Threatening NCAR, Trump administration seeks to extinguish a beacon of climate science

The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, sits atop Table Mesa, near the eastern edge of the Rockies. Framed by Ponderosa pines, conifer forest, grasslands, and giant flatiron-shaped slabs of red sandstone—the same red sandstone that tints the concrete of the building designed by acclaimed architect I.M. Pei in 1967—the center is one of the crown jewels of the US scientific enterprise.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR. “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” the White House budget director, told USA TODAY. “A comprehensive review is underway and any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

Even if you’re not a scientist, this should be on your radar. You need to understand what it means.

NCAR is the birthplace of nearly 60 years of scientific discovery. NCAR scientists built computer models of the individual components of Earth’s climate system. Of the atmosphere and the ocean. Of the land surface and marine biogeochemistry. They coupled those components together in full Earth System Models, which capture many critical features of real-world climate. They democratized climate science by making their computer models freely available to the global research community.

Thousands of scientists called NCAR home for some portion of their career. They were not only pioneering computer model builders. They were model testers, confronting simulations with observed climate data. They were diagnosticians who studied modes of natural climate variability, like the Madden-Julian Oscillation first identified by NCAR scientists Rol Madden and Paul Julian. They were atmospheric chemists, who helped to figure out how human activities affect Earth’s protective ozone layer. They were specialists in exploring how greenhouse gases, clouds, and particulate pollution affect the energy balance between incoming sunlight and outgoing heat from the Sun-warmed atmosphere and oceans. They were experts in the “forcings” of climate arising from natural changes in the Sun’s energy output and volcanoes, and from the non-natural changes in greenhouse gases driven by fossil fuel burning. They developed innovative ways of separating human and natural influences on climate. They were theoreticians, statisticians, and computer gurus. They studied extreme weather, and how and why the properties of heat waves, droughts, and floods have changed over time. Put simply, NCAR researchers are an integral part of the global brain trust of climate scientists.

And the Trump administration wants to destroy it. Why? Because NCAR attempts to understand the inequitable impacts of human-caused climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable. Because NCAR climate models predict significant changes in Earth’s climate over the 21^st century, and is therefore deemed to be “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” And because the president has dismissed climate science as a “con job” perpetrated by “stupid people.” The Trump administration’s world view is that the United States doesn’t need a climate science brain trust because it doesn’t like what the brains say.

In a country that is no longer a democracy, science that does not comport with the leader’s views must be destroyed. But how?

By defunding the federal agencies performing critical research. By firing thousands of scientists responsible for the research. By introducing counternarratives to established scientific understanding. By banning words and phrases like “climate change” and “global warming.” By removing educational material from websites. By installing political operatives to oversee federally funded scientists. By cutting or withholding funding for scientific research at universities. By threatening and punishing individuals and entities that do not bend the knee and bow to the leader’s will. By generating a pervasive climate of fear. A culture of silence and anticipatory obedience.

And by targeting the shining beacons of knowledge—shutting them down or breaking them up into bits and pieces that lack critical mass. Taking over their buildings. Scattering their personnel to the winds.

That is what may happen to NCAR under the second Trump administration. And that is what is already happening to other beacons of US climate science, like the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which was evicted from its building in New York City by the Trump administration in May, and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, which lost federal funding for one of its flagship research programs, the Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System, at the end of June.

Scientists are part of the rich heritage and story of the United States. Benjamin Franklin and electricity. Guglielmo Marconi and radio communication. Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, and their discovery of the cosmic background microwave radiation—the echoes of the Big Bang. Susan Solomon and the complex heterogeneous chemistry of stratospheric ozone depletion. Jennifer Doudna and gene editing.

Like these and many other storied individuals, NCAR is also an important part of the scientific heritage of the United States, along with GISS and GFDL. These institutions were—and still are—leaders in understanding, modeling, and monitoring Earth’s climate. Their scientists are responsible for achievements that all Americans should be justifiably proud of, and that all Americans should value.

Attempting to erase a country’s scientific heritage, as the Trump administration is now trying to do, should be of concern to every US citizen. Because if climate science is viewed with disfavor today, other fields of scientific inquiry might be next in line for the chopping block. Vaccine development and deployment systems. Cancer research. Basic science judged to have no immediately obvious economic benefit.

If the beacons of knowledge are turned off in Boulder, New York, and Princeton, America’s scientific enterprise will suffer for generations. The best and the brightest will leave for more enlightened shores. They will follow their scientific dreams and passions elsewhere. And the best and the brightest from other countries will no longer come to America to study and work.

This does not Make America Great Again. Or Make America Healthy Again. It does not protect US citizens from harm, or provide them with clean air and water. These actions are senseless, vindictive, and cruel. They diminish this country and its standing in the world. They hamstring the science and innovation that fuels much of American prosperity.

Nor will turning off scientific beacons like NCAR make us safer. Improving understanding of how and why Earth’s climate has changed in the past, and how it is likely to change in the future, has real survival value. Such knowledge helps us to better understand the risks of rising seas, warming oceans, stronger hurricanes, and more intense heat waves and floods. Knowledge of our changing climate helps us to better prepare for these risks. To identify the root causes of risks. To reduce climate risks by transitioning to less risky energy systems.

I’ve been privileged to attend conferences at NCAR and to collaborate with NCAR scientists. Those conferences and collaborations shaped my scientific career, just as they shaped the careers and pathways of thousands of scientists around the world. On my visits, NCAR has always been a hub of activity, filled with the excited buzz of discussion and argument, the joyous Eureka moments at the birth of new ideas. The prospect that these sounds of science might be replaced by the sound of silence is unthinkable.

So let’s do everything we can to keep scientific beacons like NCAR burning brightly. If they go dark, our collective future is darker and more uncertain.