One bit of damage being undone. Thousands more remain.
Scientists have begun to re-deploy ocean monitoring equipment yanked from Pacific Northwest waters by the Trump administration in September.
Yanked why? Well, they have a process. Ask: does this cost money? If answer is yes, yank it. Money saved! Win!
On Monday, an autonomous underwater vehicle called a glider slipped gently off the stern of the Research Vessel Elakha and into the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles offshore from Newport, Oregon.
Resembling a 6-foot yellow torpedo with wings, the glider is quietly motoring north to waters off Washington state while measuring conditions including rising ocean temperatures and sagging oxygen levels. Three times a day, after diving as much as 3,000 feet deep, it surfaces to transmit its oceanographic data by satellite and receive new instructions from its shore-based operators.
Well now you see there’s another problem right there. Not only does it cost money, it also tells us things we don’t want to know. The solution is simply to throw it out. If we don’t know about the rising temperatures, the rising temperatures are not happening.
The larger, stationary observatories that the Trump administration quietly removed last September will take longer to put back.
Well he removed them for a reason you know. He wanted to.
The ocean-watching equipment is part of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative, which monitors surface and underwater conditions 24/7 off Alaska, North Carolina, the Pacific Northwest, and Greenland.
The high-tech buoys keep the pulse of the oceans as their temperature and chemistry rapidly change. The buoys also provide real-time updates to Dungeness crabbers and other mariners heading out into possibly dangerous waves. The science foundation calls the observatories “the most technologically advanced observational networks in the oceans.”
Sounds expensive. Let’s get rid of it.
In June, the Trump administration backed down from its push to dismantle the observatory networks, with Pacific Northwest devices already removed and others to be pulled by 2027, after pushback from the public and Congress.
It backed down?! Can we have more of that?
In an emailed statement in June, National Science Foundation spokesperson Mike England said that the agency remained committed to ocean science despite dismantling — or “descoping” — its ocean-observation network.
“The decision to descope aligns with NSF’s wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio,” he said.
Wtf kind of “nimbler” approach is he talking about?? The kind with no technology? Just going to the beach and looking west and taking notes on what they see? Is that smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio?
Answers on a postcard.