Major bomb aimed at climate science

Who thinks climate scientists are terrorists? Apparently President Donald Trump, whose proposed budget will devastate federal climate science for years to come, as explained by Scientific American and others.

In particular, the proposal targets 20 percent of NOAA’s budget, including its satellite division and Office of Ocean and Atmospheric Research, and 40 percent of EPA’s Office of Research and Development. Such cuts will cause far-reaching and long-lasting harm to climate science and have ripple effects on other science that is not controversial.

Trump’s proposed cuts will affect all of us, not just climate researchers. “A reminder: virtually all we know about Earth’s atmosphere & oceans comes from sustained decades of government-funded scientific research,” tweeted Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate researcher.

NOAA is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce and oversees the National Weather Service. It “is the lead agency for the nation’s weather forecasts, weather satellites, fisheries, ocean services and climate monitoring,” University of Georgia meteorologist Marshall Shepherd wrote in a commentary for Forbes magazine. A drastic cut could “place American lives and property at risk,” Shepherd said.

We in Hawaii are especially dependent on our ocean, weather and climate, and benefit from knowing as much as we can about them.

Why blind ourselves? We upgrade radar, satellites and other technology to see over the horizon or into the future against hostile missiles, approaching storms and pandemics; why would we deliberately render ourselves vulnerable to the slower developing, more subtle, but even more widespread serious risks of climate change?

We already know the glaciers are retreating; Greenland and polar ice is melting; nearly 50 percent of trees, plants, insects and animals have gone locally extinct; storms are more intense; tropical diseases are spreading; heat waves have killed over 100,000 people in the past 17 years; wildfires are expanding; coral reefs may not survive to the middle of the century; and the sea is rising.

Following the goals set at the 2015 Paris Agreement, the next 10 years will prove incredibly crucial in finding out if all countries involved will be able to deliver on their promises. Can we claim to care about our children or God’s creation and deliberately avoid learning hard truths of what lies ahead and of steps to help them?

Federal climate science funding has remained about $2 billion yearly from 1993-2014, while federal funding for research, technology, adaptation and international assistance climbed from about $2.4 billion to $11 billion annually from 1993-2017, the GAO reports.

Sadly, proposed cuts in other areas say something about Trump’s approach to public health and science generally.

While Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said, “We consider that (climate change) to be a waste of your money to go out and do that,” the proposed cuts don’t stop there.

The reductions include $5.8 billion, or 18 percent, from the National Institutes of Health, which fund thousands of researchers working on cancer and other diseases; and $900 million, or a little less than 20 percent, from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds the national laboratories, considered among the crown jewels of basic research in the world.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology, the leading professional society for cancer specialists, warned that the proposed budget “will devastate our nation’s already fragile federal research infrastructure.”

“Now is not the time to slow progress in finding new treatments and cures for patients with cancer,” it said.

When our children ask where we were when the greatest scientific system in the world was gutted and dismantled, where we were at the moment when the worst effects of climate change could be avoided, where we were when the government stopped forward progress on the scourge of cancer, and where we were when our leaders stopped taking responsibility for the safety of our communities — don’t let your answer be “I stood to the side and watched.”

Let our congressional delegation and president know that we support continued funding for federal science research.

Laurence K. Lau, J.D., is former state Deputy Director of Environmental Health. Charles “Chip” Fletcher, Ph.D., is a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.