Stephen Colbert fires back at Paramount, Trump over ‘Late Show’ axing
Stephen Colbert blasted Paramount and President Donald Trump after “Late Show” cancellation.
Tricia Hall Collins is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine.
I found my purpose in science class growing up in Marion. My dream: become an Earth scientist to help solve society’s most pressing problems.
President Donald Trump and his administration are crushing my dream as they work deliberately to destroy the American scientific community.
My work as a scientist has spanned managing environmental risk for manufacturers and oil and gas companies while in private industry, to measuring the loss of Antarctica’s ice sheets while studying at Ohio State University.
Now, as I work to complete my Ph.D., I am studying the impacts of abrupt climate change on our dwindling water supplies.
Much of my scientific training has been paid for by American taxpayers (through agencies like the National Science Foundation, one of the largest research funders in the world) because my work has the potential to benefit all Americans.
Indiscriminately discarding thousands of scientists like me, who have been trained for public benefit with public money, is not only irresponsible; it’s a poor investment strategy.
Even poorer when you consider that every dollar invested in publicly funded research drives $8.38 in private industry research and development.
Contrary to helping people, the president has proposed eliminating all climate science funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), thus halting transparent science that improves drought and flood forecasts, among other benefits.
If the president doesn’t see the value of climate science, JPMorgan Chase certainly does — they hired NOAA’s former chief scientist to guide their investment strategies last year. It hurts the American people if science is only accessible to rich, private interests.
I am fighting to finish my degree while Trump destroys the infrastructure that has supported American science dominance since the end of WWII.
My work, as well as the work of millions of other scientists worldwide — from measuring crop yields to monitoring for nuclear explosions to predicting tomorrow’s weather — is made possible by U.S. Geological Survey satellite imagery and NOAA climate models.
Not only is Trump firing thousands of scientists who work at these agencies, but he is now purposefully hiding the critical data produced by these scientists — data that is legally required to be free and available to the public.
We need to keep improving our ability to help communities like those in Texas that endured devastating flash floods made potentially 20%-30% worse because of climate change, and like those in Ohio that are experiencing more heat stress risk and extreme rainfall.
We need to robustly fund scientific research, but instead, funding and programs are being terminated. Meanwhile other countries are treating this as “a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity” and are trying to lure American scientists with promises of funding and “scientific refuge.”
This is not only my loss, as I search the job market for opportunities to keep training and help my fellow citizens, but a brutal loss for this country.
Science expands our understanding of the world. Why deliberately destroy it? It’s worth noting when it has happened before.
Hitler toppled Germany’s scientific supremacy in the 1930s because free inquiry was a threat to Nazi philosophies and power. We should take note of the result: scientists fled Germany, with many ending up in America, the land of scientific opportunity (at the time). These scientists, some of whom are household names to this day, contributed directly to this country’s dominance in the world.
While damage in the present has already been done, we can save America’s critical place in science.
Call your representatives and demand that they stop the destruction of American science.
Raised in Marion, Tricia Hall Collins is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine.
