Victories for ocean science this week. And for all of us.
Despite the best efforts of some, it looks like ocean science has gotten a bit of a reprieve. NPR did a story this week on a new website that pulls together all of the government’s ocean science into one location.
A few years ago, the Alt National Park Service took on the form of a resistance to the rejection of science. They stood up, pushed back and organized.
Now, a few former NOAA scientists have continued that tradition.
Previously, all of NOAA’s climate science was housed on Climate.gov. The information is technically still available, but the Trump administration shut down the website that brought it all together in one place.
Those former NOAA staffers happened to be the ones who ran the website. So, they banded back together and have created a new website at Climate.us that has most, if not all, of the same information, but this time without government oversight. I call that a win for climate science. The website is grant and donation funded, but I hope they can continue operation and keep providing the service as long as necessary.
In another win for ocean science, efforts to dismantle a series of monitoring buoys in the Pacific Northwest and off North Carolina and Greenland have been scrapped. These research stations gather key information on water temperature, climate and currents. Most importantly, they provide a continuum of information. Had the monitoring been stopped, there would be no way to fill in the missing data, even if they were put back in the water later.
When you consider the extreme weather the US has seen this week, from floods and tornadoes to droughts and wildfire, sometimes within a few hundred miles of each other, I don’t see how anyone can say the climate isn’t changing. And that doesn’t even include the devastating and deadly heat dome baking western Europe right now.
And that’s before the effects of the coming El Nino even start to hit.
During the COVID-19 pandemic it was suggested that if we did less testing we would find fewer cases of the disease. That was suggested as a good thing, that we should do less testing.
I believe that is the modern day equivalent of putting your head in the sand.
Ignoring the science will not stop the consequences from coming anyway.
My hat is off to the people who are running the revised climate website. I’m gonna have to see if they are accepting donations.
Lastly, earlier this week, I saw an article from the BBC about sinkholes appearing in Turkey. The reason? Farmers are tapping into the aquifer and removing more water than can be replaced naturally.
A few years ago, the plot of my novel Water Crisis: Day Zero addressed the top of a shortage of freshwater and what it means to global stability. This particular issue isn’t in the book, but it is one more way we are ignoring what is happening around us.
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