Opinion: The silencing of science in the age of Trump
How climate scientists have lost their power amidst a crisis
By Kristen Kilgallen, Psychology, 2020
Although President Donald Trump and his administration’s rhetoric is harmful in shaping public perception of the seriousness of the climate crisis — tweeting, in one instance, that “Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”, invented by the Chinese to get ahead economically — it has always been comforting to know that government scientists and reports will go through a rigorous research process and peer review to state the facts. However, many avid climate deniers are the supervisors of those who are meant to produce these objective reports, which allows them to declare the policies and procedures of the agencies they head. The Trump administration has found a way to suppress the dissemination of climate science and to bypass it when it comes to decision making and climate policy.
In many of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) and Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) most alarming and influential publications, the Trump administration has used a well-known tactic to silence findings: deny, delay and deflect. After the nation’s most comprehensive climate assessment was released in 2018, President Trump denied its accuracy, proclaiming to reporters “I don’t believe it.”. When asked about the report, which indicated that a number of life-altering and dire consequences of climate change were going to occur if no changes were made, officials offered that it was only based on the “worst case scenario” and the next report would be more “balanced.” The administration replied to scientists that they “simply disagreed with the paper’s conclusions” from a 2018 study from the USDA, which revealed that a carbon rich environment endangered the nutrients in rice, grass and, therefore, the global food supply. The report was written and conducted by Dr. Lewis Ziska, who has conducted research at the USDA for over two decades. Ziska has noted that the number of scientists working with her to study climate stressors has been slashed from 11 to about 4 or 5.
The Trump administration removal of climate data off of government websites, paired with the defying of the longstanding precedent of publicizing and interpreting influential scientific data, has made research findings inaccessible to the public. According to Politico, the Trump Administration has overlooked, dismissed, and evaded the findings of at least 45 studies, and likely more in relation to climate change. In previous years, it has even been reported that officials have not only sanitized reports by the near entire evasion of the words “climate change,” climate related words, and even the word “climate” itself, but they have deleted certain findings from press releases. One line famously reported from the Washington Post in 2017 that was deleted, “Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding,’’ never made it to the public after the report was already delayed from news release for several months.
Ziska has noted that the number of scientists working with her to study climate stressors has been slashed from 11 to about 4 or 5.
This top down pressure from government officials not only has direct impacts on the science the public is being exposed to, but has indirect implications for the way scientists self-censor their work. A survey of federal scientist across 16 agencies found that “about one in five reported they had avoided working on climate change or using the phrase “climate change” without explicit orders to do so.”
The accounts from dismissed scientists are particularly perturbing, due to the fact that scientists who were doing the work of their agency and serving the American people faced threats, reassignment, and termination on the basis of politics rather than merit. “It’s been made clear to us that we’re not supposed to use climate change in press releases anymore. They will not be authorized,” one federal researcher said, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal.“It’s a lot of stuff that definitely filters down, and it affects the reality of people on the ground doing the work when you’re not sure of how I should present this. It’s definitely a huge waste of time.”
“It’s been made clear to us that we’re not supposed to use climate change in press releases anymore. They will not be authorized.”
One of the most resonant takes was from National Parks Service scientist Maria Caffrey, whose findings related to climate change’s impact on coastal areas were not publicized. “The excuses varied but became ever more vague, such as ‘we are ever so busy’ or that it would worry people… A superior said they wanted to keep a low profile on climate change for four or maybe eight years while Trump was around… I was told not to attribute changes in public lands to human actions.” Caffrey has been working on the report since 2013, and eventually had her salary lowered to 25,000 a year, and later she was asked to leave the agency. The reason given was budget cuts, but even when she offered to work for free she was still asked to leave, as her work on climate change impacts was no longer needed.
This is an alarming pattern amongst expert scientists in their respective agencies. Joel Clement, the former director of the Interior Department’s Office of Policy Analysis, was reassigned from any climate change work after speaking at the United Nations about the research he had previously been conducting about adaptations to global warming. He was moved to “the office that collects royalty income from oil, gas, and mining companies — an auditing position for which I had zero expertise.” Similarly, Jacob Carter, an EPA scientist, was abruptly told by his boss that he should “begin looking for another position,” while working on models that predicted sea level rise over the next 100 years.
“By the time I left, the morale was the lowest I’d seen in 40 years. Our work had become irrelevant.”
It’s not the actionable suppression of science and data that is the most negative consequence of this administration, it’s the lack of respect for scientific conclusions, and the hollowing out of expertise from scientific agencies that is most concerning for the future of climate change science. Cuts in budget, lack of workers, and change in scientific methodology procedures has made it difficult for scientists to fight back against such attacks on their work. A new climate review panel has been appointed to question the broad scientific consensus and will be headed by William Happer, a physicist who has headed advocacy groups dedicated to debunking climate science and who once, in an interview with CNBC, made the analogy that “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler”.
Another shift in methodology was that climate assessments and models that made future predictions past 2040 were no longer allowed, removing the myriad of impacts that were not to take place until later. This is highly alarming because not only does it provide an incomplete and sanitized outlook on the future of the planet, but it removes necessary scientific data that was being harbored and collected to create these future predictions and to come up with solutions on how to prepare.
This calculated side stepping of the most pressing findings in government science agencies is not only problematic for the safety of the human race, but it also is having a big impact on those who have dedicated their lives to doing this work. “By the time I left, the morale was the lowest I’d seen in 40 years. Our work had become irrelevant,” says Jeff Alson, a 62 year senior engineer at the EPA.When the facts and science are no longer welcome, it becomes difficult for scientists to sustain the rigor and energy they once had for their work. Work that keeps all Americans safe. Unfortunately, there has been a dramatic shift in the composition of scientific agencies, board members, and panel members. New policies and personae make burying and silencing the science the norm, rather than the exception.
