U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse (opens in new tab)

But… why? Climate change is very much real and even stubborn deep-right voters like my father now ‘believe’ in it. Ok, some people make some cash. But wouldn’t they anyway? I don’t understand this need to keep pandering to a minority and to destroy ecosystems.

Remove the source of evidence and its easier to deny the claim.

I don't believe Trump himself makes any of these decisions, and as for deals I don't think he remembers what happened yesterday let alone a deal made on the campaign trail. Parties in his administration are actively trying to destroy science and cripple any kind of climate research or green energy development, even if it costs nothing. Whoever they are, they make these plans and then get him to sign while he's awake.

That cheapest option may not be the cheapest option in the long-term when the next Democratic president would re-activate the devices.

Same reasoning as removal of many post office boxes in last days of Trump 1 term.

Quid pro quo

Oil industry pays and Trump delivers.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-exec...

The crazy thing is that the oil companies confessed to a misinformation campaign and at least publicly talked about change/reform (of course, they're still oil exploration/refinement companies so not abandoning that). But they did discuss responsible use of fossil fuels in transition towards renewables.

But Trump was fooled and is more committed than ever to the since-abandoned misinformation campaign. It took on a bigger life than Exxon ever could've imagined.

The snowflakiest of them all - they can't handle unbiased readings from instruments that survey our planet.

To be honest this sounds more like an excuse and cover for having a bunch of ships and submarines in places they'd normally wouldn't be at.

Where did you get that the number of federally funded graduate students is 3.1 million?

Note that many will have industry, international or self funded (for MS it is less common to have funding). The 9B figure for maintaining the F35 you just said is very close to the entire annual budget of the NSF. Which is the main funding source of most of non medical research.

Also we are not talking about military budget, just the F35 maintenance program here.

Ok, but the military is being used for bad things not good things in one of the most easily defended countries in the world, a pure waste.

You are both comparing stuff that is nonsensical to compare $ amounts on. Would you give up science for more F-35s or vice versa? probably not or not by much.

The poster said they work in academia, not the part that has to do with science, so it seems unfair to compare the F35 to all of academia when they were complaining about science being cut.

Later, after the math showing that graduate students as a whole are more expensive than the F35 program, you claim that the U.S already spends more on education and science than the military.

The claim is of course somewhat unclear, because what comprises science spending. Is Darpa science and not military. Does Nasa count as science in this claim? If Nasa does then it might be that you throw all the budgets of NOAA and the EPA and other similar organizations into the Science pile. I say it just because I am unsure how you are calculating one part of your budget. Actually the education part I am going to suggest that is just higher education.

Higher education is around 100 billion a year, without student loans which doubles that.

The U.S government spends also approximately a couple hundred billion for Science, if I am reading this correctly https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26314 which does a lot of work putting government and business spending together which gives you a number essentially what the government spends on the military.

I can easily construct something that shows the U.S does pay more for science and education than it does for military, but only by being IMHO somewhat misleading, for example by throwing K-12 spending together with the higher education payments and mixing federal and state monies, so to clarify what I mean when I say the U.S in these kinds of conversations and what I think most people mean is "the federal government"

I suppose that the original poster also meant the federal government or it wouldn't make any sense to mention F-35s either.

Under this limitation I believe that the combined ratio of science and higher education is at best 0.8% of GDP and military is 2.8%.

Although it is not really possible to trust very much the data one receives from the American government any more so I am uncertain.

for example this document - I am just having a hard time to trust what data goes into these various parts as federal spending in that area.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

At any rate the military 2.8% I am quoting based on looking around is historically low. I would expect, especially given Iran, that it would be more in line with the historical 4.1%.

pgpf on https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-spends-more-o...

Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.

Everything is changing. Including our influence.

> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?

Well, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for months despite Iran's military supposedly being decimated, and the President of the United States is now threatening to bomb one of our closest Mideast allies (Oman), a reasonable person might ask where this military hegemony and political influence you're referring to is.

After potus ordered massive degradation of F16 radars used by Ukraine on his emotional whim making them useless, which btw were gifted by other NATO countries (!!), nobody, absolutely nobody wants US jets anymore, F35 or not.

Every single European country that already ordered them had immediately afterwards long hard talks about completely cancelling those orders and most ended up at least loweing massively the ordered amount (I presume due to contractual requirements and some money already sent, nobody expected backstabbing crooks on the other side when they were signed).

At this point its trojan horse and much worse than having nothing - it gives illusion of certain (extremely expensive) capability, but only if you lick specific ass hard and frequently enough, peppered with a billion here and there flowing in the right hands. Even then, the other side may be licking harder and thats it. Its ridiculous, and intensively insulting to every decent human being.

If we have military hegemony, then why can't we open the strait of Hormuz?

Curious -- from where do you think the basic research originated that allowed the F-35 program to exist at all?

We are certainly not naive enough to think that Lockheed Martin does basic research.

> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?

All good questions 3 years ago. How many would rely on US weapons or their US relationship today?

And then there is the unimpressive show in the Middle East.

If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen

Not nearly as clear cut as you make it out.

We haven't been able to produce a complete F-35 since Feb 2026 because we lack the necessary rare earths to do create their electronics.

Why? Because we stopped doing that work (and science) in the 90s and now China produces over 90% of rare earths on the planet and said the US can't have any for military purposes (its being negotiated).

There are zero under and post graduate programs that specialize in rare earth extraction and refining outside of China. None. And China has barred their scientists from collaborating with any colleagues from the US on the topic.

Sooooo, you're right, the F-35 program offers a lot, but can it do so "by itself" and does it provide that value in an economically viable way? Much less clear cut of an answer.

In the right case just one. The US invasion of Afghanistan required some extremely rare language knowledge to be successful.

The frustrating thing for me, having worked as an avionics technician, is that the F-35 is actually a waste of all that money

Manned aircraft are largely a waste of money in the era of drone warfare.

> the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides

Hilarious to say this, given the very public and very significant failures of US foreign policy these past couple decades, not least of all the current special military operation.

Without those people being trained at the level of grad school in workforce, you would not have enough people to even maintain a good checklist for F35. The program will go down within a year.

Grad schools do more than research, they train people for these industries, for the shop floor.

The F35 program is essential! When the USA will finally conquer free healthcare?

Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?

I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished

America had scientific hegemony and political influence over its allies.

All of tech traces its roots to American academia.

American tech enthralls more of humanity than American military has ever fought.

Yeah, 11 f35 lost to motor/software issues. Only modern war plane that have those issues.

Its minumum speed is worse than the f16, which make drone interception an issue (f16 are already a bit to fast for that according to Ukrainians), despite a pretty low takeoff speed. It should be capable of less, i'm pretty sure it's software limiters tbh, the wing design seems fine, even if the weight is a bit high (i mean, you don't need to be able to fly at 15 knot like a Rafale, but still).

It _still_ have cooling issues that brick it if you don't bring an external cooler after it landed (which is crazy to me, how did Lockeed not fix that? it's like half the reason why the availability rate is so low).

The availability rate is slow (as said earlier) but it is still more expensive than other jet yearly, despite 2/3rd of the flight hours.

F35 pilots now have less flight hours per year than recommended by NATO (a lot less) (which used to be below US standards btw), and while US f35 pilot still have more hours than their russian conterpart (~145 vs 120), it is very possible that smaller countries who made the mistake of buying them without an economy strong enough to bear the costs might fly their pilot less than 100 hours per year and complete the rest in sims (which, as demontrated by the russian, is a _very_ bad idea) (i'm afraid Greek pilots will suffer from this, which would be a shame)

On the "political influence", it's wrong. Selling the F35 cost the US influence in Norway (thank you wikileaks). In fact, each time the f35 lost a competition, political influence was expended to make the country still buy it. Imho, scientists and scientific conferences are a better way to get influence over allies and adversaries (Cas9 is probably the best example, without Doudna having an international recognition and the conference being hosted in the US, Charpentier might have gone to another RNA specialist)

[edit] to be clear, i think the f35 is a great plane for the US, and a good plane for rich countries who want to go on offensive wars, mainly due to its EW capacity that are second to none and its ability to penetrate enemy territory (which is second only to other US planes). I do also think that it still needs _massive_ improvements to be usable by regular, defensive armies, and the US expending political power to sell it to countries who don't want/need to attack their neighbors was a mistake. Also, not a good cold weather plane, which make it even worse for Norway and Canada.

Also i think its software impairs it, because the wing design seems almost perfect for its missions, and at least on paper, the reactor seems great too

Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.

The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.

Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.

Well, US is actively pulling back from doing just that as well and leaving the job to NATO.

All it takes is one announcement that the US is cutting on efforts to understand future climate disasters for that “influence” to disappear.

You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.

None if catastrophic climate change kills everyone.

I hope Canada cancels our contract to buy these from USA. I don't care the cost, it's not worth it.

Basic science is often cheap, I don't know where you're getting it's generally expensive. I've yet to meet someone whose equipment costs as much as any of the stuff my friends design for defense contractors. Even the head of the lab I'm in is making less than my friends are making as engineers and the lab equipment is pretty cheap compared to the stuff my friends are designing (we have a radar that cost maybe a couple hundred thousand but that's the majority of the equipment cost for the past decade).

Idk what your idea of budgets are for these sorts of labs but I think most engineers would be shocked at the shoestring budgets they run on (at least the ones I know are a fraction of the cost of a single engineering team).

Some of that money goes to the grad students.

Source: I paid grad students the majority of my research funding for 16 years, and so did all my colleagues.

Unless you’re building a new facility at CERN, etc, the bulk of research cost is people.

Kings don’t make mistakes. The people under them do.

What an incredibly dismissive and nasty comment.

Sat it out, or were forced out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

It was a scheduled Trump win, from how demotivating Harris was. Sure Trump demotivated a little over a million or two from bothering to show up to the polls for him, Harris was five to ten times that number (depending on whose numbers you use).

So 164,339,764 made it happen?

I don’t like any direction this administration has taken, but acting like it’s not the completely legitimate will of the people is BS.

If those who sat out were forced to vote for one of the two major party candidates, Trump’s margin may have been larger.

I think liberals and progressives have a higher propensity to vote, so you can’t assume the non voters are less likely to lean Trump.

Missed Tim Cook.

Let’s map their names to the companies they run. Then reflect on whether we buy their products: Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla/SpaceX, Meta.

It's basically 'Don't Look Up' at this point, stripped of all metaphor and potential to entertain.

Brockman

Ellison and Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia

Dell, Lawnmower Man

All true, but you know what do we have to blame for most of that?

The Internet and social media. It did in a few years was mass media had been working toward for the better part of a century.

There’s also the deluded cynics who profit from fossil fuels. Why mess up their good time??

I think you may have a hard time monitoring the Atlantic current if your sensors are all deployed off the coast of Oregon so it seems to me that this administration would jump at the opportunity to deploy those sensors off of the Oregon coast. Then they could tell the people that they are carefully monitoring the situation and can't find a problem. Nothing to see here, literally.

In a great many cases when it came to academic measurement regarding any geological event or phenomenon, the US has historically been at the forefront and shared data with its allies. Very few of those countries have their own measurement systems set up because the US already has them ready to go anyway.

When the second wave of Trump idiocy hit academic institutions by forcing foreign institutions to sign a document indicating they "do not support DEI", this caused some major trouble. Public institutions gave in to the Americans' demands because there was no way to gather the information necessary to finish research in a reasonable time frame.

I think it's time Europe treated the USA the way they want to be treated, as an outsider and a potential threat, and that it's time to stop seeing them as a partner when it comes to science. We need our own measurements, our own instruments, our own satellites, our own databases, and we need to invest now.

Unfortunately, anti-intellectualism isn't just on the rise in the USA. Plus, now now that many countries are struggling with the increased fuel prices thanks to the USA's invasion of Iran, it's hard to find money to invest in science that a worrying amount of people choose to ignore/pretend doesn't exist because it doesn't suit their personal interests.

Look, all I know is DOGE made huge cuts to the NOAA and the National Hurricane Center. And well the 2025 hurricane season speaks for itself.

What makes you think the Republicans are trying to protect the borders? From what I can see they're not trying to do that. They're just trying to make a permanent underclass of scare workers who they can pay poverty wages to. I only really see raids in cities and not the farms or countryside abattoirs that hire lots of illegal immigrants. If they really cared about illegal immigration then just remove the pull factor. Go after the employers of illegal immigrants. Make it a requirement for them to confirm immigration status before hiring anyone. Actual consequences for hiring illegal immigrants would rapidly remove the pull factors.

What's your second least aligned issue?

I don't trust the trade corrected numbers, China uses a ton of coal still and is ever increasing in their manufacturing of good sent to the US. The number for the US has mostly gone down due to switching to natural gas from coal.

I’m more referencing the narrative that climate change is being used as a political point to enforce a global political state which stifles innovation (for example read the Project 2025 document around page 417 https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...). They do make some fair points in there but the primary change to the EPA that is being proposed is focusing on decentralizing the response to climate change to the states. In a vacuum where climate change is a matter of air quality this isn’t a crazy idea but the reality is that this is a global issue which is inconvenient if you want to prioritize growth/innovation over all else and the general idea behind climate conservationism is a powerful political force which the whole world is trying to shape right now for their benefit. There is right wing conservation which largely focuses on local, narrow issues (such as whale habitats being used as a reason to cancel offshore wind). There is also left wing conservation which pushes the more global climate change view and more large scale changes such as carbon taxes, increased stimulus for renewable energy, and often more regulation. Multiple things are true here though: 1. A lot of our regulation is pointless and serves to just increase cost and lock-in existing players as dominant forces in markets. This definitely stifles innovation so there is pushback against climate related changes for fear this will continue or worsen. 2. Climate change is a powerful force in modern politics which serves as a binding force for many disparate factions and is creating many grassroots movements. The impact of these on innovation isn’t clear (nor is it the point) but increased climate awareness is certainly increasing pushback against greenhouse gas emission intensive industries such as datacenters (in their current forms until renewable capacity can catch up) 3. Climate change is very real and is already increasing the cost of doing business and being less aware of it isn’t going to help. This will also stifle innovation as costs mount in the coming years.

I see this move as an attempt to stifle 2 by hiding 3. It seems like a bet that if we don’t focus on the global issues (like a collapsing current) then much of the political power behind climate change disappears since we are frankly quite lucky in the US to have a beautiful, and largely clean environment/air. Grassroots movements and politically powerful messages are likely an annoyance for those who want to keep doing business as usual since it benefits them to do so. Not trying to make a strong claim that our current response to climate change or what anyone in particular is doing is right or wrong but it seems clear that climate change is a powerful message that pushes for much grander scale changes than most people are comfortable with especially those with strong private interests in ignoring it.

All the more reason as to why it should be Canada monitoring that portion of the ocean.

Or scientists know how to count and see that one number is larger than another; and understand that that's an important factor in many political systems.

Assuming the interlocutor is stupid, at any scale, 1-1 to the whole of american politics probably just highlight that you don't fully grasp their point of view, because then it wouldn't be stupid. You'd be able to explain it to them and get them to see the matter from your perspective. If you can't do that, then you don't know you're right, you might be, but there's no way for you to know, truly.