More than a year and a half after becoming US president, Donald Trump has finally nominated someone to be the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The position, which previously has always been held by a physicist, could go to meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, an expert on extreme weather.
Droegemeier is currently vice president for research at the University of Oklahoma, .
The director of the OSTP usually becomes the president’s science advisor. They are formally appointed as “the assistant to the president for science and technology”, giving them direct access to the president. However, , and it is unclear what Trump will do.
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Good pick
The nomination of Droegemeier has been widely welcomed. “He’s a very good pick,” John Holdren, science adviser to Barack Obama, . “I expect he’ll be energetic in defending the R&D budget and climate change research in particular.”
“I’m certain he believes in mainstream climate science,” Rosina Bierbaum, an environmental policy expert who has worked with Drogemeier, . However, it is unclear whether Droegemeier will push for action on climate change.
In 2017 Droegemeier defended Jim Bridenstine, the head of NASA, when Bridenstine made a statement suggesting climate change was natural rather than due to human actions. Bridenstine has since changed his mind and now says humans are responsible for global warming “in a major way”.
91av could find no explicit reference to climate change in , which includes a very long list of scientific papers, or on his . His 300-odd tweets suggests his main passions are college football and his Christian faith.
