{"id":6641,"date":"2015-03-19T08:04:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T13:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6641"},"modified":"2015-03-19T08:04:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T13:04:37","slug":"floridas-climate-change-gag-order-claims-its-first-victim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6641","title":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s Climate Change Gag Order Claims Its First Victim"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/03\/18\/florida-s-climate-change-gag-order-claims-its-first-victim\" target=\"_blank\">Florida\u2019s Climate Change Gag Order Claims Its First Victim<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Earlier this month, it was revealed that Florida\u2019s Republican governor Rick Scott had\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/03\/10\/florida-s-war-words-climate-change-will-doom-sunshine-state\">directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (<span class=\"caps\">DEP<\/span>) to stop<\/a>using terms like \u201cclimate change\u201d and \u201cglobal warming\u201d in any official correspondence or during meetings<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peer.org\/news\/news-releases\/2015\/03\/18\/scott%E2%80%99s-climate-change-gag-order-claims-a-victim\/\" target=\"_blank\">. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility<\/a>\u00a0(<span class=\"caps\">PEER<\/span>), that gag order has now claimed its first\u00a0victim.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"caps\">PEER<\/span>\u00a0made the following assertions\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peer.org\/news\/news-releases\/2015\/03\/18\/scott%E2%80%99s-climate-change-gag-order-claims-a-victim\/\" target=\"_blank\">in a press release today<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>Barton Bibler is a long-time\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DEP<\/span>\u00a0employee who now serves as Land Management Plan Coordinator in its Division of State Lands. He attended a Florida Coastal Managers Forum on February 27, 2015 at which climate change and sea-level rise were discussed among a mix of public attendees. Mr. Bibler\u2019s official notes on this meeting reflected all of that discussion. He was directed to remove any hot button issues, especially explicit references to climate change, and then was given a letter of reprimand for supposedly misrepresenting that the \u201cofficial meeting agenda included climate\u00a0change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he was given the reprimand on March 9th, Mr. Bibler was told to not return to work for two days which would be charged against his personal leave time. Two days later he received a \u201cMedical Release Form\u201d requiring that his doctor supply the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DEP<\/span>\u00a0with an evaluation of unspecified \u201cmedical condition and behavior\u201d issues before being allowed to return to\u00a0work.<\/p>\n<p>As of today, Bibler\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/floridapolitics.com\/archives\/12796\" target=\"_blank\">has not returned to work<\/a>, and is uncertain if he will even be able to return.\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">PEER<\/span>\u00a0is requesting state officials to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2015\/03\/gov-ricks-scott-anti-science-purge-begins-state-employee-banned-for-uttering-climate-change\/\" target=\"_blank\">open an investigation<\/a>\u00a0into the handling of Bibler\u2019s \u201cmandatory leave\u201d\u00a0directive.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida\u2019s Climate Change Gag Order Claims Its First Victim Earlier this month, it was revealed that Florida\u2019s Republican governor Rick Scott had\u00a0directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to stopusing terms like \u201cclimate change\u201d and \u201cglobal warming\u201d in any official correspondence or during meetings. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility\u00a0(PEER), that gag order [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[4279,141,4278,4277,940,369,4276],"class_list":["post-6641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-barton-bibler","tag-climate-change","tag-dep","tag-department-of-environmental-protection","tag-florida","tag-global-warming","tag-rick-scott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6642,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641\/revisions\/6642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}