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U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research as El Niño nears

463 points by ResearchAtPlay 3mo ago

arjie 3mo ago
The scales of money at play always seem so strange. Oh a few hundred million for ocean sensors, or about what a few OpenAI / Cursor employees or a few hundred FAANG employees could personally fund if they desired to do so.
- hdgvhicv 3mo ago
  It’s nothing to do with money, that’s always the libertarian excuse, and HN laps it up far more than the rest of the word.
  - pesus 3mo ago
    Whatever delusions I once held that software engineers are above average intelligence were completely eradicated by seeing how many HN commenters eagerly bought into the obvious lies about DOGE and their goals (amongst other things). It was embarrassing. They sure seem to be a lot quieter about that now, though.
    - Gud 3mo ago
      hackers used to be a large percentage of software engineers and are indeed intelligent people with an open mind. However since ~2005 their percentage of the total has gone from ~25% to <1% as computers became less of a hobby and a way to make money.
  - ToucanLoucan 3mo ago
    Have to sternly disagree: at least on the conservative side, it is thoroughly lapped up. Right wingers the world over constantly vote to fuck themselves and the rest of us over with this never ending whingeing about debt, spending, pork, what have you. On this particular issue it's even less surprising since the only thing perhaps a right winger wants to hear less about than government spending is climate change. The entire debt ceiling bullshit is political theatre and always has been. We didn't even have a debt ceiling for the majority of our existence as a nation, and since it's creation by right wingers, it has been used as a bludgeon by right wingers to kneecap anything that stood to benefit the civil good of our country. Austerity politics have been deployed here and elsewhere to great effect to destroy social programs, demonize those who need them, and reallocate trillions of dollars to the private sector to provide the same services the public sector did, but worse, and while enriching greedy assholes the entire way. And the whole way it has been done by an enthusiastic and approving portion of the public who can be persuaded to feel outrage that seventy cents of their yearly taxes are going to some program in some far off part of the country they'll never see. Meanwhile the actual national debt soars, and under who? Yep, fucking right wingers again. And every time we want to do something science and evidence backed like give the homeless somewhere to live, we're met with a chorus of WHO'S GONNA PAY FOR IT, but every goddamn time there's another country full of brown kids to blow the fuck off the face of the Earth, we always, always have money for that. It's disgusting and I hate it here.
    - autoexec 3mo ago
      > Meanwhile the actual national debt soars, and under who? Yep, fucking right wingers again. Exactly. If the people on the right cared at all about government spending they'd never vote republican again, which just shows us that they don't actually care about government spending. They don't seem to want to talk about the things they really do care about too loudly though.
- ericmay 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - iwontberude 3mo ago
    Because your rights (including property rights) are only what other people will respect, there is no true god head that swoops down to ensure it.
    - ericmay 3mo ago
      I'm not following what this comment is supposed to address from what I wrote. The US government is taking some action (they take all sorts of actions people agree or disagree with, fund or defund various programs or initiatives), and because some people disagree with that action we should create a special tax levy on "some rich text workers" to pay for something that some number of citizens want to see exist despite the government that was democratically elected defunding that various program? Maybe when Democrats win we can just tax a few Anthropic employees and have them pay for the natural gas power plants that get shut down and then we can tax them again when Republicans shut down the wind and solar turbines. Perfect! That, which is an accurate description of what was proposed, seems a bit unworkable, to say the least. Any why limit it to these sensors? Why not pay for all sorts of things? Let's just tax tech workers and they'll fund all sorts of activities that some political groups want to see happen?! lol that's so crazy and doesn't at all make sense in a democratic nation that respects the rule of law.
  - Ancalagon 3mo ago
    actually - they're not
- ertgbnm 3mo ago
  [dead]
- vel0city 3mo ago
  Its not even about saving money. If they just wanted to save money they'd just stop paying attention to the data coming in, retask/lay off the people working on it, and let the buoys stay out there. A dumb idea to me, but at least that's consistent. Let other organizations decide to manage the buoys. While I'd prefer for the government to do it, it could be possible to have other groups fund such things. It would be a lot cheaper, easier, and allow for a smoother transition with no lost data for some other org or government to take over the project. Instead, we're paying money to pull the sensors out of the water. We're actively spending money to blind ourselves to things we know are growing areas of concern.
  - goatlover 3mo ago
    This administration is extremely wasteful despite the mantra about reducing waste, fraud and abuse. In fact it's done the opposite of all three things.
  - Jtsummers 3mo ago
    This is the strangest part to me. They will spend millions and several years to dismantle a system that, realistically, could also just be abandoned. Not that we should leave more random, unused equipment out in the world, but if this were really about cost savings, and given this administration does not care at all about the environment, then leaving the equipment in place was the best option by their stated rationale.
    - fanatic2pope 3mo ago
      If they just abandon them then a subsequent administration can simply re-activate them without being forced to spend even more money.
    - Sharlin 3mo ago
      Astronaut meme: it was never about cost savings
    - insane_dreamer 3mo ago
      it's not strange or random idiocy they are intentionally making it difficult for the next administration to flip the switch back on to monitoring again; it would now require $100s of millions to reconstruct the system, money that may not be easy to get congress/taxpayers to agree to
- rjrjrjrj 3mo ago
  These sensors and a bunch of other scientific research for a thousand years, or pointless war with Iran for 3 months.
  - _fs 3mo ago
    Cost has nothing to do with it. This was all laid out in the project 2025 manifesto. Burn it all down with no regard to money previously invested. Makes it harder for future administrations to rebuild. Halting the collection of data is not enough. Maintenance is 5% or less of the cost to deploy new. If they destroy it, it makes the cost to rebuild (including having to re-seek congressional approval) that much harder and time consuming.
    - gwerbin 3mo ago
      And if they do accidentally destroy something that they want, it can be rebuilt by a private contractor friendly to the administration.
  - autoexec 3mo ago
    The war is making a lot of money for trump and his family, the science was just making some of Trump's biggest bribers look bad.
- dwroberts 3mo ago
  The US military budget is 900 billion dollars. The government can afford a few hundred million for some sensors, it should not need private sector patrons
  - echelon 3mo ago
    > The US military budget is 900 billion dollars. And we're about to pay over a third of that to Iran?
    - pesus 3mo ago
      Is it actually coming out of the military budget? I assumed we were just going to get taxed for it, or they'd pull it from some other places that actually needs the funds. Alternatively, they could just increase the military budget by 300 billion (or more).
      - morkalork 3mo ago
        It's a good measure of scale. The USA is paying Iran an amount that is 1/3rd of its military budget in reparations because they "won".
        throwawaypath 3mo ago
        No, that was fake news. The 300 billion dollars isn't coming from the US.
        amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
        How would you even know that? We haven't seen the agreement yet.
        throwawaypath 3mo ago
        >We haven't seen the agreement yet. Which why the $300 million claim is fake news.
- righthand 3mo ago
  Lol Big Tech employees don’t have desires beyond money at any cost.
wxw 3mo ago
> Starting this week, the Ocean Observatories Initiative will lose a network of more than 900 ocean sensors from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland. > By 2027, the National Science Foundation will have dismantled most of the system, which had been slated to run another 15 to 20 years. > Scientists had seen warning signs as the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget included a 55% cut to the science foundation. Official word to begin shutting down arrived in early May. Defunding science is embarassing and sad.
- arch_deluxe 3mo ago
  Don’t forget wantonly destructive.
- markdown 3mo ago
  Why not just sell them to some other country? Surely Canada would buy the in-place sensors and take them over.
  - verdverm 3mo ago
    They explicitly do not want them. They will pay companies to abandon renewable energy projects that have already planned / started.
  - jubilanti 3mo ago
    You think this is done to save costs? NO! This is costing more money to actively dismantle them than it would be to just abandon them. The administration is intentionally and specifically trying to destroy scientific evidence of climate change. If they just abandoned them, the next administration could reactivate and repair them.
    - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
      People in the libertarian SV techbro world actually fall for the randian crap and believe that’s what they are getting. And that’s the charitable interpretation.
  - 3mo ago
bbbrad 3mo ago
Read the article, but I'm still not seeing why the U.S. is pulling these sensors. Anyone have any insight?
- ezfe 3mo ago
  Because they're scientific instruments to collect data
  - square_usual 3mo ago
    Specifically climate data, which can be used to argue for climate change action.
    - tetha 3mo ago
      As the old joke went, the easiest way to not have detected covid cases in the country is to stop testing. Very simple, very effective.
      - warkdarrior 3mo ago
        Not an actual joke, this was Trump's idea during his first term.
        jermaustin1 3mo ago
        And not old... literally only 6 years ago.
        Sabinus 3mo ago
        Another one was when the popular perception was that Obama did more drone strikes than Trump did. In fact, Trump had authorised more than Obama did. Trump had just stopped the reporting of the drone strikes.
  - dionian 3mo ago
    [flagged]
fusslo 3mo ago
to be honest I always assumed scientific sensors like those also had military applications either directly or indirectly (installing listening devices at the same time as installing the scientific equipment). That'd be partly why we fund and keep them around. But I guess not!
- behringer 3mo ago
  They do, but trump doesn't really care about military readiness.
- bflesch 3mo ago
  This decision gives them plausible reason to send a ship to every single sensor and "remove" it, nobody knows what they replace it with. Maybe the old sensor network is compromised and snooped on by another nation, so they'd need to replace it with some better, obviously classified sensor network. The anti climate change angle and the pain inflicted to "liberal" climate scientists is a nice to have but maybe not main reason for this move.
  - bauldursdev 3mo ago
    Is there anything that would point to this possibly being the case?
    - bflesch 3mo ago
      Maybe it's part of the Epstein files, he was famously wearing US Coast Guard shirts ;) If it also contains a sensor network to detect adversary ships and submarines, it would be bad if someone else can use it to track US submarines. Or the sensors are too old and their resolution can't detect modern mini submarines or autonomous drone ships such as the ones the Ukraine is using in the black sea, so they need to be upgraded. These people are PR professionals and have been doing propaganda since generations. If Trump speaks about Greenland he does not mean the country but he uses it to bury another Greenland entity that he does not want to be associated with. Same with Canada the country vs. Cañada the Spanish word. Bonus is if they can ragebait their political opponents because then nobody will ever again be able to find the original story with these keywords. And to me this kind of story and easy anti-climate-change narrative checks all the boxes.
Hikikomori 3mo ago
Another project 2025 goal essentially, destruction of any real science that doesn't fit whatever "gold standard science" is. https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-change...
waterthrowaway 3mo ago
As a physical oceanographer, the destruction of these observing systems is horrific. It is hard to stress enough how intentionally OMB is trying to disassemble American science. The new (proposed) OMB guidelines prohibit international collaboration without pre approval for example. They also codify a political grant approval process. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-manage... Additionally, OMB is not releasing the congressional appropriated funds that they are required to. This is currently tanking the post-doctoral researcher market and eventually will wipe out a generation of researchers if it isn’t stopped. https://grant-witness.us/funding_curves_nsf.html https://grant-witness.us/funding_curves_nsf.html Please call your elected representatives! It is so so important! https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-science-grants/ https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-scienc...
- WhitneyLand 3mo ago
  OMB = “Office of Management and Budget”. It’s a White House office run by Russell Vought, highly ideological maga institutionalist.
  - ceejayoz 3mo ago
    (and one of the authors of Project 2025)
  - tadfisher 3mo ago
    Also famous for being a principal architect and author of Project 2025, which explicitly calls for impoundment as a mechanism for expanding presidential authority to control the Federal budget for political purposes.
    - FrustratedMonky 3mo ago
      In order to usher in their Theocratic Dictatorship, they need to have an un-educated population. This is the start. I hope it takes a few generations and the tide can be turned. But at this rate, the US might end within the next couple years, not decades. I don't think they are really even trying to hide it. Project 2025 was pretty obvious road map.
skeledrew 3mo ago
It's a leveled playing field now. No more pesky "I can provide data that shows..." to stand in the way of making things GREAT AGAIN. All arguments' strength rely on how much money is backing each, which is what makes all things GREAT. Facts are what those with power want it to be, not what some young upstarts claim from reading some machines. And that, again, is GREATNESS!!
- gyanchawdhary 3mo ago
  100% !
rwyinuse 3mo ago
Perhaps EU or China could build their own network of sensors to track this stuff? It's dangerous for so much science to be dependent on a country run by anti-science idiots. I sincerely hope that China wins the AI race, for the sake of myself and my children. The Chinese Communist party might be evil, but at least they accept fundamental natural sciences, and are actively investing in technologies that help avoiding worst climate scenarios. Buying anything American instead of EU or Chinese alternatives has become deeply unethical to me.
- dionian 3mo ago
  we seem to be doing some pretty cool science still. like invented AI
- Barrin92 3mo ago
  >Perhaps EU or China could build their own network of sensors to track this stuff? already do, the EU is in particular collects a ton of oceanographic data through for example the Copernicus Marine Service, but these particular sensors are in waters close to Oregon, Washington and Alaska, not really anything the EU or China could replace. In its region the US is naturally not really replaceable, it's simply a big blow to research.
  - pvaldes 3mo ago
    China will happily jump to help. To help themselves to be able to track the movements of US nuclear submarines anywhere in waters close to Oregon, Washington or Alaska (Or to move their own submarines freely by the area without telling to anybody except them). Dismantling sensors around Alaska helps Russia on an hypothetical future attempt to retake the area; and doing it around "51 state" or Greenland is the same thing for US.
throwarayes 3mo ago
This seems to be a case of administration impounding funds authorized by Congress for this purpose. As in they’re just spending what Congress told them to. And unfortunately SCOTUS made it harder for private groups to sue over impounding. And seems to argue only the GAOs comptroller can sue under the impoundments control act (ICA). GAO is the part of Congress that investigates when executive branch isn’t enforcing the law / spending funds. But have themselves limited ability to enforce anything. It’s another post watergate reform eroded by Trump II. The ICA was created to stop these sorts of impoundments that happens with Nixon and earlier. Notably members of Congress are working to pause the dismantling https://apnews.com/article/ocean-observatories-initiative-trump-congress-9b306cb05ec3c824f5e034821add6ad2 https://apnews.com/article/ocean-observatories-initiative-tr...
Danox 3mo ago
The countries on the other side of the Pacific in East Asia will just have to pick up the slack and the same applies to those on the European side of the Atlantic, just another signal of the decline of the United States. I’m sure that the same will apply to the weather satellites above.
- phtrivier 3mo ago
  Should Europe put sensors on the US coast to continue measuring the collapse of the AMOC ? I'm not 100% sure the US navy would enjoy that. Europe will find proxy measurements to confirm that, thanks in no small part to US politicians, pour climate will be even more FUed than expected. We won't send flowers, but, hey, that's your country, and you got lower taxes and better return on your cryptos, so "the rest of the world" can go to hell, I suppose ? This too shall pass, but it can't pass fast enough.
deadbabe 3mo ago
What else can we say to stuff like this except fuck the United States?
- groundzeros2015 3mo ago
  Well we could try to Figure out the motives and justification, or we can just get mad and feel smug.
  - anon_shill 3mo ago
    Here is what the National Science Foundation has to say about it: > "The decision to de-scope aligns with NSF's wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart life cycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio." Seems like even if we want to understand the justifications, the people making these decisions don't care to share them with us.
    - 20after4 3mo ago
      Wow that quote is the most useless bullshit bunch of words I've seen strung together recently. It says a whole lot of nothing in the most insulting way possible. Must have been written by a highly paid consultant.
      - warkdarrior 3mo ago
        > Must have been written by a highly paid consultant. ChatGPT?
        20after4 3mo ago
        Probably!
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- 3mo ago
TrackerFF 3mo ago
Let me guess, they want it privatized? IIRC, Project 2025 argued that private companies provided more accurate weather forecasts, and thus one can just dismantle gov. agencies like NOAA and the market for such services will take care of itself.
- jorblumesea 3mo ago
  project 2025 is also just about the wholesale destruction of the opposition, including academia.
20after4 3mo ago
Look at all of the headlines coming out of the department of energy: https://www.energy.gov/newsroom https://www.energy.gov/newsroom Lots of them related to coal and LNG. Most prominently: https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-invest-350-million-build-modernize-and-restart-coal-plants https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-invest-350... The policy of the federal government is anti renewable energy and pro coal, pro oil. Oil executives are profiting from the situation with Iran. These guys don't want us to have cheap renewable energy. They want us to keep paying their tolls and they don't want anyone to have access to evidence that could continue exposing the damage they've done to the environment.
- scottyah 3mo ago
  The DoE is posting misinformation constantly, they seem to just be old oil people. Idk how they're still flying under the radar.
  - gwerbin 3mo ago
    None of it is under the radar anymore, they have a radicalized supporter base and increasingly dictatorial control over the basic functioning of government. Subtlety is no longer necessary under those conditions.
- testing22321 3mo ago
  [dead]
fancyfredbot 3mo ago
I understand the present US administration would want to stop funding this, and that they have the power to do so. I don't understand how that has led to the sensor network being dismantled. Surely it would have been cheaper to leave it in place and stop maintaining it?
- adithyareddy 3mo ago
  It's not about the cost, it's about ideology. Same reason they've paid nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to energy developers to abandon offshore wind farm projects. The point isn't to save money, it's to stop green energy projects, which is an ideological goal. If their decisions don't make sense to you it's because you're not viewing them through their ideological lens.
  - fancyfredbot 3mo ago
    The way I thought it worked was that congress would set a budget and scientists would decide how to spend it. Perhaps naively I thought these scientists would want to do science and would be unwilling to steer funds away from whichever projects they liked in order to fund the removal of some sensors. I guess maybe the scientists who make these decisions are also partisan and happy to do as the administration asks.
  - gwerbin 3mo ago
    It's not an ideological goal, it's a profit goal. Ideology is just part of the propaganda engine. Isn't it funny how conservatism always seems to benefit big business? Have you ever noticed how quiet conservative politicians get when some supposedly conservative ideology ends up being bad for big business?
- warkdarrior 3mo ago
  If you destroy the sensor network now, it is that much more expensive for a future administration to rebuild from scratch.
- throwarayes 3mo ago
  “Have the power” They have power, but it’s not actually legal. Congress has mandated funds for this array, the administration wants to cripple it beyond repair before any legal action can catch up.
jdw64 3mo ago
I cannot understand the decision to withdraw this for purely political reasons. What I don't understand about the Trump administration is that they are dismantling all of America's diplomatic power. Trump has the 'ability to become president'—self PR, black propaganda against opponents, that sort of thing. But he does not have the 'ability to run a country.' As Professor Ed Dever said, after ten years we are only now beginning to get 'some hints,' yet they present it as if no solution has been offered. But this kind of data is long term time series data. If some of it gets damaged, it would take decades of operation again. The value being undermined in the United States is enormous. They withdraw this simply because their supporters don't believe in climate change, for the sake of approval ratings. But this damages trust in long term research projects in the US, and America's leadership in the R&D world. If the cost is that high, why did they go to war with Iran? There are so many things I don't understand. Why, while calling themselves a consumer nation, are they destroying the hegemony they themselves built? True dominance requires the consent of the governed. America's status as the strongest superpower was a product of the consent of surrounding subordinate nations. That's what Antonio Gramsci talked about. Things the US scaled back, like USAID, also created a favorable image of American imperialism. So even though the US invaded and destroyed South American countries in reality, it played a role in making people believe it was truly about freedom and progress. That is symbolic capital. But what Trump is doing now is beyond comprehension. From a third party perspective, Trump administration policies make it look like they imagine a feudal system built on top of America as the supreme state. They are destroying long term leadership and the trust the US has built. Some might call the Trump administration's actions 'unpretentious honesty.' But this is not honesty. It's just greed. The Trump administration seems to have created America's bankruptcy. In my view, Trump always wins. It's just not America's victory
- 20after4 3mo ago
  >The Trump administration seems to have created America's bankruptcy. In my view, Trump always wins. It's just not America's victory You summed it up perfectly right there. It's not about anything good for America or really anything good at all. It's pure greed. It's doing the bidding of whoever is paying him the most. It's destroying America on purpose for the benefit of foreign and international interests. I honestly believe they are trying to engineer the most possible death and destruction so that they can swoop in an take what's left for themselves. Destroy the economy and buy everything up at bargain sale prices. Starve the people and deny them any relief. Make homelessness illegal so you can legally enslave them. Those that don't starve to death will work in the camps.
james_marks 3mo ago
The final rebuttal to “the data doesn’t lie”: pull the sensors.
- burkaman 3mo ago
  It's a natural extension of "stop the count" and "if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases".
captainbland 3mo ago
From the playbook of COVID, it's not a problem if you just stop measuring.
janalsncm 3mo ago
The first thing you do when you want to improve a metric is to start measuring it. When you don’t care about that thing anymore you stop measuring it.
GreenSalem 3mo ago
Rogue nation. North Korea behaves better.
msie 3mo ago
This must be publicized as much as possible to shame Trump and Vought.
- goatlover 3mo ago
  Russel Vought has really flown under the radar compared to most other Trump officials. He's one of the smarter and more dangerous ones.
swframe2 3mo ago
The North Atlantic’s ‘cold blob’ may signal a major current’s decline https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cold-blob-may-signal-current-decline https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cold-blob-may-signal-cur...
AIcanbiteme 3mo ago
[dead]
heisenbit 3mo ago
Ripping out sensors is the equivalent of shooting the messenger.
tim-tday 3mo ago
The trump administration is anti science, anti anything that provides evidence for climate change. They’re obsessively pro fossil fuels and anti green anything. What I’m “shocked” about is that this is news to anyone.
simonerlic 3mo ago
I worked directly with the Ocean Networks Canada team for my engineering capstone project- they're a fantastic crew who are really clearly dedicated to providing open access to their data (they have a free API if you want to play with it!) It's honestly a shame that this happened, but I hope they can use it to give a compelling argument for more funding in the future to expand the network (and make up the loss of data)
- lawgimenez 3mo ago
  Care to link this free API
  - Supercompressor 3mo ago
    Think I found it: https://data.oceannetworks.ca/OpenAPI https://data.oceannetworks.ca/OpenAPI
pvaldes 3mo ago
They want to Marsform the Earth at any cost
throwaway85825 3mo ago
Why ain't more science funded by private organizations? Relying wholly on government grants is tenuous. I've lost access to things because grants weren't renewed.
- bakies 3mo ago
  Because the ROI is 0
hyperman1 3mo ago
There is a midterm comming up in the USA. If you're living there and you're now not going to vote,I'm sorry but you're complicit. They might make it inconvenient, but you all still got some power left over there. Afaik, either a few traditional red states turn blue and make it clear there is a limit to what's politically possible, or you're a dictatorship.
hulitu 3mo ago
> U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research Why ? It was good to rely on Big Brother for decades and sleep well. /s

463 points by ResearchAtPlay 3mo ago

arjie 3mo ago

The scales of money at play always seem so strange. Oh a few hundred million for ocean sensors, or about what a few OpenAI / Cursor employees or a few hundred FAANG employees could personally fund if they desired to do so.

hdgvhicv 3mo ago
It’s nothing to do with money, that’s always the libertarian excuse, and HN laps it up far more than the rest of the word.
- pesus 3mo ago
  Whatever delusions I once held that software engineers are above average intelligence were completely eradicated by seeing how many HN commenters eagerly bought into the obvious lies about DOGE and their goals (amongst other things). It was embarrassing. They sure seem to be a lot quieter about that now, though.
  - Gud 3mo ago
    hackers used to be a large percentage of software engineers and are indeed intelligent people with an open mind. However since ~2005 their percentage of the total has gone from ~25% to <1% as computers became less of a hobby and a way to make money.
- ToucanLoucan 3mo ago
  Have to sternly disagree: at least on the conservative side, it is thoroughly lapped up. Right wingers the world over constantly vote to fuck themselves and the rest of us over with this never ending whingeing about debt, spending, pork, what have you. On this particular issue it's even less surprising since the only thing perhaps a right winger wants to hear less about than government spending is climate change. The entire debt ceiling bullshit is political theatre and always has been. We didn't even have a debt ceiling for the majority of our existence as a nation, and since it's creation by right wingers, it has been used as a bludgeon by right wingers to kneecap anything that stood to benefit the civil good of our country. Austerity politics have been deployed here and elsewhere to great effect to destroy social programs, demonize those who need them, and reallocate trillions of dollars to the private sector to provide the same services the public sector did, but worse, and while enriching greedy assholes the entire way. And the whole way it has been done by an enthusiastic and approving portion of the public who can be persuaded to feel outrage that seventy cents of their yearly taxes are going to some program in some far off part of the country they'll never see. Meanwhile the actual national debt soars, and under who? Yep, fucking right wingers again. And every time we want to do something science and evidence backed like give the homeless somewhere to live, we're met with a chorus of WHO'S GONNA PAY FOR IT, but every goddamn time there's another country full of brown kids to blow the fuck off the face of the Earth, we always, always have money for that. It's disgusting and I hate it here.
  - autoexec 3mo ago
    > Meanwhile the actual national debt soars, and under who? Yep, fucking right wingers again. Exactly. If the people on the right cared at all about government spending they'd never vote republican again, which just shows us that they don't actually care about government spending. They don't seem to want to talk about the things they really do care about too loudly though.
ericmay 3mo ago
[flagged]
- iwontberude 3mo ago
  Because your rights (including property rights) are only what other people will respect, there is no true god head that swoops down to ensure it.
  - ericmay 3mo ago
    I'm not following what this comment is supposed to address from what I wrote. The US government is taking some action (they take all sorts of actions people agree or disagree with, fund or defund various programs or initiatives), and because some people disagree with that action we should create a special tax levy on "some rich text workers" to pay for something that some number of citizens want to see exist despite the government that was democratically elected defunding that various program? Maybe when Democrats win we can just tax a few Anthropic employees and have them pay for the natural gas power plants that get shut down and then we can tax them again when Republicans shut down the wind and solar turbines. Perfect! That, which is an accurate description of what was proposed, seems a bit unworkable, to say the least. Any why limit it to these sensors? Why not pay for all sorts of things? Let's just tax tech workers and they'll fund all sorts of activities that some political groups want to see happen?! lol that's so crazy and doesn't at all make sense in a democratic nation that respects the rule of law.
- Ancalagon 3mo ago
  actually - they're not
ertgbnm 3mo ago
[dead]
vel0city 3mo ago
Its not even about saving money. If they just wanted to save money they'd just stop paying attention to the data coming in, retask/lay off the people working on it, and let the buoys stay out there. A dumb idea to me, but at least that's consistent. Let other organizations decide to manage the buoys. While I'd prefer for the government to do it, it could be possible to have other groups fund such things. It would be a lot cheaper, easier, and allow for a smoother transition with no lost data for some other org or government to take over the project. Instead, we're paying money to pull the sensors out of the water. We're actively spending money to blind ourselves to things we know are growing areas of concern.
- goatlover 3mo ago
  This administration is extremely wasteful despite the mantra about reducing waste, fraud and abuse. In fact it's done the opposite of all three things.
- Jtsummers 3mo ago
  This is the strangest part to me. They will spend millions and several years to dismantle a system that, realistically, could also just be abandoned. Not that we should leave more random, unused equipment out in the world, but if this were really about cost savings, and given this administration does not care at all about the environment, then leaving the equipment in place was the best option by their stated rationale.
  - fanatic2pope 3mo ago
    If they just abandon them then a subsequent administration can simply re-activate them without being forced to spend even more money.
  - Sharlin 3mo ago
    Astronaut meme: it was never about cost savings
  - insane_dreamer 3mo ago
    it's not strange or random idiocy they are intentionally making it difficult for the next administration to flip the switch back on to monitoring again; it would now require $100s of millions to reconstruct the system, money that may not be easy to get congress/taxpayers to agree to
rjrjrjrj 3mo ago
These sensors and a bunch of other scientific research for a thousand years, or pointless war with Iran for 3 months.
- _fs 3mo ago
  Cost has nothing to do with it. This was all laid out in the project 2025 manifesto. Burn it all down with no regard to money previously invested. Makes it harder for future administrations to rebuild. Halting the collection of data is not enough. Maintenance is 5% or less of the cost to deploy new. If they destroy it, it makes the cost to rebuild (including having to re-seek congressional approval) that much harder and time consuming.
  - gwerbin 3mo ago
    And if they do accidentally destroy something that they want, it can be rebuilt by a private contractor friendly to the administration.
- autoexec 3mo ago
  The war is making a lot of money for trump and his family, the science was just making some of Trump's biggest bribers look bad.
dwroberts 3mo ago
The US military budget is 900 billion dollars. The government can afford a few hundred million for some sensors, it should not need private sector patrons
- echelon 3mo ago
  > The US military budget is 900 billion dollars. And we're about to pay over a third of that to Iran?
  - pesus 3mo ago
    Is it actually coming out of the military budget? I assumed we were just going to get taxed for it, or they'd pull it from some other places that actually needs the funds. Alternatively, they could just increase the military budget by 300 billion (or more).
    - morkalork 3mo ago
      It's a good measure of scale. The USA is paying Iran an amount that is 1/3rd of its military budget in reparations because they "won".
      - throwawaypath 3mo ago
        No, that was fake news. The 300 billion dollars isn't coming from the US.
        amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
        How would you even know that? We haven't seen the agreement yet.
        throwawaypath 3mo ago
        >We haven't seen the agreement yet. Which why the $300 million claim is fake news.
righthand 3mo ago
Lol Big Tech employees don’t have desires beyond money at any cost.

wxw 3mo ago

> Starting this week, the Ocean Observatories Initiative will lose a network of more than 900 ocean sensors from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland. > By 2027, the National Science Foundation will have dismantled most of the system, which had been slated to run another 15 to 20 years. > Scientists had seen warning signs as the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget included a 55% cut to the science foundation. Official word to begin shutting down arrived in early May. Defunding science is embarassing and sad.

arch_deluxe 3mo ago
Don’t forget wantonly destructive.
markdown 3mo ago
Why not just sell them to some other country? Surely Canada would buy the in-place sensors and take them over.
- verdverm 3mo ago
  They explicitly do not want them. They will pay companies to abandon renewable energy projects that have already planned / started.
- jubilanti 3mo ago
  You think this is done to save costs? NO! This is costing more money to actively dismantle them than it would be to just abandon them. The administration is intentionally and specifically trying to destroy scientific evidence of climate change. If they just abandoned them, the next administration could reactivate and repair them.
  - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
    People in the libertarian SV techbro world actually fall for the randian crap and believe that’s what they are getting. And that’s the charitable interpretation.
- 3mo ago

bbbrad 3mo ago

Read the article, but I'm still not seeing why the U.S. is pulling these sensors. Anyone have any insight?

ezfe 3mo ago
Because they're scientific instruments to collect data
- square_usual 3mo ago
  Specifically climate data, which can be used to argue for climate change action.
  - tetha 3mo ago
    As the old joke went, the easiest way to not have detected covid cases in the country is to stop testing. Very simple, very effective.
    - warkdarrior 3mo ago
      Not an actual joke, this was Trump's idea during his first term.
      - jermaustin1 3mo ago
        And not old... literally only 6 years ago.
      - Sabinus 3mo ago
        Another one was when the popular perception was that Obama did more drone strikes than Trump did. In fact, Trump had authorised more than Obama did. Trump had just stopped the reporting of the drone strikes.
- dionian 3mo ago
  [flagged]

fusslo 3mo ago

to be honest I always assumed scientific sensors like those also had military applications either directly or indirectly (installing listening devices at the same time as installing the scientific equipment). That'd be partly why we fund and keep them around. But I guess not!

behringer 3mo ago
They do, but trump doesn't really care about military readiness.
bflesch 3mo ago
This decision gives them plausible reason to send a ship to every single sensor and "remove" it, nobody knows what they replace it with. Maybe the old sensor network is compromised and snooped on by another nation, so they'd need to replace it with some better, obviously classified sensor network. The anti climate change angle and the pain inflicted to "liberal" climate scientists is a nice to have but maybe not main reason for this move.
- bauldursdev 3mo ago
  Is there anything that would point to this possibly being the case?
  - bflesch 3mo ago
    Maybe it's part of the Epstein files, he was famously wearing US Coast Guard shirts ;) If it also contains a sensor network to detect adversary ships and submarines, it would be bad if someone else can use it to track US submarines. Or the sensors are too old and their resolution can't detect modern mini submarines or autonomous drone ships such as the ones the Ukraine is using in the black sea, so they need to be upgraded. These people are PR professionals and have been doing propaganda since generations. If Trump speaks about Greenland he does not mean the country but he uses it to bury another Greenland entity that he does not want to be associated with. Same with Canada the country vs. Cañada the Spanish word. Bonus is if they can ragebait their political opponents because then nobody will ever again be able to find the original story with these keywords. And to me this kind of story and easy anti-climate-change narrative checks all the boxes.

Hikikomori 3mo ago

Another project 2025 goal essentially, destruction of any real science that doesn't fit whatever "gold standard science" is. https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-change...

waterthrowaway 3mo ago

As a physical oceanographer, the destruction of these observing systems is horrific. It is hard to stress enough how intentionally OMB is trying to disassemble American science. The new (proposed) OMB guidelines prohibit international collaboration without pre approval for example. They also codify a political grant approval process. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-manage... Additionally, OMB is not releasing the congressional appropriated funds that they are required to. This is currently tanking the post-doctoral researcher market and eventually will wipe out a generation of researchers if it isn’t stopped. https://grant-witness.us/funding_curves_nsf.html https://grant-witness.us/funding_curves_nsf.html Please call your elected representatives! It is so so important! https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-science-grants/ https://5calls.org/issue/federal-financial-assistance-scienc...

WhitneyLand 3mo ago
OMB = “Office of Management and Budget”. It’s a White House office run by Russell Vought, highly ideological maga institutionalist.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago
  (and one of the authors of Project 2025)
- tadfisher 3mo ago
  Also famous for being a principal architect and author of Project 2025, which explicitly calls for impoundment as a mechanism for expanding presidential authority to control the Federal budget for political purposes.
  - FrustratedMonky 3mo ago
    In order to usher in their Theocratic Dictatorship, they need to have an un-educated population. This is the start. I hope it takes a few generations and the tide can be turned. But at this rate, the US might end within the next couple years, not decades. I don't think they are really even trying to hide it. Project 2025 was pretty obvious road map.

skeledrew 3mo ago

It's a leveled playing field now. No more pesky "I can provide data that shows..." to stand in the way of making things GREAT AGAIN. All arguments' strength rely on how much money is backing each, which is what makes all things GREAT. Facts are what those with power want it to be, not what some young upstarts claim from reading some machines. And that, again, is GREATNESS!!

gyanchawdhary 3mo ago
100% !

rwyinuse 3mo ago

Perhaps EU or China could build their own network of sensors to track this stuff? It's dangerous for so much science to be dependent on a country run by anti-science idiots. I sincerely hope that China wins the AI race, for the sake of myself and my children. The Chinese Communist party might be evil, but at least they accept fundamental natural sciences, and are actively investing in technologies that help avoiding worst climate scenarios. Buying anything American instead of EU or Chinese alternatives has become deeply unethical to me.

dionian 3mo ago
we seem to be doing some pretty cool science still. like invented AI
Barrin92 3mo ago
>Perhaps EU or China could build their own network of sensors to track this stuff? already do, the EU is in particular collects a ton of oceanographic data through for example the Copernicus Marine Service, but these particular sensors are in waters close to Oregon, Washington and Alaska, not really anything the EU or China could replace. In its region the US is naturally not really replaceable, it's simply a big blow to research.
- pvaldes 3mo ago
  China will happily jump to help. To help themselves to be able to track the movements of US nuclear submarines anywhere in waters close to Oregon, Washington or Alaska (Or to move their own submarines freely by the area without telling to anybody except them). Dismantling sensors around Alaska helps Russia on an hypothetical future attempt to retake the area; and doing it around "51 state" or Greenland is the same thing for US.

throwarayes 3mo ago

This seems to be a case of administration impounding funds authorized by Congress for this purpose. As in they’re just spending what Congress told them to. And unfortunately SCOTUS made it harder for private groups to sue over impounding. And seems to argue only the GAOs comptroller can sue under the impoundments control act (ICA). GAO is the part of Congress that investigates when executive branch isn’t enforcing the law / spending funds. But have themselves limited ability to enforce anything. It’s another post watergate reform eroded by Trump II. The ICA was created to stop these sorts of impoundments that happens with Nixon and earlier. Notably members of Congress are working to pause the dismantling https://apnews.com/article/ocean-observatories-initiative-trump-congress-9b306cb05ec3c824f5e034821add6ad2 https://apnews.com/article/ocean-observatories-initiative-tr...

Danox 3mo ago

The countries on the other side of the Pacific in East Asia will just have to pick up the slack and the same applies to those on the European side of the Atlantic, just another signal of the decline of the United States. I’m sure that the same will apply to the weather satellites above.

phtrivier 3mo ago
Should Europe put sensors on the US coast to continue measuring the collapse of the AMOC ? I'm not 100% sure the US navy would enjoy that. Europe will find proxy measurements to confirm that, thanks in no small part to US politicians, pour climate will be even more FUed than expected. We won't send flowers, but, hey, that's your country, and you got lower taxes and better return on your cryptos, so "the rest of the world" can go to hell, I suppose ? This too shall pass, but it can't pass fast enough.

deadbabe 3mo ago

What else can we say to stuff like this except fuck the United States?

groundzeros2015 3mo ago
Well we could try to Figure out the motives and justification, or we can just get mad and feel smug.
- anon_shill 3mo ago
  Here is what the National Science Foundation has to say about it: > "The decision to de-scope aligns with NSF's wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart life cycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio." Seems like even if we want to understand the justifications, the people making these decisions don't care to share them with us.
  - 20after4 3mo ago
    Wow that quote is the most useless bullshit bunch of words I've seen strung together recently. It says a whole lot of nothing in the most insulting way possible. Must have been written by a highly paid consultant.
    - warkdarrior 3mo ago
      > Must have been written by a highly paid consultant. ChatGPT?
      - 20after4 3mo ago
        Probably!
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
3mo ago

TrackerFF 3mo ago

Let me guess, they want it privatized? IIRC, Project 2025 argued that private companies provided more accurate weather forecasts, and thus one can just dismantle gov. agencies like NOAA and the market for such services will take care of itself.

jorblumesea 3mo ago
project 2025 is also just about the wholesale destruction of the opposition, including academia.

20after4 3mo ago

Look at all of the headlines coming out of the department of energy: https://www.energy.gov/newsroom https://www.energy.gov/newsroom Lots of them related to coal and LNG. Most prominently: https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-invest-350-million-build-modernize-and-restart-coal-plants https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-invest-350... The policy of the federal government is anti renewable energy and pro coal, pro oil. Oil executives are profiting from the situation with Iran. These guys don't want us to have cheap renewable energy. They want us to keep paying their tolls and they don't want anyone to have access to evidence that could continue exposing the damage they've done to the environment.

scottyah 3mo ago
The DoE is posting misinformation constantly, they seem to just be old oil people. Idk how they're still flying under the radar.
- gwerbin 3mo ago
  None of it is under the radar anymore, they have a radicalized supporter base and increasingly dictatorial control over the basic functioning of government. Subtlety is no longer necessary under those conditions.
testing22321 3mo ago
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fancyfredbot 3mo ago

I understand the present US administration would want to stop funding this, and that they have the power to do so. I don't understand how that has led to the sensor network being dismantled. Surely it would have been cheaper to leave it in place and stop maintaining it?

adithyareddy 3mo ago
It's not about the cost, it's about ideology. Same reason they've paid nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to energy developers to abandon offshore wind farm projects. The point isn't to save money, it's to stop green energy projects, which is an ideological goal. If their decisions don't make sense to you it's because you're not viewing them through their ideological lens.
- fancyfredbot 3mo ago
  The way I thought it worked was that congress would set a budget and scientists would decide how to spend it. Perhaps naively I thought these scientists would want to do science and would be unwilling to steer funds away from whichever projects they liked in order to fund the removal of some sensors. I guess maybe the scientists who make these decisions are also partisan and happy to do as the administration asks.
- gwerbin 3mo ago
  It's not an ideological goal, it's a profit goal. Ideology is just part of the propaganda engine. Isn't it funny how conservatism always seems to benefit big business? Have you ever noticed how quiet conservative politicians get when some supposedly conservative ideology ends up being bad for big business?
warkdarrior 3mo ago
If you destroy the sensor network now, it is that much more expensive for a future administration to rebuild from scratch.
throwarayes 3mo ago
“Have the power” They have power, but it’s not actually legal. Congress has mandated funds for this array, the administration wants to cripple it beyond repair before any legal action can catch up.

jdw64 3mo ago

I cannot understand the decision to withdraw this for purely political reasons. What I don't understand about the Trump administration is that they are dismantling all of America's diplomatic power. Trump has the 'ability to become president'—self PR, black propaganda against opponents, that sort of thing. But he does not have the 'ability to run a country.' As Professor Ed Dever said, after ten years we are only now beginning to get 'some hints,' yet they present it as if no solution has been offered. But this kind of data is long term time series data. If some of it gets damaged, it would take decades of operation again. The value being undermined in the United States is enormous. They withdraw this simply because their supporters don't believe in climate change, for the sake of approval ratings. But this damages trust in long term research projects in the US, and America's leadership in the R&D world. If the cost is that high, why did they go to war with Iran? There are so many things I don't understand. Why, while calling themselves a consumer nation, are they destroying the hegemony they themselves built? True dominance requires the consent of the governed. America's status as the strongest superpower was a product of the consent of surrounding subordinate nations. That's what Antonio Gramsci talked about. Things the US scaled back, like USAID, also created a favorable image of American imperialism. So even though the US invaded and destroyed South American countries in reality, it played a role in making people believe it was truly about freedom and progress. That is symbolic capital. But what Trump is doing now is beyond comprehension. From a third party perspective, Trump administration policies make it look like they imagine a feudal system built on top of America as the supreme state. They are destroying long term leadership and the trust the US has built. Some might call the Trump administration's actions 'unpretentious honesty.' But this is not honesty. It's just greed. The Trump administration seems to have created America's bankruptcy. In my view, Trump always wins. It's just not America's victory

20after4 3mo ago
>The Trump administration seems to have created America's bankruptcy. In my view, Trump always wins. It's just not America's victory You summed it up perfectly right there. It's not about anything good for America or really anything good at all. It's pure greed. It's doing the bidding of whoever is paying him the most. It's destroying America on purpose for the benefit of foreign and international interests. I honestly believe they are trying to engineer the most possible death and destruction so that they can swoop in an take what's left for themselves. Destroy the economy and buy everything up at bargain sale prices. Starve the people and deny them any relief. Make homelessness illegal so you can legally enslave them. Those that don't starve to death will work in the camps.

james_marks 3mo ago

The final rebuttal to “the data doesn’t lie”: pull the sensors.

burkaman 3mo ago
It's a natural extension of "stop the count" and "if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases".

captainbland 3mo ago

From the playbook of COVID, it's not a problem if you just stop measuring.

janalsncm 3mo ago

The first thing you do when you want to improve a metric is to start measuring it. When you don’t care about that thing anymore you stop measuring it.

GreenSalem 3mo ago

Rogue nation. North Korea behaves better.

msie 3mo ago

This must be publicized as much as possible to shame Trump and Vought.

goatlover 3mo ago
Russel Vought has really flown under the radar compared to most other Trump officials. He's one of the smarter and more dangerous ones.

swframe2 3mo ago

The North Atlantic’s ‘cold blob’ may signal a major current’s decline https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cold-blob-may-signal-current-decline https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cold-blob-may-signal-cur...

AIcanbiteme 3mo ago

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heisenbit 3mo ago

Ripping out sensors is the equivalent of shooting the messenger.

tim-tday 3mo ago

The trump administration is anti science, anti anything that provides evidence for climate change. They’re obsessively pro fossil fuels and anti green anything. What I’m “shocked” about is that this is news to anyone.

simonerlic 3mo ago

I worked directly with the Ocean Networks Canada team for my engineering capstone project- they're a fantastic crew who are really clearly dedicated to providing open access to their data (they have a free API if you want to play with it!) It's honestly a shame that this happened, but I hope they can use it to give a compelling argument for more funding in the future to expand the network (and make up the loss of data)

lawgimenez 3mo ago
Care to link this free API
- Supercompressor 3mo ago
  Think I found it: https://data.oceannetworks.ca/OpenAPI https://data.oceannetworks.ca/OpenAPI

pvaldes 3mo ago

They want to Marsform the Earth at any cost

throwaway85825 3mo ago

Why ain't more science funded by private organizations? Relying wholly on government grants is tenuous. I've lost access to things because grants weren't renewed.

bakies 3mo ago
Because the ROI is 0

hyperman1 3mo ago

There is a midterm comming up in the USA. If you're living there and you're now not going to vote,I'm sorry but you're complicit. They might make it inconvenient, but you all still got some power left over there. Afaik, either a few traditional red states turn blue and make it clear there is a limit to what's politically possible, or you're a dictatorship.

hulitu 3mo ago

> U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research Why ? It was good to rely on Big Brother for decades and sleep well. /s