There have been a number of moves made during Donald Trump's second term in office that have threatened the future of the Earth but few are quite as damaging as one that has just been made, as the 'global mothership' of climate science is set to be dismantled.
Despite decades of progress that admittedly was still far from being good enough, it appears as if the world is only going backward when it comes to climate progress, and at the forefront of that is the Trump administration.
It has been less than twelve months since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, yet amid the removal of electric vehicle regulations and the relaxation of environment-benefitting rules regarding the construction of AI data centers, the planet is like in a far worse state.
However, President Trump could just have made the most damaging move yet as key members of his administration have announced the intention to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a place that's considered by many to be the 'global mothership' of climate and environmental science.
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As reported by Nature, Russel Vought, Trump's budget director, announced that the world-leading center would be dismantled, asserting that "this facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country."
Vought argued that the NCAR is "the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy," and the White House added that it "will be breaking up NCAR to eliminate Green New Scam research activities.
"Any vital functions, such as weather modeling and supercomputing, will be moved under the purview of another entity or location."
Trump has already made an enemy of the scientific world with Elon Musk's DOGE-led budget cuts earlier this year, prompting many to sign an 'SOS letter' amid major funding cuts, and this has only further prompted backlash.
Oceanographer and geographer Dawn Wright called the move to gut NCAR "another unbelievably reckless blow to American science," adding that "if the NSF does follow through with these plans to break up NCAR, that's just going to decimate a huge chunk of the US climate research that we all depend on."
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe echoed this sentiment, illustrating that "dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
While this might not necessarily have as immediate of an impact on the climate as some regulatory changes that directly impact the environment, it will undoubtedly affect our long-term understanding of the climate and how to best preserve our planet — especially as many scientists believe we're on the verge of approaching a climate 'tipping point'.
Additionally, while the White House has claimed that vital weather tracking tools present at NCAR will be 'moved' elsewhere, it's unclear if this will be a seamless process and that could significantly impact forecasting, potentially even putting lives at risk.
It's ultimately a move that not only denies the existence of climate change but attempts to eradicate any evidence of its existence and advice to prevent it, as there's no better way of claiming a problem doesn't exist than preventing that problem from being studied in the first place.