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The Department of the Interior is seeking high-level scientists to run five regional centers of the program of scientific centers for climate adaptation.
But who wants to work for a Trump administration known to have denied or downplayed climate science? And why does he fill the positions?
Sharpen your pencils, candidates. CVs are due tomorrow.
According to a US Geological Survey publication, Interior plans to fill the largest positions in five of the eight regional climate adaptation centers housed in research universities, from Hawaii to Massachusetts.
Opportunities for a "supervising physicist / biologist" are attractive jobs in the federal public service. They have a senior rank in the GS-15 class and an annual salary of $ 127,000 to $ 164,000. Hiring will be done at the Southeast, Northeast, South Central, Northwest and Pacific Islands Adaptation Centers.
According to at least one university program director who is waiting for the USGS to hold a position in his home university, the University of Washington, the interest is not lacking.
"I have to say that a lot of people are asking me a lot about work, but I do not know how many people have applied," said Amy Snover, director of the Northwestern University of Toronto. 39; ACCS. and an associate professor affiliated with the UW Environmental College.
Snover will not make the hiring decision. The USGS, whose director, James Reilly, promised during the confirmation of his vote in the Senate, last April, to keep the policy outside the scientific work of the agency.
The same can not be said of the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, the former Montana congressman who has openly challenged climate science. In August, he said the devastating wildfires in California "have nothing to do with climate change," though studies have shown the connection between large forest fires and the warmer climate and more Dry California.
Independent scientists felt a collective chill when Zinke issued a directive in December 2017 requiring discretionary grants of $ 50,000 or more to be screened politically to ensure that federal spending is better aligned with the policies. political positions of the administration.
Zinke commissioned Steve Howke, a personal friend in Montana, to oversee the selection of funding for universities, non-profit organizations and conservation groups.
It is unclear how many projects at the adaptation centers were projected, but Snover said that political control of science was a concern for many scientists. She pointed out that most of the grants to accommodation centers would reach the threshold of $ 50,000.
All the work of the CCAC is to assist the interior agencies such as the National Parks Service, the Wildlife Service, the Land Management Office and the Office of Indian Affairs to understand the impact of climate change on natural and cultural resources, she said.
Snover said most of the candidates she had spoken to had not cited the Trump administration's climate policies as an obstacle. "Maybe people have already figured out what they thought before calling me," she said.
Questions sent by e-mail to the press service of the Interior on vacancies at the CCAC – including why five of the eight posts are filled simultaneously – have not received an answer in time. But a person familiar with the program said "there was nothing wrong with it" in the departures of the former directors.
Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: "That says you have so many vacancies, that means senior officials have left the program."
And while government-sponsored science remains critical to exploring the causes and effects of climate change, Rosenberg said the Trump administration's rejection of man-made warming had placed many government scientists in an untenable position.
"I think that any academic occupying one of these positions will have to think very seriously about the possibility of doing the work that he wants to do under this administration," he said. "This is the kind of deal Faust has made that many scientists must find now."
But Snover, who oversees the University of Washington's partnership with the CCAC since 2017, said she was unaware of any scientific work that would have been stifled for political reasons. Research conducted by the northwestern center focused on the risks and characteristics of forest fires in the northwestern Pacific, as well as the effects of rising watercourse temperatures on Pisces.
"It is very clear to people that the climate is changing and that it is urgent to prepare for the changes ahead," she said.
While the fundamental objectives of CCAC retain the support of higher authorities, the Trump administration has already tinkered.
Established by the Congress in 2008 as the National Center for Climate Change and Wildlife Science, the program was expanded in 2009 to include eight research clusters called "Climate Science Centers". All regional centers were created between 2010 and 2012.
But at the beginning of this year, as part of the 2018 budget process, the name was changed to "Science Centers for Climate Adaptation".
According to USGS, "the mission of our network has not changed.The changes align more clearly the national and regional centers and focus on the focus of the centers on the satisfaction of needs in the field. adaptation of natural resources ".
Reproduced from Climatewire with the permission of E & E News. E & E provides daily coverage of essential information on energy and the environment on www.eenews.net.
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