Trump Nominates Oklahoma Meteorologist to be Science Adviser
Credit: Matt Wade
President Donald J. Trump has nominated Kelvin Droegemeier, who is vice president for research and regent’s professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, to be the new director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In that position, he will serve as the president’s chief science adviser if confirmed by the Senate.
From the announcement:
Dr. Droegemeier currently serves as Vice President for Research and Regents’ Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma and as Oklahoma Cabinet Secretary of Science and Technology. He co-founded and directed the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. Dr. Droegemeier served two six-year terms (four years as Vice Chairman) on the National Science Board, under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He earned his B.S. in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and M.S. and Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Droegemeier is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The nomination was praised by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), who is ranking member of the House Science Committee. She issued the following statement:
“I am pleased that the President has finally nominated a Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier’s experience as a university Administrator in Oklahoma, as founder and director of NSF’s Science and Technology Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, and as vice-chair of the National Science Board will serve him well in this role. I hope that the Administration will heed his advice. Dr. Droegemeier knows how important our commitment to robust R&D and innovation funding is and he knows well the value of the scientific community. I believe when he is confirmed, he will work to advance the scientific interests of the United States. I look forward to working with him.”
National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France Córdova said he was “thrilled” with the nomination in a statement.
Through his deep and years-long connection to the National Science Foundation, we know him to be a thoughtful advocate for all aspects of science.
Starting in 1989, Dr. Droegemeier served five years as deputy director of the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS), a pioneer in weather prediction and one of NSF’s first Science and Technology Centers. In 1994, he returned to CAPS as director, a position he held for nearly a decade. In 2003, he co-founded the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. Throughout his time with these centers, he showed himself to be as energetic as the tornadoes he studied.
Dr. Droegemeier served 12 years with the National Science Board, including two terms as vice chair. As a board member, he always did his homework, asking great questions and providing NSF with valuable guidance on policy and strategy. During his recent time as Oklahoma’s secretary of Science and Technology, Dr. Droegemeier demonstrated his willingness to work as a force for unity on science and engineering policy, showing that research is apolitical, and yields benefits to all Americans.
Importantly, Dr. Droegemeier has exemplified the role of researcher as educator and communicator. For decades, he worked as a professor, shaping the careers of future researchers. He has carried his clear love for sharing knowledge and communicating the value of research into his subsequent work. At a time when NSF and its partners are working to enhance the economy, national defense and the U.S. position as a global innovation leader, I am grateful that such a champion of basic research has been selected for this important role.
Below is Droegemeier’s full biography taken from the University of Oklahoma website.
Dr. Kelvin K. Droegemeier
Kelvin K. Droegemeier earned a B.S. with Special Distinction in Meteorology in 1980 from the University of Oklahoma, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in atmospheric science in 1982 and 1985, respectively, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the University of Oklahoma faculty in September, 1985 and in 1987 was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Droegemeier’s research interests lie in thunderstorm dynamics and predictability, variational data assimilation, mesoscale dynamics, computational fluid dynamics, massively parallel computing, and aviation weather. An expert in aviation forensic meteorology, he has served as a consultant to Honeywell Corporation, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, the National Transportation Safety Board, and Climatological Consulting Corp.
In 1989, Dr. Droegemeier co-founded the NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS), serving as director from 1994 until 2006. As director of the CAPS model development project for 5 years, he managed the creation of a multi-scale numerical prediction system that has helped pioneer the science of storm-scale numerical forecasting. This computer model was a finalist for the 1993 National Gordon Bell Prize in High Performance Computing. In 1997, Dr. Droegemeier received the Discover Magazine Award for Technology Innovation (computer software category), and also in 1997 CAPS was awarded the Computerworld Smithsonian Award (science category). Dr. Droegemeier also is a recipient of the NSF Pioneer Award and the Federal Aviation Administration’s Excellence in Aviation Award. In 1999, Dr. Droegemeier incorporated Weather Decision Technologies, which now has offices both in the US and abroad. From 1999-2001, he wrote a daily weather science column for the Daily Oklahoman newspaper and in 2003, co-founded the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), serving for many years as its deputy director.
In 2004, Dr. Droegemeier was appointed by President George W. Bush to a 6-year term on the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation that also provides science policy guidance to the Congress and President. He chaired the Board’s standing Committee on Programs and Plans and Task force on Cost Sharing, and co-chaired the Hurricane Research Task Force. In 2010, Dr. Droegemeier was nominated by President Barack Obama for a second term on the National Science Board (Senate confirmation pending).
In 2005, Dr. Droegemeier was appointed Associate Vice President for Research and in 2009, Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, former Chairman of the Board of the University Corporation Atmospheric Research, former member of the Microsoft Research Corporation External Advisory Board, and current member of the Boards of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Oak Ridge Associated Universities Foundation, Council on Governmental Relations, National Weather Museum and Science Center, and Norman, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce. He also is a Trustee of Southeastern Universities Research Association.
Accomplishments as Vice President for Research
Upon becoming Vice President for Research, Dr. Droegemeier launched Aspire 2020, a bold strategic planning initiative that centers on the goal of OU becoming the Nation’s foremost public comprehensive research university of its size. Aspire 2020 involves three objectives: Transforming Research Culture, Transforming Research Engagement, and Transforming Research Competitiveness. Aspire 2020 does not involve creating a written plan, but instead serves as both a practical framework as well as a philosophy for continuously advancing research and creative activities. New practices and paradigms created as part of Aspire 2020 are helping OU achieve its full potential as one of the Nation’s research powerhouses, and to date, numerous initiatives have been launched in direct response to Aspire 2020.
Specifically, the Center for Research Program Development and Enrichment (CRPDE) was recently created to assist faculty in developing their research programs as well as grant proposals. A Strategic Initiative in Defense, Security and Intelligence (DSI) Research is opening new doors of opportunity in areas for which OU traditionally has been less engaged, and a Research Liaison Program has been established whereby one faculty member in each academic department and program serves as a point of contact to the Office of the Vice President for Research. A new Vice President for Research Awards Program was initiated, and the Research Council recently conducted a pilot program on Potentially Transformative Research that resulted in two internal grants to faculty, one of $50K and one of nearly $40K. A new competitive seed funding initiative, known as the Faculty Research Challenge Grant Program, is providing over $0.5 million per year to initiate new projects that show promise for long-term growth.
New emphasis is being placed on multidisciplinary research and especially bold, imaginative engagements with Federal agencies and private industry. A major goal is to establish on the Norman Campus another meaningful Federal agency presence to complement the several outstanding NOAA organizations now in place. The Norman Campus soon will establish a Center for Applied Research and Development (CARD) to support new types of grants and contracts, particularly those in areas of defense and national security, and launch a Faculty Leadership Academy. And with great excitement, OU is developing a new vision for its Research Campus, which is closing in on one million square feet of developed space and now houses more than 350 private employees among more than a dozen companies.
19 responses to “Trump Nominates Oklahoma Meteorologist to be Science Adviser”
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No real beef, but I notice this fellow is being acclaimed for his study of tornados and other short term weather phenomena. There’s no mention of that ugly “Climate Change” stuff that so upsets God-fearing Republicans. Which leads me to suspect that a major part of Dr. Droegemeier’s attractiveness to the Trump administration is that its spokespeople can now proclaim that “Global warming is a myth! and we have a climate scientist who speaks to the President every day, so we know!”
Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age.
Honestly that’s where yall messed up. The Climate debate was made political. So whats happened is instead of either side giving a little or looking at it rationally we have the far left acting like the US and EU should just “go back to the earth man” or even better buy carbon credits. Meanwhile there are plenty of ways to actually help stop this we will never try because it doesn’t make people in high places money.
“either side giving a little or looking at it rationally” Is that a statement that the Right isn’t looking at Anthropogenic Climate Change rationally?
and that
“because it doesn’t make people in high places money.” Perhaps that large Fossil Energy interests are interested in making the entire issue political?
Well, I don’t know about you, but, I super-insulated my house and painted the roof solar white and I am a low energy user. I also drive an Electric Car.
“Perhaps that large Fossil Energy interests are interested in making the entire issue political?”
Or, perhaps that large sections of the political community were interested in more thoroughly politicizing decisions on the US energy supply?
We have been fighting oil wars continuously for the last 30 years. How can you politicize it to a greater degree than that?
Emmet, your point tells us nothing about how our society decides about allocating our own energy resources. As I’ve said before, the defining difference between the productivity of industrial society, and the relative lack of productivity in pre-industrial society, is not a tool, like oil. It is described in the competent definition of the industrial revolution:
“When a society moves from allocating resources by custom & tradition (moderns read here, by politics) to allocating resources by markets, it may be said to have undergone an industrial revolution.”-Arnold Toynbee- 1884
This was the standard definition of the industrial revolution in 1920. If you move decisions about energy away from market networks, or allow the violence of Caliphate Revivalists to move them away from market networks, then we have moved back towards the steeply lower productivity of pre-industrial society, with all the poverty that Iran, or, for example, Venezuela is experiencing today.
Note that Venezuela’s low productivity, and attendant poverty, is present in spite of having the largest estimated reserves of oil on Earth. These are reserves that *no*one* is fighting wars over. Yet, they are massively allocated by politicians, instead of market networks, and Venezuela’s people are impoverished thereby.
It is in this direction that large sections of the political community would lead us. That is what I am referring to in my above comment.
Charge the cost of those oil wars to the oil industry. Then let’s see what the market decides.
Since the oil companies *opposed* much of that activity, why should they be charged? The oil companies made it clear, for instance, they wanted no overthrow of the fascist regime in Iraq, and they got what they wanted the first time, but not the second.
The last 30 years of wars have been fought by and for and against and between one flavor or another of Caliphate Revivalist. That is only tenuously connected to oil by geography. The Caliphate Revivalists would still be there if the oil disappeared tomorrow, though they would be looking for a new source of revenue, a la the Kim Dynasty. That would make them as worrisome as the Kim Dynasty in their behavior, if not in their potential.
To be clear, Caliphate Revivalist assaults *should* be opposed, no matter whether there is oil involved or not. Caliphate Revivalism is another wave of anti-industrial reaction. They are, in this case, targeting the intellectual and spiritual networks needed for industrial society to thrive around the world. They have also shown they are willing to trample freedoms of action on the level of markets, and on the level of political networks.
By contrast, the green blob reactionaries mostly target physical networks of industrial society, and only target things on the level of markets and intellectual networks when it will help them push their primary targets over the edge of oblivion. They are too often just as religious in their attitudes and activities as are the Caliphate Revivalists. *All* of these different groups are anti-industrial reactionaries.
That is why someone as science advisor who can discern such activity interfering with competent science is a good idea.
All our misadventures in the Mideast have been undertaken to secure the oil supply for the world’s economy. It’s a massive ongoing cost incurred in support of the petroleum industry. The decision by our government to incur that cost is a political rather than a market driven one. The petroleum industry can therefore, by your reasoning, be considered preindustrial.
Emmet, it is indeed a massive cost, and it is incurred in support of the freedoms of action needed to allow industrial society to exist around the world. Oil companies are *not* separate from industrial society. They are crucial parts of it. That you wish to separate them out is irrelevant.
*All* defense spending is pre-industrial in its politically specified nature under the US Constitution. For that to change, we will have to make massive changes in how the military is funded. To make that difference goes beyond the scope of our discussion. Your belief that without the oil industry the Caliphate Revivalists would not be in existence, and not need to be defended against, is, …quaint.
By hiding the true cost of oil production in the defense budget, to say nothing of the environmental cost, we artificially distort the market, making petroleum seem a more viable energy source than it really is. Put the war costs and the environmental costs into the cost of petroleum and you will see an explosive uptake of alternative energy sources. We don’t need to subsidize green energy, we just need to end the truly massive subsidy of the petroleum industry.
Emmet, you are artificially separating out oil from the rest of industrial society’s activities. If oil in the ME did not exist, we would still be having to fight the Caliphate Revivalists. Calling it an “oil war” is a propaganda term, based on geographical happenstance. These are people who are anti-industrial reactionaries, and would have assaulted industrial society even if there was no oil in the ground near where they live. It is these waves of violent anti-industrial reaction that are costing us the money to defend industrial society, not getting the oil. It’s the people, not the oil.
These are people who are anti-industrial reactionaries, and would have assaulted industrial society even if there was no oil in the ground near where they live.
You assume a lot. Were we not pumping one trillion dollars a month into the Mideast, flooding a subsistence culture with cash, it is likely that the activities of malcontents situated in the region would be rather constrained. If you are living in a tent in the desert and you are chiefly concerned with coveting your neighbors camel, you may be less likely to bomb Paris.
In fact, before we decided we needed their oil, they never bombed Paris. Then, when we did decide we wanted their oil, we moved in, organized them into countries, dictated who would run those countries and how (hint: badly), and proceeded to bury the benighted nomads in cash. And the result, apparently, is their fault. They are anti-industrial reactionaries, ’tis said.
And once we stop buying their oil, and the trillion a month dries up, the ensuing collapse and chaos will be their fault as well. Truly are they a wicked people.
“They are anti-industrial reactionaries, ’tis said.”
They? The groups within these populations who wish to revive the Caliphate are a minority. Yes, the Caliphate Revivalists started organizing *long* before there was much oil revenue. Only Persia was getting oil money at the time. They started in 1928, which is when the Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Al Banna. In their writings these Caliphate Revivalists demonstrate deep scorn for intellectual freedoms, and spiritual freedoms, and for political freedoms, except as a tactic to end same, and for any other industrial freedom of action that gets in the way of reviving the Caliphate, in all its universalist copy of the 7th Century Roman Empire of Constantinople.
By contrast, there are many in those populations who want nothing to do with that, and would like to participate in the networks of industrial society. Those, we should help.
“And once we stop buying their oil, and the trillion a month dries up, the ensuing collapse and chaos will be their fault as well. Truly are they a wicked people.”
If we did, that would not stop the desire to revive a world-conquering Empire, the Caliphate, and the chaos might just make handles, to unite the Ummah of Islam behind them, more easily available. This is no solution to the problem of Caliphate Revivalism.
Rather, they have a Science Adviser running OSTP who will not treat an area of science as though it were a secular religion that *must* be proselytized to avoid the damnation of losing the ice age we live within, even though during an interregnum.
You guys are doing nothing to lessen my cynicism.
Droegemeier’s work seems an awful lot like the stuff that Bridenstine was jazzed about before he got nominated for NASA. I wonder if he’s been instrumental in the OSTP nomination. That might be… interesting. A NASA administrator with some real power would be handy as the agency starts to go through the really rocky parts of its HSF crisis.
It’s mentioned in the summary of Droegemeier’s career that he spoken to Bridenstine about weather and climate and perhaps other scientific matters and Bridenstine’s past statements show he had been influenced by those discussions — which I find wholly admirable actually. We’re talking about a former hotshot Navy pilot, after all, it wasn’t inevitable that he would actually seek out a noteworthy scientist and try to learn anything.
But alas, I doubt that Bridenstine has enough influence in the White House to affect the choice of a Presidential Science Advisor. He didn’t get to pick his own Deputy Administrator for NASA, after all. And despite Donald Trump’s apparent interest in space affairs, his first two budget proposals actually called for cuts at the space agency (Congress was in a more generous mood, fortunately).
” He didn’t get to pick his own Deputy Administrator for NASA, after all.”
But then he would have been up against the “suggestion” by the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, with the Deputy Administrator position. With the Science Adviser, all he had to contend with was people complaining about *anyone* Trump thought might be qualified, and there were probably others in Congress backing the guy as well. The difference in political balance is rather extreme between the 2 appointments. Trump *cannot* ignore Shelby, if he wants a budget.