White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

https://www.science.org/content/article/white-house-plan-break-iconic-u-s-climate-lab-moves-forward

by robtherobber • 4 months ago

185 163 4 months ago

soared• 4 months ago

Boulder is not a town you generally want to upset, I would expect this to have an outsized inverse impact compared to what the White House expects over the long term.

throwaway6734• 4 months ago

Why? When I think of boulder I do not think of “people that resonate with the American public”

shrubble• 4 months ago

There’s a lot of different reasons that have nothing to do with this particular situation that has led to the saying that Boulder is “nine square miles surrounded by reality”…

nomel• 4 months ago

Could you expand on this a bit?

Balgair• 4 months ago

Very rich, very liberal, very loud, has a lot of free time too. Elon raised his first set of kids there for a reason.

Folks there tend to have a lot of hooks in a lot of places.

frogperson• 4 months ago

Fascism, plain and simple. This is caving to corporate interests at the expense of the public.

baggy_trough2• 4 months ago

Fascism is when research labs are reorganized?

virgil_disgr4ce• 4 months ago

"reorganized"

deafpolygon• 4 months ago

You mean techno-fascism? Since this benefits Meta, Microsoft, Google, et. al. Cheaper oil, gas, electricity infrastructure means bigger profit margin. It’s not so much they want pollution or to go all in on oil infrastructure specifically, but less oversight and regulation so they can build more and faster for cheaper.

Kapura2• 4 months ago

I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.

mort966• 4 months ago

Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...

elif2• 4 months ago

I don't think there was as much pushback about his policy as much as there was discontent with an economic slowdown and a somewhat ironic (considering where we find ourselves) frustration with his age.

jahnu• 4 months ago

Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated that?

anon7000• 4 months ago

If people payed attention, Kamala’s policies were decently well thought out and not the exact same as Biden.

It’s more about how demonized the libs have been, dissatisfaction with “woke culture,” certain groups of conservatives who will never vote pro-choice, and certain populations not feeling like they have a spot in liberal dialogue. (Young men.) and partly because she’s a black woman.

I would argue the election had almost NOTHING to do with actual policy or cabinet choices, because Trump should have easily lost if it was. His previous cabinet was a disaster and he can no longer attract the best and brightest due to his controversy. So, exactly as expected, his cabinet is a fucking disaster. People are attracted to the guy who will go apeshit on a system that doesn’t seem to work for them, even when stability & slow progress is actually better. (Fast progress is even better, but that’s not what Trump provides)

SmirkingRevenge4• 4 months ago

She was basically trying not to go negative on Biden while still in office. Biden and his team were actively pressuring her to stay onside, according to some reporting, which is indefensible. Reprehensible really. She should've burnt the bridge.

But it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. It was all mostly over when Biden decided to run again in the first place. Kamala moved numbers in states she campaigned in, and she probably could have moved more with enough time.

Mistakes were made - but most important and most blameworthy mistake came from the Republicans 4 years earlier, when they rejected their obligation to impeach and convict after Trump nearly killed them all on TV.

afiori2• 4 months ago

based on recentish interviews (or book?) it was likely genuine in the sense of not being performative, but apparently she knew it was both false and the wrong thing to say but said it anyway out of loyalty to Biden.

tootie2• 4 months ago

This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and logic.

mort966• 4 months ago

My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans.

What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?

jmuguy• 4 months ago

Yeah really the take away apparently is that Democrats should just lie, brazenly, about everything. I mean that's what Trump and JD Vance did and continue to do. When you can just invent your own world to live in, how are rational people supposed to deal with that? Would people have reacted different if Biden and Harris had truthfully said "oh and the world is still fucked up because of COVID, electing Donald Trump won't change that"

jajuuka7• 4 months ago

This doesn't seem based in reality. You don't go from majority support for you running to less than that and blame the other side. There are demonstrable actions and events that have a distinct link to her downward popularity.

When examining why someone lost you generally don't insinuate that the loser did everything right and the other side are just bad people and that's why they won. That's a recipe for learning nothing and repeating the same mistake over and over again. Which unfortunately seems to be the national policy position.

SmirkingRevenge4• 4 months ago

Murc's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law

rayiner7• 4 months ago

I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.

No, the damage was done before that. Harris ran the best campaign she was capable of running. We know that because she ran a terrible campaign in 2019, even with all the Obama people backing her. I went to the Iowa primary campaigning in 2019. I saw Harris several times, including at a small event focused at Asians. She’s an abysmal retail politician. Warren was hugging people and taking selfies while Harris was hiding in her tour bus. Harris is obviously an introvert who doesn’t really like people.

Given Biden’s age and early talk of being a one-term president, the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. That’s a gift that will keep giving because South Carolina is now Democrats’ first primary. If Harris runs again she’s virtually guaranteed to begin the campaign with a strong primary start.

sdenton4• 4 months ago

Harris was the vice president, and was therefore the closest thing to a small-d democratic choice amongst the available options. Otherwise... Why Harris and not Newsom?

The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.

swed4202• 4 months ago

the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began.

And back when we had an actual primary (rigged, with an overcrowded field), Warren was the choice to appease the 'progressive' identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist. They all pretended to have some knock-off version of Medicare For All because it polled so well, only to rugpull the concept as soon as Bernie was booted out.

Dems know how to win, but it's against capital's wishes, so they obey accordingly as controlled opposition via illusory democracy and choice.

mmooss6• 4 months ago

the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists.

That's the reverse: Warren wasn't nominated because she's progressive and beloved by people who care most about diversity.

The centrist Dems supported Harris - Biden's VP - and hate progressives more than they hate Republicans (they do everything to show how they work with Republicans) - look at the NYC mayoral race, where the Dem candidate was opposed or not supported by many Dem leaders.

julienchastang• 4 months ago

I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.

The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.

overfeed3• 4 months ago

The problem is that there was no primary.

I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".

Yizahi3• 4 months ago

"Primary" is fundamentally anti-democratic concept. It basically says that we, oligarchs, will pick whoever we want and you, plebes, will vote for him. Just like the first past the post system, where two oligarch's candidates are having a nice little internal contest, is anti-democratic. Until that is fixed, no amount of pleading and rationalizations will help "fix oligarchy".

tempodox• 4 months ago

The war on facts continues.

JKCalhoun• 4 months ago

"I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024."

Ha ha, reminds me of Murcs Law [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law

Herring2• 4 months ago

Seriously. Racism, pedophilia, assassination, war -- I'd vote for a dead cat over this. Americans can't get that, they have a major problem.

scwoodal• 4 months ago

NCAR’s climate research may not be the only thing driving the White House attack. It is widely believed to also be part of a campaign of political retribution waged against Colorado for its conviction and imprisonment of Tina Peters, a former county clerk who breached election security systems in a scheme to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The state has included the attack on NCAR in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Federal policy by wounded ego is still wounded ego.

tzs• 4 months ago

It's also widely believed that is a big part of why he vetoed a bill to fund the Arkansas River Valley water pipeline in Colorado, to bring much needed clean drinking water to rural communities in southeastern Colorado (communities that overwhelming voted for Trump all three times).

Another reason widely believed to be a significant factor is that it would benefit Lauren Boebert's district, and Trump wanted to punish her for siding with Democrats in the House on releasing the Epstein files.

The pipeline funding bill had been very bipartisan. It had passed the House by unanimous consent, and whatever the equivalent procedure is in the Senate.

There was an attempt to override the veto. The House vote was 248-177, which failed because a veto override requires 2/3 of the votes. It would have needed 283. All Democrats voted to override. It would have taken 71 Republicans to push it over, which would have been 1/3 of Republicans present. It only got 35, 1/6th of the Republicans.

jacquesm2• 4 months ago

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again

It's going to take a lot of glue to try to put the United States together again. Breaking things is easy, and the Trump administration absolutely excels at it. The White House, some buildings (some occupied) in Iran, the economy, the cohesion in so far as there still was any left in the country, the scientific community and the reputation of the United States as a dependable ally.

But once broken they are not so easily restored.

Tadpole9181• 4 months ago

I'm not convinced Humpty will come together again at all. The US population doesn't seem to care nearly enough to effectuate change while the regime talks about brown shirts at polling stations, delayed elections, Fed oversight of ballots, and preventing married women from voting.

Our relationships have crumbled and there's no reason to trust us: friend or foe. We're ramping up debt harder than ever, we've made tourists scared, we killed our academic imports, and we've made it impossible to start a business while letting private equity gobble up entire markets to play financial games with loans - setting up a time bomb for catastrophe. Now we're shutting down food inspection systems, disabling ecological oversight, firing every qualified person we can and installing sycophants in their place. Some with for-life positions! The economy is only desperately clinging on pretending everything is fine and they can weather the store - but the King has no clothes and has taken full control of economic levers with no oversight.

And beyond requiring regime change, the US can no longer solve such issues without constitutional amendments. Our government has proven to be fundamentally broken. Which simply will not happen because it is broken.

The US seems to be on an unrecoverable path to third world theocratic state status. We will lose our democracy and we will lose our economy. And I see no path out of it anymore.

jacquesm2• 4 months ago

I'm not convinced Humpty will come together again at all

Agreed, that's sort of the point of the rhyme. You can break stuff far easier than that you can make or repair stuff.

softwaredoug4• 4 months ago

This fits a consistent trend:

Unless Congress explicitly mandates something by law, they should expect an administration to unilaterally dismantle it. Congress delegated authority assuming it’s used in good faith and courts+executive have called Congress’s bluff.

In this case it’s a facility created by NSF, but Congress doesn’t explicitly say this HAS to exist. Therefore it won’t exist any longer.

mikeocool• 4 months ago

While true in the abstract, this administration has also dismantled numerous things that are mandated by congress.

softwaredoug4• 4 months ago

Like what?

jedberg• 4 months ago

It's worse than that though. They are dismantling things that congress has mandated, and also just not making legally mandated payments, and no one is stopping them.

Congress has abdicated their duty of checks and balances. In a functioning government, the executive would have already been removed for not following legally mandated spending.

TOMDM3• 4 months ago

It's mandated by law how tariffs may be levied and how states may police themselves and how they may independently conduct their elections.

If you think law will stop this administration then you're not paying enough attention.

softwaredoug4• 4 months ago

The law has stopped this administration on things from offshore wind farms to tariffs.

Maybe not fast enough, but it happens routinely.

The issue is that SCOTUS decides to use administration to reinterpret precedent.

mudil• 4 months ago

For some it's more iconic than for others.

bigyabai• 4 months ago

What is that supposed to mean? Don't paraphrase, just say it.

ntchpalm• 4 months ago

This is just an attempt by one political party to censor climate research. The hope is, if there is no research being done, then there will be no pressure to do anything about it. This is similar to the COVID mentality of, "stop the testing." If you don't test for COVID, the numbers don't get worse.

However, as someone who has worked at NCAR for many years, I can tell you that the place is a mess. The Table Mesa facility is mostly devoid of employees, with entire floors of offices left in a state of dark decay. Most of the vehicles in the parking lot are people hiking the trails, and days of yucky weather will reveal at most a couple dozen cars in the parking lot, mainly maintenance people. Elementary school groups continue to show up for tours, but the scientists and technical staff have moved to other buildings in town, specifically the Center Green and Foothills Lab clusters.

NCAR has become a mere shadow of its former self, with > 30% of its funding being absorbed by the Directorate and President's offices, with some executive salaries exceeding half a million dollars (not bad for a non-profit). The younger talent have fled, from the engineers up to the upper management, and what remains are aged-out scientists just waiting for retirement. Internal surveys, which seem to be sent out almost weekly, tend to show very low confidence in the leadership. It's a tanker running on inertia, and breaking it up and selling it off may be the best thing for it.

hsuduebc23• 4 months ago

A month earlier, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), had said the White House would “break up” NCAR, citing its role in “climate alarmism.”

This is absolutely the biggest pain of today's politics. You can't argue with their dogma even when it agains literally all the facts. Needless to say, both parties are doing it. Just a little bit differently.

White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

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