The National Science Foundation (NSF), at the directive of the Trump Administration, has begun removing a $360 million ocean monitoring system, claiming that they are shifting priorities. They plan to aim four of the five systems that do crucial work to monitor temperature, current flow, chemical composition, and the effect of fisheries, among other data, that give us long-term information about how the world’s oceans are changing over time. The project began in 2016 and was funded to monitor the oceans for 25 years, but are now being shut off after only ten of those years.
The federal NSF budget proposal called for an 80% cut to funding for the Ocean Observatories Initiative, much of which was then re-funded by Congress and other NSF partners. Despite that, the NSF head of media affairs says that removing these systems is part of a “wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.” If you have no idea what that statement means, you are not alone. This B.S. nothing-statement really indicates that the NSF is willing to follow Trump and the MAGA Project 2025 mission of slashing or dismantling all research related to climate change.
What better way to deny the realities of climate change than to remove any ways to measure it? Not only are they cutting the budgets, but they are materially removing all of the monitoring equipment, meaning that, if scientists want to renew initiatives, new expenses and resources will be needed.
This new effort to erase climate change ocean monitoring comes in a year where we are expected to experience an El Niño which is predicted to cause extreme heatwaves and catastrophic storms. In addition, the Atlantic Ocean system of ocean currents that regulate the climate and drive weather patterns has been weakening and has a real possibility of collapsing.
Rather than measure, predict, and prepare for changes that we know are coming to our climate and our weather systems, the ruling class would rather ignore reality and keep on drilling, trading, and fighting wars over oil and other fossil fuels. Their drive for profits is killing us all, and they don’t want us to see it until it is too late. We don’t need monitoring systems for us to realize that the so-called world leaders do not share our interests of a livable future for all. So, let’s stop them while we still can!
