Three things that always come out: the Sun, the Moon, and the Truth.
– attributed to Gautama Buddha
That won’t keep tyrants from perennially hating , fearing, and denying that there can be physics or fact that are not subject to their decrees.
PBS News hour has one of my favorite Arctic experts, Twila Moon, to talk about the importance of monitoring the polar latitudes. I first met Twila in Iceland for a conference in 2014, I think, since then I interviewed her numerous times.
MAGA will never understand science, or its importance for citizens and decision makers, and I continue to be inspired by the dedication of scientists to continue communicating critical observations.
The Trump administration has pulled federal funding for an annual report chronicling the changing environment of the Arctic, where rapid warming is upending ecosystems, reconfiguring trade routes and scrambling Great Power strategy.
Every year for the past two decades, the Arctic Report Card has provided a checkup on the health of the region, which is heating up at several times the pace of the rest of the globe. Sea ice has dwindled. Snow cover has shrunk. Glaciers are thinning out. Tundra vegetation has grown more abundant, leading to wildfires that burn through huge areas.
Now, the report’s coordinator and publisher, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is withdrawing its support for the report card. In a statement on Tuesday, Kim Doster, the agency’s director of communications, didn’t provide a reason.
“Coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card will not be facilitated through NOAA,” Ms. Doster said. “All data historically contributed by NOAA to the product will continue to be collected and will remain publicly available.”
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The broad importance of climate and ecological changes in the Arctic is why NOAA worked to ensure that each year’s report would be relevant to many kinds of people and organizations, including Indigenous communities, businesses and the military, said Rick Spinrad, the oceanographer who led NOAA during the Biden administration.
And yet, because the Arctic is such a bellwether of the effects of global warming, the report card was a natural target in the Trump administration’s efforts to root out what it calls climate alarmism, Dr. Spinrad said. “It’s another inane step in this administration’s turning a blind eye to climate change, among other environmental issues.”