ploot

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32388210

The Trump administration’s proposed budget seeks to shut down the laboratory atop a peak in Hawaii where scientists have gathered the most conclusive evidence of human-caused climate change since the 1950s.

The president’s budget proposal would also defund many other climate labs, including instrument sites comprising the US government’s greenhouse gas monitoring network, which stretches from northern Alaska to the South Pole.

But it’s the Mauna Loa laboratory that is the most prominent target of the President Donald Trump’s climate ire, as measurements that began there in 1958 have steadily shown CO2’s upward march as human activities have emitted more and more of the planet-warming gas each year.

The curve produced by the Mauna Loa measurements is one of the most iconic charts in modern science, known as the Keeling Curve, after Charles David Keeling, who was the researcher who painstakingly collected the data. His son, Ralph Keeling, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, now oversees collecting and updating that data.

The proposal to shut down Mauna Loa had been made public previously but was spelled out in more detail on Monday when NOAA submitted a budget document to Congress. It made more clear that the Trump administration envisions eliminating all climate-related research work at NOAA, as had been proposed in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for overhauling the government.

It would do this in large part by cutting NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research entirely, including some labs that are also involved in improving weather forecasting.

https://archive.ph/caA1y

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28194139

Donald Trump and White House officials walked back a Friday announcement that there would be tariff exemptions on imported electronics.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump directly denied the tariff exemption announcement.

…

“This is really mind-boggling. If this was serious industrial policy, the main thing you want is certainty: ‘Here’s the tariff, it will be in place for the indefinite future, and you should plan accordingly,’” Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, said, according to The Washington Post. “Here, it’s basically: ‘Come back next week and see what we’ve got.’ That’s no way to run an economy.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27739404

Summary

Russia was excluded from Trump’s sweeping tariff list due to existing U.S. sanctions that limit trade, White House officials claimed.

Despite lower trade volumes, countries like Syria were still included, prompting skepticism.

Trump has prioritized ending the war in Ukraine and threatened 50% tariffs on nations buying Russian oil. Russian state media framed the omission as sanctions-based, not favoritism, with some mocking Trump’s harsher stance on allies.

Ukraine, meanwhile, faces a 10% tariff despite the country’s strategic partnership with the U.S.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/41630293

She said her lecture was going to discuss humanitarian aid in a time of crises as well as the challenges aid workers have faced in Gaza and other war zones.

“[I was told] that discussing the USAID cuts could be perceived as an anti-governmental narrative,” Liu told Global in an interview on Friday. She added that NYU, her alma mater, also said her lecture risked being perceived as antisemitic.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60051791

A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.”

Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35340931

“They’re our brothers and sisters. When we stop seeing people that way it’s so easy to start making laws or enacting policies that harm them.”