Scientists plan February 'Scientists March on Washington' in response to the anti-science and anti-intellectual agendas of Donald Trump and the Trump administration...
The original "Doomsday Clock" was launched after World War II by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It originally indicated the danger of global nuclear war. Recently it was updated to include the dangers of climate change to the world. Although the Obama administration had prosecuted some individuals for whistle blowing, the gag orders issued by President Donald Trump in a growing number of federal departments beginning on January 24, 2017, is unprecedented and is forcing official government publications to deny science and promote nonsense.Proclaiming that "...an American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world...", a growing group of prominent scientists, including reportedly some winners of the Nobel Prize, have announced that they will march on Washington D.C. in response to the anti-intellectual and anti-science agendas of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The announcement came as the Trump administration ordered people serving in various departments of the federal government to shut up or be fired. By January 25, the departments that had been issued the gag order include the EPA and the National Parks Service.
The call for the Scientists March has so far not set a date for the event, but by early January 26 support was reportedly growing. At the same time, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which was originally founded to warn of the danger of nuclear war (and which provided the famous "clock") has updated its dire warnings following the attacks on science and fact since Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 21, 2017.
Like the recent Women's March on Washington (and related marches around the world), the scientists' march is currently being organized and coming into place on social media.
The story was broken in Daily Kos and other news services on January 25, 2017.
HERE IS THE DAILY KOS REPORT...
Scientists Plan March on D.C., Jen Hayden, January 25, 2017, Daily Kos
Scientists begin going rogue, create alt Twitter account and plan march on D.C.
Scientists working in the federal government are not happy with the science-denying direction this administration is already taking in week one. WEEK ONE! Here’s the bone-chilling directive sent to employees of the Environmental Protection Agency:
No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
No blog messages.
No new content can be placed on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
Virtually all of the Cabinet appointments by Donald Trump are people who deny science and who in many cases ignore history, as the President wants them to. With a majority of Republicans in the Senate and House, Trump may be able to continue purging government publications of facts and replacing the words of the United States on scientific matters with Trumpian blather and outright lies.Popular Science noted how dangerous this is for the public at-large, "Late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once wrote that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Science will suffer without transparency—and so will we."
Rogue scientists are plotting to fight back. An “alt” account popped up on Twitter with news of a scientists march on Washington after the National Park Service feeds were ordered to be shut down:
The person or people behind the account are feisty and ready for a fight:
Aside from the new rogue Twitter feed, they have begun planning a march on Washington. The latest information on the march is below, more information is available on their website. Although no official date appears to have been set, the Facebook group has collected 60,000 members virtually overnight.
What is the Scientists' March on Washington
Welcome! We want to thank you all for your incredible outpouring of support for this march. We are working to schedule a March for Science on DC and across the United States. We have not settled on a date yet but will do so as quickly as possible and announce it here. Although this will start with a march, we hope to use this as a starting point to take a stand for science in politics. Slashing funding and restricting scientists from communicating their findings (from tax-funded research!) with the public is absurd and cannot be allowed to stand as policy. This is a non-partisan issue that reaches far beyond people in the STEM fields and should concern anyone who values empirical research and science.
There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives. The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action. The diversity of life arose by evolution. Politicians who devalue expertise risk making decisions that do not reflect reality and must be held accountable. An American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world.
Please bear with us as pull together our mission statement and further details. Many more updates to come on Monday.
Jen Hayden is a Daily Kos staff writer.
ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017, THE DAILY BEAST REPORTED AS FOLLOWS:
NEWSPEAK... Science Is the Latest Casualty of Trump’s War on Truth... A Trump spokesman said, then tried to unsay, that EPA science would be reviewed by politicians. Republicans have tried this before. BY Jay Michaelson
01.26.17 4:10 AM ET
This week, the EPA stopped doing science.
As reported, clarified, and restated within a hectic 24-hour period, the Trump administration announced that scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency would be reviewed by political staff prior to being released.
“We'll take a look at what's happening so that the voice coming from the EPA is one that's going to reflect the new administration,” Doug Erickson, head of communications for Trump’s EPA transition team, told NPR Tuesday.
That, of course, is propaganda, not science. Science depends on the scientific method, which since the 17th century has required empirical evidence, scientific reasoning, and the objective presentation of data so that other scientists can verify or refute the conclusions drawn. If data is doctored for political purposes, it isn’t scientific data.
After some outcry, Erickson subsequently backtracked on his original claim, “clarifying” that he was only referring to existing information on the EPA website—such as its pages about climate change. Such “holds” would be normal for a presidential transition, but Erickson’s earlier comments suggested a much wider change in policy.
In fact, there is precedent for Erickson’s initial version. In 2003, when the George W. Bush administration tried to change an EPA climate change report to amplify the level of uncertainty, and swap out EPA’s own data for a study commissioned by the fossil fuel industry’s trade association, the American Petroleum Institute.
Two years later, it was later learned that those edits came from Philip A. Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, a lawyer who had worked for the American Petroleum Institute itself and who had no scientific background. Cooney subsequently resigned, and was hired two days later by ExxonMobil.
The White House’s naked attempt at censorship was a scandal in 2005. It would become standard operating procedure in 2017.
Meanwhile, the Trump transition team has instructed employees at the EPA, the Department of Agriculture and the Interior Department to stop using their agencies’ social media accounts. In an amusing twist, that led to the rogue efforts of the Badlands National Park twitter team, which began tweeting—gasp—scientific facts about climate change. Those tweets were later deleted, and a new, unofficial account sprang up purportedly managed by National Park Service employees, which currently has 935,000 followers.
These policies fit neatly with the new administration’s core beliefs about climate change specifically and truth more generally.
First, it’s well known that Trump has been all over the map about climate change: it’s a Chinese conspiracy, it may or may not be real, or maybe it is somewhat real if Ivanka says so. The range is similar throughout the Right: moderates agree that climate change is real, conservatives deny it, and the alt-right says it’s a leftist conspiracy.
Of course, climate change is not a matter of opinion; it’s a matter of scientific consensus as to the validity, or not, of the theory in question. And on that count, the consensus is overwhelming. For example, one recent review found that of 928 peer-reviewed articles were published in scientific journals over a five-year period, all 928 adduced evidence proving the existence of human-caused climate change, with exactly zero showing evidence contradicting it.
But in this administration, with its “alternative facts” that contradict photographic evidence, outrageous conspiracy theories about voter fraud that emanate from cranks on the internet, attacks on journalism, bald lies about the efficacy of torture, and denial of basic constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and nondiscrimination, the principles of the scientific method are mere collateral damage from its wholesale attack on truth. It’s hard even to complain about censoring environmental science when the president of the United States is promoting outright lies, whether about voter fraud today or birth certificates in 2011.
Still, climate change is a uniquely perilous context for Trump’s assault on truth, because he is jumping on an existing bandwagon: the campaign, paid for with billions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry, to convince Americans that all the world’s scientists are wrong, and that what is obviously happening to our planet is either not happening, or isn’t our fault. Toward this end, the fossil fuel industry has paid fake think tanks—most importantly the Heartland Institute—that clothe the industry’s message in pseudo-scientific garb, fake scientists to publish bogus articles, and an army of publicists.
These efforts have worked. As of last October, only 48% of Americans “believed” what 100% of peer-reviewed climate science articles stated: that the climate is changing due to human activity. And that has largely tracked partisan affiliation. Meanwhile, only 27% are aware that “almost all” climate scientists say that human behavior is chiefly responsible for climate change—which 93% of American Association for the Advancement of Science members indeed say.
That last data point is worth considering. Just as the Trump administration has created “alternative facts” to contradict objectively verifiable ones, reported by journalists with professional standards of conduct, so it is now joining the fossil fuel industry in creating alternative science.
But as with myths about Benghazi, or the Clinton email server, or voter fraud, or vaccines, the alternative can quickly become the mainstream, especially when they are amplified by Fox News, Breitbart, and the rest. Moreover, in the case of environmental science, the government has the power of the purse; it’s easy to imagine academic institutions losing federal support if they deviate from the party line on climate or a host of other issues.
The primary casualty here is, of course, the stability of the biosphere, already reeling because of global climate disruption. But a secondary casualty is the notion of science itself—now demoted, like journalism, to a matter of opinion.
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” But in Trumpland, there’s no difference between the two.
