Once upon a time, America was a world leader in science. America was the first nation to break the sound barrier. America was the first nation to put a man on the moon.
And we could STILL be the world leader in science, however a war is currently being waged against science and scientists in America. This war has been going on for years, and it has crippled America’s standing in the world, and allowed other nations to surpass us.
Sadly, the group that is waging a war against America’s scientists is one of America’s two major political parties, it’s the Republicans who are waging a war against science.
For more than a decade, Republican Senator James Inhofe has raged against the scientific consensus that humans are fueling climate change, calling it “the greatest hoax” ever perpetrated on Americans. The Oklahoma Republican has blasted the Environmental Protection Agency as an “activist organization” that has unfairly burdened everyone from farmers to fossil-fuel companies. In 2012, Inhofe even wrote a book attacking the science around global warming, which MOST of the world has accepted as a serious and urgent threat.
And now, Inhofe’s attacks against scientists have escalated, and become more dangerous and destructive than before. Now Inhofe has an unprecedented opportunity to shape the nation’s energy and environmental policies. And he has helped populate the upper ranks of the agency he has derided with several of his closest confidants.
At least half a dozen former aides to Inhofe — and counting — have been hired into top positions at the EPA and the White House. In addition, two former Inhofe aides have become top domestic and international energy and environmental advisers to President Trump.
Donald Trump has called the climate science that proves humans are fueling climate change “a hoax”, and has pulled America out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He has also vowed to zero out all federal spending on clean energy research and development.
From day one of his presidency, Trump and his Republican lackeys have been waging a war on science, appointing people with few scientific credentials to key positions, defunding programs that could lead to a cleaner and safer environment and a healthier population, and, most ominously, censoring scientific inquiry that could inform the public and government policy.
Trump is attempting to silence scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the Department of the Interior, including the National Park Service; the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the National Institutes of Health, and to keep them from sharing the results of research that we; the American tax-payers; already paid for.
Trump has ordered removal of all fact-based studies, press releases, social media and blogs related to EPA research that show evidence of carbon emissions intensifying global warming.
Trump has ordered the E.P.A. to freeze all grants and contracts, which will impact programs that improve air quality, protect drinking water and dispose of hazardous waste and toxins from old industrial sites.
Trump is giving aid and comfort to climate change deniers and greedy CEOs in the oil and coal industries, while attempting to silence reasonable, responsible, trustworthy people in the scientific community.
And when appointing a man to be in charge of America’s Department of Energy (the department that maintains all of America’s nuclear warheads, our nuclear power plants, and America’s energy grid), Trump appointed Rick Perry!
Perry is also a Republican, and Perry has no background in nuclear physics, and is another anti-science lackey, who claims that global climate change isn’t real. Rick Perry knows NOTHING about how to run the Department of Energy and has publicly admitted to that fact, but Trump has appointed him to be in charge of America’s energy grid, America’s nuclear power plants, and America’s nuclear warheads anyway!
And the man Trump appointed to the E.P.A was also a Republican lackey in the war against science. Scott Pruitt also insists that global climate change is “a hoax” and shortly after he was installed at the E.P.A., Pruitt dismissed at least 5 scientists from the agency’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, to be replaced with advisers will ignore science and push a political agenda instead.
Then, we have Rush Limbaugh, a Republican demagogue who claims that scientists are “idiots” for daring to publish studies on global climate change and signaled out NASA scientist James Hansen as an “insane lunatic”.
Rush Limbaugh also claims that warnings about Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Harvey are just liberal hysteria and a liberal hoax, and basically told all of the people in Florida (who are in the path of Hurricane Irma) to just ignore those “idiot” scientists, and tough it out. Nothing bad is gonna happen.
And then we have Ann Coulter, a Republican agitator who claims that scientists are some sort of evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs."
Evolution science is central to modern medical science, especially biology, immunology and genetics, so Ann is basically accusing anybody that ever graduated from medical school of being “evil”.
She also attacks embryonic stem cell research and accuses research scientists in this field of having “a clear financial incentive to lie” and she also accuses them of “killing humans”.
And Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have millions of Republican fans, who listen avidly to everything they have to say. How many people in America have formed their opinions about scientists based on what Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have to say about them?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Republicans have anti-science rabble-rousers in charge of federal agencies, in charge of state governments and in charge of school boards. The Republicans have anti-science agitators in the United States Senate, in the U.S. House of representatives, and in state legislatures.
Is there anyone out there who believes that America would not STILL be the world leader in science, if not for the Republicans waging a war against America’s scientists?