Sci Supp Bak

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x bak</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">another kind of suppression:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</font></div><div><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">ATTEMPTING TO DEFUND, LIMIT THE EPA </b></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The first chance that the bloc of 85 freshman Republicans had to influence environmental policy was with H.R. 1, the bill that would fund the federal government for fiscal year 2011. The House passed a 27 percent budget cut for the EPA, which, had it passed the Senate, would have been the agency’s largest cut since 1981</span>. </font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We were trying to tell our brothers on the Republican side that they’re never going to get this through the Senate, but they were posturing,” said Norm Dicks, a Democrat, and the former ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee. “They wanted to make the cuts. They thought they were going to win political points with the Tea Party-types for cutting the EPA budget.”</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Lawmakers also attempted other cuts by proposing 162 amendments, 22 of which would have cut EPA programs or limited the government’s enforcement of environmental regulations and its ability to study climate change</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, H.R. 1 never became law because the House and Senate were not able to reach a budget compromise until April 2011, when H.R. 1473 narrowly avoided a government shutdown. After negotiations with the Senate, the two houses agreed on a 15.6 percent cut, the <b>largest enacted cut since the EPA lost 16 percent of its budget in 1986</b>. RR</span></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The 22 amendments proposed in H.R. 1 signaled how this group of freshmen Republicans, and pledge-signers, wanted to limit the EPA and climate-change research. </b>Think Progress, a liberal blog, researched climate change statements by members of the 112th Congress, and found many members of Congress were doubtful of climate-change science.<b> The Investigative Reporting Workshop matched the Think Progress statements with the list of members of Congress who signed the pledge from Nov. 16, 2010, and found 17 of the 20 Senators who had signed the pledge said they doubted climate change science, as did 78 of the 156 representatives who had signed the pledge. </b></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Throughout the House's debate on H.R. 1, several pledge signers proposed amendments that would limit government regulation of climate change.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Rep. Mike Pompeo,</span> a Republican who represents the Kansas district where Koch Industries is headquartered, and is a signer of the No Climate Tax Pledge, received $10,000 from Koch Industries PAC in the 2010 election.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once in the House, Pompeo proposed an amendment to H.R. 1 to cut $8.5 million, or roughly half the fiscal year 2010 budget, from the EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting program. Pompeo said at the time, “This data is the very foundation of the EPA's effort to pursue its radical anti-jobs agenda.”</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Another amendment was proposed by Republican Rep. John Carter of Texas, who wanted to ban using money to enforce a rule on cement manufacturing emissions</b>. He was one of the first representatives to sign the No Climate Tax Pledge. Carter and two other Texas Republicans proposed an amendment that would have prohibited the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases emitting from stationary sources, such as factories. </font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republican Rep. <b>Ralph Hall of Texas</b>, also in that first group of representatives to sign the pledge, sponsored an amendment — which passed — to stop the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from creating a National Climate Service, which was intended to be “a one-stop shop” for climate informatio</span>n. </font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia sponsored an amendment — which passed — that stopped funds for EPA guidelines on surface coal mining operations</b>. </font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Republican Rep<b>. Kristi Noem of South Dakot</b>a signed the pledge in 2010 and received $5,000 from KochPAC. She sponsored an amendment — which passed — to prohibit money from being used to change the air quality standards regarding coarse particulate matter (dust). </font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, neither these amendments nor the bill survived in the Senate.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Many of the 85 freshman Republicans sponsored bills in the House to limit the EPA’s regulatory power or to expand oil and natural gas drilling</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Koch Industries Public Sector LLC, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, lobbied for H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, </span>which would have rolled back the Supreme Court’s ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases.<b> The bill was sponsored by Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan and co-signed by 92 Republicans</b> (and three Democrats),<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> 61 of whom also signed the pledge. </span><b>Had it passed, the Energy Climate Prevention Act would have prevented the EPA from defining greenhouse gases as air pollutants and prohibited all federal research or programs on climate change research.</b></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In June 2011<b>, Rep. Griffith of Virginia </b>also introduced the EPA Regulatory Relief Act, which would have allowed companies to ignore future EPA rules on industrial boiler and heater emissions while delaying the implementation of any rules that would constitute the “least burdensome regulatory alternative.” The bill eventually gained 101 Republican and 25 Democratic co-sponsors, 67 of whom signed the No Climate Tax Pledge.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Griffith said he signed the No Climate Tax pledge because he believes national limits on greenhouse-gas emissions harm Virginia’s coal industry and the jobs it provides. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">He said he didn’t feel any pressure to sign the pledge from Americans for Prosperity, which he credits with helping him win a seat in Congress in 2010 by campaigning against the policies of his Democratic predecessor, Rick Boucher. </span></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Griffith also said that the $5,000 his campaign received from Koch Industries in June 2010 had no influence on his decision to sign the pledge less than two weeks later. Opposing President Obama’s “war on the coal industry” was a top issue during his campaign, he said.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“When I was running in early 2010, this was already on my agenda,” Griffith said. “I was talking about these things long before I even knew that the Koch brothers and AFP were involved in these issues.” </font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The pledge isn't limited to those in Washington. Among other office-holders who signed it is Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Janet Barresi, who declined to talk about her reasons for signing the pledge in August 2010. But through her press secretary, Barresi said in statement that the school district relies on property taxes from power plants and oil and gas production.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Oklahoma's schools depend on revenue from fossil fuels, and the destructive power of a tax on these fuels is not justified by questionable science," Barresi said in the statement.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contributing: Julia Broemmel</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 721 no lnx</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/biden-science/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/biden-science/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Four scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency are alleging that the "war on science" is continuing under the Biden administration, with managers at the agency altering reports about the risks posed by chemicals and retaliating against employees who report the misconduct.</font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>The government watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a formal complaint Friday on behalf of the scientists with the EPA's Office of the Inspector General, calling for an investigation into reports that high-level employees routinely delete crucial information from chemical risk assessments or change the documents' conclusions to give the impression that the chemicals in question are not toxic.</div><div>
</div><div>The group also wrote to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's Subcommittee on Environment, calling on lawmakers to work with the inspector general to investigate the allegations.</div><div>
</div><div>The report follows outrage about officials in the Trump administration covering up scientific facts by deleting the EPA's climate change website, but PEER emphasized that the problem is persisting at the agency six months into President Joe Biden's term.</div><div>
</div><div>"These alterations of risk assessments are not just artifacts of the Trump administration; they are continuing on a weekly basis," said Kyla Bennett, science policy director at PEER who formerly worked at the EPA.</div><div>
</div><div>Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the agency is responsible for evaluating the risks of existing chemicals as well as those slated to be manufactured in or imported to the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>The four employees said in the complaint that they've observed "numerous instances" in which significant changes were made to their own assessments, including:</div><div>
</div><div>The removal of language identifying possible adverse effects of chemicals, including developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, mutagenicity, and/or carcinogenicity;</div><div>Changes to report conclusions to indicate that there are no signs of toxicity "despite significant data to the contrary"; and</div><div>Risk assessments being reassigned to inexperienced employees "to secure their agreement to remove issues whose inclusion would be protective of human health."</div><div>"The resulting Material Safety Data Sheets lack information vital to prevent harmful exposures, such as proper handling procedures, personal protection needed, accidental release measures, first aid, and firefighting measures," said PEER.</div><div>
</div><div>In one case, managers increased the dose considered safe for consumption for a certain chemical by nearly 10,000-fold, according to The Hill.</div><div>
</div><div>"All of these altered assessments need to be pulled back and corrected in order to protect both workers handling chemicals and the American public," said Bennett.</div><div>
</div><div>According to PEER, staff scientists at EPA have spent months raising concerns internally and filing a formal complaint on their own—only to face "harassment from managers named in the complaints."</div><div>
</div><div>Hours after PEER filed the complaint on Friday, the organization said, the four whistleblowers' names were released internally at the EPA in "a troubling move" by someone at the agency.</div><div>
</div><div>"Whistleblowers help protect us all—we must protect them," PEER said.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The organization called on the inspector general to "identify all the alterations and restore the correct risk information," and to dismiss the civil service managers found responsible for the misconduct in the investigation.</div><div>
</div><div>"EPA's lack of accountability for scientific misconduct poses a direct danger to public health," said Bennett. "Inside EPA, scientific integrity has become an oxymoron and a cure will require a complete overhaul."</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>Is Joe Biden ready for the urgency of the climate crisis? - Alternet.org ›</div><div>Joe Biden's blitz on climate policy is impressive. Here's what it ... ›</div><div>'Like drinking bleach': Former Obama adviser derails Fox News ... ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>Biden Elevates Science in Week One Actions - Scientific American ›</div><div>Biden pursues giant boost for science spending ›</div><div>Biden seeks big increases for science budgets | Science | AAAS ›</div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">819 icn</font></p><p><span style="color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" arial="arial" verdana="verdana" sans-serif="sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 22px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=1d45d2b799&e=06876ede6b" style="color: rgb(142, 196, 77); text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Top CDC Health and Climate Scientist Files Whistleblower Complaint</span></a></span></span><br style="color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial, " helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" sans-serif="sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="color: rgb(142, 196, 77);"><span style="color: rgb(76, 155, 34);">BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE & GEORGINA GUSTIN</span></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Here's what happened to a top scientist in the nation's premiere health agency. Other scientists, and climate science itself, have been sidelined in agencies across the government. <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=fc6a52c66a&e=06876ede6b" style="color: rgb(142, 196, 77); text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: rgb(165, 42, 42);">Read More</span></a></span></span></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/scientists-trump-2216772306.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/scientists-trump-2216772306.html</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Sharon Lerner</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The mood was understandably gloomy at the National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy, and the Environment. </b>"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.</font></p><p>
</p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>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,</b>" 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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>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,</b> brought to mind a cartoon character whose feet continue to frantically pedal in the air even after he's gone off the cliff.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Instead the scientists were focused on the measurable and indisputable changes they've observed</b>—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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p>
</p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientific Visualization Studio / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reposted with permission from our media associate The Intercept.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">o be clear, what Conway and Spicer were doing was lying.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ordering the EPA to take down its climate change pages is appalling. As Reuters says,</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So yeah, that’s very, very worrisome.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How long will it be before Trump makes it official, gagging NOAA and NASA scientists as well?</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now, it seems, it’s happening here once again.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6/16 recover</font>