This week's news about the "termination" of 9-13 members of a scientific Advisory Board that provides counsel to the Environmental Protection Agency (epa) and the Interior Department has upset many who have relied on the agency to regulate mass polluters, such as environmentalists and climate scientists. As Blasting News reported, the removal of these members is part of a review by President Trump's executive order from March which enabled the EPA director Scott Pruitt to dismiss those members on May 5.

Two experts willingly weaken advisory board

According to the Washington Post, two additional experts from the advisory board quit their positions on Friday in protest of the agency's initial decision which they hope will send a message to the EPA that they're needed. But, as one of the links provided to a Blasting News article above about their removal said, the EPA under Scott Pruitt intends to replace those who they did not renew terms for with scientists from the industry that they're supposed to be regulating.

Carlos Martin and Peter B. Meyer are the two experts who resigned, and who shared their resignation letter to the EPA via Twitter over the removal of their co-chairs Dr.

Courtney Flint and Robert Richardson.

When news broke about the agency getting rid of these members, EPA spokesman J.P.

Freire told the Washington Post on Monday that "no one had been fired or terminated," adding that the EPA director Scott Pruitt had simply decided to bring in fresh advisers. The Washington Post report titled: "EPA dismisses half of key board's scientific advisers; interior suspends more than 200 advisory panels," it states that when the academics got their notices as early as last Friday, they were simply told that their terms would not be renewed.

Administration getting revenge on climate science

Generally, the members' terms are renewed when they end but under an administration that has said that climate change is a hoax and under Scott Pruitt, who has sued the agency multiple times and has made no secret of wanting to dismantle it; there is a great concern that climate science in under threat. Blasting News also reported on a symbolic gesture by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who moved the arms of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, over Trump's presidency.

Concerns were also expressed in a People's Climate March in Washington that took place in early May.

In his statement, however, Freire contradicted himself by saying that they were making a "clean break" with the last administration's approach and that they were not going to "rubber-stamp" Obama-era. Deborah Swackhamer who was the former director of the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center -- and a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors -- has been critical of the "rubber-stamp" statement, saying that she feels the administration was being biased just because they were appointed by President Obama, adding that she would still advise in the same way even if appointed by Scott Pruitt.

As much as the spokesman and the agency want to provide padding for the impact and say that this is a normal situation, or to downplay that this isn't a termination, the "rubber-stamp" statement, or when they say they want to make a "clean break" and in both, refer to the Obama administration; they're clearly on a vendetta against climate science and the previous administration.
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