Trump’s Attack on Weather Center Would End Lifesaving Meteorological Research |
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On December 16, USA Today broke the news that the Trump administration was planning to eliminate the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). According to a tweet by Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025 and current director of the Office of Management and Budget, the administration had determined that the Colorado-based center was a hub for “climate alarmism.” Dismantling it — and farming out its surviving, non-climate-change-related functions to other agencies — would strike a blow against a scientific community that has come to the overwhelming conclusion that global warming is real, caused by human activities, and accelerating. Some commentators also noted that attacking NCAR, which employs 800-plus people, is a stick-in-the-eye to Colorado, a state whose governor has consistently opposed many of Trump’s most extreme policies, and where election conspiracist and former county clerk Tina Peters resides in a state prison, after a federal judge ruled that she had to remain incarcerated despite her being pardoned for federal crimes by Trump. Peters was, after all, sentenced on state, rather than federal, charges, rendering Trump’s pardon largely pointless.
NCAR has long been in team Trump 2.0’s crosshairs.