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The Guardian
21-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Texas flood protest goes to Washington: ‘No more kids lost to climate disasters'
Twenty-seven blue, pink and purple trunks, adorned with yellow roses and other flowers, were placed within view of the White House on Monday – each representing a child who perished when Camp Mystic in Texas was overwhelmed by a devastating flood. 'We are gentle, angry people and we are singing for our lives,' sang a group of activists, including mothers from Texas, as they protested against the deadly consequences of government cuts and Donald Trump's inaction on the climate crisis. Flash floods killed at least 135 people over the Fourth of July weekend. Most of the deaths were along the Guadalupe River in Kerr county, north-west of San Antonio. State legislators were due to discuss authorities' initial response and possible improvements to warning systems in a special session on Monday. The 34 activists who gathered at the Ellipse, south of the White House, held signs that said, 'We need warnings, not cuts', 'Flood warnings came late, budget cuts came fir$t' and 'No more kids lost to climate disasters'. They attributed the fatalities in Texas not to a natural disaster but a 'preventable and politically charged crisis' stemming from government defunding of critical agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and National Weather Service. The protesters, many with direct or indirect connections to the flood's victims, also condemned a broader failure to address the climate crisis and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. They demanded immediate policy changes, full funding for weather and disaster response agencies and a rapid transition away from coal and oil. Samantha Gore, who grew up attending a summer camp along the Guadalupe River, where fast-moving waters rose 26 feet and washed away homes and vehicles, said: 'Our hearts are broken to be here today commemorating the lives of 27 children who should be at home right now, recounting the adventures they had at summer camp. 'They did not die as a result of natural disaster. They died as a result of choices – terrible and deadly choices – made by Kerr county officials, made by the state of Texas and made by the Trump administration.' Accurate weather predictions and timely alerts could have saved lives but were hindered by systematic defunding, Gore added, noting that, since Trump took office, Noaa and the National Weather Service had lost more than 600 staff, while weather balloon launches, flood modelling tools and emergency communication systems have been suspended or scaled back in many regions. 'These cuts directly affected Texas. Key Texas weather offices are understaffed, including those responsible for issuing flood alerts. Emergency coordination at the local level has been weakened due to reduced federal support.' Trump's so-called 'big, beautiful bill', passed by Congress in time for 4 July, will make matters worse, the activists argued, with a $200m cut to Noaa's forecasting and public alert programme. The cuts were inserted late in the process by the Texas senator Ted Cruz. Gore, 43, a functional medicine nutritionist who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, said: 'As a mother in the richest country in the world, I should not have to worry every night that I won't get flood warnings in time to save my family because our government defunded our National Weather Service and Noaa. This is insanity. This is so dangerous. This is not leadership. It's a combination of cowardice and corruption.' Trump and Texas's governor, Greg Abbott, have pushed back aggressively against questions about how well local authorities responded to forecasts of heavy rain and the first reports of flash flooding. But activists called for Washington to restore all funding to Noaa, Fema and the National Weather Service, for Abbott to release funds for flood relief without partisan conditions, for polluters to be held accountable and for a rapid transition to clean energy. Nyeka Arnold, founder and executive director of the Healing Project, a grassroots non-profit in Austin, said: 'When humans don't prepare or respond to disasters, we make them worse. We need more than thoughts and prayers. We need accountability and that's why we're here.' Arnold called for investment in local communities rooted response systems as well as infrastructure funding for flood prevention and climate resilience in historically marginalised neighbourhoods. 'Emergency planning that centres equity and not just politics.' Eileen McGinnis, who launched the Parents' Climate Community in 2019, said: 'Our kids are at the frontline of the climate crisis and we see this playing out in so many ways, big and small. Summers no longer have the same sense of unbridled joy and possibility. 'Wildfire smoke, extreme heat make it dangerous for kids even to set foot out there. Young people who survived disasters like the recent floods can develop PTSD, which is compounded by poverty, repeat exposures to disasters or other sources of instability in their lives. The list goes on and on.' Monday's protest ended with a call-and-response chant: 'The people, we rise; the people, we rise; up from the wreckage, we rise; with tears and with courage, we rise; fighting for life, we rise.'
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ted Cruz ensured Trump spending bill slashed weather forecasting funding
Ted Cruz has had quite a week. On Tuesday, the Texas senator ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding, a disaster critics say was worsened by cuts to forecasting. Cruz, who infamously fled Texas for Cancún when a crippling winter storm ravaged his state in 2021, was seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday, a day after a flash flood along the Guadalupe River in central Texas killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children and counselors at a camp. The Greece trip, first reported by the Daily Beast, ended in time for Cruz to appear at the site of the disaster on Monday morning to decry the tragedy and promise a response from lawmakers. 'There's no doubt afterwards we are going to have a serious retrospective as you do after any disaster and say, 'OK what could be done differently to prevent this disaster?'' Cruz told Fox News. 'The fact you have girls asleep in their cabins when flood waters are rising, something went wrong there. We've got to fix that and have a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm's way.' Related: Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn The National Weather Service has faced scrutiny in the wake of the disaster after underestimating the amount of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that caused the deaths and about $20bn in estimated economic damages. Late-night alerts about the dangerous floods were issued by the service but the timeliness of the response, and coordination with local emergency services, will be reviewed by officials. But before his Grecian holiday, Cruz ensured a reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (Noaa) efforts to improve future weather forecasting of events that cause the sort of extreme floods that are being worsened by the human-caused climate crisis. Cruz inserted language into the Republicans' 'big beautiful' reconciliation bill, before its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to 'accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public' around weather forecasting. A further $50m in Noaa grants to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems and coastal ecosystems was also removed. Cruz was contacted by the Guardian with questions about these cuts and his trip to Greece. Environmental groups said the slashed funding was just the latest blow to federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disasters such as the Texas flood. More than 600 employees have exited the National Weather Service amid a Trump administration push to shrink the government workforce, leaving many offices short-staffed of meteorologists and other support workers. About a fifth of all full-time workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), meanwhile, are also set to depart. 'Ted Cruz has spent years doing big oil's bidding, gutting climate research, defunding Noaa, and weakening the very systems meant to warn and protect the public,' said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Fossil Free Media. 'That's made disasters like this weekend's flood in Texas even more deadly. Now he's doubling down, pushing through even more cuts in the so-called big beautiful bill. Texans are dead and grieving, and Cruz is protecting big oil instead of the people he's supposed to represent. It's disgraceful.' Cruz, who has previously cast doubt over the scientific reality of the climate crisis, said that complaints about cuts to the National Weather Service are 'partisan finger pointing', although he conceded that people should have been evacuated earlier. 'Some are eager to point at the National Weather Service and saying that cuts there led to a lack of warning,' the Republican senator told reporters on Monday. 'I think that's contradicted by the facts and if you look at the facts in particular number one and these warnings went out hours before the flood became a true emergency.' The Trump administration, too, has rejected claims that the service was short-staffed, pointing out that extra forecasters were assigned to the San Antonio and San Angelo field offices. The service's employees union has said the offices were staffed adequately but were missing some key positions, such as a meteorologist role designed to coordinate with local emergency managers. 'People were sleeping in the middle of the night when the flood came,' said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. 'That was an act of God; it's not the administration's fault the floods hit when it did.' Leavitt said any blame placed upon Trump for flood forecasting is a 'depraved lie'. Resources for weather forecasting, as well as broader work to understand the unfolding climate crisis, could be set for further cuts, however. The Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal seeks to dismantle all of Noaa's weather and climate research labs, along with Noaa's entire research division. This would halt research and development of new weather forecasting technologies and methods. This planned budget, which would need to be passed by the Republican-held Congress to become law, comes as the threats from extreme weather events continue to mount due to rising global temperatures. 'We have added a lot of carbon to the atmosphere, and that extra carbon traps energy in the climate system,' said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. 'Because of this extra energy, every weather event we see now carries some influence from climate change. The only question is how big that influence is. 'Measuring the exact size takes careful attribution studies, but basic physics already tells us the direction – climate change very likely made this event stronger.' In a statement sent after initial publication of this story, a spokesperson for Cruz claimed that the cut funding 'had nothing to do' with weather forecasting and added, without providing further evidence, that Noaa's funding could be spent more efficiently. 'Only a shameless and soulless partisan hack would tie the one, big, beautiful bill to the Texas floods,' she said. 'There's simply more productive ways to be faithful stewards of public money and improve weather forecasts than continuing to overfund every possible Noaa account.'
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Trump delays plan to cut satellite data access crucial to hurricane forecasting
The Trump administration on Monday announced a delay of one month to a plan to cut forecasters out of an atmospheric satellite data collection program that is seen as crucial for hurricane forecasting. There has been alarm among scientists about the plan to cut access to the data after it emerged last week in a public notice sent by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). Some scientists had warned the sudden loss of access to the data for Noaa and Nasa experts could set hurricane forecasting 'back decades'. Monday's delay in the program's abrupt termination comes after an apparent intervention by a top Nasa official – a sign that the Trump administration's stance towards science may be receiving meaningful internal pushback. The data is collected and processed by US Department of Defense satellites and had been due to be suspended on Monday. It has been unclear why the decision had been made to cut forecasters out, though media reports had suggested it was driven by concerns about cybersecurity, and the new notice on Monday by Noaa describes steps as being taken to 'mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk'. Noaa had insisted last week that the changes would not affect the quality of forecasting and had previously not said anything publicly about cybersecurity. Scientists use the data for a myriad of key weather and climate purposes, including monitoring the rapidly changing evolution of hurricanes, wildfires and sea ice. Should the satellite program end on 31 July, it would still be unavailable to forecasters during the peak months of this year's Atlantic hurricane season, which runs until 30 November. In last week's notice, the agency said that 'due to recent service changes' the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) will 'discontinue ingest, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30, 2025'. Then on Monday, in a new post Noaa said the cut to DMSP data would be postponed until the end of July after a request for a postponement of the removal by Dr Karen St Germain, Nasa's earth science division director. The new notice by Noaa said the US navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC), which sends the data to Noaa, had planned to 'decommission the DMSP ingest system in Monterey to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk to the High-Performance Computing environment. 'However, late on Friday, June 27th, CNMOC (Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command) received a request from Dr Germain with Nasa to postpone the removal and to continue processing and distributing DMSP data through July 31st. 'In response, FNMOC has coordinated with CNMOC and is ready to continue processing the DMSP downloads … An update service advisory will be sent and FNMOC now expects to decommission DMSP processing no later than July 31st.' The satellites also track changes to the Arctic and Antarctic, and have been tracking changes to polar sea ice for more than 40 years. On Friday an official at space force, which is part of the Department of Defense, had said the satellites would remain functional.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Trump officials axed an online portal for its key climate report. Read it in full here
The future of the US government's premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades. Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life. But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed. A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website. The Guardian is replicating the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. The 2023 assessment, which is more than 1,800 pages long, warns that the 'effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States'. It adds that 'without rapid and deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, the risks of accelerating sea level rise, intensifying extreme weather and other harmful climate impacts will continue to grow.' Read in full the fifth national climate assessment here (it can take a few seconds for the document to load) Nasa said it is in the process of uploading the voluminous reports on to its servers, although the administration did not respond to questions over how, or in what form, future climate assessments will be conducted after the shuttering of the research effort. 'The USCGRP website is no longer active,' a Nasa spokesperson said, in reference to the US Global Change Research Program, a federally funded program to coordinate climate research. 'All preexisting reports will be hosted on the Nasa website, ensuring continuity of reporting.' Researchers who have worked, for free, to produce the reports expressed concern about the future direction of the assessments under Trump, who has called the climate crisis 'a giant scam' and 'bullshit' in the past. As president, Trump has removed mentions of climate from federal websites, scrapped research work on environmental issues, and cut staff and funding for weather forecasting and climate agencies, and has just signed a major Republican spending bill that stymies clean energy while providing greater support for the fossil fuels that are causing dangerous global heating. 'This was a labor of love from scientists to the people; these assessments were written for the public and policymakers to make decisions to keep people safe and ensure the food and water and infrastructure we need,' said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy and Texas Tech University. 'I felt very sad to see the website was taken down, because so many people rely on this information. I'm also worried that what will come next might meet the letter of the law without its spirit. It could be something full of misinformation, it could ask a large language AI model why Americans shouldn't worry about climate change. We just don't know.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion The synthesis of information in the national climate assessments is only rivaled in its authoritative and comprehensive nature by the UN's own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, Hayhoe said, and its loss may compound the impact of removing other sources of climate information and the forecasting of worsening extreme weather events, such as the deadly flood that hit Texas last week. 'It's alarmed me to see this gradual attrition of ability as climate change is happening faster than any time in human history,' said Hayhoe, who has been an author or lead author on assessments stretching back to the George W Bush administration. 'We are getting supersized extreme weather and that means we need more information, not less – we need more expertise, more data collection. Unfortunately we are seeing resources being pulled back just as our vulnerability increases.' Environmental groups have vowed to launch legal action to fully resurrect the climate assessments while Trump's political opponents have also attacked the removal. 'Burying the legally mandated climate assessment won't change the fact that climate change is already destroying lives and livelihoods, but Trump's war against the truth will impede state and local governments' ability to prepare for and protect families from climate change-fueled disasters,' said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Trump officials axed an online portal for its key climate report. Read it in full here
The future of the US government's premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades. Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life. But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed. A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website. The Guardian is replicating the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. The 2023 assessment, which is more than 1,800 pages long, warns that the 'effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States'. It adds that 'without rapid and deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, the risks of accelerating sea level rise, intensifying extreme weather and other harmful climate impacts will continue to grow.' Read in full the fifth national climate assessment here (it can take a few seconds for the document to load) Nasa said it is in the process of uploading the voluminous reports on to its servers, although the administration did not respond to questions over how, or in what form, future climate assessments will be conducted after the shuttering of the research effort. 'The USCGRP website is no longer active,' a Nasa spokesperson said, in reference to the US Global Change Research Program, a federally funded program to coordinate climate research. 'All preexisting reports will be hosted on the Nasa website, ensuring continuity of reporting.' Researchers who have worked, for free, to produce the reports expressed concern about the future direction of the assessments under Trump, who has called the climate crisis 'a giant scam' and 'bullshit' in the past. As president, Trump has removed mentions of climate from federal websites, scrapped research work on environmental issues, and cut staff and funding for weather forecasting and climate agencies, and has just signed a major Republican spending bill that stymies clean energy while providing greater support for the fossil fuels that are causing dangerous global heating. 'This was a labor of love from scientists to the people; these assessments were written for the public and policymakers to make decisions to keep people safe and ensure the food and water and infrastructure we need,' said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy and Texas Tech University. 'I felt very sad to see the website was taken down, because so many people rely on this information. I'm also worried that what will come next might meet the letter of the law without its spirit. It could be something full of misinformation, it could ask a large language AI model why Americans shouldn't worry about climate change. We just don't know.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion The synthesis of information in the national climate assessments is only rivaled in its authoritative and comprehensive nature by the UN's own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, Hayhoe said, and its loss may compound the impact of removing other sources of climate information and the forecasting of worsening extreme weather events, such as the deadly flood that hit Texas last week. 'It's alarmed me to see this gradual attrition of ability as climate change is happening faster than any time in human history,' said Hayhoe, who has been an author or lead author on assessments stretching back to the George W Bush administration. 'We are getting supersized extreme weather and that means we need more information, not less – we need more expertise, more data collection. Unfortunately we are seeing resources being pulled back just as our vulnerability increases.' Environmental groups have vowed to launch legal action to fully resurrect the climate assessments while Trump's political opponents have also attacked the removal. 'Burying the legally mandated climate assessment won't change the fact that climate change is already destroying lives and livelihoods, but Trump's war against the truth will impede state and local governments' ability to prepare for and protect families from climate change-fueled disasters,' said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator.
