The National Science Foundation this month began dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative system, a system of sensors that provide data on ocean conditions.
The move was a part of a broader push by the Trump administration to cut climate science operations. But after an intense bipartisan response, the federal science agency said Thursday it would halt its plans and work to redeploy the instruments it had removed.
The National Science Foundation established the system in 2016 with plans to operate it for three decades. The system includes more than 900 instruments worth $386 million located along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland used to track waves, wind and current data. The tools also track the ocean’s salinity and can detect early marine heatwaves and El Niño-related anomalies.
“Dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data,” Oregon’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement.
Translation: People noticed something shortsighted and irresponsible that the Trump administration was doing, so they backtracked it and moved on to their many other shortsighted and irresponsible projects.
Things like this are yet another reason we have got to get these people out of power as quickly as possible. These things aren’t just stupid, they result in massive physical damage and they kill a lot of people.