One of Ryan Zinke’s high-school football buddies is blocking the nation's climate research.

Vile opportunist and climate change denier Ryan Zinke, as Secretary of Interior, oversees 5.5 billion dollars of research money provided to non-goverment researchers and planners that fall under his jurisdiction. Our tax dollars fund environmental research, conservation, and land acquisition through Interior.

At the beginning of 2018, Zinke added a new level of a job-killing regulation that requires scientific funding “above $50,000 must undergo an additional review to ensure expenditures “better align with the administration’s priorities”.

American climate scientists are now alleging that scientific research funding is being held up by a former high school football teammate and friend of Ryan Zinke who is implementing Zinke’s plan to derail the climate change fight.

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Mallory Pickett, writing in The Guardian, reports that Ryan Zinke (Kremlin asset Donald Trump’ s hitman on environmental policies that fall under the Department of Interior’s jurisdiction), signaled that climate change is not a priority for the agency that oversees the nation’s environment.

In a gobsmacking interview with Breitbart News, Zinke stated that it was “environmental terrorist groups” that are “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 friends, oversees this unprecedented review process required by Zinke. Howke is a Senior Advisor to Acting Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget Scott Cameron at the Department of the Interior.

Pickett writes:

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.

The department, which manages a significant portion of the US landmass, has attributed the slower pace of funding approval to efforts to reduce “waste, fraud and abuse”. Yet the policy, which has been in place for six months, is already hindering some research. One of the largest programs affected is the Climate Adaptation Science Centers, a network of eight regionally focused research centers located at “host” universities across the country.

The largest funding program targeting by Howke is the “Climate Adaptation Science Centers, a network of eight regionally focused research centers located at “host” universities across the country”. This network focuses on climate extremes and their consequences for the safety of the American people from hurricanes, heat waves and forest fires.  

Every administration brings new priorities to the cabinet departments, but in agencies that fund science, this is usually reflected in the subject areas of calls for proposals. The awarding procedures – rigorous reviews of proposals conducted by agency staff with relevant scientific expertise – stay the same. “We are not used to an additional political review on top of that,” McPherson said.

“Funneling every grant over $50,000 to a single political appointee from departments that range from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the [US Geological Survey] to the Bureau of Reclamation suggests a political micromanagement approach,” said David Hayes, an interior deputy secretary in the Obama and Clinton administrations who now directs the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at the NYU School of Law. He described it as “political interference” that is “both unprecedented and pernicious”.