As a bevy of bald spots gathered in Trump’s DC hotel yesterday for Heartland’s climate denial conference (which as it turns out was not sponsored by Fidelity Charitable)--an event featuring mostly white men sharing their Boomer memes and rehashing myths about, say, the Little Ice Age--a different sort of gathering was taking place not too far away.
Over in the House of Representatives, the Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on scientific integrity (or lack thereof) in Trump’s Department of Interior.
At the hearing, Dr. Joel Clement, a former Interior climate scientist who was reassigned to be a casher-of-fossil-fuel-checks and then became a whistleblower, described his time at DOI. Clement described the total lack of accountability for the decisions made to re-assign scientists, and included a powerful quote from a colleague who lamented how “they broke it, they broke the agency.”
Republicans, predictably, were not pleased with this hearing. Ranking minority member Rob Bishop (R-UT) complained that the committee didn’t have jurisdiction over science integrity legislation, apparently deliberately ignoring Congress’s oversight authority and obligation. Bishop was flippant and dismissive, saying that it was going to be “cute” and “fun” and “partisan propaganda,” which was undercut by Chairman Raul Grijalva’s counterpoint that Republicans held a similar hearing under the Obama administration.
The GOP’s witness was Daren Bakst from the Heritage Foundation, who proceeded to pretend that President Obama’s administration was just as bad as Trump’s, if not worse, which was the GOP’s recurring rhetoric in the hearing. Of course, Bakst’s written testimony praised the tobacco industry’s “secret science” platform. (Makes sense, since Heritage has taken tobacco money to argue on the lethal industry’s behalf.) Bakst also quoted from Susan Dudley, a fellow “expert” whose paycheck comes from the Kochs, and who once faulted the EPA for not taking the health benefits of smog into account.
But the star of the show was Democratic-invited witness Dr. Maria Caffrey, who was forced out of her position at the National Park Service in retaliation for refusing to remove climate change content from a report about how sea level rise impacts National Parks. A preview can be found in her Guardian op-ed, and the story of how the administration tried to squelch the report was exposed by Reveal last year, forcing the release of the report.
To see her speak, though, brought it home in a way that even a podcast about it could not quite do. The lengths Dr. Caffrey’s antagonists went to in their attempt to strip climate change out of the sea level rise report were far, and the depths to which they sunk were low.
It’s one thing to delay a report. It’s another to delay it until the author giving you trouble goes on maternity leave, and then jump in to gut the report’s climate mentions behind her back.
It’s one thing to disagree with a report author about word choice, because “anthropogenic” is big and confusing. But to also demand the removal of “human-caused” in its place? Quite something else.
And it’s absolutely unacceptable to confront her about it three days after returning from said maternity leave, with, in her words, “verbal and even physical intimidation.” Disagreements are fine, but it’s not okay that, per Dr. Caffrey, “He raised his voice to me so much that I became alarmed, he turned red, and he smacked a stack of papers on a table. This behavior was very intimidating and unnerving to me.”
It’s one thing to force a PhD scientists to take a step down to take a position as an intern, as they did, slashing her pay and leaving something of a stain on her CV. And it’s one thing to not renew someone’s contract because funding dried up.
But it’s quite another to refuse her offer to work for free, as a volunteer.
Dr. Caffrey’s voice faintly broke as she concluded, worried that she’d need to split up her family, leaving her baby with her husband to seek work elsewhere.
But sure, Rep Bishop, this is all just “cute” and “fun.”
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