Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Now the war on Climate Science begins in earnest; NOAA Satellite budget to be dramatically slashed!!
From DailyKos: Trump Plans Drastic Cuts to NOAA's Weather Satellite Budget:
The Trump administration is planning to make drastic cuts to the weather satellite budget of the National Weather Service’s parent organization, NOAA, the Washington Post reports. Weather experts interviewed by the post stated that these proposed cuts would impair the Weather Service’s forecasting ability in a number of critical ways that would endanger Americans including hurricane and tornado forecasts.
The apparent motivation for these cuts is the elimination of climate science satellites. The people proposing these cuts don't seem to understand that climate science is the integration and analysis of weather data over time. Satellites provide critical instantaneous data on weather, sea ice and crop conditions that are used commercially by public and private organizations to make decisions that are critical to protecting life, transporting goods, growing food and managing water supplies, etc.
The Weather Service’s capabilities to forecast and monitor storms like Sandy that ravaged trillions of dollars of infrastructure up and down the east coast will be damaged by Trump’s planned cuts.
Trump also plans massive cuts to NOAA’s coastal programs. They assert they want to transfer the money to defense, apparently not aware that the Norfolk naval base is under attack by rapid sea level rise related to climate change. The Navy Times reported that sea level rise threatens to inundate 128 military bases. Navy base Norfolk is the world’s largest naval base, critical to our national security, built at a cost of many billions of dollars. Cuts to coastal programs and climate studies will have devastating impacts on navy bases world wide, with Norfolk being among the most heavily impacted.
The Trump administration will damage national security, homeland security, critical infrastructure and the economy if congress enacts these reckless cuts. We must stop them.
