Colorado Politics, in a report by Ernest Luning, says the Trump administration is moving to dismantle Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, with the White House calling the facility a source of climate alarmism and directing the National Science Foundation to break up the lab while moving any vital activities elsewhere. The story notes NCAR’s budget had already faced a 40 percent cut proposal and that the NSF provides more than half of its funding.
State Democrats blasted the move as deeply dangerous and reckless. Gov. Jared Polis warned that beyond climate work, NCAR provides severe weather data that protects lives and property. The piece adds that NCAR employs more than 800 people, is managed by UCAR’s university consortium, and that NSF is reviewing assets like the Wyoming Supercomputing Center and two research aircraft as part of a restructuring.
The Bullet Point Brief
- White House rationale. Officials label NCAR a hub of climate alarmism and cite its woke direction as cause to break it up. Vital weather work would move elsewhere.
- Colorado pushback. Polis and Democratic members of Congress call the plan deeply dangerous and blatantly retaliatory. Politics meets science in a cage match.
- Follow the money. NSF covers more than half of NCAR’s funding and had floated a 40 percent cut. Restructuring includes supercomputing and aircraft divestitures.
- What NCAR is. A nonprofit research hub founded in 1960, run by UCAR’s 130 plus member institutions, and the largest federal program for climate and severe weather.
- Bigger pattern. The article situates this with prior Trump era cuts and firings tied to federal climate work, fueling claims of retaliation.
My Bottom Line
This is the kind of stuff that wears out the Great Suburban Normie. If Trump does it, Democrats call it the end of science. If Democrats do it, Republicans call it tyranny in a lab coat. Life is not that black and white. The last administration absolutely weaponized information and poured gas on the green energy grift. That happened. Is canceling NCAR a threat to public safety or an attack on science itself? No. It is not. Spare us the crocodile tears, Governor. Is it deeply dangerous? No. Is it blatantly retaliatory? There is a good chance it is. Barack Obama had it right. Elections have consequences.
NCAR is a nonprofit. If the research has marketplace value, philanthropy and industry can help shoulder it. At the same time, government does have a role in baseline weather research and in showing citizens practical ways to be good stewards. That is not socialism. That is common sense. The problem is the twenty year mission creep into advocacy and a taxpayer funded narrative factory that scolds how people live.
Where is the middle? Try this. Firewall public safety from politics. Fund core weather modeling, fire, flood, and aviation forecasting at stable levels and keep that work strictly nonpartisan. Require open data, open code, and independent replication so findings stand on merit, not press releases. Mandate a bipartisan scientific oversight board with staggered terms to prevent partisan whiplash.
Then diversify everything else. Set a matching model where climate adjacent projects above the public safety baseline require non federal dollars from philanthropy, universities, and industry. Impose regular sunset reviews on programs that drift into activism. Publish value for money scorecards so taxpayers can see outcomes, not slogans. You want to study stewardship tools for homeowners and ranchers. Great. Focus on actionable, local risk reduction and stop lecturing about lifestyles.
That is a workable center. Keep the lifesaving science. Cut the sermon. Make the advocacy pay its own way. And let the data be checked, challenged, and improved in daylight.
Source: Colorado Politics
