State Employees Say Rules Prevent Open "Climate Change" Discussion In Florida 366
An anonymous reader writes "The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting has an article in the Miami Herald about there being certain words state employees have been ordered to avoid: "We were told not to use the terms 'climate change', 'global warming', or 'sustainability'," said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP's Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. "That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel."
i'th Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Grow up Florida.
Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Funny)
Grow up Florida.
Perhaps the problem is the opposite - so many retired in that state.
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Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Informative)
The irony in this statement is so palpable, one could cut it with a knife:
Florida, the Sunshine State, is a poor choice for solar due to "cloud cover" ...
It isn't irony. It was marketing. The cloud cover is a given, but the state is a greenhouse for about 9 months a year and the unclouded sun can be intense due to its sub-tropical location.
In fact, the cloud cover is because Florida is a Sunshine State. It's a narrow strip of land surrounded on 3 sides by ocean and you cannot get more than about 100 miles away from ocean anywhere in the state. The sun boiling down on all that water forms clouds and they then move over land, dumping torrential rains almost daily in the extended summer season. Which is about the only way the place was livable prior to air conditioning - which was more or less invented in the state. The rains drop the temperatures from muggy mid-90s down to an endurable 75 or so for a brief blessed while.
Scott, on the other hand is a jerk.
I doubt that these anti-solar statements are a matter of the fossil fuel industry having a death-grip on the state's utilities. Florida's utilities operate on a diverse mix of fossil and nuclear plants and some of the major fossil plants are fuel-of-convenience capable (coal or oil).
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Solar works effectively every day of the year in Scotland, which is a lot cloudier [wikipedia.org] and a lot further north than Florida. It's simply inconceivable that it doesn't work a whole lot better in Florida.
Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Informative)
Grow up Florida.
Grow up Florida.
It's not really a Florida thing, but a Republican thing. From TFA:
This unwritten policy went into effect after Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr. as the DEP’s director, according to former DEP employees.
Be prepared for this sort of thing from other Republican states because apparently, according to their ostrich-like logic, not talking about something means it isn't happening and can't/won't happen. (Though, in Florida, sticking your head in the sand might mean you might drown from the increasingly rising tides.)
Of course, Rick Scott and many other Republicans have otherwise simply side-stepped these kind of issues by declaring: I am not a scientist. [nymag.com]
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Solar death panels.
Notice they don't mention temprature? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't you expect them to say "It's gotten x degrees warmer every year" for some value of x?
Notice they stopped postings graphs of how much warmer it is? They used to.
The sum total of all harm is itemised in one paragraph: "The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years."
How can the sea rise only on 30% of beaches?
climte.gov has a nic
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Unfortunately, that value "x" would be somewhere below 0.02 based on the last 35 years of so of global (note the "global" - I have no clue what FL's temps have done in the same time frame) temperature changes.
You won't frighten a lot of people by saying "it's a 50th of a degree warmer than last year, you fool!!!".
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Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I know. I always get tuttes about quantum superposition at work, ands don't get me started on the missives banning plate tectonics.
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Entirely reasonable if your job is public housing.
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Build that housing on a fault line! All geology is permanent and local!
Re: i'th Post (Score:2)
Please tell us you're being brilliantly sarcastic.
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This is why public servants work for the public, and why the government should not be run like a corporation. Vote those Florida bums out.
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Odd that science is considered politics though.
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state employees are supposed to make up reports on if the weather change etc is happening and how much and to ponder if their state budget is sustainable or not.
Re:i'th Post (Score:4, Interesting)
Its not odd at all considering scientists participate in political activism (james hansen)
Was Frances Kelsey a "political activist", too? Or was she simply trying to do her job diligently?
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Wow.. your brain simply does not work like it should does it?
Yes, when people make political issues of science issues, that science often becomes political. I know- shocking isn't it. But it is no different than anything else that people make political issues.
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Logically, I would have though it would be unsustainable to bar the word sustainable but they ideological asshats motivated by nothing but greed always do unsustainable seek to sustain the unsustainable, things like infinite wealth and infinite resources and infinite greed, well, that last one is true, greed is infinite but it really is unsustainable. No wonder they want to bar the word sustainable. As for science being political, no, science is science, what people choose to do with the science or how the
Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, when people make political issues of science issues, that science often becomes political. I know- shocking isn't it.
Incorrect, not shocking. Evolution doesn't become any more or less true if it becomes a political issue in churches. The laws of physics don't change if you're a wealthy industry that can afford to fight back politically against physicists. Your posts in this entire thread (fuck, on this entire site, for years) have been perfused with the idea that scientific phenomena can change if you politically attack them. You can maybe change what scientists examine and the course of scientific discovery, but that's not the same thing. And if you're going to suggest that's what happening here, because we haven't looked hard enough at the sun or something, you're wrong. Industry in this case has spent a lot of money funding scientific research into non-anthropomorphic causes of climate change, and have only managed to produce bullshit. [nytimes.com]
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Do you ever think that maybe, just maybe, we're not trying hard enough?
I say we form a commitment, here and now, to vote the Law of Gravity out of office at the next election and replace it with something more in tune with the 21st Century. We'll see how long it takes
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If you really think science has nothing to do with politics then quit injecting it into politics.
Re:i'th Post (Score:4, Insightful)
It's politics who's trying to use science (or far more frequently trying to deny science), not the other way around.
Here's science : our climate is changing and that change is mainly (and probably exclusively) the result of human activities. What politicians or anyone with a political agenda do with that scientific knowledge has nothing to do with science.
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Re:i'th Post (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, the evidence points to the opposite.
No, it doesn't. [theguardian.com] The mainstream predictions are actually doing ok [theguardian.com]. The simple fact is that you do not understand climate science [rationalwiki.org] and thus you assume the experts know nothing about it either [spring.org.uk].
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The problem is that for the most part others will be paying. And plenty of people will be profiting from deliberately making those 'mistakes'.
Re:i'th Post (Score:5, Interesting)
In Bangladesh, the coastline is receding with no bailouts, and people move to cities which have no infrastructure. The humane solution is precisely more creation of public money, and education. Your market solution creates a lot of unnecessary misery, because ideology.
...and politicians? (Score:3)
Most states ... have rules about discussing promoting political views on the job.
That's funny I swear I've seen state politicians promoting their political views while on the job. I've almost never seen them promoting well established scientific discoveries though.
Not like Florida has to loose (Score:5, Funny)
Now if it were surrounded by water and flat that would be different
Re:Not like Florida has to loose (Score:5)
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this is just dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
even if I am wrong, i would much rather an open debate over this.
Re:this is just dumb (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they're confusing "climate change" with "Beetlejuice". Say it too many times...
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Now we're in for it!
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Then why is "Beetlejuice" the title of the film?
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Re:this is just dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you don't buy the doom and gloom scenarios, of all places to be worried about *mild* climate change scenarios, Florida is it.
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I think what he is trying to say is that the IRS took away the rights of potential mouthpieces from talking about what they want (tea party targeting) but the same people who were ok with silencing the other side are now upset when their side is being silenced.
it really is a bad analogy, but thats what I took from it
Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Best way for the denialists to win. Make it illegal. Beats hell out of the cherry picking. Now if we can just get rid of science classes and replace them with bible studies.
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So we're now at the stage of "banning it"?
Best way for the denialists to win. Make it illegal. Beats hell out of the cherry picking. Now if we can just get rid of science classes and replace them with bible studies.
In the past they have legislated that the Earth is flat, or that it is the center of the solar system, or that pi=3.00. See how well those have worked out?
If it turns out that global warming is true, what are they going to do? Arrest Mother Nature? Good luck with that. By then most of Florida will be underwater anyway.
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By then he will be dead and lived rich through generous campaign contributions and a nice tropical under wave grave to retire in.
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It's kind of irrelevant what the Florida government or the Koch Brothers Family of Astroturfers think. The insurance industry accepted the reality of AGW quite some time ago, and people living in coastal areas are already viewed as higher risks by actuaries. Surely there must be someone in government of the state of Florida that tracks this and is capable of understanding why it's going on.
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100 years? Good luck with that shit. Theres not a legitimate scientist working in the field who thinks theres 100 years left to worry about it, particularly when we are observing the effects right now.
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What we needed to do was somehow tie climate change to communism or terrorism, then people would be taking action and building climate shelters in the back yard. But with neither of those things then it's just another liberal fantasy.
Try North Carolina (Score:5, Interesting)
"The law approved by the senate on 12 June [2012] banned scientists in state agencies from using exponential extrapolation to predict sea-level rise, requiring instead that they stick to linear projections based on historical data."
No need to limit talking in NC, they just pass legislation which limits sea rise. Science through legislation. Done and done.
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
We ban so many things these days. Try discussing the idea that racial differences go beyond the cosmetic and see how long you last at your job.
That might depend partly on your job. In medical circles, it's fairly well understood that some medical conditions affect certain groups of people more than others. If a doctor were to ignore, say, symptoms of sickle-cell disease in black people on the ground that it's "racist", that could easily be grounds for a malpractice charge, since most of its victims have central-African ancestors. Haemophilia primarily affects people with European royalty in their ancestry. Tay-Sachs disease mostly affects people with a Jewish backtround. And so on. If a medical corporation were to prevent their employees from discussing diseases that have a genetic component, we should hope that the employees publicise the problem and get it overturned.
Of course, a lot of medical organizations do have a religious component, and it wouldn't be too surprising to find that management wants such things classified as "God's will". But if fact that would be terrible medical practice, and should be brought out in the open if it's happening.
In the opposite direction, when young I was one of the few kids in my environment who seemed to be immune to poison ivy, a common problem weed in North America. Eventually I learned the reason: Sensitivity to its toxin is primarily a "white person" problem, because Europe is the only part of the world with no native plants that contain the toxin. Although I look totally European, I'm partly Ojibwa, and I apparently inherited the resistance from my father's father's mother. I'm not complaining, of course, but I would be a little bothered if this "racial" sensitivity were a forbidden topic of discussion in medical circles. I've had friends with very serious reactions to the toxin, and suppressing information about the racial nature of the sensitivity wouldn't have any public health benefits. (And knowing that some people are permanently immune to it is helpful if you'd like to eradicate the plant in an area frequented by white people. ;-)
There are similar problems with decorative plants like poison sumac and Brazilian pepper, which contain the same toxin, and are widely grown as decorative shrubs or trees in South America and Japan, where most people are immune to the toxin. Again, mentioning the racial differences in sensitivity can aid in diagnosing and preventing problems; it can also be useful information if you're looking for people to remove the plants from an area. Florida has a serious problem with an infestation of Brazilian pepper, and (white) people trying to remove - or worse, burn - the plants have had major medical problems as a result. Floridians would be especially dumb to prevent discussion of the genetic component to this sensitivity.
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Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing race with genetics. The two are not related in any way. Race is a human construct.
Race is a human construct based on small differences in genetics.
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We ban so many things these days. Try discussing the idea that racial differences go beyond the cosmetic and see how long you last at your job.
Yeah, and perpetual motion too. See what your perpetual motion invention does for your standing in the physics faculty or your chances of getting an engineering job. It's discrimination -- against crackpots.
Here's the problem with demanding that scientists take your humbug seriously: there's an endless supply of humbug in the world. It's effortless to manufacture bullshit out of thin air, and when that is disposed of it's effortless to make more. But science takes work, and turning scientists into profes
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One side of the abortion debate describes foes as "anti-choice" rather than "pro-life."
That's because the discussion isn't simple. Would you rather there be no abortions, or many?
Few to none, by the mother's choice? Then you are pro-life and pro-choice. None based on making them illegal in a police state? Then you are anti-choice. Lots and legal? Then you are pro-choice. Lots and illegal? Pro-life.
If you want to discuss the word games, define "conservative" and "liberal". Oddly, the rest of the world uses neo-liberal to mean US-Libertarian/Conservative. So liberal (neo-liberal a
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Interesting)
One side of the abortion debate describes foes as "anti-choice" rather than "pro-life."
To be honest, that one seems to make sense - these "pro-life" people are more likely to supports wars and the death penalty, so calling them "pro-life" seems kind of disingenuous.
Climate Deniers: What is your defence for this? (Score:2, Interesting)
I am really curious as to the talking points the climate deniers will come up with to defend a government banning the use of particular words. Has it really come to this?
Re:Climate Deniers: What is your defence for this? (Score:5, Informative)
They could re-use all the things they said in North Carolina, when passing legislation requiring coastal development planning to ignore sea level rises.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/north... [go.com]
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If you RTFA -
Passed by a female Democratic governor
Limited to 4 years
Written because the models predicting doom weren't trusted and offered no useful guidance on what to if if 2,100 sq miles were going to be under water
If the predictions of doom* in 100 years are correct they would still have 96 years to act. That might be enough.
* Sea level rises just over 1 meter/39 inches in 100 years
Re:Climate Deniers: What is your defence for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a serious speech restriction that won't last 2 seconds in court. Government as an employer receives no additional leeway on restricting free speech. This is censorship plain and simple and it's a prior restraint on speech that the courts will not allow.
All that's needed is a single employee to challenge the law.
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As for beyond work, you might be surprised. I believe there are laws restricting federal employees from doing things like doing campaign work for candidates for federal office.
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and some of those bans make perfect sense: pending litigation, proprietary IP, strategy, confidentiality, personal info, etc.
but banning basic scientific fact?
that's a whole new level of ignorant douchebaggery
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but banning basic scientific fact?
Even if there were such a thing as "basic scientific fact" this wouldn't come anywhere close to it. This is complex theory based on many diverse data points with no possibility of controlled testing. I'm not saying it's wrong. But it isn't basic and unfortunately it may not be fact until it is too late.
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this is millions of data points and the consensus of 99% of researchers across the entire spectrum of specialties and topics
to deny at this point is willful prideful ignorance
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How is this any different than the firings and lack of funding for anyone that researches valid non-anthropomorphic climate change causes?
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And you have some evidence for this claim, right?
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King Cnut famously demonstrated that no matter how powerful, rulers have no power over the the oceans and the tide.
Sooner or later, legislators in Florida, lacking his wisdom, are destined to learn that lesson the hard way,
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“You can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that's enough to make a decent living.” - W.C. Fields
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So you think liberty can magically make sea levels recede? I've heard some Americans mythologize, but I never knew they thought they had superpowers.
It is almost like (Score:5, Insightful)
They want to be submerged under 20m of water.
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They want Tallahassee to have beach front property too.
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Quoting a politician when discussing science is usually a bad idea, no matter which side it is. Then again, listening to zealots (again, on both sides) instead of scientists is just as bad.
China & U.S hand in hand. (Score:2)
As China for example is blocking citizen access to the new Pollution Documentary found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I think: Huh, thank God there's still some sane democracy elsewhere on this globe.
Then I'm hit in the face by idiotic actions like this one....
Do those ppl really think that denying is the answer ?
Does the problem disappear by acting like Amoeba?
Are these individuals actually so blinded by economy, money, growth...
What's the major malfunction here ?
those are not the only words to avoid. (Score:2)
They are paid to do this. (Score:4, Informative)
The Republican politicians are paid to do this. If you want the truth don't vote republican.
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what are we better than? the truth?
the GOP is the party of stupid. who said that?
the GOP said that:
http://thehill.com/video/in-th... [thehill.com]
you haven't noticed a connection between incredibly ignorant, antiscience statements and the GOP? oh i'm sure you can find a democrat who said something stupid. and i can find ten republicans for every one odd democrat
do you want to bet on that?
let me get started:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rep... [mediaite.com]
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08... [nytimes.com]
that's off the to
5 words you cannot say in Florida? (Score:5, Funny)
So as a Floridian federal employee I cannot say:-
"There is no such thing as human induced [climate change], or [global warming] as it was once called and my belief in this will last as long as the [sustainability] of a congressman's gravy train."
but I can say:-
"You climate deniers are full of S..t, and are definitely corrupt and in the pocket of the oil industry"
OK, I can go with that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
bushwacky (Score:2)
Wasn't there a Republican Presidential hopeful in the Florida governor's mansion at the time? Is this what we can expect if he gets elected to the White House? None of us will be allowed to say 'climate change'.
Taken to its logical conclusion (Score:2)
From the article: “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,”
Why does Florida hate gravity?
Guv'nuh Skeletor (Score:2)
... is yet another one of the teabagistan nutjobs that make me wonder if there is anyone left in the Republican party that isn't fucking nuts.
I mean, the Democrats aren't any great shakes (I abhor Hillary - she's morphed into just another neocon hawk), but the psychopathy exhibited by those with an R next to their names is just absolutely stunning. I look at the current list of the Presidential candidates that the RNC has foisted upon us voters, and it's a clown-car of bottom-feeding grifters and scumbags.
censorship is wrong (Score:2)
In all forms for all sides.
how about "gulf oxygen levels" (Score:2)
can we say that?
"invasive species"
"coral bleaching"
"algal bloom"
"dead zone"
ooh, here's a favorite:
"huuricane"
A better application of terms (Score:2)
Re:Flordia doesn't have those issues yet (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that to address erosion caused by over development, perhaps florida might still want to consider "sustainability" (apparently also banned) even if all those other problems are of no concern to a flat coastal state.
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You might think that, wouldn't you?
Sustainable Initiatives [state.fl.us]
Bureau of Beaches and Coastal Systems [state.fl.us]
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Sounds like faith-based reasoning.
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Think of it like the Family Values Council chairman practicing homosexuality, or "fair and balanced" meaning neither.
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Twat
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It's CLIMATE CHANGE, not global warming and you seem to agree that the climate has been changing and you even go so far as to attribute climate change as having some impact by man (the romans)
So it would seem you agree with the scientific community in that many aspects of CLIMATE CHANGE are man made, while others are entirely part of the Earth's natural process.
What? You didn't intend to agree with the scientific community? Well better hurry back on over to cliimatedenialforjesuswiki.com to find new "talk
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