Yesterday, the White House rocked the scientific world by announcing that it would be dismantling and substantially defunding the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), beginning “immediately.”
This is a scientific catastrophe.
“I’m not going for hyperbole, but I firmly believe we’re talking about setting back science in this country by decades,” Antonio Busalacchi, president of NCAR’s parent body, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, said today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “And not just science—we’re talking about [scientific] input that saves lives, [saves] property, advances economic development, and [enhances] national security,” he said.
NCAR is an organization most people have probably never heard of. But it is extremely well known in the earth sciences field, where it provides basic research fundamental to our understanding of such issues as coastal flooding, wildfires, 90-day weather forecasts, and hurricane forecasting.
It has even played a role in improving airline safety. “We’ve not had a casualty [in many years] from an aircraft crash due to wind shear or downbursts,” Busalacchi said. “That’s a result of a monitoring system, put in for severe, extreme weather” that was developed by NCAR.
Why is NCAR being dismantled? According to comments given to USA Today by Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, it’s because of three main offenses: (a) it is a hub of “climate alarmism”; (b) it is engaged in excessively woke activities; and (c) it has done research on the impact of “weather conditions and changing climate” on wind energy.
All of these reasons are bogus.
“Climate alarmism” is activism. Organizations like NCAR are not activists or lobbyists. “We are physical scientists.” Busalacchi said. “We may inform policy, but we’re not political scientists. [Our job] is not to prescribe policy.”
Nor is the Center radically “woke.” In fact, the “woke” activities singled out by the Administration were small aspects of what the Center has done. One was the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, designed to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered” for indigenous peoples. NCAR dropped its funding for the project in January 2025, shortly after President Trump’s anti-DEI executive order was issued, Busalacchi said. “We were one of the very first [to comply with that order]. In less than 72 hours we were in complete compliance.” (It’s not clear whether the Center remains active under different funding.)
The other singled-out activity was an art exhibit focusing on humanity’s association with water. Why that is “woke” is not readily apparent. “Water is a natural resource,” Busalacchi said. “It should be apolitical.” And he noted, “no federal funding was received [for] that art exhibit.”
As for wind power? Yes, that’s a truly dangerous third rail in today’s Administration, but NCAR wasn’t building windmills, Busalacchi noted: it was helping to forecast power generation from them. By doing so, he said, it was saving money for Americans ratepayers by lowering their utility bills.
Another part of Vought’s order called for salvaging those portions of NCAR that the Administration does find useful, and splitting them into multiple smaller centers. That, too, is counterproductive. To begin with, Busalacchi noted, it will produce disorganization and inefficiency because the various parts of the center’s activities reinforce each other. “They go hand in hand,” he said.
Not only will splitting them into separate smaller centers impede the science, he said, but it will waste considerable amounts of money by requiring multiple new HR systems, IT systems, legal systems, communication systems, press offices, etc.
“It’s trite to say it, but the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts, ” Busalacchi said.
Photo by en:user:Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
Thank you for this wake-up call. It’s been under the radar.