Science article
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-seeks-end-climate-research-premier-u-s-climate-agency
NYT article
The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s premiere Earth sciences research centers.
A budget allocation of just over $170 million, down from about $485 million in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades. “At this funding level, O.A.R. is eliminated as a line office,” the proposal states.
For sure. New Orleans is a privatized nightmare in terms of engineering and construction - cranking out dogshit studies with no correction since the CPRA is just as useless, and everything in the pockets of the local levee districts, glorified chambers of commerce but with the authority to define which communities get levees.
At the end of the day, it’s not about protecting any communities (otherwise you wouldn’t build them below sea level….) but rather about protecting oil infrastructure. Hence you see lots of studies that aren’t fiscally justified go forward with poorly defined benefit-cost analyses, and then hardly hold up to scrutiny, except that the local levee districts then rile up their local slop farmer (e g. Sen. Graves ®-LA) who leans on the federal government to approve it.
I don’t think there have ever been any consequences to this sort of action? But if there are, we’ll all certainly learn from them…
Private engineering firms are just there to eat the blame when making “tough decisions”, since they have neither ties to the community nor an obligation to its members. Federal engineering studies are obligated to consider a range of decisions and utilize standards, private studies just need to say what you want them to and then provide enough backing to justify it in permitting. Therefore our system of austerity and kickbacks greatly favors one over the other.