Day: March 21, 2017

Local science community rallies around opposition to Trump, plans march

Read the full story in the Chicago Tribune.

In Illinois coffee shops and theaters, scientists and science fans gather to plan a march. At government offices they fret about the appointment of Cabinet leaders who hold skeptical views on climate change. And in labs they worry about the freeze on their research projects.

The regional science community has felt apprehension since the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency — concerns that further crystallized Thursday with the release of the administration’s budget proposal. Trump seeks deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and other areas of federal government that rely on scientific research.

Now, motivated by the tenor of the Trump era, the science community is trying to educate the public about how science affects their lives and is planning a Chicago pro-science march to coincide with the national March for Science on Earth Day.

What a Gutted EPA Would Cost Our Communities

Read the full story in Governing.

Cities, towns and counties depend on the federal agency in numerous ways. Drastic budget cuts would create a lot of pain for them.

San Francisco’s Race to Zero Waste Has One Last Major Hurdle

Read the full story at Medium.

We often hear about San Francisco’s success in waste management and recycling: how the city is a leader in this field, diverting 80% of its waste through reusing, recycling, and composting. This diversion rate is impressive and superior to that of every other major city, which raises the question: How is San Francisco diverting 80% of its waste?

The Women on the Front Lines of Climate Change

Read the full story in Pacific Standard.

Twenty-six million people around the globe have been displaced by climate change since 2010; 20 million of those climate refugees — more than 75 percent of them — are women. But women are not merely victims of climate change: They also have the potential to create lasting solutions. In the global north, women make 80 percent of consumer decisions. In developing countries, the vast majority of water-collection and food-production tasks fall to women. Meanwhile, as Kalee Kreider notes, women are increasingly controlling the upper levels of climate diplomacy, from the executive secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to the working group in charge of implementing the Paris Agreement.

EPA awards $100 million to upgrade Flint water system

Read the full story from Reuters.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday it had awarded $100 million to upgrade Flint, Michigan’s drinking water infrastructure to address a crisis that exposed thousands of children to lead poisoning.

Scientists Brace for a Lost Generation in American Research

Read the full story in the Atlantic.

The work of a scientist is often unglamorous. Behind every headline-making, cork-popping, blockbuster discovery, there are many lifetimes of work. And that work is often mundane. We’re talking drips-of-solution-into-a-Petri-dish mundane, maintaining-a-database mundane. Usually, nothing happens.

Scientific discovery costs money—quite a lot of it over time—and requires dogged commitment from the people devoted to advancing their fields. Now, the funding uncertainty that has chipped away at the nation’s scientific efforts for more than a decade is poised to get worse.

A grim budget day for U.S. science: analysis and reaction to Trump’s plan

Read the full story in Science.

President Donald Trump rolled out his first budget request to Congress today. It is for the 2018 fiscal year that begins on 1 October. It calls for deep cuts to some federal science agencies (read our initial coverage to get some of the numbers), and is likely to draw fierce opposition from the scientific community and many lawmakers in Congress.

ScienceInsider is providing analysis and reaction to the budget all day.

Come back to see our latest items (most recent at the top).

Rural voters lose in Trump’s budget plan

Read the full story in Politico.

The spending blueprint calls for a deeper cut to the Agriculture Department — 21 percent — than to just about any other agency. Trump would slash programs that invest in rural infrastructure, target rural public radio and demolish food-aid programs that farmers rely on to buy their products.

The ‘Job-Killing’ Fiction Behind Trump’s Retreat on Fuel Economy Standards

Read the full story at Yale Environment 360.

The Trump administration is expected to roll back the fuel economy standards that were a signature achievement of the Obama administration. The move won’t save auto industry jobs, but it will increase air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Biodiversity amidst death

Read the full story in Great Lakes Echo.

Four white-tailed deer graze atop a rise, oblivious to Jay P. Lee and G.W. Palen, and other folks named Stowell and Whitehead and Slayton and Potter interred there. It’s afternoon — an uncommon feeding time for deer that usually prefer dawn and dusk — on a fall day at Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing, Michigan.

The deer browse amongst the graves, apparently unperturbed by the writer, photographer and ecologist walking at the foot of their hill, discussing varieties of lichen on tombstones, the food value of non-native honeysuckle for wildlife and the evils of invasive buckthorn.