The US interior department administers over $5.

The US interior department administers over $5.5bn in funding to external organizations, mostly for research, conservation and land acquisition. At the beginning of 2018, interior secretary Ryan Zinke instated a new requirement that scientific funding above $50,000 must undergo an additional review to ensure expenditures “better align with the administration’s priorities”.

Zinke has signaled that climate change is not one of those priorities: this week, he told Breitbart News that “environmental terrorist groups were responsible for the ongoing wildfires in northern California and, ignoring scientific research on the issue, dismissed the role of climate change.

Steve Howke, one of Zinke’s high-school football teammates, oversees this review. Howke’s highest degree is a bachelor’s in business administration. Until Zinke appointed him as an interior department senior adviser to the acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget, Howke had spent his entire career working in credit unions.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/17/interior-secretarys-school-friend-crippling-climate-research-scientists-say

Comments

  1. Boris BorcicAugust 17, 2018 at 7:17 AM

    It's not so much that they be identified as Nazis than the insulting lies they spout, that makes one want to punch them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mari ChristianAugust 17, 2018 at 8:24 AM

    And we all know what the "administration's priorities" are - the almighty dollar.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The heart of the book is the story of the Great Terror that struck the scientific establishment in the 1930s.

The heart of the book is the story of the Great Terror that struck the scientific establishment in the 1930s. Ings shows that scientists now depended for resources and promotion (but also for physical survival) on the power of patrons such as top leaders like Andrei Zhdanov, or the greatest patron of all, Stalin. He describes the rise of the maliciously cunning but childlike Trofim Lysenko, who notoriously became Stalin’s favorite scientist (though they met only once or twice). As starvation spread in the wake of Stalin’s collectivization, particularly in 1932-33, Lysenko, a semi-educated charlatan, attacked well-known geneticists who were trying to develop new hybrid crops that could solve the problem of low productivity, much of it caused by Stalin’s brutal policies. Fueled by what Ings calls “a huckster’s monomania,” Lysenko claimed he could raise crop yields by his own process, called vernalization, in which artificially induced coldness could fool winter wheat to develop earlier i...
Read more

Leaving aside the correlative nature of this study and the ambiguities around interpreting differences in corpus...

Leaving aside the correlative nature of this study and the ambiguities around interpreting differences in corpus callosum white matter density as a biomarker for "neural damage," this study makes the dubious assertion that skunk weed is high potency. Bad science compounded by lazy journalism is a reminder to never trust any science news from UPI .  http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2015/11/27/Study-High-potency-marijuana-linked-with-neural-damage/1671448657013/
Read more

I don't know why this is, but whenever I hear a pseudoscientist invoke the name of Stephen Hawking for any reason,...

I don't know why this is, but whenever I hear a pseudoscientist invoke the name of Stephen Hawking for any reason, they almost always get his name wrong. It's either Hawkin, Hawkins, or Hawkings; almost never do they get it correct as Hawking. Why? It's a mystery. Perhaps saying it right would burn their tongue. Whenever I do get this email from a crank, wanting me to read his lengthy PDF tome on a new model of physics for the universe, or whatever it is, I reflect on what it was that made him think I was likely to be receptive to it. The answer is obvious: it's the association of the idea of skepticism with the title of the show Skeptoid. He figured that I, as the skeptic, am the adversary of the mainstream and the champion of the maverick, looking to tear down the dark-aged establishment using the radiance of new ideas as my weapon. This is kind of a half-right definition of skepticism. Yes, we do want to shine the light of science on the ideas around us to see what...
Read more