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EPA Scientists Banned from Speaking at Climate Conference
The EPA administration is fighting back against the climate change ideologues. The agency has cancelled the speaking appearances of three scientists who were scheduled to speak at a non-EPA conference on subjects related to climate change.
These scientists contributed to a 400-plus-page report to be issued today on the status of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program and its challenges, and there are fears that scientists are being silenced from speaking on this controversial subject. It’s widely known that the head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, questions whether human activity is a major contributor to climate change.
John King, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, chairs the science advisory committee of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program (which is sponsoring the conference), and stated the following:
It’s definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at E.P.A. They don’t believe in climate change, so I think what they’re trying to do is stifle discussions of the impacts of climate change.
No further explanation for this decision by the EPA has been offered.
This story raises a few questions for me:
- Who decides whether a federal government employee may attend any particular conference (assuming funds are available)?
- Does a federal agency have the right to decide whether an employee can present a paper at a conference or appear on a panel?
- Can a federal employee be fired if he or she decides to appear anyway?
- Do you see this action as censorship, and does it matter?
This is the thing, the papers that the EPA employees prepared are going to be presented. Email makes that a certainty. It’s a matter of who is presenting them.
The researchers are now rock stars within their academic niche. EPA administration has guaranteed that.
The other thing is that I can almost guarantee you the papers weren’t about climate change per se. This was about a specific estuary and the research findings on that estuary. That is what these researchers are interested in. Temperature changes are one and only one component of their research. The paper will then contain some fluff – at most a paragraph – on climate change. That’s how such papers are typically written. A genuflection.
As I read the article, EPA staff are prohibited from “formally presenting” at the event. Given that both the event and the content to be presented are, at least in part, EPA-funded, it seems reasonable that the EPA would be at liberty to determine what kind of formal involvement it wished to allow its employees to have. Discussions of climate change are rarely divorced from public policy discussions, and presenting a coherent policy is a legitimate EPA interest. In my opinion.
These days, claims of “censorship” seem to be very popular pretty much everywhere except where they’re appropriate.
Thanks, Cato. I always appreciate when people add important questions; mine are just the beginning of the conversation.
I think the issue gets sticky (in the eyes of some) when the policies change due to a new administration. I assume that there would be no problem with the Obama people presenting only one view, but the new administration has the right to change the policy. If they present on their own time and make the disclaimers you suggest, I’d be fine with their presenting, but I’m not sure everyone following this thread would agree, given the controversy of the subject. Also, the presentations had already identified them in the literature as representatives of EPA. They could verbally change that, but the documentation is still there. Thanks for commenting!
So HO, do you think they should have been allowed to present, if there was limited info on climate change, per se? Do you think this was an overreaction by the managers?
First, there are scientific findings and there is policy. As I read it, this was about findings and not policy.
Second, this was funding beginning under a previous administration and at least this phase of the work was being wrapped up. Whether to go forward is a separate question.
Third, the researchers seemed to have been based close by the site of the conference, i.e., they are located in Rhode Island somewhere. The conference is in Rhode Island. Rhode Island isn’t that big a state. So travel budget is not going to be that big a deal.
For all those reasons, I would have allowed them to present. But frankly, the administration has done these particular researchers a favor. As I said earlier they are rock stars in this niche. My understanding from the NYT article is that all estuarine research had been cancelled in the upcoming budget, not only climate change. They are going to be looking either for new jobs or an opportunity to move laterally within EPA. It will be easier to find a new job than it would have otherwise, even without EPA funding. There are other funding sources for estuarine research. And there’s always Australia. Huge budget there.
I think, too, the obvious impact is indicating there’s a new sheriff in town. Things are going to change. Thanks for elaborating!
It could be the case that some information provided to the EPA is proprietary. A company could provide information, for example, of a new measurement technique that is currently undergoing patent evaluation. It would not be responsible to release that information prematurely.
It’s probably rare for a change of administration to have quite so abrupt a change in policy priority as we’re seeing now with respect to climate change. The Obama administration was on the “all in/true believers” train and obviously Trump/Pruitt are deep skeptics. That 180 is probably causing some real whiplash in this case that highlights these kinds of issues.
You’re right. But such agreements are a very limited portion of the research at least when I was there. It also goes through a huge internal review process when it is done. It’s far from routine. There was one case I was peripherally involved with and it took over two years to get the ok within the agency. Surprised a company would want to put up with the delay.
Before that it was genetically modified seeds/organisms, fairly sharp disagreements about environmental risk in general, precautionary principal, issues in toxicology. There are lots of areas. Climate change wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.
From the Times article – “He said in an email that E.P.A. scientists may attend the program, but not the morning news conference. He later clarified saying, “E.P.A. staff will not be formally presenting at either.”
So it sounds like the scientists in question can attend if they wish, but won’t be presenting in any way, with the authority of the EPA at their backs. I see nothing wrong here, unless I’m missing something.
I deal quite a bit with state environmental agencies and their people are restricted to what they can and can’t attend and speak at in an official capacity. You work for the EPA and collect your check from them, they get to control where you are and what you do while on the clock, simple as that. Not seeing any real controversy, might be a case of the New York Times making a mountain out of a molehill.
No surprise there! The guy who said it was censorship probably caught their eye.