The Trump administration’s war on science has come to the Pacific Northwest.
Out in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and Alaska, scientists and researchers – including a key contingent from the University of Washington – have set out a system of monitoring devices called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The purpose is to track changes in the undersea environment, marine ecosystems and the strong currents that affect the global climate. Similar monitors are in place off the coast of North Carolina and between Greenland and Iceland.
Now, for some foggy reason, the Trump administration is dismantling the whole thing.
Is this being done to save money? The system costs $48 million annually to operate, or, put another way, a twentieth of the projected cost of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom. Maybe it would be more cost effective to cancel Trump’s vanity project than to scuttle a scientific program that is doing something more important than feeding the ego of the president.
A statement from the Trump-dominated National Science Foundation is less than illuminating. It claims that the shutdown “aligns with NSF’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
One can read that pile of words over and over and still learn nothing. It is one of those paragraphs that consists of big, smart-sounding words thrown together in the hope of tricking people into thinking they mean something.
The words that very likely get to the real reason the ocean project is being ripped up come in this New York Times description of the system’s benefits: “Scientists have used data from the system to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how changes in ocean temperature such as marine heat waves might affect fisheries or signal bigger shifts in the climate, and coastal flooding along the East Coast.”
Did you catch those words “greenhouse gases” and “climate”? Somebody in the Trump administration certainly must have and, since these obsequious nimrods do not believe in climate change and do believe greenhouse gases are simply the necessary cost of greater and greater oil company profits, why would they be interested in scientific data that could tell them they are dangerously, stupidly wrong?
Far from making America great again, the Trump administration has given away or destroyed most of the advantages that have made this country a world leader. The alliances that magnified American power have been wrecked, the aid programs that won the U.S. influence in far corners of the planet have been ended and American leadership in global health has been tossed aside.
Now, add to that the defunding and dismantling of scientific endeavors that have given Americans a huge technological and economic edge.
Make Americans Gullible Airheads – that is the real meaning of MAGA.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
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