I'm a scientist. Under Trump I lost my job for refusing to
hide climate crisis facts
Maria Caffrey
I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying
administration – and it cost me my job
Thu 25 Jul 2019 07.00 BST
‘Politics has no
place in science. I am an example of the less discussed methods the
administration is using to destroy scientific research.’
The Trump
administration’s hostility towards climate science is not new. Interior climate
staffer Joel Clement’s reassignment and the blocking of intelligence aide Rod
Schoonover’s climate testimony, which forced both federal employees to resign
in protest, are just two of the innumerable examples. These attempts to
suppress climate science can manifest themselves in many ways. It starts with
burying important climate reports and becomes something more insidious like
stopping climate scientists from doing their jobs. In February 2019, I lost my
job because I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying administration. And
yet my story is no longer unique.
This is why on 22 July I filed a whistleblower complaint
against the Trump administration. But this is not the only part to my story; I
will also speak to Congress on 25 July about my treatment and the need for
stronger scientific integrity protections.
I have worked at
the National Park Service (NPS) for a total of eight years. I started
out as an intern during the Bush administration, where I experienced nothing
like this. I returned in 2012 after
earning my PhD, when the NPS funded a project I designed to provide future sea
level and storm surge estimates for 118 coastal parks under different
greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. This kind of information is crucial
in order for the NPS to adequately protect coastal parks against the future
effects of the climate crisis.
I handed in the first draft of my scientific report in the
summer of 2016 and, after the standard rigorous scientific peer review process,
it was ready for release in early 2017. But once the new administration came into power, publication was repeatedly
delayed, with increasingly vague explanations from my supervisors. So for
months, I waited. And waited. I was still waiting when I went on
maternity leave almost a year later in December 2017.
Senior NPS officials
tried repeatedly, often aggressively, to coerce me into deleting references to
the human causes of the climate crisis
It was while I was on leave that I received an email from
another climate scientist at the NPS who warned me that the senior leadership
was ordering changes to my report without my knowledge. They had scrubbed of
any mention of the human causes of the climate crisis. This was not normal editorial adjustment. This was
climate science denial.
A months-long
battle ensued. Senior NPS officials tried repeatedly, often aggressively, to
coerce me into deleting references to the human causes of the climate crisis
from the report. They threatened to make the deletions without my approval if I
would not agree, to release the report without naming me as the primary author,
or not release it all. Each option would have been devastating to my
career and for scientific integrity. I stood firm.
And I prevailed. Media inquiries and open records requests
about my report eventually led to letters from members of Congress, and the NPS
was essentially forced to publish my report as I had written it.
The NPS continued
to retaliate against me. I was forced to accept pay cuts and demotions while I
continued to lead several other projects. By February of this year, the NPS
declined to renew my funding, despite common knowledge that my branch at the
time had ample surplus funding.
When I received
this news, my immediate supervisors, who wished for me to stay, asked me to
apply to be a volunteer so that I could continue my work. My volunteer
application was denied without explanation. If there was any question about
whether my termination had to do with legitimate budget constraints or with
punishing me for not altering my report to suit the Trump administration’s
agenda, that answered it.
Politics has no
place in science. I am an example of the less discussed methods the
administration is using to destroy scientific research. I wasn’t fired and
immediately told to leave; instead they sought retribution by discretely using
governmental bureaucracy to apply pressure and gradually cut funding. I
have been cut off from projects that I created and was working on, including
one that would have provided the public with a valuable interactive way to see
for themselves how sea level rise will impact our parks. This is why we need to
support stronger protections for scientists.
Ultimately it will be the taxpayers who will pay the true
price for our apathy towards these violations. It will become progressively
costlier to alter our infrastructure to accommodate the incoming tides. And we
will watch as our historic structures are swallowed by the sea. As these things
are happening, remember that there were probably multiple scientists like me
who warned of these dangers but were silenced. The current administration may
only last a matter of years, but its actions may potentially impact our planet
for centuries.
Dr Maria Caffrey is a
climate scientist who formerly worked in the National Park Service Natural
Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate. She currently resides in Denver,
Colorado
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