Latest news with #ScienceFriday
Vox
a day ago
- Automotive
- Vox
Elon Musk couldn't change Trump's mind on electric vehicles
is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is also a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News. Elon Musk and President Donald Trump — two of the most powerful, outspoken billionaires in America — are still tangled up in a messy breakup over a variety of issues. It's no shock that these two men with huge egos would have friction, but it's interesting to look at some of the specific things that seem to be causing trouble between them. In particular, Trump's and Musk's differing views on climate change and clean energy have evidently become an irritant again. Recall that Musk, CEO of the electric car company Tesla, participated in White House councils during Trump's first term, but left after Trump began the process of pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement. But Musk began to drift to the political right. He publicly backed Trump's campaign for a second term — onstage and with money — and was rewarded with a high-profile quasi-governmental post as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency that laid off thousands of federal workers. It seemed like they were accomplishing their mutual goals. Trump even turned the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and got one himself. However, Tesla made about one-third of its profits over the past decade from selling compliance credits to other carmakers in states that adopted California's vehicle emissions rules as well as in several other countries. The Trump administration is also targeting the programs that created this line of business through executive orders. The back-and-forth over the years between Trump and Musk was mirrored in the perceptions of Tesla's products. The sleek electric cars were once rolling billboards projecting that their owners were concerned about climate change and are now attacked as endorsements of fascism. More broadly, it shows that there are stubborn political divides on how people view clean technology — electric vehicles, renewable energy, battery storage, and so on. A poll this week from the Pew Research Center showed that Republicans have less and less favorable views of clean tech. The exception is nuclear energy, which has seen increasing support among both Democrats and Republicans. Pew Research Center But on the flip side, Republicans tend to strongly support fossil fuel extraction from offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and coal mining — far more than Democrats do. California and 11 other states now plan to end the sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Two-thirds of Americans say they are against this idea, but here, too, there's a political divide, with 85 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats in opposition. Looking back over the past five years, it's apparent that even when Trump and Musk were in alignment, they couldn't change the political valence of electric cars. Pew Research Center Now, at least one more Republican has soured on EVs: Trump is reportedly looking for a buyer for his red Tesla Model S after his dustup with Musk. It will take more than a thumbs-up from the White House or the enthusiastic backing of a billionaire to change Republicans' minds about technologies that help limit climate change. There are some outliers, though, like the Iowa Trump supporters who also back wind power. Related Meet the Trump supporters who love wind energy But the momentum behind these tools is massive and mounting. Wind, solar, EVs, and grid batteries have all seen tremendous price drops, huge performance gains, and surging deployment in recent years. The Trump administration's policies could sap some of this momentum, but they can't stop it.
Vox
2 days ago
- Climate
- Vox
One thing we can count on to keep ruining our summers
is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is also a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News. Smoke from wildfires in Canada is once again shrouding parts of the United States — cities like Chicago and Milwaukee — with unhealthy air, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Parts of the plume have reached as far as Europe. The bulk of the smoke is forecasted to drift eastward across North America and thin out. As of Thursday afternoon, Canada was battling more than 200 blazes, the majority in western provinces like British Columbia and Alberta, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. In Canada, the fires forced more than 27,000 people to evacuate, but the smoke is 'impacting aerial operations for both suppression and evacuation flights.' This is all too familiar. Canada faced a massive spate of wildfires in 2023 and in 2024 that similarly sent clouds of ash and dust across North America, reaching places like New York City. The burned area this year is a fraction of the size of the regions scorched in 2023, a record-breaking year for wildfires in Canada, but it's still early in the fire season. Canadian fire officials warn that the 'potential for emerging significant wildland fires is high to extreme' and lightning may lead to more ignitions in the next few days. These blazes remind us that the dangers of wildfires reach far beyond their flames, and the threat is growing. Wildfire smoke contains a melange of gases like carbon monoxide, particles of soot, and hazardous chemicals like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that can cause cancer. The tiniest particles in smoke can penetrate deep into the lungs, and even reach the bloodstream, leading to a variety of health problems. When it drifts over a community, it often causes a surge in emergency room visits as people who breathe the smoke suffer strokes, heart attacks, and asthma attacks. There's also evidence that long-term exposure to smoke can lead to a higher likelihood of death from heart, lung, kidney, and digestive diseases. And experts believe the true health burden from wildfires is likely much more extensive than we realize. The harms to health will increase as wildfires become more destructive. Though wildfires are a natural, regular, and vital phenomenon across many landscapes, more people are now living in fire-prone areas, increasing the risk to lives and homes. That increases the odds of starting a fire and means more people and property are in harm's way when one ignites. Decades of fire suppression have allowed fuels like trees and grasses to build up to dangerous levels. And as humanity continues to burn fossil fuels, emitting greenhouse gases and heating up the planet, the climate is changing in ways that enhance fire conditions. So smoke isn't the only pollutant to worry about, and as average temperatures continue to rise, these factors are undoing hard-fought progress in improving air quality across much of the world. However, there are ways to clear the air and avoid some of the worst harms. One tactic is to pay attention to the Air Quality Index in your area and avoid being outdoors when pollution reaches high levels. Wearing a high-quality KN95 or N95 mask can help reduce the damage from polluted air. Blocking air from getting indoors and filtering the air in living areas reduces smoke exposure as well.
Vox
6 days ago
- Business
- Vox
The wild hunt for clean energy minerals
is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is also a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News. The world is hungry for more stuff: televisions, phones, motors, container ships, solar panels, satellites. That means the stuff required to make stuff is in high demand, and none more so than what are known as 'critical minerals.' These are a handful of elements and minerals that are particularly important for making the modern devices that run the global economy. But 'critical' here doesn't mean rare so much as it means essential — and alarmingly vulnerable to supply chain shocks. In the US, the Geological Survey has flagged 50 minerals as critical to our economy and security. And including some among that larger group, the US Department of Energy is focused on 18 materials that are especially important for energy — copper for transmission lines, cobalt for cathodes in batteries, gallium for LEDs, neodymium for magnets in motors, and so on. For governments, these minerals are more than just industrial components — they're potential bottlenecks. If producers of these substances decide to restrict access to their customers as a political lever, if prices shoot up, or if more industries develop an appetite for them and eat into the supply, companies could go bankrupt and efforts to limit climate change could slow down. That's because these minerals are especially vital for so many clean energy technologies. They're essential for the tools used to produce, store, transmit, and use electricity without emitting greenhouse gases. They're vital to building solar panels, batteries, and electric motors. As the worldwide race for cleaner energy speeds up, the demand for these products is surging. According to the International Energy Agency, mineral demands from clean energy deployment will see anywhere from a doubling to a quadrupling from current levels by 2040. But these minerals aren't spread evenly across the world, which could leave some countries bearing most of the environmental burdens from mining critical minerals while wealthier nations reap the economic benefits and other countries get left out of the supply chain entirely. 'A world powered by renewables is a world hungry for critical minerals,' said UN Secretary-General António Guterres at a panel last year. 'For developing countries, critical minerals are a critical opportunity — to create jobs, diversify economies, and dramatically boost revenues. But only if they are managed properly.' Right now, the US is a major consumer of critical minerals, but not much of a producer — a fact that's become an obsession for the Trump administration. The president has signed several executive orders aimed at increasing critical mineral production within the US by relaxing regulations and speeding up approvals for new critical mineral extraction projects. In Congress, lawmakers are mulling spending billions of dollars to build up a critical mineral stockpile similar to the strategic petroleum reserve. Even as the US government takes those steps, the international trade war that the Trump administration itself launched has begun to disrupt the global supply of critical minerals. China is one of the largest producers of critical minerals, particularly rare earth metals like dysprosium and terbium, but it has imposed limits on some of its critical mineral exports in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs, sending prices skyward. The dawning awareness that the critical minerals everyone needs may not be readily available has led countries to redouble their efforts to find more of these materials wherever they can — in the ocean, across deserts, and even in space. In the near term, that means the world will need more mines to expand supplies of critical minerals. And with the market for clean energy poised to expand even further, scientists are trying to find new alternative materials that can power our world without making it hotter. But it will take more time and investment before the plentiful can replace the precious. Why we're hooked on critical minerals Since the list of critical minerals is long and diverse, it's helpful to narrow it down. And one mineral stands out: lithium. The IEA estimates that half of the mineral demand growth for clean energy will come from electric vehicles and batteries, mainly from their needs for this soft, light metal. Depending on how aggressively the world works to decarbonize, lithium use is projected to increase by as much as 51 times its current levels by 2040, more than 10 million metric tons per year. That's because lithium is still the best material to store and release energy in batteries across a variety of applications, from the tiny cells in wireless earbuds to arrays of thousands of cells packed into giant batteries on the power grid. As more cars trade gasoline engines for electric motors, and as more intermittent wind and solar power connect to the grid, we need more ways to store energy. While lithium is not particularly rare, getting it out of the earth isn't easy. There are only a handful of places in the world that currently have the infrastructure to extract it at scale and at a low enough price to make doing so worthwhile, even with ever rising demand. The US produces less than 2 percent of the world's lithium, with almost all of it coming from just one mine in Nevada. The US has about 20 major sites where lithium could be extracted, according to the US Geological Survey, but building new mines can take more than a decade, and the timelines have only been getting longer. Because of their costs and the long-lasting environmental damage they can cause, mining projects have to undergo reviews before they can be approved. They often generate local opposition as well, stretching out project timelines with litigation. But the US is motivated to build this out and there are already new lithium projects underway in places like the Salton Sea in California and the Smackover formation across the southern US. These sites would extract lithium from brine. Could the US replace lithium and other critical minerals with cheaper, more abundant substances? Not easily. 'Substitution is not impossible, but depends on which material,' Sophia Kalantzakos, who studies environmental science and public policy at NYU Abu Dhabi, said in an email. Some materials are truly one of a kind, while others have alternatives that need a lot more research and development before they can step in. For example, there are companies investing in lithium alternatives in batteries, but they also have to build up a whole supply chain to get enough of the replacement material, which can take years. And it's not enough to mine critical minerals; they need to be refined and processed into usable forms. Here again, China leads, operating 80 percent of the world's refining capacity. The bottom line is that there's no immediate, easy answer to the critical mineral supply crunch right now. But there might be solutions that emerge in the years to come. How can we get around critical mineral constraints? These challenges have spurred a wave of research and development. Engineers are already finding ways to do more with less. Automakers like Ford, Tesla, and the Chinese company BYD are increasingly turning toward lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries as an alternative to conventional lithium-ion cells. Not only does the LFP chemistry use less lithium for a given energy storage capacity, it also uses less of other critical minerals like nickel and cobalt, lowering its cost. The batteries also tend to be more durable and stable, making them less prone to catastrophic failure. The US Department of Energy has invested in ways to make lithium-based batteries more efficient and easier to manufacture by redesigning the structure of battery components to store more energy. Researchers are also investigating battery designs that avoid lithium altogether. Chemistries like aluminum ion and sodium ion, as their names suggest, use different and far more abundant elements to carry charges inside the battery. But they still have to catch up to lithium in terms of durability, safety, performance, and production scale. 'I think this lithium-ion technology will still drive much of the energy transition,' said Rachid Amui, a resource economist who coauthored a United Nations Trade & Development report on critical minerals for batteries. It will likely be decades before alternatives can dethrone lithium. Eventually, as components wear out, recycling could help meet some critical mineral needs. But demand for technologies like batteries is poised to see a huge jump, which means the world will have no choice but to grow its fresh lithium supplies. There is some good news, though. Mining is getting more efficient and safer. 'There's so much autonomous technology now being developed in the mining industry that is making mining safer than we could have ever imagined 15, 20 years ago,' said Adam Simon, a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Michigan. That's helping drive down costs and increase the efficiency of mineral extraction. The number of known sources of lithium is also rising. KoBold Metals, a mining firm backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, is using AI to locate more critical mineral deposits all over the world. The Energy Department is also throwing its weight behind domestic innovation. The department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which invests in long-shot energy ideas, is funding 18 projects to increase domestic production of critical minerals. The program, dubbed MINER, is aiming to develop minerals that can capture carbon dioxide. 'Through programs like MINER and targeted investments in domestic innovation, we're working to reduce reliance on foreign sources and lay the groundwork for an American energy future that is reliable, cost-effective, and secure,' said Doug Wicks, a program director for ARPA-E, in a statement to Vox. There's also a global race to secure more mineral supplies from far-flung places, all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. On parts of the seafloor, there are vast fields of nodules made of nickel, cobalt, lithium, and manganese. For mining companies, the argument is that mining the seafloor could be less damaging to the environment than drilling or brine extraction on land. But the ocean floor is anything but a desolate place; there's a lot of life down there taking many forms, including species that have yet to be discovered. One of the most lucrative areas for sea mining, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, happens to have a rich ecosystem of sponges, anemones, and sea cucumbers. Another factor to consider is that pulling up rocks from the bottom of the sea is inevitably expensive. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone can reach 18,000 feet deep. Hauling those minerals up, shipping them to shore, and refining them adds to their sticker price. 'I think it's interesting and needed because of the [research and development] that it stimulates,' Simon said. 'But economically, there's no company right now who could actually mine the lithium in those clays from the bottom of the ocean.' There are even companies that have proposed mining critical minerals from asteroids. One company, AstroForge, has already launched a test spacecraft into deep space. That's an even dicier business proposition since working in space is even more expensive than trying to mine the bottom of the ocean. But space mining technology is a moonshot — still gestational and decades away from even returning a sample. The companies behind these proposals say that humanity's hunger for these minerals is only growing and it's prudent to start taking steps now toward building up supplies of raw materials in space.
Vox
27-05-2025
- Business
- Vox
The world's largest emitter just delivered some good climate news
is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is also a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News. Panda Solar Station in Datong, Shanxi Province of China. The first Panda Solar Station began operations on August 10, 2017. The station's installed capacity is 100MW, which is estimated to generate 3.2 billion kWh of electricity, saving 1.06 million tons of coal and reducing 2.74 million tons of carbon dioxide emission during its expected lifespan of 25 years. Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images China is the world's largest single greenhouse gas emitter, spewing more than double the amount of heat-trapping chemicals as the next biggest climate polluter, the United States. For decades, China's emissions soared ever higher as its economy grew, burning extraordinary volumes of coal, oil, and natural gas to light up cities, power factories, and fuel cars. The trend seemed unstoppable: At one point, China was approving two new coal power plants per week. It was an alarming prospect for the whole world. 'Eighty-five percent of emissions for the remainder of the century are projected to occur outside the EU and the US,' said Michael Greenstone, an economist at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. 'If we're going to make real progress on climate change, that will require reductions from that 85 percent.' And since China is the single-largest emitter, there's no feasible way to meet international climate change targets without them on board. But now, for the first time, there's been a shift: China's greenhouse gas emissions have actually fallen even as energy demand went up. According to a new report at Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, China's overall greenhouse gas emissions have dropped for the first time, thanks largely to the country's aggressive build-out of clean energy. Looking at official statistics and commercial data, the analysis shows greenhouse gas output fell 1 percent over the past year, even as China's overall energy use and economic activity increased. It's not a massive shift, but the fact that the curve has bent at all is a major development for the global effort against climate change. The growth rate of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions has begun to level off, but it has yet to decline. In order to eventually halt human-caused warming, that rate has to effectively reach zero, and in order to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, that has to happen roughly within the next three decades. The decline of emissions in China is a big step toward this international goal, and the timing puts it on course for its own climate targets, too. China had previously committed to peaking its greenhouse gas emissions before 2030. 'This is a little ahead of schedule,' Greenstone said. 'The planet is happy about that.' Why did this happen? In large part, the decline in emissions came from clean electricity production. China deployed vastly more wind, solar, and nuclear power — sources that don't emit carbon dioxide — at a pace faster than its electricity demand growth. Meanwhile, its coal and gas electricity production dropped. China's emissions have dipped before due to economic slowdowns, so the fact that its economy grew while emissions declined is a significant turning point, putting China in a league with more than 30 countries, including the US, that have already done the same. China has established itself as the world's largest producer of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and batteries, driving down prices for the global market. It's deploying these technologies within its own borders, as well as exporting them en masse, and some of its biggest customers are developing countries. That means China's investments in clean energy redound to the rest of the world. Renewables accounted for 90 percent of new power capacity installed worldwide last year. Later this year, countries will gather in Brazil for the COP30 climate conference, where world leaders will hash out how to bring new, stronger commitments to cut their contributions to climate change by 2035. China's President Xi Jinping pledged that his country will come to the table with a comprehensive plan to further reduce its emissions across its economy, while the US may not show up at all. One his first day of his second term, President Donald Trump began the process of pulling the country out of the Paris climate agreement altogether. Again. However, in the Carbon Brief report, Myllyvirta noted that China's small drop in emissions could easily go back up. If its economy grows even faster, demand for fossil fuels could rise again. Whether that happens depends, in part, on how the dust settles on the tariff fight between the US and China. High trade barriers would slow China's economy. Losing the US as a customer could push China to try to compensate by installing more clean energy domestically. China also emits greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide. In particular, China is releasing high levels of HFC-23, a byproduct of making nonstick coatings and a pollutant that is thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. China committed to halting HFC-23 pollution entirely when it signed the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol in 2021.
Vox
09-05-2025
- Climate
- Vox
Your weather forecast is about to get a lot worse
is a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is also a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News. An aerial view of severe flooding in Frankfort, Kentucky, caused by days of heavy rainfall across the Midwest on April 7, 2025. Leandro Lozada/AFP via Getty Images Did you check the weather forecast today? Whether it was on your phone, the 5-day outlook in your newspaper, or your friendly TV meteorologist, that forecast was built on a massive government-run network of sensors and computers that get the weather right more often than not while rarely getting the attention they deserve. And now that system is being taken apart, piece by piece. NOAA, the main US science agency that studies weather and climate, has already lost at least 2,000 workers since January thanks to a combination of layoffs, buyouts, and retirements. More job cuts may be looming. The White House says it wants to cut NOAA's $6 billion budget by almost 30 percent. The upshot is that with these cuts, efforts to make forecasts even more accurate will stall, while existing forecasts may get worse. Weather forecasts are not just about whether or not you need an umbrella; they provide critical planning information for air travel, farming, shipping, and energy production. And they also save lives. In April, massive spring floods hit the central and southern US. Ahead of the storm, the National Weather Service at NOAA warned of upward of 15 inches of rainfall. 'This is not your average flood risk,' according to a NWS bulletin from April 2. 'Generational flooding with devastating impacts is possible.' The ensuing storms and floods killed at least 24 people, but given their extensive area, the death toll could have been much higher. In a report this week, scientists at the World Weather Attribution research group said that good storm predictions and effective emergency management were key to saving lives. Those forecasts and storm alerts were the product of decades of investment and infrastructure built up across the country. 'The US National Weather Service forecast the floods a week in advance and issued warnings throughout the event,' said Friederike Otto, a climatologist who leads World Weather Attribution, during a recent call with reporters. 'And as a result, people in the region knew when they needed to evacuate, and so the death toll was relatively small compared to similar events.' But with the recent government cuts, the US is losing the data that informs these predictions and the scientists who produce them. The National Weather Service has been contending with understaffing for decades, and now the recent firings have made things worse as the US heads into another summer likely filled with more extreme weather. Of the 122 NWS forecast offices across the US, 30 do not have a chief meteorologist at the moment. Related Elon Musk is coming for our weather service More people are living in vulnerable areas, and as global temperatures continue to rise, the destruction from extreme weather is getting worse. But even places that historically have avoided severe heat and torrential downpours are seeing dangerous weather become more common. That's why predicting the weather is more valuable than ever and why it's so alarming that the US is losing its capabilities. How weather forecasts work To build a weather prediction, you start with measurements of the earth, the sky, and the sea, sometimes from very far away. A thunderstorm in the southeastern US may have its seeds in the Pacific Ocean weeks in advance, for example. 'It all starts with data,' said Alan Sealls, president of the American Meteorological Society. But how do we actually get all of that data? It can come from something as sophisticated as a geostationary satellite or as simple as a weather balloon. Twice a day, the National Weather Service launches these helium-filled orbs from 92 sites across the US. They take snapshots of temperature, humidity, and windspeed as they rise into the atmosphere. This data doesn't just inform weather models for the US but feeds into global models that help predict sunshine, rain, clouds, and snow all over the world. 'The weather balloons give us such detailed, precise data no other instrument can get,' Sealls said. 'If we don't have those in the area where that weather is likely to be hazardous or threatening, we potentially have a degraded forecast.' Between balloons, radars, satellites, buoys, aircraft measurements, and ground instruments across the country, NOAA has built one of the most robust weather monitoring systems in the world, collecting 6.3 billion observations per day. The National Weather Service then plugs the data from these instruments into computer models to predict the next torrential downpour, cold snap, heat wave, or thunderstorm. And almost all of this information is available to the public for free. Related One agency that explains what the government actually does for you However, most of us aren't collating our own, personal weather reports from raw data. We're getting them from any of the multitude of cell phone apps available — from the Weather Channel to Carrot Weather to Weather Underground — or from local experts who we trust. Meteorologists from news agencies or private companies also use the government's raw data and models to produce their own weather predictions that are focused on specific areas or draw on outside expertise and experience. That's why the forecasts on TV, in newspapers, or in weather apps can differ. But they still rely on the same foundational government data — especially when it comes to dangerous extremes. 'When we're on TV talking about hazardous weather, most of us around the country are in direct contact with the National Weather Service,' Sealls said. 'The National Weather Service, that is definitely the center point of all weather forecasting in the United States.' Government researchers are also constantly improving weather forecasting. A modern 5-day forecast is as accurate as a 1-day forecast in 1980. A 72-hour hurricane track prediction these days is better than a 24-hour prediction from decades ago. The National Weather Service's annual budget is just $1.3 billion — and yet its services add up to billions of dollars in economic benefits and untold numbers of lives saved. NOAA is now testing even better models for hurricanes and tropical storms that could provide up to five days of lead time. Budget and job cuts are already hampering weather predictions Already, some NWS sites in the US have reduced the number of weather balloon launches and some have stopped due to budget and staffing cuts. 'They've been short-staffed for a long time, but the recent spate of people retiring or being let go have led some stations now to the point where they do not have enough folks to go out and launch those balloons,' said Pamela Knox, an agricultural climatologist at the University of Georgia extension and director of the UGA weather network. Since weather models rely so much on initial readings from real-world measurements like weather balloons, losing them can lower the quality of predictions. Losing personnel might also mean less maintenance on equipment like radars, leading to more outages. And having fewer staff scientists makes it more difficult to provide timely emergency alerts. 'We're becoming more blind because we are not having access to that data anymore,' Knox said. 'A bigger issue is when you have extreme events, because extreme events have a tendency to happen very quickly. You have to have real-time data.' 'If you have fewer people on staff,' she added, 'more things are going to fall through the cracks.' At the same time, the climate is changing. That means that the historical patterns of weather no longer apply in much of the country, and continued warming will alter these trends further. The World Weather Attribution team estimated that the April extreme rainfall in the US was two to five times more likely due to warming, and that its intensity increased by 13 to 26 percent. Yet at a time when the impacts of these changes have become impossible to ignore, the Trump administration is cutting climate research as well. The White House's budget proposal specifically 'terminates a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy-ending 'Green New Deal' initiatives.' The US did have a system for staying ahead of these long-term threats, but the Trump administration dismissed all the scientists working on the National Climate Assessment, a report required by law that assesses the current and future impacts of climate change to the country. The result is a country facing a growing threat from natural forces but actively sabotaging its ability to stay ahead of them.
