Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Government Climate scientists are upset that President Trump wants them to avoid using emotive language in their press releases.
Trump official said scientists went ‘beyond their wheelhouse’ by writing climate change ‘dramatically’ shrank Montana glaciers
By Dino Grandoni and Juliet Eilperin March 7
A U.S. Geological Survey study documenting how climate change has “dramatically reduced” glaciers in Montana came under fire from high-level Interior Department officials last May, according to a batch of newly released records under the Freedom of Information Act, as they questioned federal scientists’ description of the decline.
Doug Domenech, assistant secretary for insular areas at Interior, alerted colleagues in a May 10 email to the language the USGS had used to publicize a study documenting the shrinking of 39 glaciers in Montana since 1966.
The news release began: “The warming climate has dramatically reduced the size of 39 glaciers in Montana since 1966, some by as much as 85 percent.”
Highlighting that sentence, Domenech wrote to three other Interior officials, “This is a perfect example of them going beyond their wheelhouse.”
…
The USGS, the main scientific arm of Interior, publicly describes its mission as providing “impartial information” about the environment, including “the impacts of climate.” The agency has studied climate change since at least the 1970s.
Andrew Fountain, a geology professor at Portland State University who co-authored the study, said he had heard rumors that Interior officials were unhappy. “In short, they just didn’t like the idea we found yet more evidence of climate warming,” Fountain said.
…
The referenced email is available here (h/t Washington Post).
What a shocking development – government climate scientists are being required to objectively report their findings, instead of trying to influence the political process by publishing emotionally charged official press releases.
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Cut-off their funding.
“Christ almighty”, was my parents go-to phase, near as I remember.
Yet here I am.
Wait some years, the “scientists” will moan about sinking temperatures and the consequences for the earth if this goes on another 10000 years.And they will make computer models to show how much the temperatures will fall in the next 1000 years, and that the earth will be damaged And the will make mankind accountable for the sinking temperatures. we will all be dead!
(in fact we will be dead,but for other reasons)
🙂 so any more recent than 2009 around? could be a good laugh
The use of the word “dramatically” by so-called “scientists” raises a red flag. It imparts nothing more than emotion, and that is its purpose. They need people to be emotional about some glaciers shrinking, because without emotion, they’ve basically got nothing but a slight warmup since the LIA, which is somehow “bad” and somehow our fault, because “carbon”. But all they really have is a weak correlation – rising temps and rising CO2 levels. The link is extremely weak, as is “the science”, which is why they need to try to sway people using emotions. It’s the oldest trick in the book.
Yeah, skeptics would never stoop to such ploys.
Do you have evidence? Or are you just assuming that the skeptics must be bad again?
2nd photo from 2009, wasn’t that 9 years ago? And the top photo looks like winter, while the bottom photo looks like Spring/Summer to me.
Trump complaining about people being too dramatic???
Now I really have heard everything. How about leading by example if you really care Mr Trump.
It was about 10 years ago when first mass analysis by satellite of glaciers became available. Prior to that individual “scientists” had gone to glaciers around the world and measured melting. They went to the most dramatically melting glaciers of course and then extrapolated to all inland glaciers.
When the satellite data came in we found that the individual scientists had obviously been biased. The result showed that they had overestimated glacier melting by 900% worldwide. The flow from inland glaciers was grossly misestimated from the obvious “dramatic” feeling these researchers had by looking at individual hand picked glaciers.
We see the errors of climate scientists being the same errors other scientists have made. This is why we have double blind studies in pharmaceutical testing. This is why we require 6 sigma before we say we “discovered” something in physics. Climate scientists here in Montana doing the same thing that they have erred on before egregiously. No correction.