Now that science in general, and climate science in particular is treated as potentially politically embarrassing heresy by the Trump Administration, and the ultra corrupt Republican congress, France’s President Macron has offered to make France a sanctuary for American scientists facing bureaucratic repression, outright censorship, and slashed government support for basic scientific research programs. Donald Trump and his cheapskate Republicans are making the US a second rate country for scientific research.
French President Emmanuel Macron Trolls Donald Trump: 'Make Our Planet Great Again'
By Abigail Abrams
In a speech and on Twitter, Macron adopted Trump’s signature slogan — “Make America Great Again” — but changed it slightly to invert the U.S. president’s agenda. “Make Our Planet Great Again,” Macron said.
By Science News Staff
President Donald Trump unveiled his full 2018 budget request to Congress today. The spending plan, for the fiscal year that begins 1 October, fleshes out the so-called skinny budget that the White House released this past March. That plan called for deep cuts to numerous research agencies. But it did not include numbers for some key research agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). ScienceInsider will be scouring today’s budget documents for fresh details. Come back to our rolling coverage for analysis and reaction.
NIH spending slashed by 22%, overhead payments squeezed
NASA cuts put carbon monitoring effort in crosshairs
The request for NASA would kill off a research program necessary for establishing effective carbon monitoring in the United States and other countries, potentially jeopardizing the type of carbon accounting necessary to carry out the Paris climate agreement.
NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) was begun by congressional mandate in 2010 to develop methods for assessing the greenhouse gas emissions from forests and other natural carbon stocks. Although much of the work the $10 million NASA program supports is focused on the United States, it also supports pilot technologies for eventual use in countries such as Colombia, Cambodia, Mexico, and Peru.
"These countries rely on this collaboration in order to monitor the forests better," says Pontus Olofsson, a physical geographer at Boston University who has worked on two CMS grants, including a project that tracks tropical forests through time, estimating carbon emissions down to the pixel. "It would be devastating not only for us but also these partner countries."
The science program currently supports a wide area of research, including airborne measures of Alaska's interior forests, prototype methane monitors for California regulators, satellite-based assessments of farming emissions, and studies of forest fires in the Amazon basin.
Cutting this research would not just cause short-term troubles. It would be a long-lasting setback to combating climate change, says David Victor, an expert on international climate policy at the University of California, San Diego.
“These programs also lay the foundation for a future verification system,” Victor says. “Serious treaties to make deep cuts in emissions will require verification, just as serious arms control agreements only work when commitments can be verification. The country needs to start building this capability if we are to be ready to manage the global climate problem.”
The cut appears to be part of a pattern, Olofsson adds. The request also calls for cuts in international climate programs such as SilvaCarbon, a forest assistance program supported by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service, and they are all links in a chain that is working toward providing effective measures of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. SilvaCarbon, for example, relies on the NASA pilot projects for its collaborations, Olofsson says. "If you take out one piece, it's kind of hard for things to function."
The shuttered effort would be part of $59 million in proposed cuts to earth science research grants at the agency, alongside a plan to end five space-based projects…
For full disclosure my brother spent a summer in Antarctica drilling ice cores for scientific research.
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