The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies

Many researchers who have been terminated have not responded to inquiries from Massachusetts Institute Technology Review Technology Or refused to comment, amid increasing concerns that the Trump administration will punish scientists or institutions that criticize their policies.

Cut

The current NSF and NIH grant is just the beginning of management plans to reduce federal financing for climate and clean energy.

The proposal of the White House budget for the next fiscal year seeks to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in financing through federal agencies, specifically “Green New Frades” in the Ministry of Energy; NASA’s “priority climatic monitoring satellites”; “Research, Data, and Grants Driving Climate” in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; And “climate; clean energy; awakening social, behavioral and economic sciences” in NSF.

The administration issued a more detailed NSF budget proposal on May 30, which called for a 60 % decrease in research spending and separating nearly a clean energy technology program. He also suggested cutting money by 97 % for the American Global Change Research Program, which produces regular climate risk assessments; 80 % for the Ocean Compansatories initiative, a global network of ocean sensors that monitor changing marine conditions; And 40 % for NCAR, the research center in the atmosphere.

If congress agrees to budget cuts anywhere near the levels offered by the administration, then scientists are afraid, can remove the resources needed to monitor the long -term climate of oceans, forests and air.

According to the administration, the administration plans to end the lease contracts on dozens of NOAA facilities, including the global monitoring laboratory in Hilo, Hawaii. The laboratory supports the work of the nearby MAUNA LOA Observatory, which follows the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for decades.

Even the short gaps in the studies of the temporal chain, on which scientists around the world depend on, will have a permanent impact on the ability of researchers to analyze and understand weather trends and climate.

“We will not know where we are going if we stop measuring what is happening,” says Jin Long, Assistant Director of Energy and Environment at Lawrence Levermor National. “It is a devastating matter – there are no two ways around it.”

The dwarf science

Many observers said that the increasing concerns that financing public research will achieve greater success in the coming fiscal year, forcing scientists to rethink their research plans – or reconsider whether they want to stay in the field at all.