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waterthrowaway
epistasis
The other thing they've done is make it possible to cancel any grant at any time if it goes against the politics of the current executive administration.
Science has flourished in the US precisely because it could proceed without whimsical political picking and choosing, entire areas of science have flourished that would never have happened otherwise.
That's not to say that politics is completely out of science, Congress has done things like ban any research money for gun safety, for example. But that had to make it through Congress, a vote across party lines, instead of just being the political whim of some bureaucrat that can cancel whatever they want whenever they want.
For every issue you read about here on HN, there are about 10 other policy changes designed to destroy the US's scientific infrastructure. It doesn't get much attention because of all the other chaos going on, and scientists tend to be pretty quiet and try to stay apolitical, but it is truly a full-on crisis in the scientific research community right now. You won't see immediate effects, but in 10-20 years when China zooms ahead of the US on all research fronts and the US is left out of key technology and science directions, we will feel it then.
btown
And the non-cancellable nature of grants is not just a nice-to-have, it's absolutely critical for research with upfront capital costs (buying equipment, building labs, etc.)
The very _fact_ that this is a policy is disrupting research, even if specific grants haven't been cancelled. Some universities are stepping in to backstop, but it's a powerful chilling effect.
Loquebantur
People here are missing that they're not dismantling random things. There is a system to it, the objective of which is far more sinister than mere ideology.
The sensors in question here are crucial to monitor the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
They don't want that monitored because it is currently breaking down. Not some arbitrary far away time, now.
The science of this gets astroturfed into some nonsense "we don't really know". We do.
But conveniently, now the data to show this to the incredulous won't exist.
epistasis
Some of the specific grants that have been cancelled are shocking in the negative effect they will have on the ecosystem. Cutting off Sean Eddy, a giant in DNA analysis, just baffles the mind:
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/11/nx-s1-5807995/some-researcher...
There's not even any political angle to pursue here, it is just lighting knowledge on fire with no grander purpose.
saalweachter
A professor I worked for in college was a big fan of how the US funding was fragmented, with some coming from the NSF, some from NIH, Energy Ag, each branch of the military... if one department had a loon in charge, the others would keep things running smoothly.
epistasis
Yeah, that was one massive benefit of the fragmentation of scientific funding, just like how in the private sector there's a great diversity of funders, of employers, etc. etc. etc.
All that's now been reduced to a single kill switch at the very top, and they're trying to change all the non-political positions into political appointees so that they have control not only with a veto at the top, but control of every single decision along the entire way, without any of that pesky scientific merit getting in the way.
undefined
Duwensatzaj
>Science has flourished in the US precisely because it could proceed without whimsical political picking and choosing
Please don't take this as a defense of the Trump administration pulling these ocean sensors, but the previous administration also had political demands on grants. One of the better articles about this I've found is "Politicizing science funding undermines public trust in science, academic freedom, and the unbiased generation of knowledge" - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/research-metrics-and-an...
This ended up getting grants cancelled because they'd throw in a line so the DEI checkbox would get checked, and then Cruz went through with a hacksaw and cancelled the grant for it, as Scott Alexander found - https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/only-about-40-of-the-cruz-w...
dragant
This is a good point but its apple vs oranges. This administration is literally politicizing and destroying science funding.
panny
[flagged]
enragedcacti
Call me crazy, but I think climate scientists can enumerate major carbon sources and sinks. Unfortunately your comment is so vague that I can't tell if you're referring to a specific thing some person said or if you're just imagining a guy to be mad at.
epistasis
> cannot enumerate the major sources/sinks of carbon on the planet
What climate scientist can't do this? Are you talking about non-scientists calling people "science deniers"? Or are you denying that climate scientists have been able to do this, in which case yes you are literally a science-denier?
Nonetheless, you can't excuse harming the future of the entire nation because somebody had their feelings hurt. The stakes are bigger, here.
jandrewrogers
The vast majority of carbon sources and sinks can be attributed. Even the sinks are probably 80+% attributed at this point despite being more difficult to identify via remote sensing.
WhitneyLand
OMB = “Office of Management and Budget”.
It’s a White House office run by Russell Vought, highly ideological maga institutionalist.
pupppet
I thought it might be Orange Man Baby.
tadfisher
Also famous for being a principal architect and author of Project 2025, which explicitly calls for impoundment as a mechanism for expanding presidential authority to control the Federal budget for political purposes.
FrustratedMonky
In order to usher in their Theocratic Dictatorship, they need to have an un-educated population. This is the start. I hope it takes a few generations and the tide can be turned. But at this rate, the US might end within the next couple years, not decades.
I don't think they are really even trying to hide it. Project 2025 was pretty obvious road map.
msie
Sadly, he will not be jailed for all the destruction he has caused. Can we send him the repair bill after he's out of office?
ceejayoz
(and one of the authors of Project 2025)
SilverElfin
He’s a self described Christian nationalist. He literally believes the laws should reflect Christian morals and views. Like a right wing sharia. And that’s what Project 2025 includes. Things like age verification for porn are meant to be backdoor porn bans, and also meant to hurt gay and lesbian culture. But it’s based on a puritanical Christian theocratic sort of view.
frogperson
The elected reps are captured by business interests. Citizens united means the best marketing team wins every election. The reps do not work for citizens, why would they? Voting has been nullified, democracy is dead.
red-iron-pine
US business interests are fine with the US funding science they can use
these are foreign interests, and it's 100% clear who is behind it.
phyzix5761
We haven't started the Democracy phase yet in the US. It's a constitutional republic and its working exactly as designed by the founding fathers. The wealthy elite stay in control of the Senate (equivalent to the House of Lords) and the citizens get to have their say in the House (equivalent to the House of Commons). In this system nothing becomes law unless approved by the Lords of the Senate.
This started as an Aristocracy with well meaning participants but its evolved into an Oligarchy just as anacyclosis[1] predicts. The next stage is Democracy and then that, eventually, crumbles into mob rule (Ochlocracy).
20after4
It feels more like we've jumped straight to mob rule (with tinges of oligarchy, which are not new really)
20after4
I live in a red state. Our elected representatives are in on it.
pstuart
It's borderline evil. The only reason they are doing this is to silence the science that contradicts their agenda.
I get the part about old school corruption where your cronies get to steal from the government (hello Big Coal/Big Oil), but to figuratively shit on the people of the world out of spite takes it to a whole new level...of evil.
xg15
Can anyone explain that "anti-science" crusade to me? This doesn't seem to have any effect than reduce America's standing in the world.
adithyareddy
They're ideological goals, not technical ones. If they don't make sense to you it's because you're not viewing it through their ideological lens.
undefined
justin66
They're isolationists. They do not care about America's standing in the world.
st-keller
If you want to be an authoritarian ruler, truth is the first thing you have to eliminate! If noone knows what is true, a leader can tell you what to believe! Science is our method to determine truth! A führer cannot have that!
gpm
More than that if you're a professor (and thus an educator for the next generation) you're now incentivized to modify your speech in favour of the authoritarian in order to keep getting funding.
I wouldn't underestimate the degree to which funding to these is being cut because climate scientists have historically been politically opposed to certain large republican donors that make their fortunes burning fossil fuels.
Hikikomori
It was also the first things Hitler and Mussolini did once they got power.
wnevets
> reduce America's standing in the world.
That is the goal.
undefined
jackyinger
A small price to pay to increase the standing of a select few. /s
munificent
The primary goal of authoritarianism is consolidation of power among a small number of elites. Anything that can reduce that power is an enemy.
The essential weakness that the powerful elites have is that they are, by definition, outnumbered. So in order to consolidate and maintain power, they need to disturb any system that the masses can use to coordinate and form collective action.
(It's a kid's movie, but Hopper's speech in "A Bug's Life" captures this very well: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1hfo90u/hoppers_jus...)
Reality has a strong consensus-creating effect. We all live in the same material world, so simply by understanding it better and sharing that understanding, we will automatically trend towards having more common ground and more agreement.
That's a threat to elite power, so authoritarian governments have always been anti-science. They may pay it lip service, or attempt to harness it to their own ends, but they never want an entire populace that it well-educated and grounded in reality, because well-informed masses are harder to divide and conquer.
peyton
[flagged]
kevin_thibedeau
It's all outlined in Gulliver's Travels.
datsci_est_2015
You can read the profiles of people who run in the circles of those who have decision-making powers.
Take for example the Wikipedia article for Liz Peek[1]:
> Peek spent more than 20 years on Wall Street as a research analyst focused on the oil industry. She began working for Wertheim & Company in 1975 and in 1983, was one of the first women to become partner at a Wall Street investment firm.
> Peek was the first woman elected president of the National Association of Petroleum Investment Analysts and was also a member of Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts.
> She has written for The Fiscal Times, Fox News, the New York Sun, The Wall Street Journal, Alternate Universe, the Motley Fool, and Women on the Web and has appeared on Fox Business with Neil Cavuto and Fox & Friends. Peek contributes opinion pieces to The Hill.
> Their son, Andrew Peek, studied at Princeton, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Texas at Austin, is a veteran of the US Army, and has worked for the Heritage Foundation and for two Republican US Senators and one Republican Congressman. He briefly served in each of the Trump administrations; as part of the State Department during Trump's first term, and as an advisor at the NSC during Trump's second term.
Just read her opinion pieces and you’ll experience her worldview firsthand, which I can only presume comes from a foolish sense of self-righteousness for making a career out of enabling and exacerbating the fossil fuel crisis. Don’t think she would be able to sleep at night if she actually gave a shit about even learning about the potential impacts of climate change.
And she’s a drop in the bucket - all of these people are like this.
RetroTechie
I'm thinking..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
Often phrased as "science progresses one funeral at a time"
..applies here. Each time a Big Oil executive or one of their conspirators eats it, green tech progresses.
They worked to build today's fossil-dependent world. 20-somethings work to build a world that does without fossils (and imho they're doing ok there).
epistasis
Pretty much every single part of Project 2025 is designed to reduce America's standing in the world, not just the anti-science parts of it.
It's a general trend across all authoritarian regimes; it's harder to be authoritarian with lots of international connections, with lots of strength and partnerships.
Autarky, authoritarianism, isolation, all go together (along with weak economies, etc., but the goal isn't to have the biggest amount of pie, the goal is to be able to control all the pie slices and take the biggest portion, even if the pie is far smaller.)
jaybrendansmith
When do we get to the part where we all collectively wake up and realize they are the enemy of the American People? You know, the part with the guillotines?
aaron695
[dead]
peyton
[flagged]
epistasis
What COVID research shutdowns are you talking about? That's too vague to understand, it could mean anything of any sort of political motivation! But with COVID specifically, there's an entire industry devoted to feeding fake conspiracies, so you'll have to be very specific in order for anybody to agree with you.
Jtsummers
It's pretty clear that peyton is just trolling this discussion right now.
20after4
Look at all of the headlines coming out of the department of energy:
https://www.energy.gov/newsroom
Lots of them related to coal and LNG.
Most prominently: https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-invest-350...
The policy of the federal government is anti renewable energy and pro coal, pro oil.
Oil executives are profiting from the situation with Iran. These guys don't want us to have cheap renewable energy. They want us to keep paying their tolls and they don't want anyone to have access to evidence that could continue exposing the damage they've done to the environment.
scottyah
The DoE is posting misinformation constantly, they seem to just be old oil people. Idk how they're still flying under the radar.
gwerbin
None of it is under the radar anymore, they have a radicalized supporter base and increasingly dictatorial control over the basic functioning of government. Subtlety is no longer necessary under those conditions.
testing22321
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arjie
The scales of money at play always seem so strange. Oh a few hundred million for ocean sensors, or about what a few OpenAI / Cursor employees or a few hundred FAANG employees could personally fund if they desired to do so.
rjrjrjrj
These sensors and a bunch of other scientific research for a thousand years, or pointless war with Iran for 3 months.
_fs
Cost has nothing to do with it. This was all laid out in the project 2025 manifesto. Burn it all down with no regard to money previously invested. Makes it harder for future administrations to rebuild. Halting the collection of data is not enough. Maintenance is 5% or less of the cost to deploy new. If they destroy it, it makes the cost to rebuild (including having to re-seek congressional approval) that much harder and time consuming.
gwerbin
And if they do accidentally destroy something that they want, it can be rebuilt by a private contractor friendly to the administration.
autoexec
The war is making a lot of money for trump and his family, the science was just making some of Trump's biggest bribers look bad.
dwroberts
The US military budget is 900 billion dollars. The government can afford a few hundred million for some sensors, it should not need private sector patrons
mandeepj
> The US military budget is 900 billion dollars.
The new budget proposal is $1.5T
hxtk
That number, incidentally, is the entire NATO military budget. Which scares me because I can imagine someone planning on taking action that would result in the dissolution of NATO thinking they can make up the difference that way and choosing that number with that in mind.
justin66
The government has already paid for the sensors.
echelon
> The US military budget is 900 billion dollars.
And we're about to pay over a third of that to Iran?
pesus
Is it actually coming out of the military budget? I assumed we were just going to get taxed for it, or they'd pull it from some other places that actually needs the funds.
Alternatively, they could just increase the military budget by 300 billion (or more).
throwawaypath
No, that was fake news. The 300 billion dollars isn't coming from the US.
vel0city
Its not even about saving money. If they just wanted to save money they'd just stop paying attention to the data coming in, retask/lay off the people working on it, and let the buoys stay out there. A dumb idea to me, but at least that's consistent. Let other organizations decide to manage the buoys. While I'd prefer for the government to do it, it could be possible to have other groups fund such things. It would be a lot cheaper, easier, and allow for a smoother transition with no lost data for some other org or government to take over the project.
Instead, we're paying money to pull the sensors out of the water. We're actively spending money to blind ourselves to things we know are growing areas of concern.
lastofthemojito
It's also (according to some in Congress) an illegal action as Congress authorized and funded the project:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/lawmakers-fight-to-stop...
But that just seems like par for the course for the current administration, whether it's tariffs or ballrooms or ocean sensors - do the illegal thing ASAP, let the courts argue for months or years, and maaaaaybe get a slap on the wrist sometime way in the future.
autoexec
> do the illegal thing ASAP, let the courts argue for months or years, and maaaaaybe get a slap on the wrist sometime way in the future.
don't forget that the courts have already decided that anything this president does is legally okay because he's immune from punishment for breaking any law as long as they decide the illegal activity was an "official act".
gwerbin
Well the majority party in Congress could put a stop to it at any time. The fact that they don't, and haven't just on about any related issue, tells you everything you need to know. They just don't want to put their names on it in case public opinion sours, then they can at least try to keep their jobs and claim innocence.
undefined
AngryData
Congress isn't toothless so I just don't see how I can believe anything but that the majority of congress, whether they claim opposition or not, is onboard with this nonsense. They are completely out of touch and it seems like they are just playing a game of PR hot potato to avoid taking any real action.
Jtsummers
This is the strangest part to me. They will spend millions and several years to dismantle a system that, realistically, could also just be abandoned. Not that we should leave more random, unused equipment out in the world, but if this were really about cost savings, and given this administration does not care at all about the environment, then leaving the equipment in place was the best option by their stated rationale.
fanatic2pope
If they just abandon them then a subsequent administration can simply re-activate them without being forced to spend even more money.
Sharlin
Astronaut meme: it was never about cost savings
insane_dreamer
it's not strange or random idiocy
they are intentionally making it difficult for the next administration to flip the switch back on to monitoring again; it would now require $100s of millions to reconstruct the system, money that may not be easy to get congress/taxpayers to agree to
curt15
In what world is more spending for less data a good deal?
20after4
If you are in the oil, gas and coal business and the money spent is coming out of someone else's pocket then it's a great deal.
EA-3167
"Don't Look Up" was a documentary.
goatlover
This administration is extremely wasteful despite the mantra about reducing waste, fraud and abuse. In fact it's done the opposite of all three things.
hdgvhicv
It’s nothing to do with money, that’s always the libertarian excuse, and HN laps it up far more than the rest of the word.
pesus
Whatever delusions I once held that software engineers are above average intelligence were completely eradicated by seeing how many HN commenters eagerly bought into the obvious lies about DOGE and their goals (amongst other things). It was embarrassing. They sure seem to be a lot quieter about that now, though.
Gud
hackers used to be a large percentage of software engineers and are indeed intelligent people with an open mind.
However since ~2005 their percentage of the total has gone from ~25% to <1% as computers became less of a hobby and a way to make money.
ToucanLoucan
Have to sternly disagree: at least on the conservative side, it is thoroughly lapped up. Right wingers the world over constantly vote to fuck themselves and the rest of us over with this never ending whingeing about debt, spending, pork, what have you. On this particular issue it's even less surprising since the only thing perhaps a right winger wants to hear less about than government spending is climate change.
The entire debt ceiling bullshit is political theatre and always has been. We didn't even have a debt ceiling for the majority of our existence as a nation, and since it's creation by right wingers, it has been used as a bludgeon by right wingers to kneecap anything that stood to benefit the civil good of our country. Austerity politics have been deployed here and elsewhere to great effect to destroy social programs, demonize those who need them, and reallocate trillions of dollars to the private sector to provide the same services the public sector did, but worse, and while enriching greedy assholes the entire way. And the whole way it has been done by an enthusiastic and approving portion of the public who can be persuaded to feel outrage that seventy cents of their yearly taxes are going to some program in some far off part of the country they'll never see.
Meanwhile the actual national debt soars, and under who? Yep, fucking right wingers again. And every time we want to do something science and evidence backed like give the homeless somewhere to live, we're met with a chorus of WHO'S GONNA PAY FOR IT, but every goddamn time there's another country full of brown kids to blow the fuck off the face of the Earth, we always, always have money for that.
It's disgusting and I hate it here.
autoexec
> Meanwhile the actual national debt soars, and under who? Yep, fucking right wingers again.
Exactly. If the people on the right cared at all about government spending they'd never vote republican again, which just shows us that they don't actually care about government spending. They don't seem to want to talk about the things they really do care about too loudly though.
righthand
Lol Big Tech employees don’t have desires beyond money at any cost.
ertgbnm
[dead]
ericmay
[flagged]
Ancalagon
actually - they're not
iwontberude
Because your rights (including property rights) are only what other people will respect, there is no true god head that swoops down to ensure it.
ericmay
I'm not following what this comment is supposed to address from what I wrote.
The US government is taking some action (they take all sorts of actions people agree or disagree with, fund or defund various programs or initiatives), and because some people disagree with that action we should create a special tax levy on "some rich text workers" to pay for something that some number of citizens want to see exist despite the government that was democratically elected defunding that various program? Maybe when Democrats win we can just tax a few Anthropic employees and have them pay for the natural gas power plants that get shut down and then we can tax them again when Republicans shut down the wind and solar turbines. Perfect!
That, which is an accurate description of what was proposed, seems a bit unworkable, to say the least. Any why limit it to these sensors? Why not pay for all sorts of things? Let's just tax tech workers and they'll fund all sorts of activities that some political groups want to see happen?! lol that's so crazy and doesn't at all make sense in a democratic nation that respects the rule of law.
bbbrad
Read the article, but I'm still not seeing why the U.S. is pulling these sensors. Anyone have any insight?
mullingitover
There's no point in spending taxpayer money understanding what may or may not happen in the future, when we already know what will happen: Jesus is coming back. We need to spend on the military for the final battle of Armageddon.
^ Literally the beliefs of the most influential part of the political base of the administration.
anon_shill
Is this from Bannon and co.? What is their rationale for being militaristic during a return of Jesus? Wouldn't Jesus not like that very much?
burkaman
There is no way to know what Jesus would or wouldn't like. Most religious people interpret their chosen text in whatever way best fits their preferences and lifestyle. In this case, they like war, so that means Jesus also likes war: https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-ir.... It is trivial to find Bible verses supporting war if that's what you're looking for: https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-....
steve_adams_86
I don't think they literally believe it. They ostensibly espouse this for political purposes, but it doesn't appear they believe in any permanent objective or thing other than their own power and profit.
undefined
0xbadcafebee
It's not, it's Hegseth and others that are Christian Zionists. This is not "christians who like zionism", it's a specific evangelical sect that interprets global conflicts as literal fulfillments of biblical prophecy. The popular tenants of Christian Zionists include that women should be subservient to men, homosexuals are evil, white christians should rule supreme, the confederates got a bad rap, COVID and global warming are a conspiracy, and the big kicker: armageddon is coming and we must prepare the way for Jesus to rule the earth. In order to do that they need to wage holy war / WW3 so that Jesus can come back, defeat everyone, and make a new Earth and rule over it. This is why Hegseth said he's fighting a holy war, why he has Crusader tattoos, etc. It's the Christian version of Islamic Extremism. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Wilson_(theologian) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagee)
“He urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ,” the NCO wrote in the email. “He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.’" - https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/03/06/lawmakers-wan...
0xbadcafebee
Political strategy. Step one of controlling a population is to stop information flow; you can't stop something bad happening if you don't know about it. Since the party in charge thinks climate change is a hoax, all efforts at slowing climate change are therefore bad. So you remove the tools people use to document and respond to climate change, and now everything is fixed, in your world view.
ezfe
Because they're scientific instruments to collect data
square_usual
Specifically climate data, which can be used to argue for climate change action.
tetha
As the old joke went, the easiest way to not have detected covid cases in the country is to stop testing. Very simple, very effective.
dionian
[flagged]
clintonb
The current administration doesn’t care about climate change, or believes it’s a hoax. Given this, they see no need to fund research and data gathering that tells them otherwise.
francisofascii
That is a charatable interpretation. A more negative take is they are purposely suppressing the evidence.
nom
That is exactly what is happening.
Records of environmental data are a huge pain in the ass for those invested in fossil energy and adjacent industries.
The truth is hurting business and they seem to be going on a rampage actively killing it at the roots. Stop collecting and recording data, destroy and hide the existing data and close the institutions.
exe34
No, they are attacking any and all forms of data collection that can be connected to climate change - even if it's not specifically for climate change.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/may/...
verdverm
Not just climate data, they are changing how census data is aggregated so they can reverse-individualize for political goals, discussed 3 days ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48517377
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/12/nx-s1-5855734/census-bureau-d...
ActorNightly
To be fair, the public in large also dgaf about climate change.
Honestly, at this point, having natural disasters with destruction and death is probably the only way to make people care.
burkaman
This is not true, most people care about climate change, even in the US (https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...). Maybe you think "if they care then why are they still driving/flying/eating meat/whatever" and I sympathize, but climate change is not an issue that will be solved by individuals taking responsibility, in the same way that wars still happen even when the vast majority of the population oppose them.
If you're wondering why they don't at least vote for someone who cares about climate change, I don't know. But claiming people don't care at all is not true and is self-defeating, because it makes people who do care think "I guess I'm in the minority, there's no point in trying".
taylortbb
> Honestly, at this point, having natural disasters with destruction and death is probably the only way to make people care
We already have them. People just claim they're chance effects with no connection to climate change.
The problem with refuting it is that they are chance events, there's no way to definitively say "this was caused by climate change", because it's always possible it would have happened anyways. It's the upwards trend in frequency and severity that we can definitively point and say "that's caused by climate change", but that's too abstract for most people to understand.
alphawhisky
Well, it is an El Nino year...
undefined
jandrewrogers
It doesn't make much sense.
There are massive gaps in our current climate models because we have almost no data about subsurface ocean dynamics. Many of the assumptions about the oceanic environment in climate models were demonstrated to not match empirical measurement a few decades ago but we don't have enough oceanic data to come up with a coherent model for the observed dynamics. Without a plausible model for these dynamics, any predictions made from climate models have a high probability of being significantly incorrect.
These sensor networks were the first step toward collecting some data that would allow us to develop a plausible model for subsurface ocean dynamics. To be clear, we are probably still a couple decades out from this in any case but removing these sensor networks from operation definitely won't help. There are very few efforts to collect this data at scale, I believe this was one of the largest.
Most people don't realize how critical subsurface sensor networks are to building accurate climate models.
tjohns
Dismantling monitoring programs which show evidence of climate change is one of the Project 2025 priorities.
Specifically, their plan calls for downsizing the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (Mandate for Leadership, Project 2025, p. 676), and breaking up NOAA (p. 674), because they view these agencies as a source of "climate alarmism" and that "the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded."
cyberax
"See no evil, hear no evil" - literally.
fancyfredbot
I understand the present US administration would want to stop funding this, and that they have the power to do so.
I don't understand how that has led to the sensor network being dismantled. Surely it would have been cheaper to leave it in place and stop maintaining it?
xboxnolifes
You're looking at it from the lens of cost to government, but ignoring the lens if cost/profit for companies. Government spending isnt real spending to them, because its not their money. Government spending is only bad when if means they (the individuals) would profit less.
adithyareddy
It's not about the cost, it's about ideology. Same reason they've paid nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to energy developers to abandon offshore wind farm projects. The point isn't to save money, it's to stop green energy projects, which is an ideological goal. If their decisions don't make sense to you it's because you're not viewing them through their ideological lens.
fancyfredbot
The way I thought it worked was that congress would set a budget and scientists would decide how to spend it.
Perhaps naively I thought these scientists would want to do science and would be unwilling to steer funds away from whichever projects they liked in order to fund the removal of some sensors.
I guess maybe the scientists who make these decisions are also partisan and happy to do as the administration asks.
gwerbin
It's not an ideological goal, it's a profit goal. Ideology is just part of the propaganda engine. Isn't it funny how conservatism always seems to benefit big business? Have you ever noticed how quiet conservative politicians get when some supposedly conservative ideology ends up being bad for big business?
throwarayes
“Have the power”
They have power, but it’s not actually legal. Congress has mandated funds for this array, the administration wants to cripple it beyond repair before any legal action can catch up.
gwerbin
Congress could stop it right now if they wanted to. They don't want to stop it. Authoritarian government requires a strong executive and a weak legislature.
greycol
An apologist would argue that leaving the sensors to degrade and leach into the environment or for ones with buoyant parts to possibly break free and endanger seagoers is not better than deconstruction.
The malicious belief would be that it's to ensure that the system can't be easily reactivated and that a non-profit couldn't offer to take over the running costs, there's also the possible "benefit" of redirecting funding that has already been allocated for marine science that would be harder to not dispense rather than arguably use it for this.
warkdarrior
If you destroy the sensor network now, it is that much more expensive for a future administration to rebuild from scratch.
Danox
The countries on the other side of the Pacific in East Asia will just have to pick up the slack and the same applies to those on the European side of the Atlantic, just another signal of the decline of the United States.
I’m sure that the same will apply to the weather satellites above.
phtrivier
Should Europe put sensors on the US coast to continue measuring the collapse of the AMOC ? I'm not 100% sure the US navy would enjoy that.
Europe will find proxy measurements to confirm that, thanks in no small part to US politicians, pour climate will be even more FUed than expected.
We won't send flowers, but, hey, that's your country, and you got lower taxes and better return on your cryptos, so "the rest of the world" can go to hell, I suppose ?
This too shall pass, but it can't pass fast enough.
james_marks
The final rebuttal to “the data doesn’t lie”: pull the sensors.
burkaman
It's a natural extension of "stop the count" and "if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases".
hyperman1
There is a midterm comming up in the USA. If you're living there and you're now not going to vote,I'm sorry but you're complicit. They might make it inconvenient, but you all still got some power left over there.
Afaik, either a few traditional red states turn blue and make it clear there is a limit to what's politically possible, or you're a dictatorship.
swframe2
The North Atlantic’s ‘cold blob’ may signal a major current’s decline https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cold-blob-may-signal-cur...
throwarayes
This seems to be a case of administration impounding funds authorized by Congress for this purpose. As in they’re just spending what Congress told them to.
And unfortunately SCOTUS made it harder for private groups to sue over impounding. And seems to argue only the GAOs comptroller can sue under the impoundments control act (ICA). GAO is the part of Congress that investigates when executive branch isn’t enforcing the law / spending funds. But have themselves limited ability to enforce anything.
It’s another post watergate reform eroded by Trump II. The ICA was created to stop these sorts of impoundments that happens with Nixon and earlier.
Notably members of Congress are working to pause the dismantling
https://apnews.com/article/ocean-observatories-initiative-tr...
simonerlic
I worked directly with the Ocean Networks Canada team for my engineering capstone project- they're a fantastic crew who are really clearly dedicated to providing open access to their data (they have a free API if you want to play with it!)
It's honestly a shame that this happened, but I hope they can use it to give a compelling argument for more funding in the future to expand the network (and make up the loss of data)
lawgimenez
Care to link this free API
Supercompressor
Think I found it: https://data.oceannetworks.ca/OpenAPI
skeledrew
It's a leveled playing field now. No more pesky "I can provide data that shows..." to stand in the way of making things GREAT AGAIN. All arguments' strength rely on how much money is backing each, which is what makes all things GREAT. Facts are what those with power want it to be, not what some young upstarts claim from reading some machines. And that, again, is GREATNESS!!
gyanchawdhary
100% !
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As a physical oceanographer, the destruction of these observing systems is horrific.
It is hard to stress enough how intentionally OMB is trying to disassemble American science. The new (proposed) OMB guidelines prohibit international collaboration without pre approval for example. They also codify a political grant approval process. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-manage...
Additionally, OMB is not releasing the congressional appropriated funds that they are required to. This is currently tanking the post-doctoral researcher market and eventually will wipe out a generation of researchers if it isn’t stopped. https://grant-witness.us/funding_curves_nsf.html
Please call your elected representatives! It is so so important! https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-scienc...