Trump info shutdowns at US science agencies, especially EPA

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paddoboy

Valued Senior Member
By now it should have been possible to get away from our new presidency here at On Science Blogs. January 2017 is ending and the Year of the Rooster, bringer of light, is upon us. But stuff–bad stuff, often worse stuff–keeps happening to science and medicine.


the gag reflex

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait is gagging at the gag orders suddenly clamped on government science, and he is far from alone. He is talking particularly about Environmental Protection Agency staff and scientists at the Agricultural Research Service. But Official Silence has been imposed at other government agencies too.

No press releases. No blog posts. No tweets. Speculation that researchers will not even be permitted to publish their findings in journals in the usual way.

Writing about the gag orders and also Trump's executive order to freeze all EPA grants and projects at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense, grad student Christina Jenkins said, "Before now we were talking in hypotheticals, about what might happen if Trump was the president, what that might mean for science or for the environment. The reality is scarier than I imagined."




Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-trump-info-shutdowns-science-agencies.html#jCp
 
Perhaps some old fashion strike action needs to be considered.
How would any government act if all scientists from every discipline decided to go on strike if any ridiculous adverse action was taken?
yes, I understand how that will effect the normal population, particularly with regards to medical science.....
Let's hope neither eventuate either by the government or the scientists.
 
What needs to be done of course, particularly with Donald Duck, is make him some how see how if it weren't for science, he and his cohorts would still be swinging in the trees!
 
sculptor said:
Read John Bates comments on Tom Karl?
Click to expand...
http://www.popsci.com.au/science/th...nge-data8212heres-what-you-should-know,450206

The House Science Committee claims scientists faked climate change data—here's what you should know


On Sunday February 5th, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology published a press release alleging, based on questionable evidence, that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “manipulated climate records.”
The source of their evidence, according to Committee spokesperson Thea McDonalds, was a Daily Mail article. The Daily Mail is a British tabloid most famous for outlandish headlines such as "Is the Bum the New Side Boob” and "ISIS Chief executioner winning hearts with his rugged looks.” This is not the first time that the House Science Committee has used spurious evidence to dispute the existence of human-driven climate change.

The piece, which quotes John Bates—a scientist who NOAA once employed—challenges the data used in the famous 2015 Karl study. The study, named after Thomas R. Karl—the director of the NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the paper's lead author—was published in Science and debunked the notion of a climate “hiatus” or “cooling.”

The White House Press release, which includes quotes from committee Chairman Lamar Smith as well as Darin Lahood (R-Ill) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz), misrepresents a procedural disagreement as proof that human caused climate change is not occurring. It's akin to pointing to a family argument as proof that they aren't actually related.

"What the House Committee is trying to do, like they did in the past, is debunk the whole issue of global warming,” said Yochanan Kushnir, a Senior Scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

At the center of the argument is contention over how NOAA maintains climate data records. Climate researchers receive grants to process and develop climate-related data sets. Once those data sets are fully developed, it becomes the responsibility of NOAA's National Climactic Data Center (NCDC) to preserve, monitor, and update that data—which can sometimes be what data scientists refer to as messy.

“The problem,” said Kevin Trenberth a Distinguished Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “is that this is quite an arduous process, and can take a long time. And, of course NOAA doesn't necessarily get an increase of funds to do this.”
more..............

 
A significant factor is natural cycles. As for human causes, it may be too little too late at this point, specially with China on its way to catching up with the modernization of Europe, Australia, USA etc.
Still, it is insane to be against doing what we can to minimize the change.

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forget the daily mail

Look at what John Bates (Dr. John Bates, the recently retired principal scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center), actually said.
It is a flap over sloppy methodology.

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as/re energy, our history of energy use has been one that uses up one resource, then finds another.
Wisdom would suggest finding another before the current one is used up.
 
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