By Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler 3 August 2018 (Reuters) – The Trump administration has rescinded an Obama-era ban on the use of pesticides linked to declining bee populations and the cultivation of genetically modified crops in dozens of national wildlife refuges where farming is permitted. Environmentalists, who had sued to […]
By Michael Biesecker 10 August 2018 WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration endangered public health by keeping a widely used pesticide on the market despite extensive scientific evidence that even tiny levels of exposure can harm babies’ brains. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco […]
By Collin Eaton 9 August 2018 NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply “dumb”.These are among the messages that flowed from the America First Energy […]
By Timothy Cama 6 August 2018 (The Hill) – President Trump doubled down on his criticism of California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), saying Monday that the state’s water management policies are responsible for deadly wildfires.“Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being […]
6 August 2018 (Silencing Science Tracker) – On 31 July 2018, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memorandum outlining the Trump Administration’s research and development (R&D) “priorities.” The memorandum is intended to “provide[] guidance to [federal] agencies as they formulate their Fiscal Year 2020 budget submissions.”The memorandum indicates that federal […]
By Nathaniel Rich 1 August 2018 (The New York Times) – The first suggestion to Rafe Pomerance that humankind was destroying the conditions necessary for its own survival came on Page 66 of the government publication EPA-600/7-78-019. It was a technical report about coal, bound in a coal-black cover with beige lettering — one of […]
Vancouver, BC, 2 August 2018 (Sea Shepherd) – Today Justice Maisonville ruled that only Alexandra Morton can continue sampling close to salmon farms, but only in a boat that is 2.6m long, which is a vessel so tiny it is unsafe to operate in the marine waters of the BC coast. As a result, Marine […]
24 July 2018 (Silencing Science Tracker) – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) removed references to “climate change” in its 2017 sustainability report. Notably, in a departure from USAID’s 2016 report, the 2017 version no longer lists “climate change adaptation” as a priority. The 2017 version also omits discussion — which had appeared in […]
By Paul A. Eisenstein 2 August 2018 (NBC News) – The White House announced Thursday that it is moving ahead on its much-anticipated plan to roll back the fuel economy mandate set by the Obama administration. The previous guidelines, which were reached during Obama’s first term, call for automakers to each reach a fleet average […]
By Jessica Bruder 31 July 2018 (The New York Times) – In 2000, a doctor in the tiny town of St. Charles, Va., began writing alarmed letters to Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. The drug had come to market four years earlier and Art Van Zee had watched it ravage the state’s poorest county, […]