The President Wants to Return Us to Yesteryear

challenge not easily reassembled by a future administration that does not think basic science pointless.

The sensors — in the Pacific and Atlantic off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, Alaska, North Carolina, and Greenland — measure the health of the oceans, testing for temperature, salt content, acidity, changes in current. Data is transmitted to research laboratories.

The oceans control weather and in turn affect the food supply for millions worldwide. The seas absorb billions of tons of carbon pollution that we pump into the atmosphere, acting as a vital decelerant for delaying climate change. Trump thinks we should know none of this. He had the National Science Foundation try to come up with some explanation, which clearly they could not:

"The decision to de-scope aligns with NSF's wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart life cycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio."

In other words, gibberish. One researcher, speaking to "NewsHour", described this as "an intentional choice to embrace ignorance". The move is mirrored by the Trump administration's intention to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which works to understand the world's weather at a time when severe weather is becoming more frequent and disruptive. Located in Boulder, Colorado, it is one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions, but it is to be dismembered because, according to Russell Vought, Trump's budget director, who is in no position to pass judgment on climate science, the center is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country”.

The order to destruct occurs just as the Pacific is signaling what could be a record-breaking El Niño, with its power to affect weather patterns across the world. In the Atlantic, the sensors off Greenland are part way to Iceland on the seafloor 9,200 feet below the surface of the Irminger Sea. They have detected increased ocean warming in the Arctic that could disrupt the conveyor belt of currents that warm Europe, subjecting those countries to brutally harsh winters, at the same time distorting rain that feeds millions of people in Africa, Asia, and South America. But we'll no longer be watching.

Ed Dever, a professor at Oregon State University who helped lead Pacific Northwest operations of the ocean sensors, told the Associated Press:

"It’s a crippling loss of information. This is just one of a number of science facilities that is being dismantled at the present time. It seems to really mark the end of a federal commitment to basic scientific research — a commitment that has served this nation very well for the last 70 years."

Along with Trump's slashing of budgets most notably at the National Institutes of Health, and his withholding of funds from university research programs, he is reducing the United States from leading the world in scientific research to becoming an also ran.

But good news has come along. Just this week a bipartisan group of senators pushed back by passing a measure that halts the vandalism that Oregon Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley calls "supreme stupidity," and requires the National Science Foundation to return the sensors it has already extracted. But researchers say other large cutting-edge ocean and climate research programs are facing defunding by this administration in its quest to stamp out science, so the depredation is unlikely to stop. nostalgic for smog

Bolstering his mania to hold back the future, and just days apart from the 900 sensor erasure, Mr. Trump announced $700 million in funding for the coal industry. In decline for years — employment of 173,000 in 1985 if down to 40,000 today — the industry has largely replaced coal with natural gas.

Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Burning coal emits mercury and other heavy metals linked to an array of health problems. It was a mjor contributor to the soot and smog that blanketed American cities in the mid-20th Century. Trump wants America to revert to those times.

The funds include building two coal-burning power plants that would be the first in this country in 13 years. This follows the Energy Department in recent months ordering five coal plants scheduled to be shut down to instead to stay online, as well as Mr. Trump ordering the Defense Department to buy more of its electricity from utilities that operate coal-fired plants. Of the new funding, $425 million would go toward upgrading and extend the life of 12 additional coal plants.

“Today we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.”

The president was talking nonsense, and not just "clean" and "beautiful" and "all Americans". Those are Americans' tax dollars going into the building and renovation of coal plants, and once built, the operating cost of the plants, more costly to operate than gas, will be passed on to consumers in the afflicted locales. To gain access to the funds, Trump has even invoked the Defense Production Act to force companies to build the plants , an act meant for manufacturing armaments in times of national emergency.

A different administration could call a halt to all of this, making the policy a risky headache for the power industry, as well as a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.