Trump Administration White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On

[Nevilledog]

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-noaa-budget-cuts-climate-change-modeling-princeton-gfdl


Over the past two months, the Trump administration has taken steps to eliminate regulations addressing climate change, pull back funding for climate programs and cancel methods used to evaluate how climate change is affecting American society and its economy. Now it is directly undermining the science and research of climate change itself, in ways that some of the nation’s most distinguished scientists say will have dangerous consequences.

Proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency whose weather and climate research touches almost every facet of American life, are targeting a 57-year-old partnership between Princeton University and the U.S. government that produces what many consider the world’s most advanced climate modeling and forecasting systems. NOAA’s work extends deep into the heart of the American economy — businesses use it to navigate risk and find opportunity — and it undergirds both American defense and geopolitical planning. The possible elimination of the lab, called the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, in concert with potential cuts to other NOAA operations, threatens irreparable harm not only to global understanding of climate change and long-range scenarios for the planet but to the country’s safety, competitiveness and national security.

The gutting of NOAA was outlined earlier this month in a leaked memo from the Office of Management and Budget that detailed steep reductions at the Department of Commerce, which houses the science agency. The memo, which was viewed by ProPublica, has been previously reported. But the full implications of those cuts for the nation’s ability to accurately interpret dynamic changes in the planet’s weather and to predict long-term warming scenarios through its modeling arm in Princeton have not.

According to the document, NOAA’s overall funding would be slashed by 27%, eliminating “functions of the Department that are misaligned with the President’s agenda and the expressed will of the American people” including almost all of those related to the study of climate change. The proposal would break up and significantly defund the agency across programs, curtailing everything from ocean research to coastal management while shifting one of NOAA’s robust satellite programs out of the agency and putting another up for commercial bidding. But its most significant target is the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research ⎯ a nerve center of global climate science, data collection and modeling, including the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory ⎯ which would be cut by 74%. “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office,” the memo stated.

*snip*

[BoRaGard]

1. Big part of the G.O.P. War on Children the Future

[underpants]

4. One of my favorite all time political cartoons

[Irish_Dem]

2. Billionaires have polluted/poisoned the planet and humans.

They want no record or evidence of their crimes.
And they are certainly not going to pay for prevention or repair.
The average person will be left to fend for themselves.

[markodochartaigh]

3. The descendants of our oiligarchs

will be taught that the destruction of our biosphere was caused by the actions of billions of poor people. The poor are not the victors so we do not write the history.

In public school we were taught that the "famine" in Ireland in the 1840's was caused by Irish people having too many children. We weren't taught that every year during the "famine" enough food was exported from Ireland to feed the whole country, or that almost all of the best land was owned by English landlords who lived in England, or that the English had more troops in Ireland than in India so that the produce could be kept from the starving people and exported.

[Irish_Dem]

5. Yes the poor will be the scapegoats as usual.

Yes the British systematically starved the Irish with bad policies.
And refused to let the Irish be educated, or learn to read and write.
They were kept in ignorance and poverty on purpose.

[Kingofalldems]

6. Vandals.

[Silent Type]

7. Not good. I bet proposal gets reversed or the cut reduced. I will say the the UK model had a better record at predicting

where hurricanes land in the past few seasons.

[sakabatou]

8. The Dump Administration is now pro-pollution