To remove words such as “climate change”
On August 24, the Trump administration’s Department of Energy censored a Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science proposal from Dr. Jennifer Bowen, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
She posted a screenshot of the email on Facebook, writing, “This just happened. I’m just going to leave this here for people to ponder.”
In the email, Dr. Bowen was told, “I have been asked to contact you to update the wording in your proposal abstract to remove words such as ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change.’ This is being asked as we have to meet the president’s budget language restrictions and don’t want to make any changes without your knowledge or consent. Below is the current wording for your abstract—at your next convenience, will you kindly revise the wording and send back to me as soon as you can? That way we can update our website.” The words “climate change” and “global warming” were highlighted for removal in the proposal.
So Trump gets to control the wording used by independent scientists who don’t work for the government but do contribute research to government agencies. That’s pretty stunning.
The Guardian reported earlier this month that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has been censored from using the term “climate change.” They have been directed to use the phrase “weather extremes” instead.
Scientists have feared the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back and undermine climate change initiatives. On August 7, The New York Times reported that scientists from 13 federal agencies leaked a climate change report for fear it would be censored or its findings would be prevented from release. The Trump administration is politicizing and manipulating scientists’ work and research to better fit its own political agenda, which favors industries that profit from suppressing climate change science.
Good plan. By the same token the Trump administration should suppress information about approaching hurricanes for the sake of industries that profit from selling hot dogs on the beach.
Car manufacturers could save money by removing those pesky seat belts and airbags.
Could they be allowed to write “continuously increasing weather extremes”?
PS I note that her proposal contains the words “carbon sequestration”. That’s just as unacceptable, surely. Why would you want to know about carbon sequestration unless unsequestered carbon might somehow be bad?
Okay, let’s try “catastrophic violations of traditional weather”, “global cooking”, “rampaging carbon hordes”, “perpetual hurricane season”, and “increasing likelihood of feline/canine cohabitation”. Better? Politically correct enough for you, right-wing language snowflakes?
Yes! In fact, instead of “basket of deplorables”, this could be the new name for the Trump voters…
I think that everyone who accepts the science behind global warming should fight back by putting the words into every single sentence spoken – on TV, in the movies, in books, cartoons, on t-shirts…we should make it impossible for Trump to move a muscle without seeing the words.
GLOBAL WARMING! That’s for you, Donald Trump. Now just f*** off.
This is occurring in the world’s scientific powerhouse. Presumably other countries will benefit from the resulting exodus of scientists from the US. Australia’s most recent Nobel Laureate in science was born in the US, please send more scientists.
I’m amazed at how much damage one person can inflict on America’s scientific establishment.
It’s not one person. It’s that one person plus all the millions who voted for him, who cheer him on at rallies, and who Tweet in support of him. It’s Mike Pence, who enables his administration. It’s Scott Adams, who defends his administration and practically drools over him. It’s every damn person who puts on a MAGA hat and goes out to torture his neighbors by talking endlessly about the great orange one.
And the resulting brain drain doesn’t bother any of them. It’s what they want. They want all the people they don’t like, that don’t look like them, that don’t have the same accent, that don’t think like them, and that have an education they don’t agree with to leave the country. They want “their” country back, and that means they want the rest of us out…they believe we are harming “their” precious country. And among the ones they want to leave “their” country and go back where they came from are the Native Americans – who were here before we got here, but are seen as “foreigners” and interlopers to the Trump supporters.
Hey, if the US starts reporting temperatures in Celsius, all the numbers are lower!
Here are my entries:
Global longjohns
Anthropogenic weather shenanigans
Venus envy abatement
Thermal Excursion
Trump Temp
The Longest Summer
Global Tropical Paradise
Bitchin’ Polar Waterskiing Weather
Permafrostfree
Saunarific
Humidextrous
You win.
I like all of those.
Iknklast @7
Yes, we have that type of proud ignoramus here as well, fortunately the party that represents them only receives about 10% of the vote. So far. There’s also an anti-intellectual bias in the ruling conservative coalition. Given the catastrophe in the US, I’m not going to be complacent.
I’d vote for ‘Global Tropical Paradise’, it’s the ideal PR slogan for a property ‘developer’. Apparently the North West passage is now open in the northern summer, what could possibly go wrong?
Thereby perpetuating the disinformation campaign that actively seeks to conflate climate and weather in the minds of the non-scientific and under-informed.