In their letter they state “America’s diversity is our strength. Great ideas come from all parts of society, and we should champion that broad-based creative potential.” They note that 40% of Fortune 500 companies owe their foundation to an immigrant or his or her immediate descendants.  They see a Donald Trump presidency as one that would be openly hostile to immigration, one that would threaten or do mass deportations of American residents, as a place where profiling would become a standard procedure.

They describe the role they believe government should play in fostering a technical economy, one where investments are made in infrastructure, education and scientific research. In their condemnation they write “Donald Trump articulates few policies beyond erratic and contradictory pronouncements. His reckless disregard for our legal and political institutions threatens to upend what attracts companies to start and scale in America. He risks distorting markets, reducing exports, and slowing job creation.”

They call for a president who believes in “freedom of expression, openness to newcomers, equality of opportunity, public investment in research and infrastructure, and respect for the rule of law.”

So is all this true?

Here are some quotes from Donald Trump that make you pause and wonder about the candidate’s understanding of technology.

When asked about closing the Internet because of ISIS’ use of it as a recruitment tool, Trump stated:

“ISIS is recruiting through the Internet. ISIS is using the Internet better than we are using the Internet, and it was our idea. I want to get our brilliant people from Silicon Valley and other places and figure out a way that ISIS cannot do what they’re doing. You talk freedom of speech. I don’t want them using our Internet to take our young, impressionable youth. We should be using our most brilliant minds to figure a way that ISIS cannot use the Internet. And then we should be able to penetrate the Internet and find out exactly where ISIS is and everything about ISIS. And we can do that if we use our good people.”

When further questioned about closing parts of the Internet he stated:

“I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I don’t want to let people that want to kill us use our Internet.”

From his Trump: Make America Great Again, his position on immigration states “We are the only country in the world whose immigration system puts the needs of other nations ahead of our own.” From this opening falsehood he proceeds to justify “a wall across the southern border” and changing the rules around work visa programs ostensibly to ensure the domestic pool of unemployed get hired first even if they are unqualified to do high tech jobs.

What seems glaringly missing from the Trump policy site is nary a word about technology or innovation. It’s as if these significant drivers of America’s leadership in the world have been completely overlooked while he focuses on trade wars with China and Mexican “rapists and criminals.” What’s even more frightening is that the party that Trump represents is largely adopting his positions on these subjects. In the last week the Republicans announced that coal is “clean” energy, a delusional position that counters basic science. Trump has vowed to dismantle the COP21 climate change agreement, to undo the existing EPA efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and to institute America first go for broke energy development in coal, oil and natural gas. Trump’s 100-day action plan is to “rescind…the climate action plan” and to achieve “American energy dominance” with King Coal leading the way. In his response to the alarm raised by climatologists and the scientific community, Trump stated “political activists with extreme agendas will no longer write the rules.”

So I get where these technology sector leaders are coming from in their open letter. One of them is Peter Diamandis whose musings on the future provides this blog site with interesting content from time to time. Among the other noteworthy are Irwin and Paul Jacobs, of Qualcomm, the telecommunications giant, Shishir Mehrotra from YouTube, Dustin Moskovitz  and Margaret Stewart from Facebook, Alexis Ohanian from Reddit, Pierre Omidayr from eBay, Barney Pell from the Singularity University, Kim Malone and Hunter Walk, both former directors at Google, Katie Stanton, former VP at Twitter, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, Padmasree Warrior, former CTSO at Cisco, Barry Diller, of Expedia, Daniel Weitzner from MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and numerous others including a who’s who of high-tech venture capitalists, university researchers and teachers. In Trump’s defense from within the technology sector comes Peter Thiel of PayPal and Palantir. He will be a speaker at the Republican National Convention.

One can expect that funding for climate studies will be slashed by a Trump or Ted Cruz-led regime. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will see its Clean Power Plan quashed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will see its budgets decreased. Planning and budgeting for the replacement of aging Earth-observation satellites studying sea level rise and other aspects of climate science will be put on hold or cancelled. Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific-coast drilling for oil and gas will be back on. And coal-fired power plants will no longer be on the chopping block.

Will scientists sit idly by and watch this happen? That’s an interesting question. On a smaller scale Australia went through a similar experience after a change in government. With Tony Abbott in charge  a progressive carbon tax was repealed. Government departments researching climate change were closed. Australia set minimal targets for carbon reduction paying lip service to international attempts to combat climate change. But Australia’s scientists rebelled, taking it upon themselves to continue the research and reporting on the continent’s changing climate. Crowd funding replaced government money. Eventually Abbott was turfed and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull who hasn’t reinstated the carbon tax but at least affirms a belief that climate change is real and human caused.

Should America’s scientists be contingency planning similar actions as those of their Australian colleagues in the event of a Republican presidency? Should they be raising money to defend themselves when Republican witch hunts start to identify the “climate science criminals” among us like the Red Scare of the 1950s? One would hope so because current GOP leadership has clearly stated its plans to eliminate all significant American national climate policies. For the Republicans, climate change isn’t a national issue. It’s a Democratic Party issue.

How far the Republicans have moved from their environmental interventionist past under President Nixon and George H. W. Bush. Nixon who created the EPA, and Bush who invented cap and trade mechanisms for dealing with atmospheric pollutants, both listened to scientists.

So what explains the behavioral shift? Money!

The money from fossil fuel companies is lining the pockets of Republican politicians to block progress on the climate file. Delay to maximize profits is the fossil fuel industry strategy. This is the same strategy employed by Big Tobacco in its fight against scientific evidence that its products caused cancer. And interestingly enough, the climate science deniers who publish anti-climate science bromides and hold pseudo-climate science conventions, are people with roots in trying to block action against tobacco companies. They are working from the same playbook.

In the last few days the current Chairman of the House Science Committee, a Republican congressman from Texas, Lamar Smith, accused NOAA of “misrepresenting research” requesting the emails of scientists involved in a 2014 study. His objective was to uncover the conspiracy behind research on temperature observations. Smith’s agenda is the GOPs. He is quoted as stating, “Instead of hyping a climate change agenda, NOAA should focus its efforts on producing sound science and improving methods of data collection…..Unfortunately, climate alarmism often takes priority at NOAA.” His Democratic opponents on the House Science Committee have referred to Smith’s agenda as a “grand conspiracy to falsify data.”

Scientists need to make the same point and loudly. The politicizing of climate change by the Republican Party is putting the citizens of the United States at risk as well as the rest of the planet. A Republican in the White House will diminish and delay sound science-based policy. In four years time the cost to address the impact of climate change will increase 40% for each decade of delay. Who will bear the cost? Mexico?