A Quick Word About Climate Change Data, Politics, Truth, and Science
The Trump administration has removed the words climate change and most references or data about it from government websites, including the Department of Defense, the USDA Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and most eye-poppingly, the Environmental Protection Agency’s website. Fox News reports that the administration is “rebranding” what doesn’t align with the president’s agenda. Waaaa…what?
Can you rebrand the truth? Can you rebrand science? The answer given by this new administration is YES! If it helps advance your agenda, why not? Why worry about things when we don’t have to? “Climate change is bad for prosperity” (Project 2025), so why mention it? While we’re at it, let’s not mention a city’s murder rate because, let’s face it, it’s bad for the city’s economy and, well, a big bummer. Heck, let’s not mention that there’s a deadly new virus because it will likely magically disappear. It’s easy when you understand how! Preschool children do it all the time; it’s called wishful thinking.
Banning mention of Climate change is like shutting down a school because your kid got bad grades.
Do you remember George Orwell’s 1984? In that dystopic world, the names of ministries are the opposite of their actual functions. The Ministry of Truth, for instance, is a propaganda machine meant to lead people into a somnambulic state so as not to challenge the social order. “Ignorance is Strength” is the motto. It seemed funny when I read that in high school: people would never ever fall for such nonsense or allow it. But lo, it’s happening right here. Right now. Here in our own country.
What the current administration is doing is a contemptuous act against science, truth, and every person living on this planet. In addition to hiding data, they are withdrawing hard-won investments in a liveable world for our children and grandchildren. Aside from its almost hilariously and childlike wishful thinking, it is deeply saddening. But sad as I am, the wrecking ball is swinging hard and fast in our most critical hour: we weren’t doing nearly enough to save our beautiful, green, and blue home planet from tipping into catastrophe before this administration.
All of this climate science isn’t theoretical. It’s not political. It’s just scientific truth.
It’s a scary truth, but scarier yet is more time lost. To survive as a species, we urgently need to access, process, plan, and discuss that data NOW. Access to scientific information about drought, extreme weather, and other climate impacts is essential to every person, business, and government planning office. Farmers in California rely on an interactive map published by the US Forest Service, which combines over 140 different datasets to help the public and farmers plan. The tool was taken down and is no longer available. Growers are now suing the Department of Agriculture, which was ordered to take the data down.
What to do? Get involved. Don’t sleepwalk through this critical epoch for humankind and our home planet. Write letters. Contact your representatives.
Ignorance is not strength. Ignorance is ignorance. Strength? That’s citizens fighting for truth.
Let’s leave 1984 where it belongs: in the fiction aisle.
William Happer,
Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University
Richard Lindzen,
Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comment and Declaration on the SEC’s Proposed Rule
“The Enhancement and Standardization of
Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors,”
File No. S7-10-22, 87 Fed. Reg. 21334 (April 11,2022)
AS CAREER PHYSICISTS, SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES
THERE IS NO CLIMATE RELATED RISK
CAUSED BY FOSSIL FUELS AND CO2,
THUS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR THE PROPOSED RULE,
AND, IF ADOPTED, DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES
FOR PEOPLE WORLDWIDE AND THE U. S. BECAUSE
IT WOULD REDUCE CO2 AND THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS
June 17, 2022
With the deepest respect for the scientific method, coupled with a love for all life on our interconnected, life-giving planet, I must both follow the scientific consensus, and also honor what I see and feel happening to our beloved natural world and the people who are a part of it: the catastrophies of sea level rise, dramatic weather pattern changes, rapid warming, ocean acidification, droughts, floods, and wildfires causing terrible, preventable human suffering. That is not to mention climate change’s impacts on our economy; for instance, in the CA wildfires, costs are typically passed on to regular taxpayers or insurance policyholders, not to the fossil fuel corporations responsible.
Although the credentials of the scientists quoted above are formidable, even their own scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, have declared that human-caused climate change is “beyond scientific dispute.” A few Google searches show that Lindzen and Happer’s opinions are in the minuscule minority (1-3% by most reports) among scientific papers on the subject. Additionally, their support of the current administration’s efforts (linked here) to undermine progress towards net zero and green energy is out of sync with the American public’s desire to move away from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050, (66% support transitioning the U.S. economy from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050, according to the Yale voter data report, Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Fall 2025).
The fossil fuel-advocacy website, Co2 Coalition, with Happer as the chair, is populated by petrophysicists and former fossil fuel executives, supports the current administration’s rescission of the Endangerment finding (the underpinning for most impactful climate legislation), and argues for more CO2 emissions. It is available for the public to read and decide for themselves. My opinion is that their bias is revealed in their report and in their Board of Directors.
I stand by my blog post and my admonition to the American public: Don’t sleepwalk through this critical epoch for humankind and our home planet. Write letters. Stay informed. Fight back. Contact your representatives. Vote for a future for children and grandchildren. Vote for a liveable planet, not for fossil fuel economies.
Nota bene: I don’t consider this blog a place for debating the science of climate change, as most scientists agree it is an established scientific fact. I therefore will not further argue the scientific merits or lack thereof in this space.