Scientists appear to be self-censoring by omitting the term “climate change” in public grant summaries.
An NPR analysis of grants awarded by the National Science Foundation found a steadily decreasing number with the phrase “climate change” in the title or summary, resulting in a sharp drop in the term’s use in 2017. At the same time, the use of alternative terms such as “extreme weather” appears to be rising slightly.
The change in language appears to be driven in part by the Trump administration’s open hostility to the topic of climate change. Earlier this year, President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, and the President’s 2018 budget proposal singled out climate change research programs for elimination.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency has been systematically removing references to climate change from its official website. Both the EPA’s leader, Scott Pruitt, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry have said they do not accept the scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to get warmer.
As a result, many scientists find themselves in an uncomfortable position. They are caught between environmental advocates looking to recruit allies and right-wing activists who demonize researchers and denigrate their work.
“In the scientific community, we’re very cautious people,” says Katharine Hayhoe, the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech. “We tend to be quite averse to notoriety and conflict, so I absolutely have seen self-censorship among my colleagues. [They’ll say] ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t say it that way, because whatever funding organization or politician or agency won’t appreciate it.'”
The NSF data appears to bear out the change in language. While the number of grants with the term “climate change” in the public summary has dropped, the number of grants with the terms “environmental change” or “extreme weather” has increased slightly. That suggests that, even if research topics remain the same, the words scientists use to describe them may change.
“Scientists I know are increasingly using terms like ‘global change’, ‘environmental change’, and ‘extreme weather’, rather than explicitly saying ‘climate change’,” Jonathan Thompson, the senior ecologist at the Harvard Forest, wrote in an email to NPR. Thompson has been the lead investigator on multiple research projects funded by the NSF in recent years. “This seems to be born out of an abundance of caution to limit their exposure to any political landmines in what is already an extremely competitive process,” he wrote.
Four other climate researchers acknowledged that they had personally removed the term “climate change” from funding proposals or public summaries in the last year, or had advised graduate students who had done so. All were concerned that if they disclosed their names, it could negatively impact their future funding competitiveness.
Much more here at NPR
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So, “Right wing activists…” were responsible for the bullet holes in the side of the building where Roy Spencer and John Christie work? What propagandist nonsense.
The other propagandist dead give-away is quoting Katheryn Hayhoe who has blamed both flooding and drought in Texas on global warming. Data shows the exact opposite. She isn’t even in the ball park of being a scientist, and her quote is unadulterated hypocracy.
Wasn’t it NPR that a recent analysis showed a 50:1 alarmist:scepetic viewpoint ratio of climate messaging? NPR is worthless on climate news.
This is merely marketing/advertising 101 as applied to money grubbing in the scientific sphere. The product is still the same, and probably will never change much. They are simply attempting to continue selling their products. They had discovered that by jumping on the bandwagon sales would increase.
How many buyers do you get if you advertise a product by depicting it as: “esoteric and probably of little value to your everyday life”?
How many buyers might you get if you sell the product as: “Must have or you are going to DIE!”?
It doesn’t get any more dripping wet with hypocrisy than that. Ms Hayhoe was is the same [snip…let’s just leave this out altogether. -mod] Chicken Little who was running around in 2011 to 2014 warning of Texas being in a near permanent drought because of her beloved climate change religion.
For a brief review of Ms Hayhoe’s garbage science:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/14/exploiting-human-misery-and-distorting-the-science-an-environmentalists-critique-of-years-of-living-dangerously/
and more discussion here on Ms Hayhoe’s pseudoscience:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/hayhoe-denies-the-science/
I will have to note that Ms Hayhoe has had to calm her rhetoric down. She no longer goes around talking of such nonsense, simply because she can’t. Nature gave her a good spanking and hopefully she’s learned, but I doubt it. She needs alarmism to keep the grant money flowing or else her little fiefdom in Lubbock will shrink. I suspect that is occurring already as the grant situation is looking thinner in the coming years.
Climate science needs about a 90% reduction in funding IMO. Such a waste of tax money.
Certain psychology departments will have to slink elsewhere for grant money.
Looking at that graph, ‘climate change’ has dropped 60% since 2010. If this trend continues, the ‘climate change’ issue might be ‘settled’ by the year 2021. /sarc
If you ‘cherry pick’ only the data since 2016, you might conclude that the new President has single handed defeated ‘climate change’. The bigger question is; what happened in 2011 that started this trend?
Wasn’t the 97% study around that time?
Even the most hardened scientist is now realising that the data dont support the hypothesis…
‘Both the EPA’s leader, Scott Pruitt, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry have said they do not accept the scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to get warmer.’
Watch the pea. Don’t accept what? This is the regular strawman.
“accept” like in the science motto:
“In god we trust. All other bring proof. Consensus, theories, models and other garbage not accepted”
From the article: “Both the EPA’s leader, Scott Pruitt, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry have said they do not accept the scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to get warmer.”
What scientific consensus? The scientific consensus is another lie made up to promote CAGW.
It looks like that ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Global Warming’ are just so Yesterday.
Two thumbs up.
Nonsense — Trump had no influence whatever until at least Nov 2016 (literally NO ONE expected him to actually win the Presidency)….and the grant writing/granting process is far longer than six months or so. The decline obviously started as early as 2011 and was well underway as of 2015.
The shift to “extreme weather” is no surprise, though it does not make up the short-fall in grants. Further analysis of the grants would be necessary to determine if the EW grants were focused on mitigations of effects of extreme weather, or were the worthless CliSci-style model-based pseudo-predictions of “more extreme weather in the future”.
Maybe things are getting better and we will see less money wasted on crystal-ball predictions of doom and more on how to deal with the actual weather we see today.
Kip parenthetically wrote: “literally NO ONE expected him to actually win the Presidency”.
That’s one of the things that’s amused me so much since last November. We had hope (for me it was literally Anybody but Hillary), but expectations were not high.
My leftist friends, and I have a few, seem to experience daily bouts of apoplectic anger along with 5 minutes of hate, which does amuse me, but I get concerned for their long-term health. The current news of bad behavior by privileged celebrities only exacerbates their angst. “But Trump!, but Moore! (ignore Bill!).
Tired of winning, yet?
Why is the tagline Anthony Watts? Perhaps posted by Anthony Watts plagiarist.
[???? .mod]
….. because it is Anthony Watts “reporting” what was said.
Is there a problem with that, or does it “trigger” you !
Try not to chuck a tantrum !!
wow that’s the best climate news I’ve heard in ages – the silence of this change speaks volumes – if you get my drift – and wow finally a drift that there’s a whole not more sceptics (skeptics if you’re American) that are keeping it under wraps I reckon – yeah and thanks for the good news Anthoony
sorry a lot more not not
It shows the moral fibre of scientists. The world wil end in a few years because of humans and they’re more concerned with feeding their children – how low can you go?
I love this. In 1996 I was offered a fully-funded PhD place with the title “Geophysics and Climate Change on the Gulf Coast of Mexico”.
I only remember because of the weird title (I decided against academia). Weird because this was a project on plate tectonics, on the analysis of a fault that follows that coast and possibly would affect a nuclear power station if it was still infrequently active. Climate change had absolutely nothing to do with it. As far as i could see from the field work I would have been doing it would have given no significant insight into the palaeoclimate of Mexico. This was grant fishing at its finest.
Straining to hear a tiny violin of planck-length.
There will always be a temptation for researchers to phrase their grant applications in a way that references the current fads and buzzwords. Not all of them will do it, of course. But I suspect that there could be some interesting psychological or sociological studies to be done on just how many grant applications use the equivalent of a clickbait headline to try and get more favourable attention from funding bodies. Indeed, it would be interesting to see how many applications there are from different eras which involve fundamentally similar research but which try to justify it in completely different terms to fit the prevailing dogma of the time. I suspect that we’d find as much “go along to get along” as we do in every other profession, and a lot of money intended for the fashionable topic of the day being spent on things that are at best only tangentially related to it.
“right-wing activists who demonize researchers and denigrate their work.”
Even on a sceptical blog warmer scientists get deference! They are already demons and they denigrate the meaning of both ‘research’ and ‘work’. We only supply the scepticism that they themselves are supposed to include as part of their work. R-wingers don’t demonstrate enough. The left is protesting daily. If the right demonstrate they get branded as klanners, гасisтs ог номорновеs even if it’s about their high electricity bills.
As a professional ecologist I have seen it all. Biodiversity was big until we decided that if you count beetles and bacteria there was no crisis. Then there was Invasive Species, which is an actual problem but didn’t have the cache to last. There was landscape, spatial, niche theory, and systems ecology which were all going to save the world until they didn’t. There was Acid Rain, green corridors, NEON, global warming, and more I forget.
The way to kill climate change nonsense is for Trump to find the next big thing and make that a funding priority at the expense of climate change research. In a couple of years move to funding another fad. Presto, climate change is defunded.