cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32388210
The Trump administration’s proposed budget seeks to shut down the laboratory atop a peak in Hawaii where scientists have gathered the most conclusive evidence of human-caused climate change since the 1950s.
The president’s budget proposal would also defund many other climate labs, including instrument sites comprising the US government’s greenhouse gas monitoring network, which stretches from northern Alaska to the South Pole.
But it’s the Mauna Loa laboratory that is the most prominent target of the President Donald Trump’s climate ire, as measurements that began there in 1958 have steadily shown CO2’s upward march as human activities have emitted more and more of the planet-warming gas each year.
The curve produced by the Mauna Loa measurements is one of the most iconic charts in modern science, known as the Keeling Curve, after Charles David Keeling, who was the researcher who painstakingly collected the data. His son, Ralph Keeling, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, now oversees collecting and updating that data.
The proposal to shut down Mauna Loa had been made public previously but was spelled out in more detail on Monday when NOAA submitted a budget document to Congress. It made more clear that the Trump administration envisions eliminating all climate-related research work at NOAA, as had been proposed in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for overhauling the government.
It would do this in large part by cutting NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research entirely, including some labs that are also involved in improving weather forecasting.
They’re shutting it down to give ownership to the Natives of Hawaii, right???
Im a bit mixed with this because yeah if it was going to be conserved with stewardship given to native hawaiians or some such then it would be great. On the other hand if its going to be turned into hawaii’s first great coal mine…
I know it’s a joke, but in case you’re wondering: there’s no coal on Hawaii. It’s too young, geologically speaking.
I was wondering about if there is any iron on the Hawaiian islands the other day, specifically because I knew they were pretty young geologically speaking. This train of thought was inspired by Vintage Story, and my complete inability to find bauxite.
I don’t believe so. IIRC from my mineralogy & petrology courses, minable quantities of most metals occur from 4 sources:
- hydrothermal deposits: where water impregnates crustal rock at a high temperature and pressure, dissolving metals, which are then released as the water cools.
- placer deposits: where small crystals of metal ores are chipped away by erosion and carried by fluid. Those dense particles settle out from the liquid as soon as it slows down, so they all end up concentrated in specific places in rivers, lakes, etc.
- pegmatites & layered intrusions: these are igneous bodies which, due to the processes of their formation, tend to create either very large crystals of rare minerals (pegmatites), or significant concentrations of those rare metals over an entire magma chamber (layered intrusions). Hawaii doesn’t exhibit the necessary geologic conditions for either of these cases.
- banded iron formations: caused when, during the Great Oxygenation Event, microbes bound oxygen atoms to iron ions in the early ocean, effectively eating the energy of that reaction, as Iron ions became less stable with higher oxygen fugacity, and the Iron Oxide that was created, suddenly insoluble, sank to the ocean floor.
As a very recent mantle-plume-driven volcanic arc, Hawaii doesn’t exhibit the necessary conditions for any of these in great degrees, so you would not expect to find any serious metal deposits there.
We all know Trump probably doesn’t know that there are natives, and if he does then it’s straight fuck you to them. I am not expecting a more right-wing president to deviate from the sacred tradition of fucking over the indigenous.
for sure. its just retiring the telescope, taken as a thing sans trump or any of the current fuckery, is necessarily a bad thing.
americans stop colonising and imperialising the kingdom of hawaii challenge
Mauna Loa is a national treasure. It’s one of the greatest things about America.
Call your representatives!
Find and contact elected officials | USAGov https://share.google/szZpLwoHrDugLdpFY
I wonder how cheap it would be for a private entity to take over and fund it to continue the research that is so important
They’re not shutting it down because they don’t want to pay for it. They’re shutting it down because it’s created the longest-running record of atmospheric CO2 levels, and climate facts hurt oligarchs’ feelings.
They’re not gonna let anybody else operate it either, regardless of funding.
They’re shutting it down because it’s science and it’s in a Democrat state.
Perhaps but they are stupid and actively selling off government properties.
Really? Because privatization does not lower costs. I mean, seriously think this through - in addition to the operational costs, you are adding a layer of parasitic “capitalists” who intend to personally profit from the situation. Please explain to me how in the hell x + y is supposed to give you a lower final total than x + nothing?!?
And when everything goes to hell because there are now parasitic sociopaths siphoning away the money, the final result is almost always to sell everything off to a “private equity” that will dismantle shit and sell it off to the highest bidder. Because that’s what private equity is - a way to transfer the value to an individual, thus depriving the public of whatever service or product involved.
What about a non-profit org? Or an international institute independent of the US government?
How are we gonna successfully transfer ownership and control, though?
True; but if a nonprofit with funding from say a dozen different countries; it would be more robust against the current US government insanity
Holy hell, way to move the goal posts. 🤣
but if a nonprofit with funding from say a dozen different countries
That would not be a private entity…?
Unfortunately, you’re chasing a pipe dream. Sorry, but it’s true.
But I can’t fault you for trying to hold onto hope. What the fuck else do we have anymore?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anger.
It motivates and lets you do what was previously unimaginable.
Heck even private citizens could pool up enough money to fund a nonprofit to continue that work.
It’d be worth saving, that’s for sure (the observatory).
But, not just anger; what is required is the righteous fury from the stories that inspired the christian bible. Not the faux outrage of modern day hypocrites, but true, overwhelming fury at these injustices.
Until then…more lives will be taken. 😔
Maybe they are thinking of some organisation similar to the CERN.
