31/01/2017

3 Things You Need To Know About The Science Rebellion Against Trump

National Geographic -  Laura Parker | Craig Welch

The new president's first moves on science spur a Twitter war and prompt a march.
Ice is melting in much of the Arctic thanks to rising global average temperatures. The new presidential administration is facing heat over its early response. Photograph by Paul Nicklen, National Geographic Creative
The Trump administration was merely minutes old when all references to climate change disappeared from the White House website. Later that day, the National Park Service Twitter account was briefly shutdown because the new president was miffed about a retweet of side-by-side aerial photographs that clearly showed the crowd at former President Obama's 2009 inauguration was larger than the crowd at President Trump's.
Trump was so peeved, he personally ordered acting Park Service director Michael Reynolds in a phone call to come up with additional photographs that would prove the media "had lied in reporting the attendance had been no better than average," the Washington Post reported. Reynolds sent more photos to the White House. But they did not show larger crowds.
So began an unprecedented rebellion inside government agencies that quickly transformed from a duel about presidential popularity into the fate of the government's work on climate change.
By the end of Week One, public affairs officials in agencies where climate scientists work had received directives aimed at silencing them—at least temporarily. The Environmental Protection Agency was ordered, Reuters reported, to take down its climate change page from its website—although that order was shelved in the backlash that followed. Grants and contracts at EPA were also frozen, although there are reports that that edict may also be rescinded.
"Taken together, what we've seen over the first five days is completely unprecedented," says Peter Gleick, a water scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. "I have seen nothing like it in my lifetime and I've been around for a while."


Climate Change 101 With Bill Nye

The Trump administration is hardly the first new executive branch to attempt to influence scientific research that contradicts political party orthodoxy. Under President George W. Bush, Interior Department officials sometimes overruled agency scientists working on endangered species issues. The Obama administration was accused by scientists of underreporting damage from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and at times required public-relations chaperones when scientists talked to the press.
But the speed and ferocity with which controls on science appeared in the opening days of the Trump administration set off the fury on Twitter and inspired scientists from Maine to California to join a scientists' march on Washington.
More than a dozen "rogue" unofficial Twitter accounts launched to voice resistance to the orders. Some claimed to be tweeting on behalf of unidentified federal scientists at the Park Service, NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments—although no one knows for sure the identities of the people posting the tweets.
Scientists are not known for waging political protest en masse. But they have become so alarmed by what has played out, they are taking a page from the Women's March in Washington that drew an estimated 470,000 protesters, with protests in at least 80 other countries the day after Trump was sworn into office.
"The situation seems more uncertain than ever," says Bethany Wiggin, a University of Pennsylvania humanities professor who directs the Penn Library Data Refuge and has been leading the effort to collect and preserve federal climate and environmental data.
A former NPS employee tweeted climate change information on an official Badlands National Park Twitter account this week, in defiance of a Trump order. Photograph by Annie Griffiths, National Geographic Creative
"We hear there is a gag order and then there is a claim that the gag order has been revoked, and then it is denied that it was ever made. Everything seems incredibly in flux," Wiggin says. "What seems certain is that we have an anti-science administration and an anti-factual and anti-research administration that does not understand what it needs to do."
David Doniger, director of climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says he's less concerned about the Twitter war than efforts to expunge climate information from government websites.
"The most dramatic thing is the turn from full acceptance of climate science to this calculated waffling from all the Cabinet nominees who testified on the Hill," he says. "They are all saying, 'the climate is changing, we just don't know whether it is human influence or how much. That still amounts to climate denial."
Whether intended or not at the start-up of the Trump administration, the question of how the president handles climate change has now become an urgent question to settle. Doniger says the point isn't that EPA contracts were frozen, it's what happens next: "What will be more telling is how they change what's contracted for and what tasks the agency is going to be allowed to do and not be allowed to do."
Below are three takeaways from the tumultuous first week:

Muzzling Agencies Inspires A Scientists' March On Washington
Doubters of science in general date back to Galileo. Climate scientists have been an outspoken voice for as long as the government has been studying climate science.
But instructions to limit communications to the public that were passed on to public affairs officials at the EPA, Agriculture Department, and, according to the Washington Post, the National Institutes of Health, have fed fears that the Trump administration will attempt to filter climate science through a political lens.
"Attacks on climate change are nothing new," Gleick says. "They have always come from the fringe, peripheral groups and individuals. Now it looks as though marginal groups have control of the steering wheel."
Meanwhile, the march, which began as a suggestion on Facebook, has blossomed into a full-force organisational effort, with a web page and activists working to set it up. A date will be announced possibly next week. The March for Science Twitter account has 288,000 followers.
"This has just developed in the last 48 to 72 hours. It's really snowballing," says Jacquelyn Gill, one of the march organisers and a University of Maine paleoecologist who studies how extinction affects biodiversity. "What prompted this is the idea that climate science in particular will be targeted. It's not about cost-cutting. The entire United States science and medical research budget is less than two percent of the federal budget. This is clearly agenda driven."
Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general, appears at a confirmation hearing before Congress as Trump's pick for the head of the EPA. Conservationists have criticised Pruitt's record. Photograph by Gabriella Demczuk, The New York Times, Redux
The Park Service Became The Unlikely Hero Of The 'Rebellion'
The Park Service is one of the least controversial and most popular federal agencies because its primary task is to take care of the nation's parks. But in the wake of the flap about the size of the inauguration crowd, a former Park Service employee at the Badlands National Park in North Dakota defied President Trump—setting off a broader resistance that quickly spread to other federal agencies.
The Badlands former employee, who still had access to the Park Service's official Twitter account, posted tweets about rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. One of three posts said: "Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate."
By the time those posts were deleted on January 24, the Badlands Twitter account had some 60,000 new followers.
Then, a new account was born—AltUSNatParkService—which used the Park Service logo and identified itself as the "Unofficial #Resistance team of U.S. National Park Service." As of Friday morning, it had 1.24 million followers.
There are now more than a dozen alt-agency Twitter accounts, all posting a combination of climate science facts and taunts at Trump. Although these rogue accounts claim to represent agency employees, it is impossible to confirm who set the accounts up and is actively tweeting.
A Park Service employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being fired told National Geographic that agency workers are concerned that there will be reprisals from the administration, which has been embarrassed by the public show of resistance to the commander in chief—even though it is impossible to determine if the alt-sites are operated by actual government employees or internet trolls. But, the employee said, one tweet in particular posted on the alt-Park Service account suggests the account may indeed be operated by at least one rebellious Park Service employee because it refers to the White House by its official name, President's Park, because the residence is part of the national park system—a tidbit not widely known outside the Park Service.
"Reports of an unidentified orange haired mammal close to President's Park," the tweet says. "Possibly invasive species. DC animal services have been notified." (Read about the new species of moth named after President Trump.)

A Glimmer Of Hope?
It's still early and missteps are not uncommon as new administrations get up and running. The contract freeze at the EPA may, in the end, turn out to be "a tempest in a teapot," Doniger says. Although signals so far have put the scientific community on red alert, it may be too early to reach any conclusion other than the administration's start-up is in disarray.
Despite less-than-compelling testimony about climate change from both Rex Tillerson and Scott Pruitt, Trump's picks to lead the State Department and EPA, a glimmer of hope shone through that at least one of the newcomers understands what's at stake. Billionaire banker Wilbur Ross, the administration's nominee to head the Commerce Department, outlined his views in a letter to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat whose home state of Florida is one of the most vulnerable places to sea-level rise on Earth.
While Ross, who lives part of the year in Palm Beach County, Florida, echoed his fellow Cabinet colleagues in demurring on the cause of climate change, he agreed to focus on addressing the impacts. "Science should be left to the scientists," Ross said.

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Abbott To PM: Scrap RET Or Face Fury

The Australian - Simon Benson

Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: Braden Fastier
Tony Abbott has unleashed anothe­r critique on Malcolm Turn­bull’s leadership, using his Achilles heel — climate change — to accuse the government of treating voters like “mugs” if it did not scrap the renewable energ­y target.
In his second swipe at the Prime Minister in as many weeks, his predecessor said the Coalition would lose all credibility if it did not move to quickly rein in the push to generate more renewable energy.
In a speech yesterday to a Young Liberals conference in Adelaide­, Mr Abbott accused the government of “losing touch” with its traditional supporters.
The escalation of rhetoric contained a charge that the government not only lacked leadership in Mr Turnbull but that the Coal­ition was at risk of elect­oral collapse. It also reveals Mr Abbott is willing to risk further alienation from his own government.
“The past year has shown us what happens when mainstream parties lose touch with their supporters,” he said. “That was the big lesson of 2016. And heed it we must if we are to make a success of the coming year.”
While the RET has resonance among conservative MPs, some have privately expressed frustration that Mr Abbott rejected calls from colleagues when he was leader to do the same.
“Labor wants to more than double the renewable energy target­ to 50 per cent. That means a $50 billion overbuild of unnecessary wind turbines costing each household $5000 — and that’s just for starters,” he said.
“But before we get too self-congratulatory, rather than making power less expensive, our own policy is to subsidise Alcoa to keep it in business; our own policy is to lift renewable power from 15 per cent to 23 per cent within four years at the cost of $1000 per household.
“This is where the public are not mugs. We can’t credibly attack Labor merely for being worse than us.
“This is why our first big fight this year must be to stop any further mandatory use of renewable power.”
The comments build on remarks Mr Abbott made two weeks ago but indicate that he has no intention of remaining silent as the government struggles to regain momentum after a horror start to the year.
They come as Mr Turnbull is due to deliver a major speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister will becoming increasingly frustrated with Mr Abbott’s intervention on the RET, knowing that the government is unlikely to go as far as Mr Abbott is suggesting.
Senior Liberal MPs said it was no coincidence that Mr Abbott was goading the Prime Minister over climate change, as it was the issue that lost Mr Turnbull the leadership to Mr Abbott in 2009.
Mr Abbott, in his speech, recognised that he was responsible for the RET as it stands now but claimed he had brought it down from Labor’s target. He added that the government now risked subsidising renewables by bailing out stranded industries.
“Australia has almost limitless reserves of clean coal and gas. We should have the world’s lowest power prices. Instead, we’re making it harder and harder to use coal and gas through the renewable energy target — so that power is getting more expensive and less reliable,” he said.
“When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the power doesn’t flow. So until there’s baseload power from low-cost batteries, trying to rely on renewables is mad. My government reduced the renewable energy target from 27 to 23 per cent — but after the lights went out in South Australia, it’s obvious that it’s still too high.
“Alcoa is in trouble, Arrium is in trouble, Port Pirie is in trouble, even Roxby Downs has a problem.
“Why is it OK for everyone to get the benefit of Australian coal and gas except us? Why is it OK for other countries to open new power stations using Australian coal but wrong for us?
“So let’s stop forcing people to use the most expensive power and make it easier for them to use the cheapest.”
Mr Abbott also barely concealed his frustration and a belief that, had he fought the last election as leader, he would have won, claiming the Coalition had taken the conservative base for granted and paid the price.
“The British electorate rejected their prime minister’s advice — and that of the political class generally — to leave the European Union,’’ he said.
“The American electorate rejected all the mainstream candidates to catapult into the White House an outsider feeding off grievances that are deeply felt but rarely acknowledged by the system.
“And here in Australia, the resurgence of One Nation is a warning to our Liberal-National coalition that the conservative vote can’t be taken for granted.
“What used to be called the silent majority, Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’, might often lack a voice but they sure haven’t lost their vote.
“Voters will punish governments and parties that they think have lost the plot — and so they should.
“So that’s our challenge for 2017: to tackle real problems in a meaningful way so that people’s lives get better, not worse — and to do so in ways that make sense to our strongest supporters.”

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Changing Climate, Not Humans, Killed Australia’s Massive Mammals

Smithsonian.com - 

But that mass extinction could help us predict what today’s human-wrought climate change may bring
An illustration of Australia's past megafauna. (Illustration by Peter Trusler © Australian Postal Corporation 2008)
If you think Australia is full of weird creatures now, you should have seen it at the end of the last Ice Age. There were wombats the size of Volkswagons, koala cousins that resembled the mythical Drop Bear and enormous, venomous lizards larger than today’s Komodo dragons. But why did these fantastic beasts disappear? After a decade of debating this question, a new study is helping to revive a hypothesis that had previously been pushed aside.

What happened in Australia is just one part of a global story in the decline of the world’s massive mammals. From that island continent through Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, the close of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago saw the worldwide downfall of many large, charismatic creatures from the giant ground sloth to the beloved woolly mammoth. In every case, both humans and a warming climate have been implicated as major suspects, fueling a debate over how the extinction played out and what—or who—was responsible.

As far as Australia goes, humans have been promoted as prime culprits. Not only would early-arriving aboriginals have hunted megafauna, the argument goes, but they would have changed the landscape by using fire to clear large swaths of grassland. Some experts point to Australia’s megafauna crash after human arrival, around 50,000 years ago, as a sure sign of such a human-induced blitzkrieg.

For example, a region called the Sahul—which included Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea during the Ice Age—lost 88 species of animal that weighed over 220 pounds. These included oversized kangaroos that strutted rather than hopped, real-life ninja turtles with tail clubs and flightless birds twice the size of today’s emus.

The problem is, there’s no hard evidence that humans were primarily to blame for the disaster that befell these giants. Judith Field, an archaeologist at the University of New South Wales who focuses on megafauna and indigenous communities in Australia and New Guinea, says the hunting hypothesis has hung on because of its appealing simplicity. “It’s a good sound bite” and “a seductive argument to blame humans for the extinctions” given how simple of a morality fable it is, she says. But when it comes to hard evidence, Field says, the role of humans has not been substantiated.

So what really happened? The picture is far from complete, but a paper by Vanderbilt University paleontologist Larisa DeSantis, Field and colleagues published today in the journal Paleobiology argues that the creeping onset of a warmer, drier climate could have dramatically changed Australia’s wildlife before humans even set foot on the continent. And while this event was natural, it is a frightening portent of what may happen to our modern wildlife if we do nothing to stop the scourge of today's human-caused climate change.
Cuddie Springs is the only site in mainland Australia that has produced insitu fossil evidence of the co-existence of humans and megafauna, as shown here by the discovery of a flaked stone artifact and the bone of a giant flightless bird. (Judith Field / University of New South Wales)
The researchers focused on a spot in southeastern Australia known as Cuddie Springs, which turned out to be an ideal place to interrogate the fate of the continent’s megafauna. Initial scientific forays focused on searching for fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient environments, Field says. But in the process, researchers also found fossils and archaeological artifacts that indicated megafauna and humans lived alongside each other there for 10,000 years or more.

“The combination of the fossil bone, the pollen record and the archaeology make this a really unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between the three,” Field says.

Even better, DeSantis says, Cuddie Springs boasts older beds of fossils deposited long before human arrival. This provided an opportunity to document changes over a longer span of time, “and assess dietary responses to long-term shifts in climate,” she says. To that end, the paleontologists focused on fossils laid out in two horizons—one 570,000-350,000 years old and the other between 40,000 and 30,000 years old. Drawing on chemical clues about diet and microscopic damage to marsupial teeth found in those layers, the researchers were able to document who was around and what they were eating at each layer.

If you were able to take a time machine between the two time periods, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you had moved through space as well as time. “Cuddie Springs, around 400,000 years ago, was wetter,” DeSantis says, and there was enough greenery for the various herbivores to become somewhat specialized in their diets. Kangaroos, wombats and giant herbivores called diprotodontids browsed on a variety of shrubby plants, including saltbush. By 40,000 years ago, a warmer, drying climate had transformed the landscape and the diets of the mammals on it.

By late in the Ice Age, the plant-eating marsupials were all eating more or less the same thing, and the sorts of plants that were better at holding water for these mammals were much rarer. Saltbush, for example, became less palatable because, DeSantis says, “if you haven’t been able to find water for days, the last thing you are going to eat is salty food that requires you to drink more water.” The desert became drier, resources became scarce, and competition for the same food ramped up.

Altogether, DeSantis says, this suggests “climate change stressed megafauna and contributed to their eventual extinction.”

Knowing how climate change impacted Australia’s mammals thousands of years ago isn’t just ancient history. NASA recently reported that we’ve just gone through the hottest year on record in an ongoing string of exceptionally warm years. The only difference is that now, our species is driving climate change. “Australia is projected to experience more extreme droughts and intense precipitation events,” DeSantis says, including a projected temperature increase of around 1-3 degrees Celsius by 2050, thanks to Homo sapiens and our forest-razing, fossil-fuel-burning, factory-farm-dependent lifestyles.

Looking to the past may help us get ready for what’s coming. “Data from Cuddie Springs suggest that there is likely a tipping point beyond which many animals will go extinct,” DeSantis says. We’re on track to play out such a catastrophe again—and today’s changing climate can’t be halted or reversed, the least our species can do is prepare for it. “I always learned in school that the importance of studying history is to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself,” DeSantis says.

Looking at the ghosts of climate change past gives us a preview of what’s coming—and what we might lose if we do not act.

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