Why I decided not to take Kenji to the DC 'March for Science'

From the refund is due to his supporters department…

Back on January 30th I posted this:

Help send Kenji to the “Scientists March on Washington” event!

From the “all’s fair in love, war, and climate science” department comes this opportunity.

On Facebook, Dr. Roy Spencer made a comment related to a post on the original website calling for scientists to “March on Washington” to…

…take a stand for science in politics. Slashing funding and restricting scientists from communicating their findings (from tax-funded research!) with the public is absurd and cannot be allowed to stand as policy.

They add (bold mine):

Who can participate:

“Anyone who believes in empirical science. That’s it. That’s the only requirement. We will both have a diversity committee and a diverse steering committee that represents people of many backgrounds and identities. Science is done by POC, women, immigrants, LGBTQ, indigenous people, people of all beliefs and non-belief. We hope that this diversity is reflected in both the leadership of the march and the march itself.”

Dr. Spencer commented:

It is ironic that they emphasize “empirical science”, since that’s what argues against global warming being a problem. It’s the “theoretical science” they have to invoke to scare people.

But the comment by Dr. Spencer that motivates this post is this one:

Since *everyone* is invited to a “scientists march”, I’m reminded of the time Anthony Watts had his dog join the Union of Concerned Scientists. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/07/friday-funny-the-newest-member-of-the-union-of-concerned-scientists/

adding:

Kenji might need a white lab coat though.

It seemed like a good idea at the time…and people raised about $1100 towards it. I wrote then:

To do this, Kenji and I will need to fly from California to Washington DC. I’ll fly coach, probably Kenji will fly doggie carrier under the seat, which Southwest airlines allows for a $100 fee each way. Also, he’ll need to get a health certificate from the vet to fly. We’ll need to get a dog-friendly hotel for a couple of nights at a minimum, transportation to/from the hotel/event and I’ll need to make a sign to carry, get a custom white lab coatfor Kenji, plus do some training with Kenji to get him acclimated to large crowds. Since he is so small, and could easily be stepped on, or kicked on purpose, I’ll likely get a chest carrier for small dogs like this one.

We’ll have a two-sided sign, one that shows support for science, and on the reverse, a picture of the worst climate monitoring station ever found by the surfacestations project at the University of Arizona with the question “If you measure climate in a parking lot, is it still science?”

Help Kenji go!

Estimated costs by the time this is all done is about $2000-2500. Since Kenji is still waitng for the #BigOil check, or a grant from the #KochBrothers and has no funds of his own, he’s asking WUWT readers to kick in some pocket change ($10-25 or set your own level) to help get there and “March for Science” (whenever that is they haven’t got the date set yet).

Of course, we’ll have pictures, commentary, and probably some hilarious reactions by people to this.

And most importantly, I wrote:

Also, if we don’t get enough donations to make it happen, they will be refunded. Thanks, Anthony

I made it work on the $1100 raised, using a frequent flyer pass I have, but then things started to get weird, and the March for Science has descended into a farce. It was pretty bad when they didn’t even want Bill Nye because his skin color was wrong:

The March for Science, scheduled for April 22, was planning to have Bill Nye, the Science Guy, function as the event’s first honorary co-chair, but then made a startling discovery.

Nye is white.

That did it; complaints mounted that the event was not featuring people of color, and voila! As Buzzfeed reports, “Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who first exposed dangerous lead poisoning among the mostly poor black kids in Flint, Michigan, and Lydia Villa-Komaroff, a molecular biologist famous for helping to figure out how to get bacteria to make insulin,” were added to the list.

Forget the fact that Nye isn’t even a scientist; Stephani Page, a biophysicist at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who was invited to the march’s board after she questioned its commitment to diversity, fulminated, “I love Bill Nye. But I do feel comfortable saying to you what I said to the steering committee: He is a white male, and in that way he does represent the status quo of science, of what it is to be a scientist.” Page added that adding the two women “was an opportunity to put up a picture of science that did not just fit the white male image.”

The march’s lead organizer, Jonathan Berman, admitted, “We did talk internally about the optics of having the first person to be announced be only a white man.”

Then we started seeing other things that were disturbing, Via William Briggs:

Because it seems organizers believe scientific results are less important than who is producing them. Diversity trumps science.

Proof? Buzzfeed reports that, so far, the March for Science has already gone through “four diversity statements.” So the Twitter account @ScienceMarchDC tweeted (and later deleted) “colonization, racism, immigration, native rights, sexism, ableism, queer-, trans-, intersex-phobia, & econ justice are scientific issues.” The tweet also pictured a black power fist and rainbow flag icons.

Of course, science per se is silent on all these matters. But that’s because natural science alone is mute on every moral and ethical question put to it. Including the question whether to deign to include a white man holding a science baton.

“I love Bill Nye,” said Stephani Page, a biophysicist at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who created the Twitter hashtag #BlackAndSTEM. Page was asked to join the march’s board in February after she tweeted criticism of its approach to diversity. “But I do feel comfortable saying to you what I said to the steering committee: He is a white male, and in that way he does represent the status quo of science, of what it is to be a scientist.”

And being a scientist is not about race and sex. It’s about intelligence, talent, interest, drive, money, and luck. Much the same as what success in most fields require.

The March organizers say nothing about this. They want us to know what they really stand for (emphasis original):

Inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility are integral to this mission and to our overall goals and principles. People have rightly pointed out that some of our own public communications, including social media posts, have not affirmed this stance. …We are actively partnering with and seeking advice from organizations and individuals with expertise in this area. We cannot ignore issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, or any other form of discrimination in the discussion and implementation of science. Nor can we ignore the ways in which science has been misused to harm marginalized communities. The lack of inclusivity and diversity in STEM thwarts scientific advancements not only by limiting who conducts the research, but also by influencing what topics are studied, who participates in the research, and who will benefit from or be harmed by it.

Sound like left wing politics to you, and not science? That was the effect they were going for. Organizers insist, “It was a mistake to ever imply that the March for Science is apolitical — while this march is explicitly non-partisan, it is political” (the original statement was in bold type).

And this tweet, put it over the top for me:

2-minute video shows how easy it is to make a sign to carry at the Oshkosh #ScienceMarch https://t.co/agKSqGSXtz pic.twitter.com/1ZI79T6q5M

— Oshkosh MarchForSci (@OshMarchforSci) April 11, 2017

Umm, yeah, it’s about your employment contract, science for sure. Not.

Basically, what started out as a march put together by some people concerned about the Trump administration changes to the bureaucracy, has descended into a free-for-all encompassing just about every social issue there is. For example, this “Union of Concerned Scientists” wonk:

Pretty excited for these signs to make a debut at the #ScienceMarch #marchforscience. pic.twitter.com/5tYCRGEOdR

— Eleanor Fort (@RidewithEleanor) April 21, 2017

Some people have pulled out already. With junk like this Tweet from the UCS organizers, it’s easy to see why. I predict this will descend further into social anarchy, and some Marches will have some violence break out. I don’t want to be anywhere near that if it happens, but more importantly, any message Dr. Roy Spencer and I had intended to convey in a humorous way, will get drowned in a cacophony of social justice garbage that has nothing at all to do with science.

Organizers promised that hundreds of thousands would participate in an April 22 March for Science planned for hundreds of cities worldwide and an April 29 People’s Climate March in Washington, DC.

These events have no more to do with science or climate change than do UN programs or the Paris climate treaty. Their own leaders make that perfectly clear.

A climate website asserts that marchers intend to mark President Trump’s 100th day in office “with a massive demonstration that shows our resistance is not going to wane.” They intend to “block Trump’s entire fossil fuel agenda,” with Berkeley-style tantrums and riots, most likely.

A science march website says this is “explicitly a political movement, aimed at holding leaders in science and politics accountable” for trying to “skew, ignore, misuse or interfere with science.”

That pious language really means they intend to allow no deviation from climate cataclysm doctrines.

Even left-leaning CNN is starting to question it.

So,  while it seemed like a fun idea for Kenji and I to attend and to mock it from a science perspective, I fear that given it’s turned into an ugly political/social farce, it will turn ugly for us. I’m not going, Kenji isn’t going, and anybody who contributed towards travel is due a refund if [they] want it.

Some people mentioned in comments on the original thread not to worry about it if we didn’t go, but that doesn’t speak for everyone, so drop me a note in comments if you’d like a refund for your contribution and I’ll gladly do it, otherwise, I’ll put it towards other things to support WUWT.

Thanks for your consideration, and for your help. – Anthony Watts