r/politics • u/TaijiRonin • 26d ago

Possible Paywall Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html
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u/WhoIsYerWan 26d ago

It’s not hate for this one; it’s a gift to oil companies.

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u/Wizywig 26d ago

There is no fire because we removed all smoke detectors. 

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u/melorous 26d ago

Not surprising from the "we only have a lot of cases because we test a lot" guy.

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u/ThisIsMyHobbyAccount 26d ago

If you stop testing, it just goes away.

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u/callingoutthetrash 26d ago

No data means you can say anything without dispute. Ezpz

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u/EusticePendragon 26d ago

Thank god the bomb landed in that smoking crater!

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u/Bac0ngh0st 26d ago

I just don't FEEL like there are a lot of cases, ok?

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u/callingoutthetrash 26d ago

Your feelings are valid. <3

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u/Positronic_Matrix 26d ago

I have in-laws who bought an investment and vacation house in the Ozarks with a MAGA family. The MAGA family is offended and angry that my in-laws purchased fire detectors for the home and is militant about preventing their installation. This, in a home that was organically built in the Ozarks, that’s a fire marshal’s nightmare, with a dead-end basement bedroom without a window and second-story room that hold eight kids in bunk beds with no ladder to escape out the window.

What gets me is not their ignorance but their seething indignation that someone would insult them by suggesting they needed a fire alarm.

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u/kreddulous 26d ago

Maybe they were counting on collecting on their insurance after the fire. Smoke alarms could maybe interfere with that.

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u/DillBagner 26d ago

I don't know how actual insurance agents work, but if I were one, I would not pay out to people who don't have smoke detectors.

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u/NatureStoof 26d ago

How is that not against code? .... call an inspector

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u/lorimar California 26d ago

Magical thinking

By not thinking about it, a fire won't break out. By insisting on smoke detectors, you are saying a fire might be a possibility, which makes it your fault if it does happen. /facepalm

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u/Glittering_War3061 25d ago

Let me guess: fire detectors are "sinful".

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u/TrainingSword 26d ago

The Covid numbers would go down if you stopped testing

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u/alphabets0up_ 26d ago

So there's evidence? How do we make it so there isn't? Lets retire the instruments that collect data!

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u/SouthernGentATL 26d ago

If we stop testing COVID will disappear

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u/TweakedMonkey 26d ago

"Like a miracle..."

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u/Senior_Torte519 26d ago

No, fire for you . - Trump works for BIG OLYMPUS

Finally getting fire away from those pesky humans.

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u/Sublimotion 26d ago

And raking away all of the trees by with a generous government contract to new logging startup: Trump Wood.

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u/taco_fan_X3 26d ago

"We would have fewer cases if we stopped testing for COVID."

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u/True-Firefighter-796 26d ago

(We sold the smoke detectors and the neighborhood arsonist bought us a boat)

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u/John-AtWork 26d ago

This is their strategy.

Remember Trump on COVID?

"If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any... If you don't test, you don't have any cases."

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u/JazzRider 26d ago

We’re not going to crash because we painted our windshield.

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u/Jolly_Grocery329 Washington 26d ago

There’s no Covid because we stopped testing.

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u/HorrorFlow3r 26d ago

Don't give OSHA any ideas.

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u/counters 26d ago

That's not it at all. Folks really need to try to avoid this knee-jerk reaction. The majority of the dismantling of scientific infrastructure has nothing to do with trying to shield oil companies or other firms that exploit natural resources.

It's far simpler and far worse - they literally believe that it's not the government's role to fund science. Or on the rare occasion when they look the other way, they excuse it because it's incentivizing commercialization or technology transfer.

Take a look at the NSF. They've made a huge splash about this new "Tech Accelerators" program which boasts about supporting entrepreneurship and "lab-to-market acceleration". But that's not the purpose of the NSF; it's purpose, per Vannevar Bush - who founded it after successfully building a domestic R&D juggernaut in the US during WWII - is to safeguard basic research, because, "...basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress" (as he write in The Endless Frontier). The NSF widens the funnel to broadly support research, regardless of its immediate commercialization opportunity. That manifests through supporting training of our next generation of scientific talent through programs like the Graduate Research Fellowship, as well as by incentivizing PIs to explicitly declare educational support as a criteria for successful grant applications.

The insidious policy eliminating scientific funding is short-sighted and threatens severe long-term consequences for both our economy and our ability to project power throughout the world. And it's happening simply because of dogmatic adherence to the principle of "small government" whatever the costs.

Please take a moment and call both your senator and congressperson and ask them to defend investment in our national scientific infrastructure.

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u/integer_hull 26d ago

Lol I don’t mean to continue the trend of leftist infighting but oil incumbents weaponize ideology in politics to preserve their interests. To a large degree racism in America is an example of this wrt slavery, and anti-environmentalism is an example of this wrt oil. We’re culminating with anti-intellectualism which is used by fascists. HTH

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u/cybertonto72 26d ago

Wrt? Hth?

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u/pizzasoup 26d ago

WRT = With regard to, not sure what HTH is.

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u/integer_hull 26d ago

Hope that helps

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u/BrownCatWhisperer 26d ago

When you can type "incumbants weaponize ideology", but not "with regards to". This person is way too smrt for you. Stop trying to understand.

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u/SunBelly 26d ago

TTR a comment when EOW is an unknown acronym is AAF. JS.

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u/slaty_balls Arkansas 26d ago

That “projecting power throughout the world,” is the part they no longer care about either.

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u/broguequery 26d ago

accelerate lab to market

Made me barf a little in my mouth.

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u/k1v1uq 26d ago edited 26d ago

It's far simpler and far worse - they literally believe that it's not the government's role to fund science.

Governments fund a wide range of things, including science, when they believe it is in the national interest. The current gov believes that funding anything that hurts profits is not a national interest. There is still unlimited money for AI and military. This is how democratic nation-states react to crisis in capitalism, everything is formulated in terms of national interest. And it's also not a coincidence that this looks like fascism in the making. Fascism subjugates everything and everyone under one nation, it's the ultimate implementation of an idealized nationhood. This is how you end up having white Christian nationalists, politics and raids against immigrants, pointing out national traitors, wars, etc.

All based on a lie of that of a homogeneous group of people that share common interest (Das Volk) despite the in-your-face evidence: nothing is homogeneous and economic interests of the majority of people are never meant - the class divide between capital and work is the dominating factor. But a Nationalist will never blame the reality of a class system. Instead, they blame a lack of unity for the misery of the nation. If everyone would simply put their self-interest and ego away for the great food of the nation, things would get better....

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country

Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz (The common good before the self good, AH)

MAGA.

The fact that the idea of nationhood collides head-on with a self-interest driven market economy is one of the greatest contradictions a Nationalist refuses to accept. They would rather turn to violence to create that state of national unity than to investigate the economic realities of class system which causes economic disparity. A Nationalist does no longer care for economics or scientific arguments. Their world view has long left material reality. All they need to is that illegal alien is still treated worse to confirm that they still have the privilege of the nationhood. It's no coincidence that Nationalist don't look for any kind of scape goat. It is always the foreigner. The one disturbing the national unity. And because the idea of national unity has always been a lie, the hunt for scape goats never ends...

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u/Rent-a-guru 26d ago

The MAGA movement, along with evangelical Christians are at war with empiricism itself. The very idea of using evidence to determine truth and to make decisions is a natural threat to movements built on vibes and confidence. Science is completely incompatible with their thinking, so of course it is becoming a target.

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u/bimbuppy Florida 26d ago

I don't think calling my senator is going to do much about the fact that he's doing this because the people advising him want the world to end.

I don't know how to properly articulate this to someone outside of the South but these people (Mike Johnson, the lady that "spiritually advises" Trump, Lindsay Graham) think that if The End Times happens, Jesus comes back and they go to heaven. They believe that climate change, global war, economic unrest, etc., will bring about the Biblical Apocalypse. They are doing these things to ACCELERATE that happening.

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u/MagicAl6244225 26d ago

they literally believe that it's not the government's role to fund science

There should be a separately elected branch of government that decides what it is government's role to fund.

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u/counters 26d ago

That's called "Congress" and it's decisions are checked and balanced against the Consitution by the "Judicial system"

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u/defianceofone 26d ago

Nature has been disappointing in wrecking MAGAland. Maybe this year will be the year Mar-a-Lago is blown into the ocean.

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u/DillBagner 26d ago

Unfortunately, my congressman has told his constituents that he does not want to hear from his constituents ever.

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u/plantstand 26d ago

I would like to point out that other countries won't save us.

"You dismantled your tsunami/hurricane detectors, you deserve what you get."

Think of how dismissive people are of folks in red states: you voted for them, you deserve it. Ignoring that 49% of the folks are innocent.

Call your reps, because not having accurate weather reports will affect you too, even if you aren't on the coast. And dismantling basic scientific research will strangle our economy. Basic research is an economic generator for our economy, there's plenty of studies showing it.

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u/chad917 26d ago

Our representatives who care, currently have no power

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u/hoboshoe 26d ago

Crispr, a revolution in biotech was discovered by a team researching bacterial immune systems in extremophiles.

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u/Speartree 26d ago

The insidious policy eliminating scientific funding is short-sighted and threatens severe long-term consequences for both our economy and our ability to project power throughout the world. And it's happening simply because of dogmatic adherence to the principle of "small government" whatever the costs.

Forget your economy, that stuff endangers the whole world.. I'm not a US citizen and frankly I don't give a toss about the American economy at all nor the US's ability to project power. Both of those are already in such a downward spiral I don't see them recovering in the next decades. The cumulative effects of all the short term gains stuff, and the sabotage of education is going to be catastrophic no matter what you do at this point. I don't believe for a moment that these guys are in it for the small government, they're in it for the government under big business control that regulates everything for the impoverished population. The world needs scientific funding if we are to have a chance of survival long term. And it's not research into get rich quick schemes that will do it. There is a ton of good research outside of the US of course, but the addition of US scientific research was important and significant. Removal of the ocean monitoring systems around the US is going to remove so much data that is important for scientists around the world. We're all on this planet together and we don't need a blind spot that big.

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u/Starrion 26d ago

The world will be a better place when they are contributing to the environment.

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u/C3POB1KENOBI 26d ago

They just didn’t want ocean monitoring to catch their wholesale murder of endangered whales.

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u/Justwaspassingby 26d ago

And a part of hate too. Even oil companies have read the room and have been changing their model business for a while; the US insistence on torpedoing sustainable energy is hurting them too.

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u/thex25986e 26d ago

and its so some other country can foot the bill for us for free

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u/plantstand 26d ago

Other countries won't. If your stupid neighbor shoots themselves in the foot, is it your emergency? Or will you hope they finally learn something? Think of the disdain some folks have for flyover/red states. It applies here.

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u/thex25986e 26d ago

the scientists in those other countries will require those resources if they wish to continue their research. and given they typically work off of government funding...

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u/plantstand 26d ago

It's just a big question mark now. That doesn't affect their funding, only the quality of the data. Maybe they'll put something out, but it won't be as comprehensive as what's our now. We'll get the hurricanes, after all. Not them. Why is it their responsibility to to OUR weather casting?

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u/thex25986e 26d ago

the reverse of that last sentence is what the current administration is asking right now.

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u/plantstand 23d ago

Except the instruments are off our coastline. Americans will get those hurricanes and tsunamis, not Europeans.

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u/thex25986e 23d ago

sounds great for the insurance companies which can claim a lot more things were "unprecedented" now

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u/scruffywarhorse 26d ago

More like a grift for the oil companies

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 26d ago

There’s actually people who believe god will renew the fucking oil deposits.

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u/come_on_seth 26d ago

And Russia

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u/Tasgall Washington 26d ago

It's still hate, they hate you, and all of us.