According to legend, when Galileo Galilei invited the Roman Inquisition to look through his telescope, they refused. Whether this actually happened is debated, but it’s clear the church’s religious orthodoxy of an earth centered universe trumped the scientific truth. It took over two hundred years for the church to officially admit it was wrong.
Nearly two hundred years ago, French scientist Jean Baptiste Fourier described atmospheric global warming, but the political orthodoxy of Republican denialism still refuses to see the truth. It attempts to ignore and suppress science, promote disinformation, claim climate science is a “hoax,” disrupt scientific and sustainable energy progress, and personally attack climate scientists’ work, reputations and careers. We don’t have another two hundred years for the Republican Party to admit they are dead wrong.
Yet Trump assembles his team of global warming/climate change deniers.
Trump has chosen Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil president and CEO, for Secretary of State. Tillerson has a financial interest in avoiding climate action, and Exxon Mobil is under investigation for misleading investors on the risks of climate change for decades.
Trump has chosen Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a fierce denier and opponent of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as EPA administrator. Pruitt has sued the EPA over its Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and for its regulations to curtail methane emissions — a powerful greenhouse gas.
Trump has chosen former Texas governor Rick Perry, a strident climate denier, to head the Department of Energy (DOE), and Trump sent DOE an ominous questionnaire asking for “a list of Department employees or contractors” who attended the U.N. climate talks in the past five years.
Trump calls for disruptive reorganization and possible budget cuts to NASA’s Earth-observing satellite programs. Trump advisors wrote that NASA is too focused on “politically correct environmental monitoring” of climate change, and suggested ending NASA’s climate and earth science research “to focus the agency on deep space exploration.”
This position has caused great concern in the global scientific community, since NASA’s second-to-none earth science research is used by scientists around the world. Trump’s advisors suggested this activity could be shifted to other agencies, but the disruptive impacts this shift would have may be irreparable. Climate scientist Michael Mann stated “We (could) lose forever the possibility of the continuous records that we need so that we can monitor this planet.”
All of these activities are part of the Republican long-term denial strategy. And, as Yogi Berra would say, its Déjà vu all over again!
A 2004 study by The Union of Concerned Scientists, titled “Climate Change Research Distorted and Suppressed,” reported the Bush/Cheney administration consistently sought to undermine the public’s understanding of climate change.
In 2006, under Bush/Cheney, the phrase “to understand and protect the home planet” was removed from NASA’s mission statement. At the time, NASA scientists expressed concerns that changing priorities and lack of funding would seriously undermine the agency’s ability to continue their research into climate change.
The same year, a National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council report suggested funding cuts at NASA would cause a “severe deficit” in Earth observation capabilities and compromise NASA’s ability to “fulfill its obligations” to the Climate Change Science Program.
A 2009 Los Angeles Times article, “Bush-era EPA document on climate change released,” reported the EPA, under Obama, released a long-suppressed report by Bush administration officials who had concluded that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country. The report was completed in 2007, but Bush refused to make it public.
A 2011 Mother Jones article, “Perry Officials Censored Climate Change Report,” stated the Texas Governor’s Commission on Environmental Quality censored a report on Galveston Bay. The original report contained a chapter on sea-level-rise impacts on the Texas coastline, which the Commission did not want the public to see.
Even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus, the Republican denial machine continues to claim the uncertainties in climate projections and fossil fuel emissions “… are too great to warrant mandatory action to slow emissions.” Yet, less than three percent of climate scientists disagree with the scientific consensus and most of those receive fossil-fuel industry funding.
Trump wasn’t always a denier. A November 2016 article in The Guardian reported that in 2009, ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, Trump was a co-signatory to a letter to Obama which pointed out that clean energy technologies would “spur economic growth, create new energy jobs and increase our energy security.” The letter concluded by saying: “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.” This is the same Trump who declares climate science a “hoax”.
Welcome to the new “post-truth” era inquisition.
William Gran, now retired, was an adjunct instructor at Greenfield Community College on global warming and climate change. He can be reached at whgran@gmail.com