The U.S. Energy Department says it won’t provide President-elect Trump’s Energy Department transition team with a list of department employees involved with climate science or the society memberships of lab workers, says Reuters.
“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” said DOE spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder.
The 74-question memo sent from the transition team to the DOE asked for the names of all department employees and contractors who went to the annual United Nations climate talks within the last five years, as well as anyone who had “attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, a measurement that federal agencies use to weigh the costs and benefits of new energy and environmental regulations. It also asked for all publications written by employees at the department’s 17 national laboratories for the past three years,” says Reuters.
Burnham-Snyder said the request “left many in our workforce unsettled.”
The department’s refusal to oblige the Trump team could indicate tensions to come between the new administration and the agency, says Reuters.
According to two Trump-administration insiders, the president-elect has decided on Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry to head up the Energy Department, says The Washington Post. Perry famously forgot the name of the department during his run for president in 2011. Telling the crowd he wanted to eliminate three federal departments, he ticked off Commerce and Education, but forgot Energy. “The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops,” he said, before remembering several minutes later in the debate.
Perry has been an outspoken climate change denier, claiming it is largely made up by scientists and politicians like Al Gore with a “carbon cult” agenda. “The science is not settled on [climate change]. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense,” Perry said during his bid for president in 2011. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.”
“The fact that Gov. Perry refuses to accept the broad scientific consensus on climate change calls into question his fitness to head up a science-based agency like DOE,” Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Post. But, Kimmel pointed out that as governor Perry had a somewhat positive record on renewables.
He “increased the ambition of the state’s Renewable Energy Standard, directed state funds to innovative wind energy R&D initiatives, and created a ‘Competitive Renewable Energy Zone’ that helped expand transmission of renewables, bringing clean wind energy from rural communities to new state markets,” said Kimmell about Perry.
Most of the Energy Department’s budget goes towards nuclear warhead maintenance and addressing nuclear waste leftover by military weapons programs. But the department also “runs the nation’s national laboratories, sets appliance standards and hands out grants and loan guarantees for basic research, solar cells, capturing carbon dioxide from coal combustion and more,” says the Post.