ECOnomics Article 51: The War on Science
Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 27, 2026
Note from the Editor: Paul Roberts, a longtime environmental advocate and public servant, died on June 24. He served on the Everett city council from 2005 to 2021 and a term on the Everett Public Schools board of directors from 1999 to 2005. His final column, published below, was submitted to The Herald on June 22.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore for the film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The film also won an Oscar that year for best documentary film. The Nobel Committee stated the prize was awarded: “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change.”
The basic science of global warming and climate change has been known since the 1960s. Research in 1968 concluded projected increases in CO2 would accelerate warming and potentially destabilize the climate. Independent research conducted by the petroleum industry in 1969 reached precisely these same conclusions.
The oil industry determined the truth was inconvenient. They knew of the damage their products would cause to the environment at the same time as the rest of the scientific community. Their response was to conduct a multi-million dollar propaganda and disinformation campaign over five decades to discredit climate science. It continues to this day.
The oil industry followed the tobacco industry’s disinformation playbook. They too found the science documenting health risks associated with tobacco use to be an inconvenient truth.
Manipulating facts, reality, and science for propaganda purposes, or as Stephan Colbert describes, “truthiness,” is the main tool of autocrats, dictators, and those who profit from misinformation. Spreading misinformation and casting doubt between fact and fiction is not new. The origins go back hundreds of years.
In his 2017 essay “On Tyranny,” Yale History professor Timothy Snyder writes: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis to do so.” Snyder describes four modes in which truth dies. They include: open hostility to verifiable reality; endless repetition of misinformation (lies) designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable; magical thinking – the open embrace of contradiction; and, misplaced faith and self-defying claims as “I alone can solve it.”
Today, the three most powerful world leaders – Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump – are arguably also the greatest purveyors of propaganda and truthiness. However, Trump stands alone, conducting a sweeping war on data, facts, higher education, science, and in particular climate change and clean energy.
The Trump administration has broadly reduced, altered, or eliminated data production by the U.S. Government. Notable targets include: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Annual Report on Hunger, Center for Disease Control, Farm Labor Survey, Pregnancy Risk Monitoring System and more.
He has blinded the watchdogs, firing at least 17 inspectors general (IGs) who’s jobs were independent oversight of government agencies; detecting waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. They included IGs for Justice, Defense, and EPA.
But the Trump administration is particularly focused on eliminating science, and data related to climate change and clean energy. Trump calls climate change a hoax and has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris agreement. Examples of the war on climate science include: canceling the National Climate Assessment, closing NCAR – the National Center for Atmospheric Research, ending NOAA’s reporting on financial impacts of climate disasters, closing Forest Service research stations that study wildfires, droughts and global warming and dismantling ocean observation stations studying ocean circulation and changes resulting from climate change.
The war on climate science was part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, advising Trump’s second term, and is being led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. They describe climate change as “climate alarmism” and “religion.” Zeldin has overseen a systematic unraveling of clean air regulations including the “endangerment finding” – EPA’s authority to limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Trump is promoting the fossil fuel industry – oil and coal – while attacking clean renewable energy, repeating oil industry disinformation talking points. He has made no secret of his disdain for renewables while
repeating his mantra: “Drill Baby Drill.” Big oil helped reelect Trump, pouring obscene amounts of money into his campaign. Today the administration is paying them back, spending millions of tax dollars keeping dilapidated coal-fired power plants open.
Disinformation campaigns are designed to promote and protect power and profits, distorting facts and reality – inconvenient truths. However inconvenient, the truth is renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. The rest of the world understands this and is rapidly transitioning to renewable clean energy.
Americans are harmed by the reckless promotion of oil and coal at the expense of clean, renewable, cheaper energy. These policies are harmful to the environment, economy and public health.
Paul Roberts is retired and lives in Everett. His career spans five decades in infrastructure, economics and environmental policy including former Chair of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency Board and advising Washington cities on climate change.
Paul Roberts was retired and lived in Everett. His career spanned five decades in infrastructure, economics and environmental policy including former Chair of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency Board and advising Washington cities on climate change.
