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Comment by bingomad123 | Hacker News Reader

EPA or Energy department are stamp collecting and not science. NASA directly advances our knowledge of the universe here as EPA or Energy Department are more like regulatory bodies whose objective is to figure out arguments for increasing taxes.

I would rather see the money going to NASA or the public universities directly instead of it going to EPA of all agencies.

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The EPA is concerned with regulating air and water quality, and the immediate impact of burning fossil fuels. Air pollution from fossil fuels has a profound impact on American lives. Whether or not they do research is irrelevant. Neutering their ability to enforce standards clearly shows the administration doesn't acknowledge the realities that affect the country and the world.

By diminishing the power of the EPA, alongside Trump's executive order that attempts to reduce/reverse the broad set of climate and clean energy initiatives from the Obama Administration (Clean Power Plan), the U.S. may continue to lose the leadership in the clean energy economy and adherence to climate change goals.

Furthermore, given Pruit's anti-EPA philosophy, we could easily see him push the body to revise the Clean Power Plan in a way that would benefit the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the environment and the long term health of Americans.

I do work supported by the DOE, it's science work, you don't know what you are taking about. Go look at the web pages of the many national labs, almost all operated by the DOE.

The DOE is the department that designs, builds, and maintains the United States' nuclear weapons. I hope there is some science going on.

You say that like regulations are inherently bad. I can assure you that the industrial firms are not pricing negative externalities into their products unless the government forces them to.

The Energy department funds loads of research.

Right, yeah, these should just sit and be managed by no one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

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