Science

"The Senate last night [Wednesday] approved a series of energy and environment nominees by voice vote in the final full day of the 115th Congress."

"Kay Behrensmeyer was supposed to be preparing for a three-week expedition to look for evidence of ancient humans in Kenya. Instead, she spent Thursday packing her research permits, her fossil-collecting supplies, and maps she’d spent weeks compiling and annotating by hand into a FedEx box, which she shipped to a junior colleague on the project. Behrensmeyer, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History, wasn’t going anywhere. The federal government was shut down."

"The real journey to the center of the Earth has begun, and scientists are discovering subsurface microbial beings that shake up what we think we know about life."

"Rep. Lamar Smith's cattle brand is shaped like the number 2, with a check mark in the top right corner. It's supposed to be burned in the right hip of an animal."

"The United Nations panel of climate science experts mentioned it in a 2013 report, scientists have published more than 200 papers analyzing it, and climate deniers said it was proof that climate change didn't exist, but in reality the global warming "pause" or "hiatus" never occurred."

"The Senate will not vote this year to confirm a new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lawmakers said this week. That leaves the agency responsible for understanding and predicting changes in the earth’s climate without a Senate-confirmed leader for the longest period since it was created in 1970."

"Scientific understanding of the risks greenhouse gases pose to public health and welfare has strengthened and broadened in the decade since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made its landmark 'endangerment finding,' according to a new review of the latest science published Thursday."

"The Trump administration says it doesn't know how many streams it is proposing to exclude from Clean Water Act jurisdiction today. But a 2017 slideshow prepared by EPA and Army Corps of Engineers staff shows that at least 18 percent of streams and 51 percent of wetlands nationwide would not be protected under the new definition of "waters of the United States," or WOTUS, announced today."