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The Trump administration announced yesterday that it’s breaking up another of America’s premier scientific institutions, this time the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. It’s the largest federal atmospheric and climate research lab, and as an institution funded through the National Science Foundation, probably can only legally be dismantled by Congress. We like to keep mentioning things like that, even if the current outlaw regime has stopped paying the least bit of attention to constitutional limits on presidential power.
Trump budget henchman Russ Vought announced the move on Twitter Wednesday (archive link), confirming a USA Today article that broke the news. Vought cited the serious scientific reason for dismantling NCAR: It’s a source of “climate alarmism.”
We should note that, unlike many tweets about climate, Vought’s little rant actually generated significant pushback from scientists and people who support science in the replies. That was a refreshing change, although the rest of the replies were split between MAGA Chuds insisting that climate change is a scam, and MAGA Chuds imploring Vought and Trump to stop futzing around with trivial things like closing research labs, and to instead address the real crisis: the existential threat posed by chemtrails. (Or “geoengineering,” the six-syllable version of chemtrails.)
That pushback matters, because as Rachel Maddow keeps reminding us, significant public opposition to stupid Trump policies can make the bullies back off.
A “senior White House official” explained to USA Today, in the same fascist duckspeak all White House drones use when mentioning climate, that the plan is to do a complete “review” of NCAR’s functions to identify and exterminate any “green new scam research activities,” and then to spin off any “vital functions” to other facilities and agencies. Leaving aside the pure authoritarian bullshit of calling climate science a scam, there’s also nothing reassuring about the claim that the wrecking crew will preserve “vital functions” of the research lab, such as its sophisticated supercomputers or its weather modeling.
When Vought says a “comprehensive review” will be done to separate out the bad woke climate alarmism from the valuable “weather research,” that doesn’t mean that experts will be involved. Instead, as happened when the lazy Nazis gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it means that some low-level flunky with no scientific background at all will run a keyword search of grants and other documents. Anything containing terms like “climate” or “diversity” will be subject to elimination, even if the projects involve “climate” in its broader meaning of “regional and seasonal weather patterns,” or discuss crop diversification for better agricultural yields, not dreaded “DEI” programs.
Also, in one of our favorite lines from the USA Today piece, we learn that “The White House billed the restructuring as a return to the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s original focus.” Keep in mind that NCAR was founded in 1960, so presumably all the scientists still working on projects in its dispersed remnants will be required to get crew cuts, wear black horn-rimmed glasses, take up smoking, and become white men who plan to vote for Goldwater.
Fuckers all love the line about being a “steely-eyed missile man” while forgetting that the real Apollo 13 engineer who won that nickname was rigorously focused on science and reality, not macho posturing image for its own sake.
We should also add that this latest fuckery comes as Trump is trying to pressure Colorado to release Tina Peters, the My Pillow election ratfucker sentenced to nine years for fucking around with election machines in a nonsensical attempt to find vote-stealing in Mesa County, Colorado, which voted heavily for Trump in 2000. Trump issued a fake “pardon” for Peters last month, although he has no power to pardon anyone convicted on state charges. Not that such details matter to Trumpworld.
For the nothing it’s worth, a “White House official” insisted the decision to murder NCAR is unrelated to Trump’s pressure campaign against Gov. Jared Polis, even while bitching that Polis refuses to play ball on the fake “pardon” for Peters. Rather, the official claimed that NCAR is “not in line with the president’s agenda,” and had “been on the radar” for elimination well before now. Translation: If it does pressure Polis, that’s simply convenient timing.
Even following the administration’s axe murder of much of America’s climate science infrastructure, the planned dismemberment of NCAR may actually manage to be its most consequential assault on science yet. As the Washington Post explains (gift link),
NCAR plays a unique role in the scientific community by bringing together otherwise siloed specialists to collaborate on some of the biggest climate and weather questions of our time, Caspar Ammann, a former research scientist at the center, said in an email.
“Without NCAR, a lot could not happen,” he said. “A lot of research at US Universities would immediately get hampered, industry would lose access to reliable base data.”
Other scientists have been pointing out just how many scientific tools and weather forecasting models have been developed through NCAR. They also emphasize that its role in educating scientists just beginning their careers means that shutting down NCAR won’t simply disrupt current data collection and analysis, it’ll set back the US’s place in earth science and technology for decades. (“Good! No more woke climate scams!” shout the idiots on social media, who will never need to know if a tornado is coming.)
Climate scientist Kate Marvel puts it simply, and heartbreakingly: This is “Library of Alexandria level destruction.”
As all this is happening, the actual NCAR Mesa lab in Boulder is closed today and tomorrow due to high winds (gusts up to 100 mph overnight) and a power shutdown because of the extreme fire danger. Why yes, NCAR developed many of the forecasting and measurement tools that help predict dangerous severe weather events like this!
Now, here’s where we circle back to the embattled hopey-changey stuff that we insist on clinging to: Yes, this could be Trump’s most sweeping attack on science yet, but it’s also yet another example of his administration’s desperate overreach, at a time when he’s increasingly unpopular and ineffectual. With members of his own party noping out on Epstein, federal worker protections, and now the ACA subsidies, pushback from both the scientific community and from voters who give two shits about science — and about accurate weather forecasts! — really can help prevent this madness from going farther. The American Geophysical Union has a handy script for calling your representatives and senators, and doesn’t everyone appreciate a handy? Give ‘em a call and let ‘em know what you think!
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[NBC News / WaPo (gift link) / USA Today / Nature]
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