NASA ’s Climate Communications Might Not Recover From The Damage Of Trump’s Systemic Suppression

Before former U.S. President Donald Trump incited a hostile insurrection against the Capitol, he’d already smashed wrecking balls through the ranks of government agencies. Among the many casualties was the truth about climate science, which NASA was routinely prevented from sharing with the public that supports it. I was the senior science editor for NASA’s Global Climate Change website and witnessed the impact of science suppression firsthand. I’d been at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), one of 10 NASA centers, for a decade when, three weeks into the Trump Administration, on Feb. 16, 2017, the Washington Post published an article noting that while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Park Service were shutting down climate communication, NASA was still writing about climate change. The Post piece shared links to my most recent NASA blog post about the rapid increase of ice-mass loss in Greenland, plus my @NASAClimate tweets and NASA Climate Change Facebook page. It caused NASA management to panic. Scott Pruitt had been appointed to head the EPA and promptly removed the EPA’s climate-change website. NASA management seemed to fear a similar fate. My manager sent a text late on the evening the Post published the story—it was a Thursday before a three-day weekend (NASA has what’s called a “9/80 work schedule,” meaning every other Friday is a day off)—which was so unusual that I saved a scre...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news