A group of “science enthusiasts” are planning a march on Washington, D.C., to protest President Donald Trump’s supposed anti-science policies.
The March for Science’s Facebook page has only been up since Wednesday, but has over 150,000 “likes” and 150,000 Twitter followers. Organizers said it’s part of a movement by “scientists and science enthusiasts in protest of the policies of the United States Congress and President Donald J. Trump,” and specifically focuses on “science denial” by Republicans.
The march is largely inspired by Trump’s alleged “censorship” of federal science agencies, especially the EPA, as well what the groups claims were”anti-science” comments Trump made. The group is specifically concerned about Trump “[s]lashing funding and restricting scientists from communicating their findings.”
“There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives,” states the group’s official website. “The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action. The diversity of life arose by evolution. Politicians who devalue expertise risk making decisions that do not reflect reality and must be held accountable.”
But these same scientists were quiet under the Obama administration.
The Society of Environmental Journalists criticized President Barack Obama in 2013 for having “taken secrecy to a new level” and effectively censoring EPA scientists from reporters.
Obama’s EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s created a controversial secret email account. Email records show that the White House knew about the secret account since at least February 2010. The account was used to contact outside environmental groups and lobbyists, and may have been used to dodge transparency requests.
The White House attempted to link the polar vortex of winter 2013-2014 to global warming — despite a lack of evidence. It turns out that White House science czar John Holdren based the claim on his “personal opinion,” not the weight of peer-reviewed science.
“The scientists should be marching to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the free market Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “They should be carrying signs that read ‘Less government funding for science!'”
Knappenberger thinks that Obama had an “overenthusiastic approach to the science” on global warming, but “got [it] mixed with his policy goals and it ended up closing off his open scientific inquiry—which allowed him only to see/accept the parts of the science he liked.”
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