terrapinsanity.com

College Park is well known for its willingness to serve Democratic Party needs, for which our campus leaders get accommodation now and then. We provide gainful employment for officials who are in a holding pattern between administrations, we generate studies to give political cover to policy moves sought by the Party, and we set up a nice backdrop when the party needs a scenic photo-op with images of youthful support.

Sometimes what we do is spill the beans.

That happened in a recent advertisement from the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, an operation inside our Engineering School. Mtech is promoting a new “clean energy challenge” and as part of that sent out advertisements linking to its web page, which announced “As part of the Obama Administration’s effort to support and empower the next generation of American clean energy entrepreneurs, the Department of Energy awarded $360,000 for the $100K ACC Clean Energy Challenge …” (We saved the full advertisement, which you can see by clicking on the image below.)

Spending $360,000 for a $100,000 challenge. Yeah, that’s about right for this administration.

It took a day but the web page was subsequently changed to remove this language. Clearly, someone had a “what were you thinking?” conversation with Mtech. At time of this writing, however, their web site retains the rest of the party pandering, which is the energy event’s kick off with a screening of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Serious scientists on this campus study climate change, and we’re shocked that they would be willing to have the value of their work overwhelmed with the public image of someone who right, wrong or indifferent now serves as America’s top junk science huckster. Will researchers in the science college even be allowed to add an asterisk to this Mtech kick off? Doubtful. To most observers, UM climate research will be hitched to the Al Gore junk wagon.