Month: July 2016

Trust me, relevant.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate already in the first few days of Dark Snow 2016.
Things have been hectic in a very, very good way.

Within a day of my arrival, I bumped, literally, into Asa Rennermalm, (pronounced “Oh-sa”) a Rutgers scientist I had interviewed last year in Ilulussat – who immediately introduced me to members of her team, and invited me to come out to
their camp on the edge of the ice sheet for a couple days.

The place is called “Point 660”, and it’s another 20 kilometers or so
beyond where Dark Snow was based last year. The team camped there consists of Asa and several UCLA researchers who are part of Dr. Larry Smith’s team, that got quite a bit of press last year for there research into Greenland meltwater flows.

New York Times:

Each year, the federal government spends about $1 billion to support Arctic and Antarctic research by thousands of scientists like Dr. Smith and his team. The agency officials who receive that money from Congress, including the directors of the National Science Foundation, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, say the research is essential for understanding the changes that will affect the world’s population and economies for more than a century.

But the research is under increasing fire by some Republican leaders in Congress, who deny or question the scientific consensus that human activities contribute to climate change.

Leading the Republican charge on Capitol Hill is Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the chairman of the House science committee, who has sought to cut $300 million from NASA’s budget for earth science and has started an inquiry into some 50 National Science Foundation grants. On Oct. 13, the committee subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, seeking more than six years of internal deliberations, including “all documents and communications” related to the agency’s measurement of climate change.
Continue reading “Dark Snow Fieldwork Log: First Entry”