EPA, NASA & other Government Twitter Accounts are going ‘Rogue’ in Protest
The scientists are fighting back against Trump administrative action by creating ”unofficial’ NASA, EPA, & National Parks twitter accounts.
At 12pm on inauguration day, the very instant that Donald Trump officially became President, all mention of climate change was instantly erased from the White House Website. It was literally the first action of a Trump administration. On Tuesday the Trump Administration ordered the EPA to take down its climate change webpage, but then suspended the order after public backlash, (the EPA climate change page contains links to emissions data and scientific facts on climate change). Trump then took executive action to freeze all scientific grants at the EPA, and then ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to quickly reconsider its Dec. 4 decision to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Any scientist working for the federal government has great cause to be alarmed, and so does anyone who cares about the environment. But in a wonderful act of defiance, the super nerds have created dozens of new platforms to reach the people. Scientists have ‘unofficially’ started new ‘Alt’ or ‘Rogue’ twitter accounts for their respective government agencies. These new twitter handles have quickly outpaced their official counterparts in terms of popularity. My favorite right now is the ‘Alt’ National Parks Services @AltNatParksSer (currently 1.06 Million followers and growing).
UPDATE 2/10/17) : AltNatParksSer is now: @NotAltWorld (after gov crackdown)
Now we have a way to get scientific facts, and information about environment action and protest, with a healthy side dish of snark and scientific ‘opinion’. For example ‘Rogue’ NASA is helping to organize a climate march on Washington with the hashtag #resist.
@AltFDA is really taking the gloves off, BOOM!
And there are many, many other federal agencies taking action. Here is a list of the alt accounts including NOAA, YosemiteNPS, FDA, NASA, EPA and many many more.