Look the other way
I see. Research is bad because it tells us about climate change, so the thing to do is get rid of research. Problem solved.
The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to a draft budget proposal viewed by NPR.
The agency’s budget for 2026 would be slashed by more than 25% overall from its current level of roughly $6 billion under the proposal, which would need to be approved by Congress. The draft cuts to NOAA’s research operations and fisheries services are particularly severe.
If enacted, the cuts would “take us back to the 1950s in terms of our scientific footing and the American people,” says Craig McLean, a former director of NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency’s research arm, whose career spanned multiple administrations.
Yes, hooray. People weren’t always moaning about climate change in the 1950s. Good times.
The budget aims to eliminate OAR, cutting the budget by close to 75% from previous levels and slashing all funding for research that focuses on climate and weather. A few groups from the office, like a team that works on tornado science, would be moved to other parts of the organization. The budget would also end funding for the many cooperative research centers scattered across the country that contribute to climate and weather research. The proposed budget comes as the administration has already fired hundreds of NOAA employees.
Isn’t that great? Hundreds of people who will no longer be whining at us about climate change.
Many of the proposed changes echo concepts outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint organized by the Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation think tank, a document the Trump administration has followed closely in recent months.
Project 2025 calls for NOAA to “be broken up and downsized,” keeping the pieces that many Americans are familiar with, like the National Weather Service, and dismantling many of NOAA’s other offices. The proposed moves follow that rubric, such as shifting the Fisheries Service to another agency.
It also called the agency part of “the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and laid out ways NOAA’s climate science research could be curtailed, some of which have been proposed in the budget document.
That’s the ticket. Don’t do anything to slow or reverse climate change, just shut up about climate change, which is both easier and cheaper.
NHK — Japan’s national broadcasting corporation — broadcast yesterday Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (in English, with Japanese subtitles), for, I think, very obvious reasons. It helps that the symbol of the dictator’s party is X.
“If I drive forward, I will go over that cliff in front of me. But if I blindfold myself… the cliff won’t be there!”
A common thread amongst denialists of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a desire to shut down the scientific institutes that study it; and/or collect data on it, usually in the interest of the fossil-carbon industry. Thus there has appeared in the last few years what has been called the Ostrich School of Climatology.
Wishing will not make AGW go away, and it appears to be on-course to get steadily worse. The NOAA has played an important role to date (see https://sealevel.colorado.edu/ )
But then again, maybe that is the reason that Trump wants to get hold of Greenland; so that he and Melania, Stormy Daniels and/or others can relax under the swaying palms of the once-Arctic and enjoy the balmy ambience and a swim in the warm and once-frozen ocean.
Once again the right and the trans show their affinity for the same methods. Don’t like what the research shows? Shut down the research! Shut up those who would do the research! Kill the messenger – it’s a grand old tradition.