What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
> the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student
This is not an unreasonably ratio between cutting-edge affection and long-term potential. Particularly when grad students aren’t currently configured to be earning positions.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.
The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, is ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?
I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.
The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.
Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
Or scientists know how to count and see that one number is larger than another; and understand that that's an important factor in many political systems.
The republicans can have 1 senator in the senate and they somehow shuck and jive to get their way. They never fucking lose in implementing their outright evil. Break some rules, use strategy, set up some game pieces. Do something, anything. The democrats couldn’t even get a Supreme Court justice seated with 6 months to go for the next election.
The GOP rigs elections in their favor and it's well known, but they don't have the power to throw out an additional 87 million votes if they don't go in their favor.
The logical conclusion then if despite everyone voting D then getting their votes tossed out is either violent revolution or liberation with the aid of another nuclear-armed state.
The will of the plurality you mean? He didn’t win a majority of the votes. He is the legitimately elected office holder; but it was not the will of the people, it was the outcome of this particularly electoral process. Many American electoral processes require a run off without a majority for this reason, and it’s an intensely weak platform to claim a mandate from - not only did more people not vote for you than half the voters, if you add in the people who could vote but didn’t, it’s by far not “the will of the people”.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Voting for Trump (or anyone with an R by their name) is wrong; sitting out a vote is wrong. Why save all the blame for the side that actually put up resistance, however ineptly?
I don’t think blue team good, red team bad is a very mature take on US politics. When it comes to substantive policy, voters do not get a choice. The same wars will be fought. The same lobbies will have their way. Just because one side will make tactless, self-deifying inaugural speeches about how the sea levels will cease to rise and the Earth will start to heal, that does not make it so.
I think that if these sensors were providing useful, actionable information more valuable than their maintenance cost is not well supported.
I hate divisive language like this, but Trump's only major concrete "policy" (if you can call it that) during his 2024 campaign was that he was going to somehow lower grocery prices by instituting tariffs, so basically "I'm going to lower prices by raising prices".
That kind of idiotic quasi-doublespeak should have been a disqualifier for anyone with at least a two-digit IQ, but apparently it's not. The only scenarios that I can see for this:
1) People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
This is so idiotic because even if that were true, which it's not, those costs would still be ruled into the price. "No such thing as a free lunch" is very literally the first thing I learned in high school economics.
If people are that stupid then they can be blamed for their idiotic decisions to vote for a despot.
2) They didn't believe in the tariff rhetoric, and wanted to vote for Trump based on a nebulous "personality".
This is stupid. If you really are voting for people because you think you'd "like to have a beer with them", then you should be blamed when bad things happen from that idiotic decision.
----
Kamala wasn't a great candidate, but I really hate this sort of "both sides"-ing people do to try and engage in apologetics for people's ridiculous decision to vote for the guy who, as far as I can tell, has literally no expertise in anything.
I'll let you in on a secret. The main reason why nobody is catering to you isn't because what you want goes against the money, the status quo, or whatever big bad you imagine. It is because if you don't vote then you are about as good for them as nipples on a Breast Plate. There is a reason seniors get everything that they want: it is because they always show up to vote!
let's not forget that orange retard would have never got reelected if the preceding retards had not cranked their clown world antics up to eleven. the senile grandpa was awakened and paraded around when it was strictly necessary, but for the most part, it was lunatics running the asylum. just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.
I wish I could find it but Simon Clark, someone who specialized in climate science, had put out a video about how we were only recently able to model the AMOC and it's shifting patterns thanks to this measurement we were doing
Most scientists don’t expect a full collapse this century, but even a significant slowdown would have major climate consequences particularly for Europe and Africa.
This was the most one-sided article I’ve seen in a while.
I didn’t see one word describing why the administration felt this was the correct decision.
All I saw was moral judgment and condemnation, as if describing the actual motivations of the actors would have been a pointless exercise.
I’m not defending the administration. I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project or the groups that operated it. But I do know that there are two sides to every conflict.
This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. And the one-sided presentation makes me much more suspicious of the motives of the publisher and therefore of the validity of their position.
> Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, “aligns with N.S.F.’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.
2) does that answer satisfy you? The bullshitty word salad doesn't surprise me. With this administration I expect incompetence and double speak and am rarely disappointed. I wonder why at this point in time you choose to give them so much leeway.
Climate Activist: The oceans are getting warmer & global currents are threatened by imminent collapse - we must do something!
Big Oil: Prove it!
Climate Activist: Data gathered between 2016 and 2026 shows ...
Big Oil: That's old news! Do you have more recent data?
Climate Activist: Well, no, because Trump2 dismantled the ocean observation system in 2026 ...
Big Oil: So you have no data to back up your claims?
Climate Activist: Not recent data, no, but ...
Big Oil: Case dismissed! Why should anyone take action based on subjective opinion, not backed up by hard data? For all we know the oceans could have miraculously cooled & the currents are fine!
This strikes me as one of the recent moves by our political/capital class where they think that if they just remove the information that’s inconvenient for them, people will stop caring and let them do what they want. You only need to listen to the bosses who so many of us work for to know that they think climate change is just an inconvenience in the way of progress. Only time will tell if this strategy will work or not.
It's arguably not particularly inconvenient for the us political class? the us has been on a tear reducing per capita ghg emissions (also trade corrected ghg emissions). this has been going on for five decades now (consistently 2.5) independent of whether administrations or congress have been red or blue
iiuc us per capita emissions are not far from 1910s levels
None will. But hide them in a box, away from where others can see, and they will happily sign a piece of paper that says they do. One so called a ballot.
That wasn't arbitrary, and it wasn't for no benefit. It was so that landowners along the coast could continue to use faulty sea level studies to justify state road and infrastructure investments.
Terrible. The infrastructure installed in the oceans was meant to last 25 years. Instead after 10 years (or less for some), we are going to spend 1.5 years removing it all.
It’s not surprising though. Manipulating data and availability data is a regular government practice now. And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities often tell a misleading story, and can be influenced by rule changes on what gets counted.
This doesn't really seem relevant, nor does it seem credible that only Democrats are ever tempted to use trickery to make crime rates seem better than they are.
It’s directly relevant. You change data collection to present a false narrative and there are many ways to do it. Shutting down the ocean data infrastructure is one example. It presents a false narrative on climate change.
The same is possible in other contexts like crime stats. You can avoid crime data collection by creating friction in reporting crimes. Or change incentives to report crime by not doing anything with reports. Or not submit data to places that collect it. And so on.
I’m not saying “only democrats” either - they aren’t - but it’s a common issue in blue cities that have obvious crime issues despite government PR about crime rates.
> And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities ...
Trying to "both sides" dismantling oceanographic science by equivocating it with "blue cities often tell a misleading story" is disingenuous at best and can easily be interpreted as deceitful by a reasonable person.
Assuming the interlocutor is stupid, at any scale, 1-1 to the whole of american politics probably just highlight that you don't fully grasp their point of view, because then it wouldn't be stupid. You'd be able to explain it to them and get them to see the matter from your perspective. If you can't do that, then you don't know you're right, you might be, but there's no way for you to know, truly.
No, this is specious. I've tried to have conversations with reactionaries on topics that we both are even aligned on. It would always be crickets the moment I deviated from the reactionary talking points. The elusive point of view that is "not grasped" is merely some combination of religious fundamentalism and spiteful destruction. Which are both ultimately just rooted in stupidity.
Where I work we research some environmental data like ocean temperature (at depth and at surface), currents, acidity, salinity, and oxygen content. Most of this occurs at the surface, but a lot occurs via CTD (many depths) and autonomous drones along the continental shelf in BC, Canada.
You'd think this stuff isn't worth monitoring, but it paints a very interesting picture of where things were, where they are now, and where they're going.
We also do experiments on key species of the food web, analyze environmental DNA to see what's present and where, and generally try to figure out what this data says about living things and how they will handle these changes.
The bottom line is that something as significant as ocean currents will have massive implications for crucial things like transport, food, agriculture, and more.
This stuff is integral to the stability of everything you care about.
And it's not looking great. Acidity is increasing, temperature is increasing, oxygen is decreasing, food webs are transforming; we need to know what this means ASAP, and we need to figure out how to adapt. This isn't your kids' kid's problems alone. You will likely experience impacts in your lifetime.
A simple example: fat, nutrient-rich foundational species of the BC Coast's food web are gradually decreasing in population and presence, being replaced by less nutrient-dense species from warmer climates. Countless juvenile fish which underpin our commercial fishery stocks depend on the richer, more nutritious species to thrive. This could impact their populations and lead to even more expensive fish; and we're talking about species which were plentiful and affordable in my lifetime. As those species decrease in quantity, the higher trophic levels suffer as well. This will be reflected in countless ways.
We need to measure this stuff because it's the beating heart of our planet, and it's changing for the worse (as far as our well-being is concerned).
If it's economically valuable wouldn't the evil capitalist bastards squeeze their reserves or peasants a little drier to create their little money printing weather trend predictor? Or you mean it's economically valuable but negative or low ROI?
You'd think that but the evil capitalist bastards generally think one financial quarter at a time and will absolutely dismantle the long-term prospects of just about anything if it gets them some shiny nickels.
Surely you're not proposing it is uncapturable economic value. That's not economics. As for the mechanics, first we have to hear what they were thinking about the substance of that value was. That's not my assertion, but rather the question posed by the persons I was replying too -- but virtually by definition economics involves the topic of capturable valuable. If it is not capturable value then I don't see how it's economic value.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
Because it would be really nice to know if some of the currents collapse when it happens rather than months later.
Even beyond that immediate need, the oceans are incredibly poorly studied and are of massive economic and military value to the United States. Baseline statistics on currents could be very useful for all kinds of as yet unknown science and applications. Countries that run a big navy do ocean science. It’s a form of dual purpose funding that benefits both civilian and military ships.
Because the other responses are incredulously focused at why someone would ask such a dumb question, the answer is that oceans affect everyone's lives.
Ocean currents and temperatures are major factors in storms, economic activity like trade, and ecosystems across the country. Monitoring them costs virtually nothing, and the benefits are huge.
The system cost like $350 million to build, and $40m/year to operate+maintain. Sending ships to remove 900+ pieces of hardware under 2 miles of ocean won't be cheap either.
Yes, it might be like watching Trump (or really all the news). If you keep at it 24x7 you ll feel that the sky will fall down in a couple of days.
But if you stop watching him for like a month, nothing of consequence happens (mostly).
Maybe these current watching is like that. If you keep looking at it,too closely and because we don't know all the variables, may be we keep making wrong "doomsday" predictions every time something moves. I have observed that this shows up in many places where we don't really know how things work..
I would much prefer if someone closely monitor the level of poisons and pesticides in the food and water we consume. For example, every store should be visited by a government agencey to collect samples and test them for poison levels...
Buoys with sensors, CTDs, and satellite data cost mere millions and are often supported by NGOs, indigenous communities, and even schools. They're a good deal, so to speak. We learn tremendous amounts from them, they provide learning opportunities for new scientists, they provide useful data to the transport industry, and so on. These are not things that are too expensive to maintain. These are things you decommission because you're ideologically opposed to them.
the US spends AT LEAST $1T/year on military—and a lot of that is used to murder a lot of innocent people just minding their own business. Cut the military budget in half to start and then complain about reckless
spending.
I’ll also add: abruptly killing programs costs more than it saves. The DOGE fiasco at USAID for example—the unruly unwinding of their finances incurred huge financial penalties. (I listened to an interview with a USAID whistleblower. It may have been interest payments?)
These ignorant and greedy billionaires destroying the people’s government based on vibes… a sick joke.
So the currents will continue to be tracked, no? :) Seriously, we should find out why this system was desired and created in the first place to answer this question. Good question...
The answer in general is we monitor things to understand them, so we know how they will affect us. Same thing we do for all the metrics that allow us to forecast the weather every week.
Because the information could sensibly inform public policy, potentially has serious effects on everyone, and doesn't obviously lend itself to private actors paying for its collection because there's no great way to monetize it. Though I wonder how genuine the question really is.
Because if they suddenly stop, it will quite likely have devastating repercussions for the entire globe. Weather patterns (which also effects food growing), sea life (more food), and probably some other non-food related things too!
Won’t markets adjust to that though. Market needs will lead to just-in-time innovation! If not, then victims can sue after damages incurred to recover their losses.
First of all, science is good in and of itself. Second of all, this science in particular seems helpful to predict the impact of potentially disastrous climate change.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
Basic science is never cheap, but none of that money goes to the grad students.
Then again, military weapons are indeed insanely expensive.
It's cheap but it's prestigious. Ideologues and fascists hate that.
> the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student
This is not an unreasonably ratio between cutting-edge affection and long-term potential. Particularly when grad students aren’t currently configured to be earning positions.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.
Everything is changing. Including our influence.
If we have military hegemony, then why can't we open the strait of Hormuz?
We did, at least a dozen times, in fact it was never even closed. What even is a "strait of Hormuz," I've never heard of such a thing.
The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
> The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground
It doesn’t matter what the reason, if you can’t do something you can’t do it.
This is just a different way if saying that we can't.
After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, is ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
The frustrating thing for me, having worked as an avionics technician, is that the F-35 is actually a waste of all that money
All it takes is one announcement that the US is cutting on efforts to understand future climate disasters for that “influence” to disappear.
You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.
In the right case just one. The US invasion of Afghanistan required some extremely rare language knowledge to be successful.
If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Manned aircraft are largely a waste of money in the era of drone warfare.
Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?
I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.
The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.
Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
> Democrats in Congress have said they will “fight” plans to dismantle the system
Putting “fight” into quotes here is terrific amount of low level shade for a scientific publication. chef’s kiss
"Proffer a strongly worded capitulation" was probably too much for publication.
Or scientists know how to count and see that one number is larger than another; and understand that that's an important factor in many political systems.
interesting how that logic only applies about half the time.
You have about as much political power as a US party in the minority of all three branches. Mind letting us know what you’re going to do about it?
The republicans can have 1 senator in the senate and they somehow shuck and jive to get their way. They never fucking lose in implementing their outright evil. Break some rules, use strategy, set up some game pieces. Do something, anything. The democrats couldn’t even get a Supreme Court justice seated with 6 months to go for the next election.
Let's not forget those from the big tech (you know the names) who kneeled before the king.
77,302,580 Americans made it happen. 87,037,184 voting-elligible Americans sat it out.
Sat it out, or were forced out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...
The GOP rigs elections in their favor and it's well known, but they don't have the power to throw out an additional 87 million votes if they don't go in their favor.
The logical conclusion then if despite everyone voting D then getting their votes tossed out is either violent revolution or liberation with the aid of another nuclear-armed state.
So 164,339,764 made it happen?
I don’t like any direction this administration has taken, but acting like it’s not the completely legitimate will of the people is BS.
The will of the plurality you mean? He didn’t win a majority of the votes. He is the legitimately elected office holder; but it was not the will of the people, it was the outcome of this particularly electoral process. Many American electoral processes require a run off without a majority for this reason, and it’s an intensely weak platform to claim a mandate from - not only did more people not vote for you than half the voters, if you add in the people who could vote but didn’t, it’s by far not “the will of the people”.
If those who sat out were forced to vote for one of the two major party candidates, Trump’s margin may have been larger.
I think liberals and progressives have a higher propensity to vote, so you can’t assume the non voters are less likely to lean Trump.
[delayed]
There's no one to blame but the left. The worst candidate in american history and somehow they still lost?
I choose to blame the people that actually voted for this. Fuck those people.
They share some blame but a transsexual dog would have been a better candidate than Trump.
Both sides had their "worst" candidate, but in different ways. One of them was a convicted felon.
Convicted rapist
Interesting how "the worst candidate in history" is not to blame.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Voting for Trump (or anyone with an R by their name) is wrong; sitting out a vote is wrong. Why save all the blame for the side that actually put up resistance, however ineptly?
I don’t think blue team good, red team bad is a very mature take on US politics. When it comes to substantive policy, voters do not get a choice. The same wars will be fought. The same lobbies will have their way. Just because one side will make tactless, self-deifying inaugural speeches about how the sea levels will cease to rise and the Earth will start to heal, that does not make it so.
I think that if these sensors were providing useful, actionable information more valuable than their maintenance cost is not well supported.
Yeah, no, it actually is mature enough.
I hate divisive language like this, but Trump's only major concrete "policy" (if you can call it that) during his 2024 campaign was that he was going to somehow lower grocery prices by instituting tariffs, so basically "I'm going to lower prices by raising prices".
That kind of idiotic quasi-doublespeak should have been a disqualifier for anyone with at least a two-digit IQ, but apparently it's not. The only scenarios that I can see for this:
1) People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
This is so idiotic because even if that were true, which it's not, those costs would still be ruled into the price. "No such thing as a free lunch" is very literally the first thing I learned in high school economics.
If people are that stupid then they can be blamed for their idiotic decisions to vote for a despot.
2) They didn't believe in the tariff rhetoric, and wanted to vote for Trump based on a nebulous "personality".
This is stupid. If you really are voting for people because you think you'd "like to have a beer with them", then you should be blamed when bad things happen from that idiotic decision.
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Kamala wasn't a great candidate, but I really hate this sort of "both sides"-ing people do to try and engage in apologetics for people's ridiculous decision to vote for the guy who, as far as I can tell, has literally no expertise in anything.
> Why save all the blame for the side that actually put up resistance
Resistance is one definition, I guess. A very loose definition.
I'd call it what it was. Career sociopaths decided to put a career sociopath on the ballot instead of someone the left's citizens would actually like.
I'll let you in on a secret. The main reason why nobody is catering to you isn't because what you want goes against the money, the status quo, or whatever big bad you imagine. It is because if you don't vote then you are about as good for them as nipples on a Breast Plate. There is a reason seniors get everything that they want: it is because they always show up to vote!
Why not name them?
Zuck Musk Bezos Pichai Thiel
Add more
Missed Tim Cook.
Let’s map their names to the companies they run. Then reflect on whether we buy their products: Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla/SpaceX, Meta.
Maybe we need a new FAANG acronym for the new American authoritarian-cozy rightward-veering tech industry.
Let’s see, we’ve got:
Meta
Amazon
Google
Appl… oh
A subgroup of MAGMA, for owners of secret volcano lairs.
Brockman
It's basically 'Don't Look Up' at this point, stripped of all metaphor and potential to entertain.
“Don’t Look Up” stripped of entertainment was just “Don’t Look Up”
Ellison and Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia
let's not forget that orange retard would have never got reelected if the preceding retards had not cranked their clown world antics up to eleven. the senile grandpa was awakened and paraded around when it was strictly necessary, but for the most part, it was lunatics running the asylum. just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.
Unlike the stable genius who's bragging how he "aced" not one, but four! cognitive tests
Let's not forget that the cause of the problem is worse than the effect of the problem.
I wish I could find it but Simon Clark, someone who specialized in climate science, had put out a video about how we were only recently able to model the AMOC and it's shifting patterns thanks to this measurement we were doing
Edit: probably not this one but atleast tells us why measurement is needed https://youtube.com/shorts/-X5EhUbzLTY?si=_N92PNUiTi3STat6
The tumor continues to grow, everyone knows its getting worse daily. Still no one dare speak of the cure.
This makes sense.
Facts cease to exist because you ignore them. I think Huxley wrote that.
‘If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any’ - Trump on COVID19
The Power of Positive Thinking is one of the few books Donald Trump has really internalized and it shows in his approach to a lot of issues.
There’s also the deluded cynics who profit from fossil fuels. Why mess up their good time??
This is what you get when worm infested brains lead the country
Don’t blame the worms, they’d have done better on their own…
Or insect infected brains (ref: Braindead TV series)
Tracking the currents isn’t going to have any effect on the currents.
That's why I drive with my eyes closed. Looking at the other cars on the road isn't going to have any effect on them.
Don't worry we're not going to do anything to mitigate their collapse either. Especially not with this attitude.
Or our reaction to and preparedness for consequences of early collapse? Is course correction impossible?
Most scientists don’t expect a full collapse this century, but even a significant slowdown would have major climate consequences particularly for Europe and Africa.
> Tracking the currents isn’t going to have any effect on the currents.
That's exactly why I never get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases. I mean, I'd rather not know, right??
/s
I'm asking in good faith here. If it's so critical, then why couldn't the same data be collected and published by another sovereign nation?
Or even the UN? That organization that this administration wants no part of...
Deutsche Physik, but with more idiots.
This was the most one-sided article I’ve seen in a while.
I didn’t see one word describing why the administration felt this was the correct decision.
All I saw was moral judgment and condemnation, as if describing the actual motivations of the actors would have been a pointless exercise.
I’m not defending the administration. I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project or the groups that operated it. But I do know that there are two sides to every conflict.
This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. And the one-sided presentation makes me much more suspicious of the motives of the publisher and therefore of the validity of their position.
https://archive.is/fZ9CN
> Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, “aligns with N.S.F.’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.
2) does that answer satisfy you? The bullshitty word salad doesn't surprise me. With this administration I expect incompetence and double speak and am rarely disappointed. I wonder why at this point in time you choose to give them so much leeway.
Ah! Both siding science.
10 years from now:
Climate Activist: The oceans are getting warmer & global currents are threatened by imminent collapse - we must do something! Big Oil: Prove it! Climate Activist: Data gathered between 2016 and 2026 shows ... Big Oil: That's old news! Do you have more recent data? Climate Activist: Well, no, because Trump2 dismantled the ocean observation system in 2026 ... Big Oil: So you have no data to back up your claims? Climate Activist: Not recent data, no, but ... Big Oil: Case dismissed! Why should anyone take action based on subjective opinion, not backed up by hard data? For all we know the oceans could have miraculously cooled & the currents are fine!
Don't Look Up was supposed to be satire.
I hope they’re able to pause this before they start destroying it.
But like the east wing I’m sure they’ll do it before there’s a chance.
Fuck this timeline
This strikes me as one of the recent moves by our political/capital class where they think that if they just remove the information that’s inconvenient for them, people will stop caring and let them do what they want. You only need to listen to the bosses who so many of us work for to know that they think climate change is just an inconvenience in the way of progress. Only time will tell if this strategy will work or not.
It's arguably not particularly inconvenient for the us political class? the us has been on a tear reducing per capita ghg emissions (also trade corrected ghg emissions). this has been going on for five decades now (consistently 2.5) independent of whether administrations or congress have been red or blue
iiuc us per capita emissions are not far from 1910s levels
"If We Stop Testing, We’d Have Fewer Cases" - Trump
That will fix it!
Just doing random evil things for no benefit? At this point it's just wanton vandalism. Punks in suits smashing windows and setting fire to cars.
Can anyone here, hand of heart, say "I agree with this decision"?
They probably think it's "cutting costs" or "reducing waste" or something. At least the fraction of the motive that isn't just corruption.
None will. But hide them in a box, away from where others can see, and they will happily sign a piece of paper that says they do. One so called a ballot.
Remember when North Carolina banned sea level rise? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-caroli...
That wasn't arbitrary, and it wasn't for no benefit. It was so that landowners along the coast could continue to use faulty sea level studies to justify state road and infrastructure investments.
This, too, isn't mindless vandalism. It's worse. It's greedy, it's short-sighted, and it's cruel.
Don't look up!
Or down. You know what, just strap those vr goggles on and stop looking at anything real at all!
Terrible. The infrastructure installed in the oceans was meant to last 25 years. Instead after 10 years (or less for some), we are going to spend 1.5 years removing it all.
It’s not surprising though. Manipulating data and availability data is a regular government practice now. And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities often tell a misleading story, and can be influenced by rule changes on what gets counted.
This doesn't really seem relevant, nor does it seem credible that only Democrats are ever tempted to use trickery to make crime rates seem better than they are.
https://abc7news.com/post/report-finds-lack-police-efficienc...
https://abc7.com/post/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-att...
Perhaps the Los Angeles DA stopped focusing on low-level crimes so he could focus on the gangs running rampant within the LAPD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...
The USA is consistently in the top 10 of nations with the highest incarceration rates. Prosecuting fewer "crimes" is a move in a better direction.
It’s directly relevant. You change data collection to present a false narrative and there are many ways to do it. Shutting down the ocean data infrastructure is one example. It presents a false narrative on climate change.
The same is possible in other contexts like crime stats. You can avoid crime data collection by creating friction in reporting crimes. Or change incentives to report crime by not doing anything with reports. Or not submit data to places that collect it. And so on.
I’m not saying “only democrats” either - they aren’t - but it’s a common issue in blue cities that have obvious crime issues despite government PR about crime rates.
> And it’s not just a Trump or Republican thing either. For example crime stats in blue cities ...
Trying to "both sides" dismantling oceanographic science by equivocating it with "blue cities often tell a misleading story" is disingenuous at best and can easily be interpreted as deceitful by a reasonable person.
I hate this timeline
For real. Cant fix stupid. Its so sad.
Assuming the interlocutor is stupid, at any scale, 1-1 to the whole of american politics probably just highlight that you don't fully grasp their point of view, because then it wouldn't be stupid. You'd be able to explain it to them and get them to see the matter from your perspective. If you can't do that, then you don't know you're right, you might be, but there's no way for you to know, truly.
No, this is specious. I've tried to have conversations with reactionaries on topics that we both are even aligned on. It would always be crickets the moment I deviated from the reactionary talking points. The elusive point of view that is "not grasped" is merely some combination of religious fundamentalism and spiteful destruction. Which are both ultimately just rooted in stupidity.
Can someone explain to me why we should continue to pay to track these currents? Genuine question.
Where I work we research some environmental data like ocean temperature (at depth and at surface), currents, acidity, salinity, and oxygen content. Most of this occurs at the surface, but a lot occurs via CTD (many depths) and autonomous drones along the continental shelf in BC, Canada.
You'd think this stuff isn't worth monitoring, but it paints a very interesting picture of where things were, where they are now, and where they're going.
We also do experiments on key species of the food web, analyze environmental DNA to see what's present and where, and generally try to figure out what this data says about living things and how they will handle these changes.
The bottom line is that something as significant as ocean currents will have massive implications for crucial things like transport, food, agriculture, and more.
This stuff is integral to the stability of everything you care about.
And it's not looking great. Acidity is increasing, temperature is increasing, oxygen is decreasing, food webs are transforming; we need to know what this means ASAP, and we need to figure out how to adapt. This isn't your kids' kid's problems alone. You will likely experience impacts in your lifetime.
A simple example: fat, nutrient-rich foundational species of the BC Coast's food web are gradually decreasing in population and presence, being replaced by less nutrient-dense species from warmer climates. Countless juvenile fish which underpin our commercial fishery stocks depend on the richer, more nutritious species to thrive. This could impact their populations and lead to even more expensive fish; and we're talking about species which were plentiful and affordable in my lifetime. As those species decrease in quantity, the higher trophic levels suffer as well. This will be reflected in countless ways.
We need to measure this stuff because it's the beating heart of our planet, and it's changing for the worse (as far as our well-being is concerned).
Can you think of any economically valuable reason why it might be important to know about weather trends or events in advance? Any at all?
If it's economically valuable wouldn't the evil capitalist bastards squeeze their reserves or peasants a little drier to create their little money printing weather trend predictor? Or you mean it's economically valuable but negative or low ROI?
You'd think that but the evil capitalist bastards generally think one financial quarter at a time and will absolutely dismantle the long-term prospects of just about anything if it gets them some shiny nickels.
...Unironically in complete agreement.
If the data is economically valuable, mbgerring, then the private market should be the ones shouldering the costs.
Let's say you're an evil capitalist bastard. How would you capture that value?
Surely you're not proposing it is uncapturable economic value. That's not economics. As for the mechanics, first we have to hear what they were thinking about the substance of that value was. That's not my assertion, but rather the question posed by the persons I was replying too -- but virtually by definition economics involves the topic of capturable valuable. If it is not capturable value then I don't see how it's economic value.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
Uncaptureable value that remains distributed is very much economic value. You seem to be falling for the efficient market fallacy.
This comment seems to presuppose that the "evil capitalists" are infallible.
People can be bad at their jobs and/or can act irrationally.
Because it would be really nice to know if some of the currents collapse when it happens rather than months later.
Even beyond that immediate need, the oceans are incredibly poorly studied and are of massive economic and military value to the United States. Baseline statistics on currents could be very useful for all kinds of as yet unknown science and applications. Countries that run a big navy do ocean science. It’s a form of dual purpose funding that benefits both civilian and military ships.
Because the other responses are incredulously focused at why someone would ask such a dumb question, the answer is that oceans affect everyone's lives.
Ocean currents and temperatures are major factors in storms, economic activity like trade, and ecosystems across the country. Monitoring them costs virtually nothing, and the benefits are huge.
> The system, which began operating in 2016, was designed to run for at least 25 years
It's likely that a majority of the cost to collect the data has already been paid for...
Evidence?
The system cost like $350 million to build, and $40m/year to operate+maintain. Sending ships to remove 900+ pieces of hardware under 2 miles of ocean won't be cheap either.
Yes, it might be like watching Trump (or really all the news). If you keep at it 24x7 you ll feel that the sky will fall down in a couple of days.
But if you stop watching him for like a month, nothing of consequence happens (mostly).
Maybe these current watching is like that. If you keep looking at it,too closely and because we don't know all the variables, may be we keep making wrong "doomsday" predictions every time something moves. I have observed that this shows up in many places where we don't really know how things work..
I would much prefer if someone closely monitor the level of poisons and pesticides in the food and water we consume. For example, every store should be visited by a government agencey to collect samples and test them for poison levels...
https://awakenedcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/share...
because it is useful information for the public benefit, and not very expensive.
What does it mean to be not expensive? How much do all the not very expensive endeavors as up to?
Buoys with sensors, CTDs, and satellite data cost mere millions and are often supported by NGOs, indigenous communities, and even schools. They're a good deal, so to speak. We learn tremendous amounts from them, they provide learning opportunities for new scientists, they provide useful data to the transport industry, and so on. These are not things that are too expensive to maintain. These are things you decommission because you're ideologically opposed to them.
honestly, who gives a shit?
the US spends AT LEAST $1T/year on military—and a lot of that is used to murder a lot of innocent people just minding their own business. Cut the military budget in half to start and then complain about reckless spending.
I’ll also add: abruptly killing programs costs more than it saves. The DOGE fiasco at USAID for example—the unruly unwinding of their finances incurred huge financial penalties. (I listened to an interview with a USAID whistleblower. It may have been interest payments?)
These ignorant and greedy billionaires destroying the people’s government based on vibes… a sick joke.
a spec on the budget compared to retiree support, military and healthcare.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't be frugal with how the money is spent. (I think this move is stupid.)
So the currents will continue to be tracked, no? :) Seriously, we should find out why this system was desired and created in the first place to answer this question. Good question...
The answer in general is we monitor things to understand them, so we know how they will affect us. Same thing we do for all the metrics that allow us to forecast the weather every week.
Because the information could sensibly inform public policy, potentially has serious effects on everyone, and doesn't obviously lend itself to private actors paying for its collection because there's no great way to monetize it. Though I wonder how genuine the question really is.
Because if they suddenly stop, it will quite likely have devastating repercussions for the entire globe. Weather patterns (which also effects food growing), sea life (more food), and probably some other non-food related things too!
Won’t markets adjust to that though. Market needs will lead to just-in-time innovation! If not, then victims can sue after damages incurred to recover their losses.
Can someone explain why we should pay for any basic public science or research?
Not a genuine question.
I, for one, only care about increasing shareholder profit.
Obvs That money is much better spent helping those poor ‘victims’ of ‘lawfare’
First of all, science is good in and of itself. Second of all, this science in particular seems helpful to predict the impact of potentially disastrous climate change.