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Following from my posts in the Trump Administration page here, here, and here I decided to create a SciComm thread to aggregate everything. In my first post, I outlined my reasons for speaking up and becoming an advocate, and I quote:
I've committed 30 minutes per day to summarising the news items that I feel are important, and will address any questions if I can answer them. I encourage other scientists (and I know there are a few on this board) to join me in posting information and clarifying, explaining and emphasising the importance of fact/evidence-based decision making.
A follow-up on the topic of silencing scientists:
Science matters. Facts matter. Communication of facts is paramount to science and policy.
I'm heeding Rush Holt's call and speaking here as a young scientist, one who is deeply worried and has seen similar happen in Canada and Australia. This affects everyone - research is collaborative and international. Both Canada and Australia's research communities are still struggling to recover from Harper and Abbott. Research literally takes years to re-build, and once people are "lost", few ever come back. Many, many of my friends/colleagues permanently left science because there were no more jobs and research programs/institutes closed down.
I am not an alarmist. I have only ever protested once in my life - that was against a cut for biomedical research funding. I don't often sign petitions or pledges, and tend to be of the type to suck it up and deal. But this is important, and I need to stand with my colleagues. I signed this yesterday.
If there's anyone else who wants to support scientific research (particularly on climate science), you can either donate to the union of concerned scientists, or contact your local representative.
I'm also willing to take questions that people have, and provide answers to the best of my ability. Scientific communication is very very important, and though my colleagues and I would generally prefer to be left alone to do our research, I've come to realise that it's this attitude that creates a disconnect with citizens and introduces misunderstandings about what we do on a daily basis.
I've committed 30 minutes per day to summarising the news items that I feel are important, and will address any questions if I can answer them. I encourage other scientists (and I know there are a few on this board) to join me in posting information and clarifying, explaining and emphasising the importance of fact/evidence-based decision making.
A follow-up on the topic of silencing scientists:
But when Badlands National Park sent four climate change-related tweets into the internet universe, its behavior was widely labeled as “rogue.†A captivating angle, to be sure, but it would have been more accurate to call this behavior “normal.†Park rangers have written and spoken about natural phenomena like bears, forests, volcanoes, and climate for decades. In this case, the park claims that a former employee hijacked the account and disseminated climate facts. If true, it’s fortunate for the park that this mischievous operative simply tweeted uncomplicated, sensible science.
Soon after the tweets were posted, Badlands National Park deleted them—perhaps fearing repercussions, given that the government had temporarily banned the National Park Service from tweeting for an unrelated incident earlier that week. But to scientists—and, I'd wager, most park rangers—the idea that the tweets were somehow inappropriate is baffling.
“Questioning this science is comparable to questioning gravity,†says Jason Briner, a glacial geologist who visits and studies the Arctic each summer.
On January 11, the park encouraged the public to “Learn more about #climatechange in the Midwest. #ParkScience.†And on January 9, the park posted “In the last 100 years, the Earth’s surface temps have risen an average 1.33°F. More than 20% of this change been since 1996. #Climate.â€
But then came the post-inauguration climate tweets.
"Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate."
This tweet would cause few, if any, scientists to raise an eyebrow. The precise carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere over the past hundreds of thousands of years are not controversial. (The record actually goes back to 800,000 years ago). This ancient air is preserved in Earth’s oldest ice, found in the Antarctic highlands, and it's pretty simple to study it.
“It’s the easiest thing one can do. There’s no room for interpretation. It’s a direct observation of what greenhouse gas concentrations used to be,†says Briner.
[...]
This reality was expressed in another tweet offered by the Badlands National Park Twitter account:
“The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93 ppm."
These factual messages are consistent with the climate change messaging already promoted by the agency: It has a climate change webpage and climate-specific twitter account.
When it comes down to it, the Park Service and its rangers aren’t in the business of sharing myths. Park rangers preserve local and cultural histories, safeguard lands, and explain what we know about the evolving world. The tweet stating December 2016’s carbon dioxide part-per-million concentration isn’t a whimsical, partisan notion, spun to promote some esoteric park ranger agenda. It’s a measurable fact obtained by simple, careful observation. But with signs that climate-related science is set to be stifled in the current administration and reports that government environmental scientists may be kept from sharing all of their work with the public, individuals tasked with defending the land may find themselves "going rogue" by doing the jobs they've done for years.
So don't be surprised by the secretive Twitter accounts blasting out data. The facts of our nation's climate cannot be considered partisan.
“There’s an overwhelming amount of scientific data on climate change,†says Briner. “They are real facts, not alternative facts.â€
Science matters. Facts matter. Communication of facts is paramount to science and policy.