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Kevin Anchukaitis

@thirstygecko.bsky.social

Climate scientist, paleoclimatologist, dendrochronologist, University of Arizona | https://kanchukaitis.github.io/ | Opinions are mine and not that of my employer

675 Posts4788 Follower758 Folgt
Kevin Anchukaitis@thirstygecko.bsky.social · 2d ago

Extensive glacier loss in the coterminous United States 'since the mid-twentieth century about one-quarter of the glaciers have disappeared and the overall area and volume are reduced by one-third.' www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Extensive glacier loss in the coterminous United States | PNAS

Glaciers populate the mountain ranges of the western conterminous United States and despite their importance to alpine hydrology, their area and vo...

pnas.org

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · last wk.

How did this happen? Officially, proposals went through the same process as before: peer review, program officer recommendation, section head approval. Unofficially, the choice was taken out of SBE's hands, going above the directorate head, Christina Freyman and to NSF leadership.

In the past, panels of independent scientists vetted proposals; program officers recommended those found worthy, and section heads approved them. But a new, unofficial process has removed decision-making power from all directorate staff and leadership. Only a few proposals in administration priority areas, such as cognitive science and AI, were allowed to move ahead, according to the former staffers. Program officers sent them to Freyman, who met with Simon Malcomber, NSF’s chief science officer. “Then he would come back with some decision,” a former staffer explains. “So it wasn’t his decision-making. He was in consult with others.” If Malcomber said a proposal was acceptable, a program officer was given the green light to officially recommend it. “They were very, very careful in terms of never putting anything in writing about what the process was,” the former staffer says. NSF did not respond to questions about the process.
Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · last wk.

NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:

‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research

Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year

science.org

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good end-of-FY coverage by the Times. The amount of unspent funds has wiggled but it was pretty clear for some time now that NSF was simply not going to spend a substantial portion of its congressional appropriation this year.

National Science Foundation Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress

The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.

nytimes.com

Kevin Anchukaitis@thirstygecko.bsky.social · 2w ago

One nice thing about the AGU annual meeting is you can count on the website being borked at nearly every stage of the process. There are few things you can really rely on these days, so there is a certain comfort in that.

Andrew Williams@andrewilwilliams.bsky.social · 2w ago

Great paper in @aguadvances.bsky.social by Aaron Match & Ben Schaffer! They show that the excess costs of an extreme weather event exacerbated by climate change are 'inherently ambiguous', with important (& unappreciated) consequences for litigation agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

On the Inherent Ambiguity of Extreme Event Costs Attributed to Climate Change

Extreme event cost attribution is inherently ambiguous, because event alternatives can be viewed as changes in frequency or intensity Ambiguous single-event attributable costs can, in theory, be ...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 2w ago

OMB's focus on NIH and NSF, which has confused a lot of folks, pretty much boils down to stopping money going to universities.

Cole Donovan@colesci.bsky.social · 2w ago

But collectively, the narrow focus on grants to universities is misguided, especially when one accounts for the balance of where the money actually goes (source: NCSES). A plurality of federal R&D funding goes to businesses, followed by internal R&D expenditure, followed by higher education.

Chart outlining the flow of federal R&D obligations to performers. Business received over 69 billion dollars, followed by federal internal at 51 billion, followed by higher education at 44.4 billion. Federally funded research and development centers received 16.3 billion, nonprofits 10.6 billion, and foreign performers 1.1 billion. State and local governments received 795 million.
Kevin Anchukaitis@thirstygecko.bsky.social · 2w ago

lol, watch this space: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Unlocking Dataset Value for AI-Enabled Scientific Discovery (AI Datasets)

nsf.gov

Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · 2w ago

United States President Donald Trump issues executive order instructing federal government agencies to "use the terms 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' in place of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' and will not acknowledge the usage of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in any applicable setting."

Dr. Twila Moon@drtwilamoon.bsky.social · 2w ago

💡 Lesson: Match the scale of the climate information to your decision's scale. ❓ Don't just ask: “What does El Niño mean?” 🎯 Ask: “What does El Niño tell us at the scale and location relevant to the decision we're making, and what additional information do we need?”

Brian J. Enquist@bjenquist.bsky.social · 2w ago

Please pass along: I’m recruiting PhD students to join our Macroecology Lab. We study physical ecology, macroecology, and biodiversity — spanning scaling, trait-based ecology, theory, comparative biology & ecoinformatics. Several avenues for funding. Please reach out if interested 🧪🌐🌾

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