U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research as El Niño nears

Science has flourished in the US precisely because it could proceed without whimsical political picking and choosing, entire areas of science have flourished that would never have happened otherwise.

That's not to say that politics is completely out of science, Congress has done things like ban any research money for gun safety, for example. But that had to make it through Congress, a vote across party lines, instead of just being the political whim of some bureaucrat that can cancel whatever they want whenever they want.

For every issue you read about here on HN, there are about 10 other policy changes designed to destroy the US's scientific infrastructure. It doesn't get much attention because of all the other chaos going on, and scientists tend to be pretty quiet and try to stay apolitical, but it is truly a full-on crisis in the scientific research community right now. You won't see immediate effects, but in 10-20 years when China zooms ahead of the US on all research fronts and the US is left out of key technology and science directions, we will feel it then.

It’s a White House office run by Russell Vought, highly ideological maga institutionalist.

I get the part about old school corruption where your cronies get to steal from the government (hello Big Coal/Big Oil), but to figuratively shit on the people of the world out of spite takes it to a whole new level...of evil.

It’s really hard to take this seriously after the COVID research shutdowns. You reap what you sow.

Instead, we're paying money to pull the sensors out of the water. We're actively spending money to blind ourselves to things we know are growing areas of concern.

^ Literally the beliefs of the most influential part of the political base of the administration.

There are massive gaps in our current climate models because we have almost no data about subsurface ocean dynamics. Many of the assumptions about the oceanic environment in climate models were demonstrated to not match empirical measurement a few decades ago but we don't have enough oceanic data to come up with a coherent model for the observed dynamics. Without a plausible model for these dynamics, any predictions made from climate models have a high probability of being significantly incorrect.

These sensor networks were the first step toward collecting some data that would allow us to develop a plausible model for subsurface ocean dynamics. To be clear, we are probably still a couple decades out from this in any case but removing these sensor networks from operation definitely won't help. There are very few efforts to collect this data at scale, I believe this was one of the largest.

Most people don't realize how critical subsurface sensor networks are to building accurate climate models.

Specifically, their plan calls for downsizing the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (Mandate for Leadership, Project 2025, p. 676), and breaking up NOAA (p. 674), because they view these agencies as a source of "climate alarmism" and that "the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded."

Because it damages USA. As other thousands of nonsensical choices in the last years, America always, consistently, ends scammed milked, and holding the shorter straw. Everything in this government is designed specifically to the inch to humiliate and destroy US. Acting exactly like foreign enemy agents for fun and profit.

Or maybe because it could be used (in theory) to register submarine's position.

Or maybe somebody expects to benefit from the climate change in some way, and couldn't care less if half of the planet became inhabitable in the process. There aren't many other reasonable explanations.

Also Accuweather paid a lot of money for this president and they are very interested in not having the US government compete against them with free, high-quality weather forecasting.

Don't make it more complicated than it actually is.

Europe will find proxy measurements to confirm that, thanks in no small part to US politicians, pour climate will be even more FUed than expected.

We won't send flowers, but, hey, that's your country, and you got lower taxes and better return on your cryptos, so "the rest of the world" can go to hell, I suppose ?

This too shall pass, but it can't pass fast enough.

They have power, but it’s not actually legal. Congress has mandated funds for this array, the administration wants to cripple it beyond repair before any legal action can catch up.

The anti climate change angle and the pain inflicted to "liberal" climate scientists is a nice to have but maybe not main reason for this move.

You summed it up perfectly right there. It's not about anything good for America or really anything good at all. It's pure greed. It's doing the bidding of whoever is paying him the most. It's destroying America on purpose for the benefit of foreign and international interests. I honestly believe they are trying to engineer the most possible death and destruction so that they can swoop in an take what's left for themselves. Destroy the economy and buy everything up at bargain sale prices. Starve the people and deny them any relief. Make homelessness illegal so you can legally enslave them. Those that don't starve to death will work in the camps.

Silicon Valley is filled with people, at the top echelons of the most valuable companies in the world, who genuinely believe they have invented divine intelligence by making a mathematical model of human speech.

Utah is for all intents and purposes a religious enclave.

We’re just like this - I don’t know what else to say. I guess we were better at hiding it when we felt we had something to lose.

already do, the EU is in particular collects a ton of oceanographic data through for example the Copernicus Marine Service, but these particular sensors are in waters close to Oregon, Washington and Alaska, not really anything the EU or China could replace.

In its region the US is naturally not really replaceable, it's simply a big blow to research.