It’s ‘Orwellian': Florida Scientists Respond To Report That State Agency Banned ‘Climate Change’
It’s ‘Orwellian': Florida Scientists Respond To Report That State Agency Banned ‘Climate Change’
On Sunday, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting published a story that alleged that Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had unofficially banned its employees from saying the words “climate change” and “global warming” in official communications. The charge of censorship clashes sharply with Florida’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change, particularly sea level rise.
But Ben Kirtman, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami who’s been in contact with members of the DEP and other state agencies in the past, wasn’t surprised by the report. He told ThinkProgress that he’d spoken with employees of other Florida agencies — he declined to name which ones — who had said that they, too, had been told not to talk about climate change in their professional capacity. So before he read the FCIR report, he knew that this censorship was likely occurring, at least at some agencies.
“The first thing they said to me was, ‘Oh we’re not allowed to talk about that,'” Kirtman said of a meeting in which he brought up climate change with employees of a state agency.
The FCIR report included multiple interviews with former employees of and volunteers with the state’s DEP, all of whom said the unwritten rule had been implemented soon after Gov. Rick Scott (R) took office in 2011. Both the DEP and the governor’s office denied the existence of a policy on talking about climate change to the FCIR, and Gov. Scott himself has also reportedly said that the claims aren’t true. The DEP confirmed its stance denying the policy to ThinkProgress Monday.
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/09/3631450/scientists-respond-to-florida-climate-censorship/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3&elq=~~eloqua..type--emailfield..syntax--recipientid~~&elqCampaignId=~~eloqua..type--campaign..campaignid--0..fieldname--id~~&elqaid=24922&elqat=1
