Lamar Smith's Chief Of Staff "Leading" NASA Transition - Like His Boss, A Denier Sack Of Shit
Scientists and policy watchers have been sounding the alarm bell that NASA’s climate work could be in jeopardy ever since Donald Trump’s election last month. That’s due in large part to some of his advisors saying the agency should be focused on space exploration and not wasting money observing the earth. But the alarm started ringing louder last week with the announcement that Chris Shank, the deputy chief of staff to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), will be heading the transition at the agency.
Shank is also policy and coalition director for the House Science, Space and Technology Committee (you know, the committee responsible for that tweet last week) and a former NASA senior official during the Bush era, a period when scientists said they were being censored.
Now Shank will be in charge of helping lay out the priorities for the next NASA administrator and if his past is any indication, NASA’s $1.9 billion earth science budget will be square in the crosshairs.
EDIT
Despite ground rules that climate science was not up for debate in the discussion, Shank still questioned aspects of climate science, including the goal of climate policies and the accuracy of scientific measurements. “The rhetoric about climate pollution, which is CO2 which I am emitting here today, is this really about some neo-Malthusian discussion on population control that we’re talking about here?” he said, alluding to the idea that climate change could be used by governments to invade people’s personal lives. “Some of the rhetoric coming out that it’s the hottest year in history actually is not backed up by the science.”
EDIT
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-denier-nasa-transition-20938
= new reply since forum marked as read
