A tiny bit of good news this week. On Wednesday, the full Senate passed - by unanimous consent - a measure to block the dismantling of a critical ocean monitoring network. On Thursday, the administration blinked. Partly.
The Trump administration had ordered the dismantling of the Ocean Observatories Initiative - hundreds of underwater buoys, gliders, and robotic vehicles carrying sensors that track currents, temperature, ocean chemistry, and seismic activity.
Why dismantle? The administration’s 1984 Memory Hole: if we don’t measure climate change, it can’t be happening, right? (Of course, if you were confident that the climate wasn’t changing, keeping those sensors could prove you right…)
Of course, hiding inconvenient information has been a badge of honor for Trump’s quislings. For example:
Lee Zeldin (EPA) quietly eliminated the Office of Atmospheric Protection - which required major polluters to report greenhouse gas emissions - and shuttered the Office of Research and Development.
Neil Jacobs (NOAA) is defending a budget that zeroes out NOAA’s climate research entirely, including the Global Monitoring Laboratory’s worldwide network of atmospheric observatories - among them Mauna Loa, which has tracked atmospheric CO2 since 1958. That’s the Keeling Curve: seven decades of the clearest evidence of human-caused climate change, slated for the Memory Hole. Gone already: climate.gov, NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters database, and the US Global Change Research Program.
Brian Stone at NSF orchestrated the OOI dismantling so quietly that Congress - which is legally entitled to 30 days’ notice before any federal facility decommissioning - learned about it from the New York Times.
Which brings us back to the good news. On June 15, ten senators sent Stone a letter calling the dismantling illegal. Two days later, the full Senate agreed - unanimously - to block it. By Thursday, NSF had paused, promising an “expert panel” would determine the program’s future.
Cold comfort: some instruments have already been pulled from the seafloor off Oregon and Washington. The House hasn’t acted. And who’s choosing the “experts” for the panel?
But the head is at least partly out of the sand.
Sources
Ocean Observatories Initiative
Trump Dismantles Key Ocean Monitoring Network in Atlantic, Pacific — Earth.org
Lawmakers fight to stop the Trump administration’s dismantling of a $386 million ocean observatory project — PBS NewsHour
Senate Letter (June 15, 2026)
Merkley, Murkowski Lead Bipartisan Push to Protect U.S. Ocean Monitoring Systems — Senator Merkley press release
US Lawmakers Push NSF to Stop Dismantling of Ocean Observation Network — Earth.org
Atmospheric Sensors & NOAA
Proposed NOAA Budget Calls for $0 for Climate Research — Eos
NOAA Defends Cuts to Research and Climate Monitoring at Budget Hearing — Inside Climate News
Trump Administration Cuts Critical Weather and Climate Satellite Programs at NOAA — EnviroLink
EPA
Trump EPA Reorganization Signals End to Climate Work — Scientific American
Broader Data Suppression
Another great post . . . but on a different topic, I think we've found Trump's flamingo equivalent. It's got to be the reflecting pool!!
reminds me of the genius phrase during covid:"If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any,"