Trump guts a major ocean climate science research project to hide terrifying inconvenient facts to protect polluters

Trump’s intense hostility to climate science is not merely irrational and stupid. It is mentally deranged and extremely dangerous to everyone. Various sources are reporting that Trump and ordered his MAGA goons to destroy the the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). That is a US funded, $368 million deep-ocean monitoring network that has been central to understanding climate-relevant ocean processes and coastal risks. Trump has ordered it to be taken out of the water. More than 900 instruments deployed off Alaska, Washington/Oregon, the East Coast, and the Irminger Sea between Greenland and Iceland are to be removed and shut down. 

The system became operational in 2016. It was designed to last for about 25 years. The cost to operate it was ~$48 million per year. Trump repeatedly tried to slash the program’s budget by about 80 percent for 2025 and 2026. OOI instruments off the coast of Newport, Ore., and Grays Harbor, Wash., collected and transmitted temperature, acidity, and oxygen level data that is needed for predicting climate-related environmental changes, and the health of the region’s commercial fishing industry. 

An OOI data transmission buoy

Long-term observing systems like OOI are critical for detecting climate change because climate changes typically emerge over a period of decades from noisy weather patterns. Once a continuous record is broken, especially in key locations like the subpolar North Atlantic or deep sea upwelling locations, scientists cannot go back and reconstruct the missing years with anything close to the accuracy of direct ocean measurements. The OOI underpins our current understanding of marine heat waves, ocean heat uptake, and biogeochemical processes that directly affect fisheries and coastal communities. From a scientific-program point of view, shutting down a system designed for 25 years after roughly a decade is another example of Trump and MAGA politics gutting the public interest to pay off special interests who profit from continuing to pollute.

The shutdown of OOI cannot be rationally understood to be a claimed neutral budget decision. The shutdown fits squarely into Trump’s and MAGA elites’ objective of (1) dismantling climate science, gutting NOAA and NSF climate research, and (2) erasing data that document fossil‑fuel damage, all while pledging to end what Trump and MAGA elites like to call the Green New Scam.

Q: Is a deceived, ignorant electorate easier to deceive, exploit and profit from than an undeceived and informed electorate?

Q: What or who is the real scam here, climate science research or Trump, MAGA elites and their way of doing business?

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