08/02/2017

Australia's Chief Scientist Compares Trump To Stalin Over Climate Censorship

The Guardian - 

Alan Finkel warns that forcing EPA data to undergo political review before publication will ‘cause long-term harm’
Dr Alan Finkel, Australia’s chief scientist, has urged his colleagues in the US to remain ‘frank and fearless’ even though science is ‘literally under attack’. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian 
Australia’s chief scientist has slammed Donald Trump’s attempt to censor environmental data, saying the US president’s behaviour was comparable to the manipulation of science by the Soviet Union.
Speaking at a scientific roundtable in Canberra on Monday, Alan Finkel warned science was “literally under attack” in the United States and urged his colleagues to keep giving “frank and fearless” advice despite the political opposition.
“The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere,” he said.
“It defies logic. It will almost certainly cause long-term harm. It’s reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union.
“Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions.”
Last month Trump’s administration mandated that any studies or data from scientists at the EPA undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public.
The communications director for Trump’s transition team at the EPA, Doug Ericksen, said the review also extended to content on the federal agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence showing the Earth’s climate was warming and human-induced carbon emissions were to blame.
Finkel compared the Trump administration’s attempt to censor science to the behaviour of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
“Soviet agricultural science was held back for decades because of the ideology of Trofim Lysenko, who was a proponent of Lamarckism,” he said.
“Stalin loved Lysenko’s conflation of science and Soviet philosophy and used his limitless power to ensure that Lysenko’s unscientific ideas prevailed.
“Lysenko believed that successive generations of crops could be improved by exposing them to the right environment, and so too could successive generations of soviet citizens be improved by exposing them to the right ideology.
“So while Western scientists embraced evolution and genetics, Russian scientists who thought the same were sent to the gulag. Western crops flourished. Russian crops failed.
“Today, the catch-cry of scientists must be frank and fearless advice, no matter the opinion of political commissars stationed at the US EPA,” he said.
A day after the EPA was told to limit its public communications, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, added a layer of confusion to reports that the Trump administration had directed the communications crackdown.
“That’s nothing that’s coming from the White House,” he told the press during his daily briefing. “They haven’t been directed by us to do anything.”
But his comments were at odds with statements made by Ericksen, who said the Trump administration was scrutinising studies or data published by scientists at the EPA, and new work was under a “temporary hold” before it could be released.
Finkel was appointed chief scientist by Malcolm Turnbull, replacing former chief scientist Prof Ian Chubb in December.


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Meet The 16yo Suing The US Government Over Climate Change

ABC triplej


Xiuhtezcatl Martinez was about eight years old when the fracking boom came to his home state of Colorado. He had grown up outdoors, and his favourite game was hunting frogs and snakes with his dad.
"I didn't really go to school, I just spent a bunch of time in nature," he told Hack.
"As soon as I began to educate myself about climate change, I saw that the world I was in love with was falling apart."

Eight years later, Colorado has more than 50,000 fracking wells, and 16-year-old Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced shooTEZcat) is a superstar activist, currently visiting Australia.
He has addressed the United Nations, and is one of a group of young people suing the US Government over lack of action on climate change.
An application to dismiss the case was denied last year, and the lawyers now plan to take it to the federal court in the coming months.
"We do not have time to waste, we do not have time to push this back," he said.
"We've been to court twice now. The first two times the fossil fuel companies and the US Government said we don't have a right to file this lawsuit.
"But [the court] denied the motion to dismiss. Twenty-one young people overcame a multi-billion-dollar industry and one of the most powerful governments in the world.
The youngest of the plaintiffs is eight years old. The case rests on the legal argument that climate change is so catastrophic to their future, that it threatens their fundamental constitutional right to life and liberty.
A ruling in their favour could be a landmark decision. It also comes as US President Donald Trump is looking to roll back US policy on reducing greenhouse emissions, including promoting the coal industry and quitting the Paris Climate Agreement signed only last year.
"Donald Trump threatens a lot of the action that has been taken over the last four to eight years. But I really don't believe he is going to go through with all these things.
I hope that everything that Trump stands for is going to push people to fight harder than ever to resist."
'Transition to solar, wind, hydro'
Xiuhtezcatl was raised as Indigenous Meshika, of the Aztec people of Mexico City. By age 12, he had organized more than 35 rallies and protests. At 13, he and his younger brother, Itzcuauhtli, were invited to talk about fracking at a middle school in Colorado. They performed the song 'What the Frack' and spoke about methane leaking from wells and poisoning groundwater. Their appearance sparked a counter protest by oil and gas industry activists, who called the Martinez home with threats.
It did not stop Xiuhtezcatl. He is now youth director of Earth Guardians, a worldwide organisation that rallies together young activists and musicians in the fight against climate change. In 2013, President Obama gave him a national community service award. In 2015, in a borrowed suit, he addressed the UN on environmental policy and the future of his generation.
His brother, Itzcuauhtli, has followed in his foot steps. In 2014, aged 11, Itzcuauhtli took a vow of silence to inspire others to speak up about climate change. For 45 days he didn't speak - communicating in sign and via a portable whiteboard.
"Young people have a huge responsibility to be a part of creating solutions. If we look at just the problems it's going to disempower people and make them hopeless," Xiuhtezcatl said.
"A reason I do what I do is to empower young leaders. I don't want to be the only one."
One solution that Xiuhtezcatl offers is redirecting subsidies for fossil fuel companies into renewables like solar, wind and hydro. He says the right combination of existing renewables technology could easily produce enough stable baseload power.
He's sure that shale gas fracking is not a solution to reducing emissions, partly because the wells leak too much methane - a greenhouse gas that is many times more potent than carbon dioxide.
"Shale gas is actually more harmful to the climate," he said.
"We're producing energy the same way as we were 50 years ago, and the entire world is using more and more energy.
"We are going to burn out the earth's resources and cause irreversible damage if we don't transition."

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'Horrible Time': CSIRO Climate Science Proves Its Worth One Year After Deep Cuts

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Climate science at the CSIRO is bouncing back one year after executives modelled its demise, securing new revenue streams in the Pacific and China, and looking to hire new staff.
On February 4 last year, chief executive Larry Marshall shocked staff in the country's premier research body by stating that because the question of whether the climate was changing "has been answered", it was time to deploy resources elsewhere.

The world is moving closer to catastrophic peril, scientists say
Scientists have moved the hands of their metaphorical 'Doomsday' clock closer to midnight, warning of the increasing threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.

At the time as many as 110 of the 140 staff in the Oceans & Atmosphere unit were considered for the axe as part of broader cuts of 350.
Amid a realisation that other agencies – from NASA to the Australian Antarctic Division – depended on CSIRO colleagues and couldn't be easily cut, and a public uproar at home and abroad, the number of redundancies was whittled back.
The number of climate science cuts eventually shrank to 29 and "the net headcount has increased over the past six months", a CSIRO spokesman told Fairfax Media.
Some of the fresh jobs will come at the Climate Science Centre, a new body backed with long-term funding by the Turnbull government. Helen Cleugh, an atmospheric researcher, will take over as its first director on February 13.
The O&A unit is also expected to beat its revenue targets this year, despite the disruption. These include CSIRO winning a contract from the multi-billion dollar Green Climate Fund for a project in Vanuatu.
CSIRO in December also signed a deal with the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science to establish the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Ocean Research.
Warming world: Proposed CSIRO climate cuts drew international rebukes. Photo: NASA
That will form part of the new Climate Science Centre, and involves the Chinese counterpart providing $2 million annually for five years with co-investment by CSIRO, the University of NSW and University of Tasmania, according to an email to staff.
"We are coming out of a horrible time," a senior scientist said, request anonymity. "With a lot more requirement, morale is starting to recover."
Locked in: Long-run funding has now been set aside by CSIRO chief Larry Marshall. Photo: Josh Robenstone
'Overshoot'
Management ranks, though, remain unstable. Alex Wonhas, the head of the energy and environment who managed to salvage many of the proposed jobs, left CSIRO to join global engineering firm Aurecon last month.
"I plan to continue to follow my passion of growing the sustainability and prosperity of our nation," Dr Wonhas told staff in a farewell email.
The search also continues for a new head of O&A after recruitment efforts failed to find a replacement for Ken Lee. Dr Lee, a Canadian oil spill expert, was revealed in private emails released to a Senate inquiry to have sought even deeper cuts - "let's overshoot first" - than were being asked for.
His email was in response to one from Andreas Schiller, then O&A's deputy director of oceans and atmosphere, who suggested CSIRO make a "clean cut" to get rid of "public good/government-funded climate research". Dr Schiller remains acting head of the division.
A spokesman for new industry minister, Arthur Sinodinos, said the cuts were "operational decisions of the organisation", and he supports arrangements now in place.
"The Minister is fully supportive of the science of climate change, and always has been," the spokesman said.

Lifeline
Kim Carr, Labor's industry spokesman, said CSIRO had "subjected to unnecessary upheaval and anxiety" over the past year after it was already reeling from $115 million slashed from funding in the first Abbott government budget.
"Although climate research was thrown a lifeline after global protest, other CSIRO staff were not so lucky," Senator Carr said. "Researchers in the Manufacturing division, Land & Water division and the newly created Data61 have all lost their jobs."
President Donald Trump is set to unleash a much broader assault on science in the US and Australia should ramp up spending to offer "professional refuge to the best climate scientists", a spokesman for Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
"It is critical that the world keeps investing in climate science so we don't face the future blindfolded," he said. "It is in Australia's and the international community's interest to offer US climate scientists jobs elsewhere - let us lead by example and send a strong message."

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