Don't Say "Climate": Northeast Climate Center To Close Under Trump Fears Of Science

The Northeast Regional Climate Center looks like
it will be another victim in the Trump war
on climate science 

The Northeast Regional Climate Adaptation Center in Amherst, Massachusetts will probably close by the end of the month because the Trump administration doesn't want anybody researching anything to do with climate change. 

The center is Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of the Trump people because it helps state and local partners formulate plants to adapt wildlife, water resources and land to climate change. 

"'This is just another way to stop science," said Bethany Bradley, the center's co-director and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where the research center is hosted.

As WBUR reports:  

"In mid-August, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed the agency's ecosystems  research arm, which overseas these centers, to spend money only on federal employees' salaries, according to budget documents.  

Other spending, on activities like publishing articles, hiring post-doctoral researchers, or applying for operating funds, has stalled, Bradley said. Planned projects for the upcoming academic year were canceled. In a typical year, the center's budget ranges from $3 to $4 million."

The center runs out of money at the end of this month.  If the OMB spending freeze isn't lifted, the center will close and 20 or so jobs might go.

It's just another of many climate change resources evaporating under the gun of the Trump administration. This center in Amherst is one of nine regional hubs across the nations that helps site and local organizations formulate plans to adapt wildlife, water resources and land to the effects of climate change. The nine regional hubs have been supported by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Several other of the nine regional climate centers in the United States have already shut down or are about to under the spending freeze. 

MY RANT

What galls me the about these climate cutbacks from the Trump administration is the wording they use about these topics. Of course their wording is meant to anger "woke liberals" or whatever they call anybody who disagrees with them.

To MAGA, people who think climate change is a serious thing aren't just wrong or misguided.  They are the enemy. That's why the funding freeze described by the White House "guts a weaponized deep state" and that efforts to combat the effects of climate change are the "Green New Scam."

I suppose it's effective PR, especially if the target audience is willfully ignorant. And for the MAGA crowd,  it probably feels good inside to use language like that.   

You can have temper tantrums all you want, but nothing gets done. Which maybe is the point. Why do actual work when you can put on an impromptu, easy show instead? Mostly for likes and clicks on MAGA social media. 

Who cares if peoples livelihoods are at stake, right?  President Trump, you're 79 years old. Isn't it time to grow up?