for researchers and the university, who must dedicate even more time and money to fighting off E&E. "That's basically as good as we could have hoped for," Kurtz said. Even when scientists win, they lose.

The lawsuit has taken a hefty toll on Overpeck and Hughes. Overpeck said he spent six weeks of his sabbatical sorting through 90,000 pages of emails, explaining the case was a "grave distraction" from his work and family. Hughes spent an entire summer collecting emails, failed to attend to his work and lost a research grant as a result.

These injuries are temporary. More worrisome is the long-term effect that records requests have on research. Hughes noted that, due to his involvement in the case, other scientists have been reluctant to email him. While Hughes is nearing the end of this career, he said that, were he a young man, he would "consider a different line of work or another institution."

Even if E&E loses in the trial court—and it most likely will—the group will have nonetheless succeeded in bullying climate scientists. This, rather transparently, was the point. If E&E had concerns about the empirical rigor of climate research, it could have scrutinized the findings of specific studies. Instead of interrogating the final product, it went after the hastily scribed emails exchanged between colleagues.

"I have taught, researched and administered in academia for more than 40 years and have not seen a time in which freedom of inquiry has been more needed, or more imperiled than it is now," Hughes wrote in a letter to University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan when E&E was working to obtain Mann's emails. "Nothing is more likely to quash the creativity of America's scientists than the ever-present ear of a hostile listener intent on finding, at all costs, the appearance of malfeasance. Nothing is more calculated to discourage research into topics that may challenge power interests."

Today, some states are enacting policies to protect scientists. <a href="http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText/BillText17/HouseText17/H5098.pdf" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Rhode Island</a> and <a href="https://www.billtrack50.com/BillDetail/786399" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">North Dakota</a> recently passed laws guarding academic freedom. The Rhode Island statute specifically shields "drafts, notes, impressions, memoranda, working papers and work products" from open records requests. Kurtz hopes more states follow suit.

Climate scientists have an unlikely ally in the Trump administration.

At the federal level, the issue becomes more complicated. The legal protections that guard the emails of federally-funded climate scientists also shield government employees, including those working for the president. As a result, climate scientists have an unlikely ally in the Trump administration.

In 2015, the conservative nonprofit <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Judicial Watch</a> made a FOIA request to obtain the emails of climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Judicial Watch has a history of harassing opponents with records requests—most notably <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/judicial-watch-hillary-clinton.html?r=0" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Hillary Clinton</a>. Its president, Tom Fitton, <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-for-documents-withheld-from-congress-in-new-climate-data-scandal/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">claimed</a> the NOAA documents requested would show "the Obama administration put politics before science to advance global warming alarmism."

"This case is interesting because it was actually started under the Obama administration, but the Trump administration continued it, I think, because the Trump administration recognizes that it's important to maintain these open-records protections," said Kurtz.

The administration, though leaky, is notoriously secretive. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Pruitt</a>, who regularly <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/11/pruitt-climate-report-epa-241546" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">antagonizes</a> climate scientists, recently installed a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/26/epa-spending-almost-25000-to-install-a-secure-phone-booth-for-scott-pruitt/?utm_term=.550a18b2d8d9" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">$25,000 soundproof booth</a> in his office. Pruitt has also been sparing in his use of email, in part, as a response to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html?mcubz=3&r=1&mtrref=www.google.com" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">2014 open-records request</a> that revealed his close ties with the fossil fuel industry. "The Trump administration, I don't think, is eager to be turning things over under open-record laws," said Kurtz.

The rationale for protecting scientists' emails from public disclosure is simple. FOIA was enacted to make government more transparent, but it also threatened to discourage open conversations among federal employees. Judges have interpreted the law to exclude these conversations from records requests—what's known as <a href="https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/I0f9fe6beef0811e28578f7ccc38dcbee/View/FullText.html?contextData=%28sc.Default%29&transitionType=Default&firstPage=true&bhcp=1" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">deliberative process privilege</a>.

"The deliberative process privilege was designed to allow agency employees to have freedom to communicate with each other and toss around ideas and engage in devil's advocate debates and what-if arguments and really feel like they can be candid with each other," Kurtz said. "In addition, there's the rationale that people might toss out ideas that are later determined to be bad ideas and never implemented, and if you produce all those emails, it's really going to confuse the public."

The NOAA suit was settled in August. "The trial court judge agreed that the emails in the NOAA case were exactly the sort of emails that this deliberative process privilege was designed to protect," Kurtz said. Judicial Watch declined to appeal to the ruling.

As with the University of Arizona case, the damage was already done. If Judicial Watch had concerns about the empirical rigor of the NOAA study, it could have scrutinized the data, the method or the results—all of which were publicly available. But, the group didn't want to debate the merits of the science. Its goal was more specific.

Invasive records requests undermine scientific inquiry.

A <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/09/freedom-to-bully-ucs-2015-final.pdf" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">2015 report</a> from the <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Union of Concerned Scientists</a> found that researchers in numerous fields—public health, environmental science, genetic engineering—face attacks from groups on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The report explains that "individuals and well-heeled special interests across the political spectrum are increasingly using broad open records requests to attack and harass scientists." It warned that such tactics can "can curb the ability of researchers to pursue their work, chill their speech and discourage them from tackling contentious topics."

With climate change, there is evidence that this is already happening. A <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015000515#!" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">2015 study</a> found that climate scientists frequently downplay the gravity of their findings in response to harassment. Authors wrote that, " in response to constant, and sometimes toxic, public challenges, scientists have over-emphasized scientific uncertainty, and have inadvertently allowed contrarian claims to affect how they themselves speak, and perhaps even think, about their own research." This erodes public understanding of science.

"We all lose when scientists self-censor due to continued harassment. We have a poorer understanding of the science and are less able to make good personal and policy decisions," said Michael Halpern, head of the Center for Science and Democracy at the <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>. "Scientists will be more likely to keep their heads down and refuse to publicly engage or ask contentious research questions if they don't feel that their peers who are attacked are adequately protected."

How then do scientists balance privacy with transparency? Where is the line between confidentiality and obfuscation?

"We think it's totally appropriate to FOIA for funding information and conflict of interest information," Kurtz said. "When you're getting into research emails and candid communication, I think that's really harmful." She added, "Short of something where you have actual evidence of criminal fraud, I think those things should be protected."

FOIA is designed to give a window into the policymaking process, but science is already transparent. "When you're doing a peer-reviewed study, your peers are looking at your research and giving you feedback on it, and they are determining whether or not it is appropriate for publication," said Kurtz. Scientists must publish their data, their methods, their results, and they must disclose their source of funding .

"That sort of transparency is actually what you need to replicate the research, evaluate the research," said Kurtz. "That is not happening in the policymaking field where FOIA was originally designed to operate."

Because science is transparent, it is also self-correcting. Researchers can interrogate, criticize and improve upon each others' work. In 2013, Thomas Herndon, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts made <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/umass-student-exposes-serious-flaws-harvard-economists-influential-study/316138/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">headlines</a> when he found a number errors in an <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w15639" target="blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">influential study</a> authored by two Harvard economists. The paper showed that economic growth slows down in countries with high national debt, and it was used to justify austerity measures following the Great Recession. Herndon, 28, published a <a href="http://darribas.org/WooWii/Assignments/OriginalPaper.pdf" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">paper</a> which called attention to the errors and refuted its conclusions about national debt.

This is how research works. Researchers evaluate and attempt to replicate the findings of their peers. They have every incentive to prove each other wrong. Herndon's work earned him the acclaim of serious economists, weeks of fawning press coverage and a <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/kbgnf0/the-colbert-report-austerity-s-spreadsheet-error---thomas-herndon" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">star turn</a> on The Colbert Report. Any person who could do the same for climate research would be similarly celebrated.

If E&E, Judicial Watch or any other groups were to find and publicize flaws in peer-reviewed climate research, they would be doing a public service. But, overwhelmingly, the data show that humans are driving the warming trend. So instead, right-wing groups go after emails, looking to defame scientists.

"Scientific transparency is obviously important," Kurtz said. "What we want to preclude is scientists having to live in a fish bowl."

Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/the-desperate-but-effective-attempts-to-silence-climate-scientists-9e293887c3b2" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Nexus Media</a>.

</div>

==

In January we filed a brief asking the D.C. District Court to protect nine National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate scientists. On August 21, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://climatesciencedefensefund.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=635c98e780ac7191328d30eeb&id=97e7f679f2&e=15e3916d62" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">the court ruled in favor of these researchers</a>, upholding NOAA’s decision not to release its scientists’ research documents to the conservative group Judicial Watch.

<a href="https://climatesciencedefensefund.org/2017/08/25/d-c-district-court-rules-in-favor-of-noaa-climate-scientists-in-foia-case/">https://climatesciencedefensefund.org/2017/08/25/d-c-district-court-rules-in-favor-of-noaa-climate-scientists-in-foia-case/</a>

We’re thrilled by this outcome, but our work is far from done. This case is part of a growing trend where groups that dispute the reality of climate change attempt to use open records laws to access publicly-funded climate scientists’ private documents. These groups often aim to make public and manipulate scientists’ emails — including taking scientific jargon out of context — to discredit and distort peer-reviewed climate research.

We continue to support researchers in these cases; in July, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://climatesciencedefensefund.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=635c98e780ac7191328d30eeb&id=f364924a9c&e=15e3916d62" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">we filed a brief</a> asking the Arizona Court of Appeals to protect two scientists from another of these invasive open records requests.

To learn more about how anti-science groups and individuals attack and intimidate researchers, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://climatesciencedefensefund.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=635c98e780ac7191328d30eeb&id=4b913d4c44&e=15e3916d62" style=" -webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">check out our profile of atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe</a>. Her commitment to climate communication and public outreach has led to ongoing harassment and aggressive legal inquiry.

==

ref

In January 2017, <a href="https://climatesciencedefensefund.org/2017/02/01/csldf-files-brief-to-protect-noaa-climate-scientists/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">CSLDF filed a brief</a> asking the federal District Court for the District of Columbia to protect National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate scientists. On August 21, the D.C. court upheld NOAA’s decision not to release its climate scientists’ research documents to the conservative group Judicial Watch.

In the case, Judicial Watch sought to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows U.S. citizens to request copies of government documents, to obtain NOAA scientists’ emails, drafts, and peer review comments related to a <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1469" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">June 2015 paper published in Science</a>. The study, which is also known as the “Hiatus Paper,” found that recent ocean surface temperature increases were greater than those indicated by other peer-reviewed studies, thus refuting the idea of a “pause” in global warming.

The scientists’ findings did not sit well with Judicial Watch, which doesn’t agree with the science of climate change. Judicial Watch sued for the NOAA scientist’s documents; <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-for-documents-withheld-from-congress-in-new-climate-data-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">the organization’s president claimed</a> that the requested materials “will show that the Obama administration put politics before science to advance global warming alarmism.”

NOAA produced some of the documents Judicial Watch requested, but withheld others, arguing that the “deliberative process privilege” protected these documents. The deliberative process privilege allows for the denial of a FOIA request if it can be shown the requested government documents involve materials that are “predecisional,” meaning written as part of the decision-making process, and “deliberative,” meaning involving consultative give-and-take. The rationale for this privilege is to safeguard preliminary documents that, if released, could prevent candid collaboration and open discussions among agency employees.

NOAA argued the privilege exists to protect the sort of deliberative materials that are the heart of the scientific process. “In pursuing a research objective, scientists may begin with only a rough idea, and then develop, test, and revise that idea as data is collected and interpreted. Possible interpretations are generated and tested in part through candid debates and exchanges among peers. Indeed, the exchange and debate among peers is the mechanism that allows NOAA to ensure its scientific products are robustly developed and accurately tested.”

Judicial Watch claimed that the deliberative process privilege could not be applied to scientific materials, but the district court sided with NOAA, concluding that both the case law in the D.C. Circuit, as well as the facts of the case, showed that “drafts of the Hiatus Paper, internal deliberations, and peer reviewer comments thus fall within the scope of [FOIA] Exemption 5,” which includes the deliberative process privilege.

The district court also dismissed Judicial Watch’s claim that a February 2017 article in The Mail on Sunday showed potential wrongdoing by the NOAA scientists and should, therefore, overrule the deliberative process privilege. In the article, a former NOAA employee asserted that certain data archiving protocols had not been completed for the Hiatus Paper; the court said Judicial Watch “cites to a single article in a British tabloid reporting, based on a former employee’s allegation” which “does not meet th[e] narrow standard” necessary to show “nefarious government misconduct.”

This case is part of a larger trend where groups that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change attempt to use FOIA or state open records laws to access publicly funded climate scientists’ private correspondence, including similar cases in <a href="http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2016/06/22/az-court-reverses-protection-for-climate-scientists/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">Arizona</a> (currently on appeal) and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/04/17/va-supreme-court-rules-for-u-va-in-global-warming-foia-case/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">Virginia</a>.

Hostile groups have also targeted researchers in other fields – from <a href="http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/judge-affirms-campus-position-207666" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">biomedical researchers</a> to <a href="http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2015/08/29/wv-decision-on-academic-freedom-versus-freedom-of-information-laws/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">environmental health scientists</a> – under open records laws. In light of these abuses, many jurisdictions have begun instituting protections for scientific research under open records laws, including most recently <a href="https://www.thefire.org/rhode-island-takes-a-stand-for-academic-freedom/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">Rhode Island</a> (effective June 27, 2017) and <a href="http://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/65-2017/bill-actions/ba2295.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style=" transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; cursor: pointer;">North Dakota</a> (effective August 1, 2017).

Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Judicial Watch has 30 days to appeal the district court’s decision.

— Lauren Kurtz is the Executive Director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund

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<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/8/meet_the_senior_federal_official_blowing">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/8/meet_the_senior_federal_official_blowing</a>

Trump administration trying to silence government scientists from working or talking about climate change? According to news reports, as many as 50 senior Interior Department officials have been reassigned since Ryan Zinke became head of the department. We speak with Joel Clement, a senior official at the Interior Department. Up until recently, he focused on the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities in the Arctic. But, without explanation, Clement was recently transferred to an unrelated job within the Interior Department—he now collects royalty checks from oil and gas companies. Clement believes he was targeted for speaking out about climate change. He went public with his concerns in the pages of The Washington Post, where he wrote a piece titled "I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration."

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<h5 class="transcript" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1;">Transcript</h5>

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Is the Trump administration trying to silence government scientists from working or talking about climate change? That’s a growing concern in Washington. On Monday, The Guardian reported LINK staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been instructed to avoid using the term "climate change" in their work.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of-the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">published</a> a draft of an alarming government report looking at how climate change is already causing drastic impacts in the United States. The report found the average temperature in the U.S. has risen dramatically since 1980. Scientists who worked on the study fear the study will be changed or suppressed by the Trump administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Scientists working inside the government are also being silenced in other ways. We’re joined now by Joel Clement, senior official at the Interior Department. Up until recently, he focused on the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities in the Arctic. But, without explanation, Clement was recently transferred to an unrelated job within the Interior Department. He now collects royalty checks from oil and gas companies. Clement believes he was targeted for speaking out about climate change. He went public with his concerns in the pages of The Washington Post_, where he wrote a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-a-scientist-the-trump-administration-reassigned-me-for-speaking-up-about-climate-change/2017/07/19/389b8dce-6b12-11e7-9c15-177740635e83" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">piece</a>story.html headlined "I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration." According to news reports, as many as 50 other senior Interior Department officials have also been reassigned since Ryan Zinke became head of the department.

Joel Clement, welcome to Democracy Now! First, can you talk about the action that you took?

JOEL CLEMENT: I blew the whistle on the Trump administration because I believe they retaliated against me for disclosing the fact that these Alaska Native villages in the Arctic are threatened by climate change, and my work with the federal government to try and get those folks out of harm’s way.

JOEL CLEMENT: There has been no response yet. I didn’t hear anything from leadership before the reassignment or after the reassignment, just to tell me where to move my things.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about this—the directive for your reassignment, from work as a scientist to basically work as an accountant, and how that happened or what explanation was given to you?

JOEL CLEMENT: Well, there was no explanation for that. I think the irony, of course, is not lost on me. I think the intention was that—to get me to quit. I think that that may have been the intention behind many of these reassignments. That’s why it’s very chilling, because that goes against a long list of rules and procedures in the federal government.

JOEL CLEMENT: Yeah. I was—I was coordinating the federal engagement here in Washington, D.C. The villages in Alaska are poised on permafrost that is melting. These islands are no longer locked in place. So the villages, in some cases, have voted to relocate. Others just want to get out of harm’s way, develop evacuation plans that are realistic. And my goal and my objective here in Washington was to get the federal act together on helping them do that. It’s an essential role. It can’t be done without full engagement here in Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the landmark federal government report that has just been leaked that’s found the average temperature in the U.S. has risen dramatically since 1980 and that the impacts of climate change are already being felt across the country? The New York Times obtained and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of-the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">published</a> a copy of the report amidst concerns from scientists that the study’s findings may be suppressed, changed or censored by the Trump administration, which has sought to deny the effects and human impacts of climate change. This just out yesterday and today.

JOEL CLEMENT: Yeah, that report is world-class science. That’s some of the best work that is done through the Global Change Research Program. Until my reassignment, I was the Department of the Interior principal to that program. This report is no secret. This has been going around. It’s gone through draft form. It’s been evaluated by the National Academies and many other very august scientific bodies. It is a concern that they would suppress this. I’m not surprised that it’s gotten out. There’s a long pattern within the Trump administration of muzzling and sidelining scientists and suppressing science. And for scientists, the integrity of their work and the integrity of the organizations they work for are paramount. And this pattern of undercutting scientific integrity is very, very worrisome.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about how long this report has been in the making? And very interesting that it came out just a few days after Sessions held a news conference about leakers, and we know it’s a top priority of General John Kelly, the chief of staff now of President Trump.

JOEL CLEMENT: This report’s been in the works for a very long time, over a year. These reports that come out of the GCRP, the Global Change Research Program, are very meticulous. They’re very well reviewed. It’s a long drafting process. Some would say it just takes too long, you’re being too careful. But the fact is, you have to do that. It’s important that that be done. And this has turned out to be very world-class work that they’ve developed.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, meanwhile, The Guardian has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/usda-climate-change-language-censorship-emails" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">revealed</a> that workers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been instructed not to use the words "climate change" in their reports. A series of emails show the censorship started immediately after Trump’s inauguration. In a January 24th email, a top official at the USDA unit that oversees farmers’ land conservation wrote to other senior officials, quote, "It has become clear one of the previous administration’s priority is not consistent with that of the incoming administration. Namely, that priority is climate change. Please visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch," unquote. Can you talk about what kind of pressure you’ve received, or other scientists that you know of, in terms of your work on climate change?

JOEL CLEMENT: Well, first, I have to say that’s absolutely chilling to hear those words. And we at DOI have been very nervous about this, as well. I will say, though, that those of us at DOI, we work on climate adaptation and climate change resilience issues. We didn’t think that we would be targeted for this kind of suppression, because what we’re dealing with are the impacts that are already baked into the system. And there are consequences. For example, the Native—Alaska Native communities in Alaska, there are direct consequences to American health and safety if we—if that is suppressed and we are forced to step away from the table. So this is extremely chilling to hear. Department of Interior is also—it feels there’s some hostility. Everyone is looking over their shoulders, a lot of concern about those that have worked with anything that even sniffs of climate change, even if it’s adaptation and resilience.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, you filed a couple of forms, a complaint and a disclosure of information with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Could you talk about what those—what those filings represent, from your perspective?

JOEL CLEMENT: Yeah, there are two filings. One, the complaint about being retaliated against for disclosing the threats that climate change poses to these Alaska Native communities. And that’s where the consequences—the rubber hits the road. Many of us lay awake at night wondering what’s going to happen in the coming storm season, which is upon us in just a few weeks up there. So that is a direct concern for the health and safety of Americans.

Also filed a disclosure about the—that mass reassignment process. That was very unusual, raised a lot of eyebrows. It appeared very clear that they were trying to shake some people loose and get them to quit or retire, which is absolutely not what the Senior Executive Service procedures are meant to be used for. They’re meant to be used to move senior executives around. We understand it’s a mobile workforce. We all sign up for that. But it’s not meant to try and get people to quit, or to retaliate against them.

AMY GOODMAN: Joel Clement, can you talk, overall, about the response of other scientists within not only Interior? You know, we were down in Washington on Earth Day for the March for Science. There were many government scientists who were there among the thousands of people, deeply concerned. And I was wondering specifically about Ryan Zinke, the former congressman from Montana, who heads your department. Did he personally reassign you?

JOEL CLEMENT: The reassignment letters came from the associate deputy secretary, so, no, it wasn’t a personal reassignment. But, of course, the secretary has to sign off on all such reassignments. And it is—there is certainly a lot of concern amongst all federal scientists right now that the incoming leadership is being very ham-handed about how they’re trying to suppress this information, and, I think, quite reckless, in fact. So, I’m hoping that there will be others like me to speak up, because this is something that has direct consequences for American health and safety.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in news from Washington, D.C., recently resurfaced blog posts show that Trump’s nominee for the Department of Agriculture’s top scientist, Sam Clovis, called progressives, quote, "race traitors" and "liars" and called President Obama a socialist supported by what he said were "criminal dissidents who were bent on overthrowing the government of the United States," unquote. Clovis has come under fire for lacking the credentials to be the Agriculture Department’s top scientist, given that he’s published few peer-reviewed research papers, has no experience with agricultural research and denies the human impact on climate change. I’m wondering: Your sense of some of the appointees so far to key positions in the Trump administration in terms of science?

JOEL CLEMENT: Well, I won’t speak to the qualifications of specific individuals. I think there is, of course, this pattern of putting special interests before the interests of Americans. And that’s—in fact, that’s vexing, because they’re talking about "America first," but they’re putting special interests first and putting Americans last. And that’s why I’m so worried about, right now, the consequences for people like the village of Shishmaref up in Alaska.

AMY GOODMAN: Just talking more about Clovis, though you don’t specifically know him, nominated by President Trump, he was an F-16 fighter pilot turned defense contractor turned conservative radio host in Sioux City, Iowa. He was a failed U.S. Senate candidate, now the pick for the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist, a position that, by law, must be drawn from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education and economics. I’m reading from a Politico piece. Does this fit a trend, Joel Clement?

JOEL CLEMENT: It appears to fit the trend. It’s vexing. It’s of concern particularly to scientists within the federal government that feel that their work is being compromised and suppressed, but also it’s chilling because these are the leaders that are coming in that are meant to interpret that work and serve it up to the American public. So, it is—this is a very disturbing trend. And hopefully this administration will step back, because they’re being very sort of transparent about this, and have a close look at what the consequences might be for American health and safety, because, ultimately, if there is a superstorm in the Arctic, for example, and one of these villages gets wiped off the map or there’s loss of life, heaven forbid, it’s on their watch. And this is a—this is a major concern for many of us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what has been the reaction by your fellow scientists who—because you’re still working at the agency, and also your superiors, to your pretty public statements now that you’ve made in numerous interviews in the past few weeks?

JOEL CLEMENT: Well, there’s a great contrast between those two reactions. I have heard nothing from my superiors or the leadership at the department or the White House. But I have heard just a groundswell of response from my colleagues, both at Interior and in other agencies, thanking me for speaking up, feeling empowered to do the same, should the opportunity present, and, in general, appreciating the fact that there is a voice out there saying, "Hey, you know, you’ve got rights. You’ve got a voice. Please us it."

SEN. AL FRANKEN: Can you tell how much warming government scientists predict for the end of this century under a business-as-usual scenario?

</blockquote>

INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE: Well, the Paris accord, in the president and my’s judgment, it wasn’t about climate change. It was about a bad deal. We spent $3 billion, $1 billion in cash—

</blockquote>

SEN. AL FRANKEN: Let me just—I know we’re out of time, so can you just answer my question? Can you tell me how much warming government scientists predict for the end of this century under a business-as-usual scenario?

</blockquote>

INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE: I don’t think the government scientists can predict with certainty. There isn’t a model that exists today that can predict today’s weather, given all the data—

</blockquote>

SEN. AL FRANKEN: Well, they predict a range. And you said we have to go with the science. That’s what you said during the early part of this hearing. You said we have to go with the science. And there is agreement among climate scientists about the range of what we would have in warming by the end of the century. Do you know what that range is?

</blockquote>

INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE: If everyone adhered to the Paris climate accord, that change would be roughly 0.2 degrees, which is insignificant. And yet people ignore the fact—

</blockquote>

SEN. AL FRANKEN: No, no, no.

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INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE: —that China—that—

</blockquote>

SEN. AL FRANKEN: No, no, no.

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INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE: That was an M—that was an MIT study. We can give you—

</blockquote>

SEN. AL FRANKEN: That was a—that was what the change would be under the period covered by the agreement. That’s not what the change would be in the end of the century if they continued it. So you’re really mixing apples and oranges.

</blockquote>

AMY GOODMAN: So that’s Minnesota Senator Al Franken questioning your boss, Joel Clement, the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

JOEL CLEMENT: Yeah, that’s—I certainly listened in to that hearing. And, of course, it’s very disturbing to hear leadership talking like that. That is, those are—those are sort of simplistic and poorly delivered talking points of the climate deniers. I will say it is very heartening for many of us to have good minds in Congress to take these folks to task, because it is important there are three branches to government, and there are checks and balances. And hopefully we can trust that system to some degree, because now Congress is very concerned, on many fronts, about the level of leadership and expertise that’s being brought in during this administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, a senior official resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency, citing the Trump administration’s war on science and administrator Scott Pruitt’s business-friendly ties. Elizabeth Southerland, a 30-year veteran of the EPA, ended her tenure as director of the Office of Science and Technology for the agency’s Water Office. In a public letter of resignation, Southerland wrote, quote, "Today the environmental field is suffering from the temporary triumph of myth over truth. The truth is there is NO war on coal, there is NO economic crisis caused by environmental protection, and climate change IS caused by man’s activities." Do you know Elizabeth Southerland? Do you know other people in the government who are going to be resigning or speaking out, as you are, Joel Clement?

JOEL CLEMENT: I don’t know Elizabeth. I appreciate her words. I think she’s spot-on. I do know a lot of people that are asking themselves what to do next. This is a very difficult time for a civil servant. We are brought on to keep the ship of state running, regardless of the administration, this neutral competency to just focus on what’s good for Americans. And so, there are times—and I have spoken with many folks who have been through several transitions over the past few decades. They don’t recall any assault like this on the integrity of their work and on the quality of their work. This has been really vexing. A lot of people are certainly considering doing what Elizabeth has done.

But I have to say, I hope people stay in. I think you can have a voice, you can still speak out about these things, but stay in your positions in the civil service, because this is absolutely key. America without subject matter experts and climate scientists, that’s a frightening prospect. So, I am really impressed with her letter and her words. I hope others speak out. And I hope many choose to remain, as well. I know it’s very, very difficult—in some situations, untenable—to remain. But for those that can, I encourage people to and stick it out, because your work and your expertise is absolutely essential.

AMY GOODMAN: Joel Clement, you were the director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the U.S. Interior Department. So, what exactly are you doing now?

JOEL CLEMENT: I’ve been reassigned to the accounting office. They collect the royalty revenues from the oil and gas industry and mining industry. So, of course, the irony is pretty explicit. I don’t think there was any attempt to conceal the fact that they expected I would quit upon being reassigned.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Have you been surprised by the royalties you’ve been collecting?

JOEL CLEMENT: The numbers are certainly staggering. But that’s—you know, at this point, I haven’t been assigned to many duties. They’re now scrambling. This is an excellent office of people. Their auditors and their accounting people, they do a great job. I have no idea how to do those things. So they’re trying to find out now—they’re forced into the position of trying to find a way to incorporate and integrate a senior executive into their office. I’ll need to be retrained. There will need to be travel involved. It’s going to be an extensive process, and it’s all happening at taxpayer expense. So, it’s vexing not just for me and for the folks I used to work with, but also the office I’m going to. It’s a very difficult situation for them. So, overall, I think this classifies as a huge mistake. And, of course, I do see it as retaliation. That’s why I blew the whistle on the Trump administration for this action.

JOEL CLEMENT: I have to trust the investigation process. You submit your whistleblower complaints to the Office of Special Counsel. They conduct an investigation. I’ll trust the process and, of course, hope that they will then direct the Department of the Interior to put me back in my position.

JOEL CLEMENT: Well, the overall concern right now is the suppression. There’s been a long pattern, since the administration took over, of suppressing science, muzzling scientists, sidelining subject matter experts. The biggest concern is that doing so has huge consequences for Americans—and, particularly in my case, those Alaska Natives. I mean, that permafrost is melting. They’re fully exposed to storms now that the sea ice has receded. And that concern is not going to be limited to Alaska Natives for long. Right now they’re on the front lines, but every coastal city, the deserts of the Southwest, the farms of the Midwest that are getting these frequent and almost biblical deluges, these are direct impacts on the health and safety of Americans and our economic prosperity. So, I see this as an assault on our nation’s well-being, and that’s my biggest concern.

AMY GOODMAN: Joel Clement, we want to thank you for being with us, director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the U.S. Interior Department—well, until he was reassigned. And we will follow what happens to you, now senior adviser at the department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue. We will link to your <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-a-scientist-the-trump-administration-reassigned-me-for-speaking-up-about-climate-change/2017/07/19/389b8dce-6b12-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">piece</a> in The Washington Post headlined "I’m a scientist. I’m blowing the whistle on the Trump administration."

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Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.

A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA unit that oversees farmers’ land conservation, show that the incoming Trump administration has had a stark impact on the language used by some federal employees around climate change.

A missive from Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health, lists terms that should be avoided by staff and those that should replace them. “Climate change” is in the “avoid” category, to be replaced by “weather extremes”. Instead of “climate change adaption”, staff are asked to use “resilience to weather extremes”.

The primary cause of human-driven climate change is also targeted, with the term “reduce greenhouse gases” blacklisted in favor of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”. Meanwhile, “sequester carbon” is ruled out and replaced by “build soil organic matter”.

Firefighters battle a wildfire in California.

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Firefighters battle a wildfire in California. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

In her email to staff, dated 16 February this year, Moebius-Clune said the new language was given to her staff and suggests it be passed on. She writes that “we won’t change the modeling, just how we talk about it – there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the sail [sic], climate mitigation is just one of them”, and that a colleague from USDA’s public affairs team gave advice to “tamp down on discretionary messaging right now”.

In contrast to these newly contentious climate terms, Moebius-Clune wrote that references to economic growth, emerging business opportunities in the rural US, agro-tourism and “improved aesthetics” should be “tolerated if not appreciated by all”.

Trump is deleting climate change, one site at a time

In a separate email to senior employees on 24 January, just days after Trump’s inauguration, Jimmy Bramblett, deputy chief for programs at the NRCS, said: “It has become clear one of the previous administration’s priority is not consistent with that of the incoming administration. Namely, that priority is climate change. Please visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch.”

Bramblett added that “prudence” should be used when discussing greenhouse gases and said the agency’s work on air quality regarding these gases could be discontinued.

Other emails show the often agonized discussions between staff unsure of what is forbidden. On 16 February, a staffer named Tim Hafner write to Bramblett: “I would like to know correct terms I should use instead of climate changes and anything to do with carbon ... I want to ensure to incorporate correct terminology that the agency has approved to use.”

On 5 April, Suzanne Baker, a New York-based NRCS employee, emailed a query as to whether staff are “allowed to publish work from outside the USDA that use ‘climate change’”. A colleague advises that the issue be determined in a phone call.

Some staff weren’t enamored with the new regime, with one employee stating on an email on 5 July that “we would prefer to keep the language as is” and stressing the need to maintain the “scientific integrity of the work”.

In a statement, USDA said that on 23 January it had issued “interim operating procedures outlining procedures to ensure the new policy team has an opportunity to review policy-related statements, legislation, budgets and regulations prior to issuance”.

The statement added: “This guidance, similar to procedures issued by previous administrations, was misinterpreted by some to cover data and scientific publications. This was never the case and USDA interim procedures will allow complete, objective information for the new policy staff reviewing policy decisions.”

Kaveh Sadeghzadeh of the Natural Resources Conservation Service added that his organisation “has not received direction from USDA or the administration to modify its communications on climate change or any other topic”.

[Trump's planned EPA cuts will hit America's most vulnerable]

Trump has repeatedly questioned the veracity of climate change research, infamously suggesting that it is part of an elaborate Chinese hoax. The president has started the process of withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to scrap or amend various regulations aimed at cutting greenhouse gases, and has moved to open up more public land and waters to fossil fuel activity.

The nomenclature of the federal government has also shifted as these new priorities have taken hold. Mentions of the dangers of climate change have been removed from the websites of the White House and the Department of the Interior, while the EPA scrapped its entire online climate section in April pending a review that will be “updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership”.

The series of emails. Some parts were redacted before the emails were released. The Guardian has further redacted phone numbers, and highlighted key passages.

“These records reveal Trump’s active censorship of science in the name of his political agenda,” said Meg Townsend, open government attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“To think that federal agency staff who report about the air, water and soil that sustains the health of our nation must conform their reporting with the Trump administration’s anti-science rhetoric is appalling and dangerous for America and the greater global community.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is currently suing several government agencies, including the EPA and state department, to force them to release information on the “censoring” of climate change verbiage.

While some of the changes to government websites may have occurred anyway, the emails from within the USDA are the clearest indication yet that staff have been instructed to steer clear of acknowledging climate change or its myriad consequences.

US agriculture is a major source of heat-trapping gases, with 15% of the country’s emissions deriving from farming practices. A USDA plan to address the “far reaching” impacts of climate change is still online.

However, Sam Clovis, Trump’s nomination to be the USDA’s chief scientist, has labeled climate research “junk science”.

Last week it was revealed that Clovis, who is not a scientist, once ran a blog where he called progressives “race traders and race ‘traitors’” and likened Barack Obama to a “communist”.

Thomasine F-R.

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To be clear, what Conway and Spicer were doing was lying.

The trend here is clear. Trump has been lying and saying provably false things since the early days of his campaign; his entire rise to the top of the GOP presidential candidate heap was based on his birtherism. He has also fervently denied any science that goes against his ideology, picking and choosing what he wishes to believe (or disbelieve). Hence his denial of the reality of human-induced climate change and his courting of the worst of the anti-vaccination promoters like RFK Jr. and Andrew Wakefield—the latter is the father of the modern anti-vax movement, even though he has been struck off the U.K. General Medical Council’s register and his original findings have been retracted and branded as fraudulent.

Ordering the EPA to take down its climate change pages is appalling. As Reuters says,

The page includes links to the EPA's inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, which contains emissions data from individual industrial facilities as well as the multiagency Climate Change Indicators report, which describes trends related to the causes and effects of climate change.

The Trump administration's recently appointed team to guide the post-Obama transition has drawn heavily from the energy industry lobby and pro-drilling think tanks, according to a list of the newly introduced 10-member team.

So yeah, that’s very, very worrisome.

As bad as this is, I have no doubt whatsoever it will get worse. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—our chief scientific agency tracking climate change—has been under constant attack for years, including McCarthy-esque fishing expeditions by the GOP-controlled House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology.* NASA is also one of the strongest and most important scientific voices we have discussing climate change, and senior Trump adviser Bob Walker has already said they plan to curtail NASA’s Earth science research.

How long will it be before Trump makes it official, gagging NOAA and NASA scientists as well?

We’ve seen this happen before in recent times; when Stephen Harper became Canada’s prime minister, his anti-science right-wing administration did much the same thing, gagging scientists, including climate scientists, from talking to the media or public. Scientists rebelled and created their own site where they could announce their results, but the gag order wasn’t rescinded until Harper’s party was voted out of power. Besides it being a national embarrassment, the gag order meant that news articles about scientific research could report it incorrectly and the scientists could not issue corrections. It also allowed Harper to prevent the public knowing about research that went against his own anti-climate agenda.

Don’t think it can happen here? It already has, back in the George W. Bush administration, when for just one example a PR flack was put in place at NASA who meddled with their science communication efforts.

And now, it seems, it’s happening here once again.

This is extremely worrying. In the absence of scientific autonomy and open discussion, the administration is free to make up whatever reality serves it best. Given that Trump signed an executive order making it easier to build the Dakota Access Pipeline—a colossal conflict of interest, since Trump has stock in the company that would build it—we can see very clearly what reality that will be. Massive corruption, suppression of free speech and the freedom of the press, oppression of minorities, the complete reversal of women’s rights, and the literal sickening of America.

We the people need to make sure our voices are heard, and that this cannot stand. There are many ways to do this, including supporting the American Civil Liberties Union, whose sole purpose is to make sure no one tramples on the First Amendment. Also, call your senators and representative! That really can make a difference, even in heavily red or blue districts.

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only partuial revover?

main lost 1/25/17

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2x bak

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http://www.ecowatch.com/scientists-trump-2216772306.html

By Sharon Lerner

While Donald Trump was reviving both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, muzzling federal employees, freezing EPA contracts and first telling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to remove mentions of climate change from its website—and then reversing course—many of the scientists who work on climate change in federal agencies were meeting just a few miles from the White House to present and discuss their work.

The mood was understandably gloomy at the National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy, and the Environment. "I don't know what's going to happen. No one knows what's going to happen," one EPA staffer who works on climate issues told me on Tuesday, as she ate her lunch. She had spent much of her time in recent weeks trying to preserve and document the methane-related projects she's been working on for years. But the prevailing sense was that, Trump's claims about being an environmentalist notwithstanding, the president is moving forward with his plan to eviscerate environmental protections, particularly those related to climate change and the EPA itself.

"It's strange," the woman said. "People keep walking up to me and giving me hugs." Like several others I spoke to for this story, she declined to tell me her name out of fear that she might suffer retaliation, including being fired. She was not being paranoid. Already, agency higher ups had warned the EPA staff against talking to the press or even updating blogs or issuing news releases. "Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press," said one EPA missive that was shared broadly and ended up in the press. And while the staffer was at the meeting, the EPA's new brass issued another memo to staff requiring all regional offices to submit a list of external meetings and presentations, noting which might be controversial and why.

The directives have left scientists fearing reprisal for merely mentioning the global crisis that has been at the center of their professional lives for years. It's the topic "whose name cannot be uttered," as one Forest Service employee put it to me. A nearby U.S. Department of Agriculture employee offered a series of euphemisms—"extreme weather events, very unusual patterns," he riffed—before turning serious. "I'm actually scared to talk to you," he said, turning his hanging name tag inward and backing away from me. The look in his eyes and the tight smiles I received from several federal employees after introducing myself as a reporter reminded me of interviewing scientists in China. My presence inspired fear.

Afraid or not, many federal researchers continued doing their jobs despite the impending doom, presenting research on everything from disease-causing mosquitos to heat waves, decreasing water availability and toxic algal blooms—all issues that have become dramatically more important as the Earth has warmed.

With the dark political backdrop, the hub of productive energy at the conference, which was co-sponsored by the EPA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, brought to mind a cartoon character whose feet continue to frantically pedal in the air even after he's gone off the cliff.

Among the meeting's attendees, who included researchers from academia, the private sector and government, there was no discussion of whether climate change is real, no tangled Kremlin-speak suggesting that "the ability to measure and pursue the degree and the extent of that impact and what to do about it are subject to continuing debate and dialogue," as Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to head the EPA, put it in his confirmation hearing last week.

Instead the scientists were focused on the measurable and indisputable changes they've observed—how habitat changes have resulted in epidemics of plague in prairie dogs that can spread the disease to humans, for instance or the way that algal blooms on lakes have impacted the fishing industry. Indeed, the breadth of the climate science at the conference spoke to the absurdity that even someone as powerful as the president of the U.S. could undo it. The Senate held its first hearing on climate change more than 30 years ago and in the intervening years, as understanding of our warming planet has grown, the government has not only collected precise measurements of vanishing arctic ice, rising sea levels, increasing global temperatures, river flooding, drought and heavy rain, it has used that data to understand the short- and long-term consequences of the phenomenon.

As a report I picked up at one of the tables, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States, makes clear, these many objective phenomena have health consequences "now and in the future." Among those listed were heat-related illness and death, drowning and injuries from flooding, lung and respiratory diseases due to worsening air quality, intestinal illnesses and blood stream infections from water-related infections, water-borne infections and Lyme disease.

That report was a collaboration of 11 federal agencies, including the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, Energy, State and the Interior, many of which have been working on ways to avert and address further disastrous impacts. Scientists have come up with specific plans for disposing of our waste in a hotter world, for instance and have identified people most vulnerable to climate change (such as kids and the elderly). They have calculated and prepared for increased amounts of storm water and developed an integrated heat health information system that includes air quality forecasts and resources for heat waves.

This data visualization shows the record low Arctic sea ice extent on Aug. 26, 2012. With less ice to reflect sunlight, larger areas of open water absorb more of the sun's heat. This heat slowly escapes into the atmosphere, causing atmospheric heating during the Arctic autumn.

Scientific Visualization Studio / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

For those who spend their professional lives focusing on this complex web of interconnected phenomena causing and resulting from climate change, denial and the censoring of the term puts them at war with observable reality. Whether they can utter the word "climate" or not, the fire season will still be 78 days longer than it was in the 1970s, as a Forest Service employee pointed out to me. (A 2015 report from the agency confirmed his point). And last year will still have been the hottest year on record, following the one before that and the one before that—knowledge we have thanks to research from NASA and the federal National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

The question that hovered over what is likely the last EPA-sponsored conference on environmental and health, at least for a while, was what would happen to all this research as Trump moves forward. In a luncheon keynote speech on Wednesday, Newt Gingrich seemed to acknowledge that the new president would likely cut at least some government funding for environmental research. Gingrich, whose fee for speaking at events in Washington, DC recently increased to $25,000 based on his "insight into Trump," urged scientists to "defend what you do." In his seemingly off-the-cuff remarks, Gingrich suggested that environmental scientists not dwell on the imminent decrease in government funding for their work but instead be cheered by the "enormous opportunity" to get private sector funding. The statement elicited a snort of derision from someone at a table near mine.

The extent to which Trump will decimate government efforts to protect people and the planet from climate change and other environmental problems remains to be seen. In the meantime, work continued. At the conference on Wednesday, a young woman gave out publications including a booklet called Science Matters from the EPA's display table. While a nearby giant screen flashed colorful aerial images from NASA satellites of shrinking sea ice in the arctic and global air pollution, she said, "we're just doing our jobs until we hear otherwise."

Reposted with permission from our media associate The Intercept.

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o be clear, what Conway and Spicer were doing was lying.

Ordering the EPA to take down its climate change pages is appalling. As Reuters says,

So yeah, that’s very, very worrisome.

How long will it be before Trump makes it official, gagging NOAA and NASA scientists as well?

And now, it seems, it’s happening here once again.

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6/16 recover

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