President Trump, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend science. You may or may not have already met, although at this point I'm pretty sure you're just ignoring that science even exists. I mean, all throughout your campaign you spread straight-up falsehoods such as that climate change is a hoax created by and for the Chinese (it's not)
and that vaccines cause autism (they don't).It's to be expected that an administration so quick to tell fabrications and call them "alternative facts" would not be comfortable with a realm of study where facts are endgame. If I was to tell you that the earth is 92.96 million miles away from the sun, you can't argue that it's actually 93 million miles- not unless you want to be laughed out of the room.
That's the thing about science, and scientific law, it can't be changed. Science doesn't care about your opinions, your political stances, your religion etc. While it can't be changed, it can apparently be silenced, as proven by Trump and his administrative team. Not even a week into his presidency he put out a gag order so that the EPA, the USDA, and other agencies are now banned from communicating with the public.
This shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone, as I said before the new President was a brazen peddler of scientific falsities during his campaign. Soon after he won the election he called notorious anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr to a meeting in Trump Tower. There were rumors put forth by his transition team that Kennedy would be put in charge of overseeing vaccine safety and regulations- rumors that were quickly squashed after a major public blowback.
Once he was actually placed in office however, he went much farther, lobbing a series on both institutional science and indisputable facts. Many people noticed not even two days after he was worn in, the White House stripped any mention of climate change or effects to fight it from its website. In addition from being banned to communicate with the media and general public, the Environmental Protection Agency was forced to freeze the grants and contracts it regularly issues to study environmental issues and handle improvement work such as handling hazardous waste.
None of this bodes well for science or public health and well being. In a conversation with TIME magazine, Jonathan Levy who is a former senior official for the department of energy said "The EPA doesn't just issue press releases. They do work like mercury testing in water and particulate testing in the atmosphere. People die if that doesn’t get done. Look at Flint, Michigan."
Flint, Michigan still has lead in their water. And while yes, it is now within the legal levels, they still have lead in their water. And instead of continuing to find ways to solve the issue, or issuing funds to help the people of Flint, the White House quietly closed the investigation into it. People in Flint are still bathing, drinking, cooking with leaded water. The water is still brown, it is still dangerous, it is still an ongoing issue.
But the EPA and USDA are not the only ones being muzzled right now. The Interior Department is facing a similar punishment for tweeting the turnout comparison photos between former President Obama's inauguration in 2009 and current President Trump's. They also got in trouble for tweeting out about the deletion of climate change and LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.
What I personally think is hilarious and completely unexpected, is the rebellion of some national parks services. Badlands National Park in South Dakota sent out a flurry of tweets about climate change, though they were pulled down. Not only this, but several people have created “rogue” Twitter accounts
and frequently tweet out facts, such as Rogue NASA, AltYosemiteNPS, AltYellowstoneNatPar, and many others.While it is fair- if not extremely petty- that the thin-skinned President would be in a huff over the inauguration comparisons. The tweets from Badlands however, and many of these rogue accounts, deliver actual scientific fact such as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are now at a dangerous 405 parts per million compared to 280 before the Industrial Revolution.
Levy, who worked under the previous Secretary of Energy physicist Ernest Moniz said that the standards for directness were very clear under his old boss. "He used to say 'Good news is optional, bad news is mandatory and has to go first.'" For the Trump team however, bad news- or at least unwelcome news- need not go ever.
One of the very real risks of this type of denial is that it can lead to a brain drain out of the government and into private sectors. The reason people choose to do science for a living is so they can actually do science. If the executive branch were to prevent that, these same brains can always flee into academia or industry, or even overseas. This Make-America-Great-Again administration could easily see the country fall far behind scientifically to it's competitors, including China- Trump's go to fear tactic.
Even without public protests and marches or bureaucratic resistance, Trump is picking a fight he will certainly lose. Something worth remembering, science doesn't read tweets. It doesn't care about the fact that you only won because of the Electoral College. When the rising oceans swamp coastal regions, such as my own home, or when unvaccinated children start dying from measles or mumps or whooping cough, you don't get to blame the "corrupt media" or voter fraud. That is literally just the way the world works. Trump and his administration need to understand this, and soon- before the rest of us pay the price.
