For more than half a century, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, has been a premier hub for climate and planetary science. That stands to change, however, as the Trump administration announced plans this week to begin “breaking up” the facility for being “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” said Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought on X. News of the center’s dismantling, however, has prompted fierce pushback from advocates who warn that closing the facility would mark a catastrophic milestone for the field of climate science.
‘Symbolic of the actual destruction of knowledge’
The NCAR has been vital for critical research on “long-term atmospheric changes, global warming, air pollution, wildfires, extreme weather and geomagnetic storms,” said NBC News. Scientists there have also played “pivotal roles” in “improving weather forecasts, air quality predictions and models of wildfire behavior, flooding and drought risk.” By targeting “one of the world’s leading climate research labs,” said USA Today, the White House plans to “identify and eliminate what it calls ‘green new scam research activities.’” What the White House deems the center’s “vital functions,” including advanced weather modeling, “will be moved to another entity or location.”
The center has played a “key role in developing the science of climate modeling and the measurement of climate observations” for decades, said Michael Mann, the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, to Politico. Closing the NCAR “very much undermines” the nation’s standing in climate sciences and is “symbolic of the actual destruction of knowledge.”
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The NCAR is “quite literally our global mothership,” said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe on X. Losing the center would be akin to “taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
Dismantling and dispersing the NCAR would “set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for and respond to” extreme weather, said Antonio Busalacchi, the president of the NCAR’s parent group, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, in a statement following Vought’s announcement.
Possible political punishment
The closure of the center dovetails with the White House’s ongoing effort to dismantle the nation’s scientific institutions at large. Still, scientists have “expressed suspicions that climate research is not the only reason NCAR has been targeted,” said CNN. Instead, some observers speculate that the closure stems from the White House’s “anger over Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ (D) refusal to release” prominent 2020 election denier Tina Peters from prison. Last week, Trump announced he’d pardoned Peters for her role in working to subvert the 2020 elections, although it’s “unclear whether Trump has that authority, because she was not convicted in federal court,” said The Washington Post.
Asked whether Trump’s frustration with Polis was a factor in the NCAR closure, the White House “did not deny the connection,” said CNN. “Maybe if Colorado had a governor who actually wanted to work with President Trump,” a White House official said to the network, “his constituents would be better served.”
