"Ryan Maue purged his Twitter account of tweets insulting climate scientists, journalists, and activists before taking the position of chief scientist at NOAA."
"Back in late September, the Washington Post reported that the Trump White House had chosen a new chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: a research meteorologist named Ryan Maue.
The story got little attention on national politics Twitter. But it was big news on so-called Climate Twitter. For years, Maue—also a former scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute—had been a thorn in the side of many scientists, advocates and journalists focused on climate change. While he would often provide original and skillful analysis on extreme weather events, Maue also routinely antagonized those who connected such events to climate change (this reporter included). At his best, Maue was a beneficial source of meteorological information. At his worst, he was a conspiratorial critic of climate science, and often a real jerk about it.
Some climate scientists were understandably alarmed. Maue was about to be more than just a Twitter troll. He was about to be the top scientist at one of the nation’s top scientific research agencies."
