April 23, 2017 10:30 AM UTC

Denver To Trump: Back Off Man, We Like Science

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• by: Colorado Pols

Denver Post reporting, but you were probably there from the look of it:

Thousands of scientists and science supporters joined the March For Science through downtown Denver Saturday in the city’s largest rally since the Women’s March in January.

In cities across the globe — as close as Boulder and as far away as Washington D.C. and a German scientific enclave in Antarctica — marchers showed support for evidence-based and science-based public policy, protested potential cuts to federally-funded research and expressed disappointment with the White House’s response to climate change…

Marchers were a mix of younger and older people who traveling from across Colorado, including Boulder, Durango and Bailey. Some were scientists and teachers while others were students and science enthusiasts.

The Colorado Independent’s Kelsey Ray:

President Donald Trump has been notably outspoken against climate change and environmental research. His budget blueprint, essentially a wish list for budget boosts and cuts, proposed slashing EPA funding by 30 percent and reducing funds for environmental research agencies like the National Oceanic and Environmental Administration.

In the lead-up to the march, numerous editorials questioned the premise of scientists acting as activists. Is there a place in science for activism? Should scientists speak about political issues? Perhaps fearful of backlash and further cuts, most government-funded research agencies have forbid their employees from talking about politics.

Many of those at the march, particularly the career scientists, had considered these questions. But they ultimately decided that recent political attacks on climate science were too worrisome not to show up.

We haven’t seen a reliable crowd estimate for yesterday’s march in Denver, but it was certainly in the tens of thousands, and as reported easily the biggest protest march since the Women’s March held a day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Much like the Women’s March, we’ve seen some attempts by Trump supporters to argue the march had no specific target, and that Trump supporters would have had as much reason to attend a March for Science as anybody else.

Against the backdrop of Trump’s huge proposed cuts to federal scientific research of all kinds, and especially research into climate change, this notion is preposterous–as much as claiming the Women’s March wasn’t a direct result of the fact that a man who bragged about sexual assault is now President of the United States. Here in Colorado, home to such a large number of critical federal scientific research facilities, we know very well what the threat is, and who is behind it.

And it looks like the whole rest of the world knows, too.