Every day, we see another headline reporting another example of Trump’s continuing–and often random– assault on federal governance and scientific expertise. A recent example, and not even one of the most consequential, was a decision scrapping satellite observations of Earth. Administration officials decided that those satellites “go beyond the essential task of predicting the weather.” In Trumpworld, only weather forecasts warrant government investment — not instruments that monitor climate, and–horrors!– might confirm the reality of climate change.
As the Washington Post reported,
Language in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget calls for preserving funding for the National Weather Service while slashing anything tied to climate change, limiting government investment to “research that is more directly related to the NOAA mission.” It echoed a call in the Republican policy playbook Project 2025 to dismantle climate research, which the report said drives “the climate change alarm industry,” while continuing to improve weather forecasting accuracy.
But scientists said there is no such division between weather and climate — and that losing climate data will actually hurt weather forecasting.
The article explains the fallacy at the root of this particular decision, but it is representative of the incompetence–and increasing insanity– of the entire administration. It’s just one example of what happens when decisions about governance are dictated by ideology rather than science or evidence. (Then, of course, there are the decisions that simply reflect Trump’s pique and uninformed tantrums…)
I count myself among the many critics who can point to areas of American government clearly requiring reform and reconsideration. But as any rational adult understands–and as the damage inflicted by Elon Musk and his band of DOGE children amply demonstrated– effective reform is considerably different from uninformed destruction.
It’s the difference between the scalpel and the blunderbuss.
Thoughtful reform begins with basic questions: is this activity a proper function of government, or might it better be left to the private sector? If it is something that we should expect government to do, should it be done “in house,” by public servants, or is it something that should be contracted out while being monitored by government? if the latter, does government have the capacity and resources to do that monitoring?
Once we have answered those questions, and decided that–yes, this is an activity that is appropriately governmental–the exercise moves to the next step. What is this activity accomplishing? How well is it performing? If we discontinue or materially change it, what are the likely consequences? Are those consequences acceptable?
Answering such questions requires–at a minimum–an understanding of what the activity entails, the reasons it is being conducted, the reason government is doing it, the identity of businesses and citizens who rely upon it, and the consequences to them and the public of altering or discontinuing it. Once in possession of that information, a cost/benefit analysis can be conducted and a considered decision can be made.
Forgive me for belaboring the obvious, but this process bears absolutely no relationship to the wholesale blunderbuss being taken to our governing structures by the uninformed, incompetent buffoons and cranks who occupy positions of authority in the current administration. As the linked article concludes,
Satellite data might prove impossible to replace once cut off, scientists said.
More than ever, accurate weather prediction depends on climate science, said Riishojgaard, whose center works with government satellite agencies on data algorithms. Meteorology and climate science depend on the same data, and to a large extent, the same computer models, which are informed by a record of satellite data that now goes back nearly 50 years, he said.
“You now cannot do weather prediction without understanding the climate,” Riishojgaard said. “If you ignore the past, it’s like you’re looking out the window in the morning and saying, ‘What’s going to happen?’”
What, indeed?
The complete lack of understanding/ denial of the real effects of climate change and the continued efforts to defund the scientific community’s ability to study this is criminal…as is everything that the Trump Administration is advocating for.
The Rump administration is handing to China our global leadership not just in climate science, but in essentially all fields of science and technology. In my professional world, irrational butchering of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and FDA threaten the loss of scientists and administrators in those organizations, stalled non-governmental research and training, medical advances, and drug development. Institutions and expertise vital to those functions have drawn students from abroad, who return home to serve their people, or stay here and contribute to ours. We will lose the benefits of “brain gain” from those capable *ferriners.” The losses already experienced will be generational, most of them irreversible. A great tragedy for the nation and the world is being acted out by misguided, even treasonous politicians and oligarchs.
Assume (figuratively) I am: very wealthy and seek adulation- easy to use my wealth to coerce- others- My Authority easily gets me what I want. There may be 1000 people like me in our country. Allying ourselves with DT is a “meal ticket “. Now- Person #2 seeks- Emotional Safety- May be white female- deeply religious or Black male- feeling put down by Female Partners- hearing Narrow, clear explanations- othering- immigrants, socialists, queers
We the “0utsiders” – some unintelligent- some- hurting and highly intelligent- Why Believe you Sheila???
Many of us – are either cowed by the Rhetoric or more concerned with our Narrow worlds of Carmel IN- our children and grandchildren or Taylor Swift or Our local Sports Favorite- silence concerns of The Weather Service. Do you see Texans resisting- Abbot and Ted Cruz?
Big Oil’s bribery of Trump has paid off once again. Without evidence of climate change, there is no climate change. This is classic Koch gamesmanship. We saw it in Indiana when Mitch Daniels was the Governor. He halted the research on our high infant mortality rates because it implicated mercury emissions from our super coal-burning plants. Other states had one of those plants, while Indiana had four in Southern Indiana, since Duke provided energy to the states surrounding Indiana.
I learned yesterday that the Kochs’ dark network has another nonprofit entity providing Trump with “data” to replace a rather massive part of our bureaucracy with AI. There is already AI that can predict the weather, but I assumed it relied on satellite data as well. Without the satellites, I’m not sure how you can predict the weather.
I guess the tragic loss of life in Texas due to storms causing flash floods was just a waste and not a lesson that we need more preparedness, not less. When an action doesn’t make sense in politics, there is almost always a corrupt scheme behind the scenes. A motive for profit and corruption lies behind every nonsensical decision made in statehouses and D.C.
I can remember when Indiana very quietly privatized our lottery scheme to the Italian mob. It didn’t make any sense. It turns out the problem was that politicians couldn’t get kickbacks from a state-run operation, so they privatized it to allow kickbacks from the mob. Then it all made sense.
p.s. Just a note that both Indiana Republican Senators voted against the release of the Epstein files yesterday. Josh Hawley said that the Democrats were playing games by slipping in the language into a “defense authorization bill which usually has bipartisan support.”
1) They do agree with each other on money for the Department of War.
2) Hoosier Senators blocked the release of files to protect the most corrupt pedophile the world has ever known.
3) Legacy media still refers to Epstein as just a “sex-trafficker,” but he was much more than that.
4) Charlie Kirk, in his own words, made the ultimate sacrifice so we can enjoy the freedoms contained in the Second Amendment. Trump called him a martyr – so be it.
The country is being run by idiots.
Yes, Bill, it is. And the idiots will destroy so much before finally, one way or another, being removed from positions that keep the destruction of our government and infrastructure going.
It will take decades – if we survive this horror show – to repair the utter destruction of our nation. Well done, voters … including those 82 million registered voters who didn’t vote. How’s that looking to you now? Wait until NOAA’s new AI weather forecast calls it wrong, and your business/town/home gets blown away.
Fallacies are the bread and butter of the idiots running the show, associated with their BS excuses.
Assuming that U.S. satellites are the only source of data ignores the open door for other countries to fill the gap and use the data to their advantage. Certainly China has the will and resources to do that if they so choose. The loss to us may very well continue to be the scientists exiting to other countries with more open opportunities for research, the students going to other countries to take advantage of access to those same scientists, and the businesses who will make decisions about investment in new markets and human resources going to where the new ideas and innovation are built on science not politics. Probably not China or other authoritarian regimes. We shall see. We know it will not be here in the U.S.
The use of the “blunderbuss” is deliberate. The more chaotic and wide-ranging the damage wrought, the harder it becomes to fix it afterwards. They are simply sowing the fields with salt, so that recovery becomes more difficult and less likely.
The weather lately combined with all the crazy politics reminds me of the title of Friedman’s book “Hot, flat, and Crowded”. We eventually will have no choice but to pay attention to the climate. As our environment suffers so will we. Its not hard to understand. I am already worried about droughts and the spread of diseases by insects that like warmer temps.