I'm a scientist. Under Trump I lost my job for refusing to hide climate crisis facts

[Judi Lynn]

Maria Caffrey
I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying administration – and it cost me my job

Thu 25 Jul 2019 02.00 EDT

The Trump administration’s hostility towards climate science is not new. Interior climate staffer Joel Clement’s reassignment and the blocking of intelligence aide Rod Schoonover’s climate testimony, which forced both federal employees to resign in protest, are just two of the innumerable examples. These attempts to suppress climate science can manifest themselves in many ways. It starts with burying important climate reports and becomes something more insidious like stopping climate scientists from doing their jobs. In February 2019, I lost my job because I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying administration. And yet my story is no longer unique.

This is why on 22 July I filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration. But this is not the only part to my story; I will also speak to Congress on 25 July about my treatment and the need for stronger scientific integrity protections.

I have worked at the National Park Service (NPS) for a total of eight years. I started out as an intern during the Bush administration, where I experienced nothing like this. I returned in 2012 after earning my PhD, when the NPS funded a project I designed to provide future sea level and storm surge estimates for 118 coastal parks under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. This kind of information is crucial in order for the NPS to adequately protect coastal parks against the future effects of the climate crisis.

I handed in the first draft of my scientific report in the summer of 2016 and, after the standard rigorous scientific peer review process, it was ready for release in early 2017. But once the new administration came into power, publication was repeatedly delayed, with increasingly vague explanations from my supervisors. So for months, I waited. And waited. I was still waiting when I went on maternity leave almost a year later in December 2017.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/25/trump-administration-climate-crisis-denying-scientist

[secondwind]

1. K&R !!!

[democratisphere]

2. Now drumpf needs to lose his job.

How can one creature f'up everything?

[joshdawg]

3. He had all the help he needed with the complicit republicans in Congress.

Especially mcturtle and now barr.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

4. Here's hoping climate change...

is stronger and has more integrity than some in congress...maybe that way trump can be blown out of the white nationalist house.

[Ilsa]

6. And Bribe-a-way-go is under water. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Need we remind money hungry RepubliCons that taxpayers paid to discover those facts. D taxpayers.

[Duppers]

7. Mygawd! How unfair!!

But give it 10 more years, it'll be impossible to deny, even for the raving idiots...who'll deny they ever denied.


I deny I ever posted this.

[2naSalit]

8. K&R

[Gothmog]

9. I am glad that TRMS has covered this

[Kid Berwyn]

10. The Truth is the enemy of fascists.

Melt the witch, not the planet.