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Trump Dismantling National Center For Atmospheric Research In Colorado (pbs.org) 284

echo123 shares a report from PBS: The Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, moving to dissolve a research lab that a top White House official described as "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country." White House budget director Russ Vought criticized the lab in a social media post Tuesday night and said a comprehensive review of the lab is underway. "Vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location, Vought said.

The research lab, which houses the largest federal research program on climate change, supports research to predict, prepare for and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters. The research lab is managed by a nonprofit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities on behalf of the National Science Foundation. A senior White House official cited two instances of the lab's "woke direction" that wastes taxpayer funds on what the official called frivolous pursuits and ideologies. One funded an Indigenous and Earth Sciences center that aimed to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered," while another experiment traced air pollution to "demonize motor vehicles, oil and gas operations."
The lab "is quite literally our global mothership," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, in a post on X. "Nearly everyone who researches climate and weather -- not only in the U.S., but around the world -- has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources."

She continued: "NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes -- the largest community climate model in the world. That too. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
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Trump Dismantling National Center For Atmospheric Research In Colorado

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  • by maladroit ( 71511 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @06:12AM (#65870773) Homepage

    From here [npr.org]:

    Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat whose district includes
    Boulder, have suggested that the proposed NCAR closure amounts to political brinkmanship by
    the White House in response to Colorado's refusal to release Tina Peters. Peters, a former
    Mesa County clerk, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for illegally accessing voting
    machines after the 2020 election. A Republican, Peters was recently pardoned by Trump,
    largely symbolic action since she has neither been charged nor convicted in federal court.

    • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @01:08PM (#65871309)

      A Republican, Peters was recently pardoned by Trump,
      largely symbolic action since she has neither been charged nor convicted in federal court.

      Yet another example of how the cry of "states' rights" is hypocritical and selectively applied. Somehow, when the party of "state's rights" controls federal power, states' rights completely disappear. In this case, the constitution and law are completely clear, but the party in power still pushes the counter-constitutional idea because they know that they control the Supreme Court, which apparently has the right to interpret the constitution to be exactly the opposite of what the words say. I guess the Supreme Court also has the right to reinterpret the meaning of "strict constructionism."

      Unfortunately, this destruction of the rule of law is exactly why places like China, and more and more so the US, are dangerous places to live.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @06:14AM (#65870775)

    The billionaires behind Trump know he's at best a useful idiot - they saw in his first term how quickly he can veer off course if he doesn't have a reliable minder nearby.

    Guys like Vought see entities like NCAR as an impediment to what they want to do, it's simple as that. They don't want the commoners to feel like the government owes them anything or is gonna do anything to improve the commoners' lives. They want the commoners to be happy spending long, tedious days screwing tiny screws into iPhones for a pittance, then quietly stepping aside and dying when they're no longer able to improve the billionaire's profit margins.

    • by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @06:18AM (#65870783)

      Considering how many of these followers consider cheeto benito their saint, I would say that they will get what they deserve.

      • Prior to the November 2024 Elections I:

        * Emailed at least 1,000 people
        * Called 100 people
        * Texted 100 people
        * Knocked on 25 doors

        I legit begged people in my community to vote and to vote blue. For early election and on election day, very few people showed up. The apathy is real. Now, as we watch the prices soar higher than a SpaceX rocket, the Epstein Files Release demolishing toner cartridges and our Health Care system is about to be dead and buried... Suddenly, "The People Remain Concerned"?

        But what does

        • There is only one pre-election promise that Trump has kept. It's to do with kicking darker-skinned people out of the USA and that's why MAGA remains faithful.

  • by mick232 ( 1610795 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @07:33AM (#65870829)
    it doesn't exist. Trump logic.
  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @07:36AM (#65870833)

    so we can unfuck all the things he's fucked.

    But the reality is, Trump is a symptom, not a disease. He was elected by the people. Those who voted Trump once were either Nazi sympathizers or fools. Those who voted Trump the second time around were definitely Nazi sympathizers, or definitely fools.

    Impeaching Trump won't do anything. The next Nazi in line is JD Vance and he's ten times worse because, unlike Trump, he's not an idiot with a case of fronto-temporal dementia.

    And even if Vance and the rest of the Nazi goons are out, the people will vote another fascist in the next time around because the people has proven twice now that they're fucking fascists or fucking morons.

    In short, America is fucked because Americans are hopeless.

    • If Dems sweep the Midterms this has a high chance of happening.

      REMEMBER: ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

    • by shilly ( 142940 )

      I understand the sentiment, but urge you not to give in to despair. Lots of people voted for him the second time around who are clearly in the process of abandoning not just him but the political movement he represents, as the horrors have unfolded in front of them in an unmistakable way. Most people are quite malleable, not fixed. Their opinions can change over time. That’s what Trump used to his advantage, and it’s something that better people can also use to their advantage too. Of course, cu

      • Most people are quite malleable, not fixed. Their opinions can change over time. Thatâ(TM)s what Trump used to his advantage

        What he used was emboldening Nazis. The entire reason those people could vote for him is that their views didn't evolve past "the brown people made my life bad".

    • So the Republicans pretty much can't win the house in the midterms even with all the cheating they are doing and all the gerrymandering they are doing.

      But it's basically impossible for the Democrats to win the senate. The current map heavily favors the Republicans with a shitload of what are perceived as moderate Republicans up for reelection. Now in reality they are all extremists that voted with Trump 95% of the time and remaining 5% were strategic votes where they were allowed to vote against him for
  • by JoeRobe ( 207552 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @07:39AM (#65870835) Homepage

    I'm an atmospheric and soil scientist returning right now from the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans, where atmospheric science is one of the largest sections of the 25,000-person conference and >60,000-member Union.

    There was an emergency town hall at the meeting after the NCAR announcement on Wednesday. One of the largest ballrooms in the convention center (New Orleans) was packed for the town hall. At one point, a (non-NCAR) scientist asked anyone to stand up if they have collaborated with or used NCAR data in the past few years. At least 90% of the people in the room stood up. It was quite moving in person.

    NCAR is a resource that has spent decades performing world-leading research. They are notably non-political, they don't advocate policy, they perform research, acquire data, and report it. They do a very wide range of research that is important for defense, air travel, aeronautics, meteorology, hurricane and tornado prediction, climatology, and air pollution. Note that I tucked climatology in that list - it's a fraction of the research they do.

    An important point: the proposed "break up" is enormously inefficient and expensive. These NCAR scientists are in the same place because their research all overlaps enough that there is benefit to them being together. If they split into different sections, people will have to be relocated, laboratories will have to be moved (short term costs) and new support staff will be required at every new site (long term costs). So not only is this a bad idea in terms of science, it's costly.

    If you're interested in contacting your senators and representatives to advocate for saving NCAR, here's a link to do so provided by AGU.

    https://agu.quorum.us/campaign... [quorum.us]

    • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

      People don't care unless it slaps them in the face. Trump is running amok all over the constitution and people applaud. SCOTUS wants a king or dictator and the Epstein files are garnering the most attention just for the gossip. The senators and representatives are letting all this happen. They don't care because it doesn't affect them... now.

      MAGA the oxymoron.

    • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @11:16AM (#65871131)

      Yeah I work in an adjacent field in soil science but studying how soils retain and release carbon and doing work with farmers on trying to capture more carbon by looking at soil practices. Turns out you can sink a LOT of co2 in soil if you do things right. (Well I mostly just take extremely shit python written by scientists and make into competent python (and in strategic areas cuda and C) and stuff it into giant pipelines. But I guess since I also write research proposals I SORT OF count as a scientist. One day the boss will let me drop a little bit of that NDA and write a paper on my "DumBoScan" algorithm..... I guess I'm a Lab assistant maybe lol.

      But there is DEFINATELY serious concern about this with the boffins. We do rely on a lot of stuff from NCAR and related labs (Ie WRF model and so on) so .... yeah this is a huge worry. Its going to impact farmers for sure as those guys are very dependent on understanding weather and climate trends for planning harvests and the like.

      Not like trump gives a fuck. I'm really glad I'm in australia, though a lot of our clients are in the US, we do seem a BIT more isolated from it as the euros and brazillians have been picking up some of the research funding slack.

    • by sinij ( 911942 )

      They are notably non-political, they don't advocate policy, they perform research, acquire data, and report it.

      I disagree. Took me all of 5 minutes to find this: Research confirms non-white urban residents face more heat stress [ucar.edu].

      • That's data. They literally just took data and reported it. Welcome to science. The fact that it's got political ramifications does not mean NCAR is advocating for political action. Just because politicians have made the topic political doesn't mean scientists can't research it anymore.

  • America's loss will be canada's gain.
  • by glatiak ( 617813 ) on Saturday December 20, 2025 @10:03AM (#65870997)

    Th e climate doesnt care... it will continue to do whatever it is going to do regardless of our belief. All shutting these programs down really means is that when we are finally forced to act it will be more expensive and disruptive. IMHO with stuff like permafrost melts it is far too late to change the climate by widespread emissions and other changes. But stopping research for whatever reason just maxiizes the ultimate cost and consequences.

  • I think that this (electing a Trump) is what happens when the pendulum gets pushed too far--it has a tendency to forcefully swing back in the other direction and I think that's a big problem with our current politics. We got a Trump because we had an Obama. We got a Biden because we had a Trump. We got another round of Trump because we had a Biden. Oy.

    How can we get to a ranked-choice system at a national level?

Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation, all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year. -- C.N. Parkinson

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