Donald Trump is often annoyed by scientific data and computer models that process such information. Witness how easily he ignored NOAA’s predicted track for Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and drew his own trajectory for it on a map with a black marker. (His turned out to be wrong).
Now Trump is busy expunging the possibility of climate change and models predicting its impact from all aspects of government. The White House would prefer that we ignore emissions and pursue use of fossil fuels at will. He is even cancelling wind power projects that are near completion, under the grounds that they are ugly.
A few years ago, NASA launched a couple of satellites that were designed to monitor carbon dioxide emissions worldwide—a useful tool to validate global emissions reductions and treaties designed to stabilize our climate. The Orbiting Carbon Observatories (OCO satellites) have shown ancillary value in monitoring plant growth for farmers and large-scale crop yield for economists.
Beyond “defunding” these satellites, the administration is proposing to destroy the existing satellites. I suppose the thinking goes: if scientists can’t monitor carbon dioxide emissions and the rising concentrations of this gas in the atmosphere, perhaps they will quit squawking about climate change or will lose the basis for doing so.
These satellites are the equivalent of a ball game, and we all paid for them. Trump is seizing the opportunity to take the ball and go home. We should be enraged at this childish behavior.
