June 2025 – Page 2 – This is Not Cool

More on National Science Foundation Headquarters Heist

I’m still trying to find out more about this. But as I do, I just wanted to put it on your radar because it’s completely crazy and epitomizes the Trump presidency. The National Science Foundation is already in the process of being gutted — in perhaps a not quite as drastic way as its peer biomedical agencies such as NIH and elsewhere. But out of the blue yesterday, word emerged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is taking over the NSF’s building, evicting all of its more than 1,800 employees. Multiple NSF employees leaked word of this yesterday to journalist Dan Garisto. After Garisto reported the information on Bluesky I independently got word of this from NSF employees and now it’s been officially announced at a press conference by HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and GSA Commissioner Michael Peters.

Adding to the wildness, the top floors of the building are, according to the AFGE Local 3403, going to be retrofitted into a kind of executive mansion for HUD Secretary Turner, including an executive suite, executive dining room, reserved parking for the Secretary’s five cars, exclusive use of an entire elevator, special space for his various assistants and a planned gym for the Secretary and his family. Turner wouldn’t be the only Secretary with nice office space. But this does sound like it’s on the extreme end of the spectrum. Equally eye-catching, there appears to be no plan for where the NSF staff will go.

Talkingpointsmemo:

Warner suggested that the move stems from Vought’s stated desire to “traumatize the federal workforce.” And I don’t doubt that. But I still think there’s more evidence that the the big driver of this is the vacuum created by DOGE and quite possibly Turner’s desire for the Sky Mansion. (I’m told that Turner brought his wife to tour the facilities when they were deciding whether they wanted it. And I’m hearing from people at NSF that they think the renovation design suggests Turner actually wants to live in the Sky Mansion.) The administration is putting out that this is an example of creating efficiency and cost-savings, as we’ve discussed. They’re also billing it as the first big example of their efforts to get the government out of Washington, DC. But this is Alexandria, Virginia, so only outside of DC in the most nominal sense. As is often the case, the justifications seem like a bunch of stuff kind of pulled together haphazardly to justify something that originated for other reasons.

Clean Energy Misinformation a Public Health Menace

We have a mental health crisis in the US, and perhaps globally, owing in part to the addictive and seductive nature of social media, and the fossil fuel industry’s long term global misinformation campaign aimed at destroying trust in science, using the most sophisticated means of communication, and algorhythms that know us better than we know ourselves.
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In the case of windfarms, health complaints have tended to cluster in geographical areas where there has been targeted negative publicity about wind turbines, or where people are accessing negative health information about windfarms. This indicates that these clustered outbreaks are ‘contagious’, spreading via communication.

Field research indicates that the more worried individuals are about the health effects of an environmental exposure, the more likely they are to report symptoms, even when no health risk is posed. As discussed in Chapter 4, a field study conducted in Germany revealed that residents’ concern about the health effects of proximity to mobile phone base stations adversely affected their sleep quality, while exposure to electromagnetic fields itself had no such negative impact.

Simon Chapman –Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease

Port Huron Times Herald, Michigan:

During a meeting to discuss potential new regulations on solar plants and energy facilities, residents of St. Clair County brought many of the same concerns they’ve expressed for months.

There were concerns about the noise level such facilities would generate, the negative impact on housing prices, and any negative health impacts, both physical and psychological, of living near such facilities.

The St. Clair County Health Department held a meeting Wednesday allowing public input on a new set of proposed regulations. The entire meeting was devoted exclusively to public input, and county officials made no decision on whether to enact the proposed regulations.

Solar and Prairie Pollinators a Win-Win

Pretty great video about what has become standard practice around any solar farm, and in fact, mandated by law in Michigan – native plants and pollinators, which, this video maintains, create a 20 percent productivity bump in surrounding farm fields.

Research done at Argonne National Lab established that solar fields with such plantings show an explosion of insect and plant diversity, including a 20 fold increase in the numbers of native bees.

I’ll have some videos soon of the farmers actually making this happen.

Getting Warmer. Faster

You wonder why this fossil fuel dominated administration is tearing apart America’s world-leading scientific and research capabilities?
It’s because of graphs like this, which they want to just go away.

Hill Heat:

Notwithstanding the retraction of Big Balls, DOGE isn’t dead. Wielded by the Project 2025 Svengali and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought from his Eisenhower Executive Office lair, the oil-fueled DOGE chainsaw continues to buzz through the U.S. government. This week we’re seeing catastrophic cuts to American scientific enterprise:

Climate.Gov was shut down.
The National Science Foundation is getting evicted from its Alexandria, Va. headquarters.
The National Aeronautic and Space Administration is on the chopping block, with plans to mothball its DC headquarters.
And crucial climate satellite data, used for everything from sea ice to hurricane measurements, is getting shut off.

New York Times gift link:

The world is getting hotter, faster. A report published last week found that human-caused global warming is now increasing by 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. That rate was recorded at 0.2 degrees in the 1970s, and has been growing since.

This doesn’t surprise scientists who have been crunching the numbers. For years, measurements have followed predictions that the rate of warming in the atmosphere would speed up. But now, patterns that have been evident in charts and graphs are starting to become a bigger part of people’s daily lives.

“Each additional fractional degree of warming brings about a relatively larger increase in atmospheric extremes, like extreme downpours and severe droughts and wildfires,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California.

Cabinet Fat Cat Boots National Science Foundation from Facility

Scientific American:

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to announce Wednesday that it’s moving into the headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the union representing NSF employees.

But as of Tuesday evening, staff at the science foundation hadn’t been informed by management about their building’s incoming occupants, leaving them feeling blindsided and unsure about where they’re expected to work.

One NSF employee said that they had “literally zero idea” the move was coming until reports began circulating among staffers Tuesday evening. That person was granted anonymity because they fear retaliation.

Jesus Soriano, president of the union that represents NSF employees, said he was expecting a press conference Wednesday morning in the NSF lobby including HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Soriano said he was informed about the plans by NSF employees.

Soriano sent an alert to union members Tuesday evening informing them that NSF’s management “learned this afternoon [from HUD]” that the Wednesday news conference would include an announcement that “HUD will take over the NSF building” and that the science agency was not involved in the decision.

New Research: Even 1.5 is Too High to Sustain Ice Sheets

Presentation from Dr Chris Stokes to the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.

Senior IPCC authors presents strong evidence that the Paris Agreement’s lower temperature limit of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is too high to prevent significant sea-level rise from Antarctica and Greenland. Even current warming levels at 1.2°C, if sustained, will likely lead to several meters of sea-level rise over coming centuries, resulting in extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures.

Currently, around 230 million people live within just one meter of sea level; melting ice represents an existential threat to those communities as well as several low-lying nations. To avoid this future, global mean temperature must return closer to 1°C or below as soon as possible through strong an immediate cuts in greenhouse gas pollution to prevent (in IPCC terminology) “slow-onset, high-impact” losses from both polar ice sheets.

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Important graph here at 2:11.
Dr Stokes points out that recent press reports of mass gains in the Antarctic have been erroneous. One time accumulation events in East Antarctica have not slowed total mass losses.

US Failing in “Sputnik Moment”

Alan Beattie in Financial Times (paywall):

Many in Congress dislike China and EVs more than they like technological advance. In an act of pure spite, the Senate recently attempted to stop the US Postal Service from using new state-of-the-art electric delivery trucks — a move that fortunately failed on a technicality.

The US’s record in squandering leads in green technology is now becoming embarrassing. Scientists at the University of Texas invented the lithium-iron-phosphate battery, which is becoming a standard for EVs, in 1996, but the US ceded the commercial advantage to Chinese companies, which were supported by lavish state subsidies. Elon Musk’s Tesla had a great start in EVs, but until very recently Musk actually opposed the US tax credits because they would have helped his competitors. He preferred consolidating his position in the US market to expanding it.

No rich-country car company except Tesla saw the EV revolution coming and got to the front of it the way China did. But at least European producers like Volkswagen have done their best to catch up with the help of official subsidies combined with temporary and calibrated EU anti-subsidy duties on imports. By contrast, the indigenous American manufacturers, which have for decades skulked behind the US 25 per cent tariff on pick-up trucks, have apparently forgotten how to innovate outside that part of the market.

Long Island Offshore Wind Still Hanging on

Reuters:

The Trump administration has lifted a month-old stop-work order on Empire Wind, a $5 billion wind farm project off the coast of New York, in a compromise with the state that could also see cancelled plans for a gas pipeline revived, officials said on Tuesday.

Norway’s Equinor (EQNR.OL), opens new tab said construction work can now resume on the project, which is expected to provide power for half a million homes from 2027 onwards.

Shares in Equinor, which is mostly reliant on oil and gas, were up by 1.5% by 1016 GMT.

Denmark’s Orsted (ORSTED.CO), opens new tab, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, which is constructing two plants off the coast of the United States, saw its shares jump by 15%.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who had issued the stop order on Empire Wind on April 16, said he was encouraged that New York Governor Kathy Hochul will now allow new gas pipeline capacity to move forward.

The deal could revive plans to build the proposed Constitution natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York, which was cancelled in 2020 after years of regulatory and legal battles over environmental and other concerns.

Roads Buckle, Bridges Fail as Extreme Heat Disrupts Infrastructure

Above, road buckles suddenly in Cape Girardeaux, Missouri.
Below, Bridge in Virginia malfunctions due to heat expansion beyond design parameters.

Pretty good example of how climate conditions beyond what designers assumed can play havoc with infrastructure.
Expensive, and increasing.

Pentagon Blocks Satellite Hurricane Data

As climate impacts and weather extremes become more destructive, military resources globally have become more involved in responding to and mitigating impacts of stronger storms, flooding and droughts.
Among those resources, US and other nations satellite technology has been particularly critical in forecasting hurricane track and strength.
Pentagon now withdrawing critical data from Hurricane hunters.

Michael Lowery in Eye on the Tropics:

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced it would immediately stop ingesting, processing, and transmitting data essential to most hurricane forecasts.

The announcement was formalized on Tuesday when NOAA distributed a service change notice to all users, including the National Hurricane Center, that by next Monday, June 30^th, they would no longer receive real-time microwave data collected aboard three weather satellites jointly run by NOAA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The permanent discontinuation of data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) will severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines.

The news on Tuesday sent users across the weather and climate community – including those monitoring changes to sea ice extent in the polar regions – scrambling to understand the rationale behind the abrupt termination. Though not immediately clear why the real-time data was suddenly discontinued, the decision appears to have stemmed from Department of Defense security concerns.

Officials at the National Hurricane Center were also caught off guard by the announcement and are preparing their team for the loss of critical forecast data for the rest of the hurricane season.