![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/imrs.php_.jpeg\")
<\/a>Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on March 9 in Hialeah, Fla. Recent reports indicate the governor allegedly issued orders for certain state agencies to not to use the term \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201cglobal warming\u201d in official communications, e-mails or reports. (Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n
Everybody is jumping on a report out of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which suggests \u2014 in, I think, a fairly well-documented fashion \u2014 that the administration of Florida Gov. Rick Scott had an aversion to the terms \u201cclimate change\u201d and \u201cglobal warming.\u201d And it appears that the message about not using these words filtered down to state agency employees and officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.<\/p>\n
Scott himself has expressed skepticism about the science of climate change in the past, and more recently, retreated to the \u201cI\u2019m not a scientist\u201d position of many GOP politicians.<\/p>\n
But for agency employees who study and try to protect the environment, not talking about climate change is pretty hard to do. For these staffers \u2014 especially in Florida \u2013 climate change is in many ways the Ur story underlying almost everything that they encounter and work on. And you want them not to talk about it?<\/p>\n
No wonder, then, that this story blew up in the media \u2014 with Scott administration officials denying the story\u2019s accuracy to the Post\u2019s Terence McCoy. Still, it seems clear from the original report that, at minimum, a number of agency employees perceived that they weren\u2019t supposed to talk about climate change or global warming.<\/p>\n
[Threatened by climate change, Florida reportedly bans term ‘climate change’<\/a>]<\/p>\n McCoy also spoke with another researcher, Elizabeth Radke, who told a similar story about running into problems with the phrase \u201cclimate change\u201d in review of a scientific paper by a branch of the Florida state government, in this case, the Florida Department of Health.<\/p>\n [Florida scientist told to remove words ‘climate change’ from study on climate change<\/a>]<\/p>\n What I find amazing about this story, though, is the short memory of today\u2019s media, most of whom aren\u2019t mentioning where this type of problem originates. In terms of trying to control the \u201cmessage\u201d about climate change as conveyed in government documents and agency communications \u2013 and thereby generating a media scandal \u2014 the pioneer was the administration of George W. Bush.<\/p>\n In October, this paper ran an obituary for Rick Piltz, a whistleblower who left the Bush administration after exposing, as our obituary put it, \u201chow top-level George W. Bush administration officials edited scientific reports to minimize the link between human activity and climate change.\u201d Piltz\u2019s whistleblowing memo, dated June 1, 2005, is still online \u2014 and still a scathing indictment, precisely because it is logical and careful, and yet also uncompromising in taking a stand against political interference with science and scientific communications.<\/p>\n It\u2019s required reading for any student of the politics of science, in the United States or anywhere else.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an excerpt, describing why Piltz left the U.S. Climate Change Science Program:<\/p>\n I believe the overarching problem is that the administration\u2026does not want and has acted to impede forthright communication of the state of climate science and its implications for society\u2026.The problem is manifested especially at the points at which the key scientifically based assessments of climate change touch on the arenas of policymaking and research planning. The administration will not accept and use appropriately the findings and conclusions of the national and international climate assessments, and it hinders and even prevents the climate science program from doing so.<\/p>\n Thus, the story of political figures exerting control over the discussion and presentation of climate change, in official expert agency communications and actions, is really a very old one. The chief difference with the Scott story, though, is that since 2005, the science of climate change has gotten more and more certain and well established \u2013 making attempts to muffle it seem more and more egregious and out of touch.<\/p>\n In the year in which Piltz was writing \u2014 2005 \u2014 the most recent scientific assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had come out in 2001. In that report, the critical sentence about whether global warming was human caused read thusly: \u201cmost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.\u201d \u201cLikely,\u201d in IPCC parlance here, meant a 66 to 90 percent scientific confidence in the judgment.<\/p>\n But Scott has the benefit of two additional assessments since then, both of which have upped the scientific certainty about this key conclusion significantly.<\/p>\n In 2007, the IPCC\u2019s Fourth Assessment Report concluded that \u201cmost of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations\u201d \u2014 where \u201cvery likely\u201d means a greater than 90 percent expert confidence in the conclusion.<\/p>\n Then in 2013, the IPCC\u2019s Fifth Assessment Report bumped the certainty level up yet again. This time, the report said, it is \u201cextremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.\u201d \u201cExtremely likely\u201d means a confidence level of 95 percent or greater. Not many scientific conclusions get this tag from the IPCC.<\/p>\n Again, progress.<\/p>\n So in sum, what can we say about the Scott administration climate scandal?<\/p>\n At least two things. First, given the prevalence of climate change skepticism in the Republican Party over the past two decades, it\u2019s safe to say that if a GOP politician ends up in an executive post (governor, president) overseeing a variety of science-focused agencies, then attempts to control climate science communications can clearly happen. We\u2019ve seen that dynamic with George W. Bush, and we\u2019ve seen it with Scott.<\/p>\n And we\u2019ve also seen that government scientists and other officials bristle under this kind of interference and eventually, tell the media (and the world) the story. It\u2019s a pattern.<\/p>\n And second: The main difference between now and 2005, when the Bush administration climate science scandals really blew up, is that the argument for taking climate change seriously today is massively stronger. Back in 2005, the Bushies could rightly point to a roughly 1\/3 chance that scientists were wrong about this whole human-caused global warming. Still bad odds \u2014 and still no justification for interfering with the communication of science. But hey, at least it was a colorable argument.<\/p>\n Today, in light of the IPCC assessments above, Scott has, at best, a 5 percent chance of being right and all the world\u2019s scientists wrong about climate change (and I\u2019d call that very generous). And this, most of all, is why the current news out of Florida is troubling indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Florida officials\u2019 \u2018ban\u2019 of the term climate change is straight out of the Bush playbook By Chris Mooney The Washington Post Everybody is jumping on a report out of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which suggests \u2014 in, I … Continue reading