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Killing the Mauna Loa observatory over irrefutable evidence of increasing CO2
- sroussey 1y agoComing for the scientists themselves next? (Ref to Galileo)
- swiftcoder 1y agoIt's happened under pretty much every other autocratic regime in recent history...
- perihelions 1y agoThere's an ongoing and horrifically absurd witch-hunt against Chinese science grad students, led by MAGA FBI director Kesh Patel. He makes very popular Twitter threads for each one he arrests, drumming up a MAGA frenzy about how their insane conspiracy theories—the ones about an organized Chinese bioterrorism plot to kill Americans—were proven correct, again. There are young PhD students who've been imprisoned for months without bail over these fictions.
- jabjq 1y ago[flagged]
- colechristensen 1y agoEh, the most believable conspiracy is gain of function research accidentally escaped a lab because of poor controls and then was covered up. Gain of function research can be done for lots of reasons, one of which is offensive biological weapons, but there are others. It's pretty irresponsible to do regardless of your justification. But these were chinese researchers in china, not grad students. China has been using students to acquire US technology, but we don't need crazy bioterrorism conspiracies. They were students, they came here to pay to learn things, it is no conspiracy that people on student visas learned things at the universities they attended. On top of that there have been inappropriate, illegal, or otherwise undesirable things foreign students have done that look a lot like espionage. The basic problem is that democrats pretend problems don't exist and republicans pretend the problems are existential threat devil boogey monsters that need to be solved by sending people to gulags. There's an excluded middle here where people want reasonable responses to potential issues.
- moralestapia 1y ago>Eh, the most believable conspiracy is gain of function research accidentally escaped a lab because of poor controls and then was covered up. Four years ago you couldn't even remotely mention this as a possibility; even, and particularly, among "the most educated"™ and "the most tolerant"™. Now plenty of them believe that was the case. Don't know if Overton window is behind or if there was some sort manipulation involved, but it's definitely something I've noticed.
- almosthere 1y agoAnd yet still, your text fades gray. I think the larger announcements yet to come, will crumble the current religion we call Science. I'd like to get back to REAL science with a lower case s.
- colechristensen 1y agoBoth of you have a screw loose and need to stop accepting the premise of the loudest idiots on social media and assuming the people who speak the loudest are representative of the feelings of people at large.
- almosthere 1y agoSpecifically point out why you want to insult instead of argue on the facts. The screw must be loose in that direction.
- colechristensen 1y ago> Four years ago you couldn't even remotely mention this as a possibility; even, and particularly, among "the most educated"™ and "the most tolerant"™. > will crumble the current religion we call Science Facts: people who talk like this are pontificating nonsense and are never worth talking to because speech like this indicates a person has zero interest in an actual discussion. I want to insult instead of debate because I truly believe people who talk like this need to be publicly shamed for discourse like this. It is a root cause of the destabilization of our society and needs to be stopped. You're talking like an AM radio conspiracy call-in nutjob. If you want to be taken seriously, don't channel the ghost of Rush Limbaugh in your rhetoric.
- moralestapia 1y agoSource on the imprisoned students? Outrageous, if real.
- dangero 1y agoHow can you say outrageous to imprison students without knowing what that particular student did or is accused of?
- moralestapia 1y agoI'm replying to @perihelions comment ... The context should be pretty clear. *facepalm*
- perihelions 1y agoThe C. elegans PhD student at Univ. of Michigan was ordered held without bond[0], in June; and the Harvard Medical School researcher was freed by a judge after being—unlawfully—caged by ICE for 116 days[1]. Here's[2] the FBI director's Twitter thread about the C. elegans researcher, for a flavor of the MAGA sociology that's driving this. [edit]: His rhetoric in the case in [3] is even less hingèd. [0] https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27/chinese-scholar-from-um-expected-to-plead-guilty-in-smuggling-case/84390464007/ https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 ( https://archive.is/XIONv https://archive.is/XIONv ) [2] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1932214047300079655 https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19322140473000796... ("This case is part of a broader effort from the FBI and our federal partners to heavily crack down on similar pathogeon [sic] smuggling operations, as the CCP works relentlessly to undermine America’s research institutions.") [3] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1930044884284523001 https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19300448842845230... ("This case is a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences... putting American lives and our economy at serious risk. Your FBI will continue working tirelessly to be on guard against it.")
- dangero 1y agoI haven’t followed these cases, but are you anti due process? How do you know these are fictions? Are you on the inside? It sounds like the cases will be tried in court and we will find out what’s true. Are you saying that’s not the case?
- davedx 1y agoEven the Third Reich appreciated the value of scientific research and engineering.
- edent 1y agoThey literally didn't. They expelled anyone working on Jüdische Physik. It is one of the (many) reasons they fell behind in atomic research.
- TheNewsIsHere 1y agoOoh! This is actually a bit of a passive, niche interest of mine. It should be noted I am not a professional historian. I just read a lot of material and watch a lot of interviews and documentaries. The Nazis fell behind in atomic research for a variety of reasons, each with its own underpinnings. One of the most interesting in my mind was organizational failings. Although many different groups were working in this area, the regime leadership was rather disconnected and didn’t prioritize a coherent or integrated research effort. They didn’t provide much funding either. In some ways this created more room for unstructured scientific inquiry and creativity, but it also meant that no particular group could make any real progress toward usable reactors or weapons. Contrast this with the Manhattan Project in the US (and the UK’s efforts at radar), which was supported and managed from the highest levels of government with a figurative blank check and despite immense compartmentalization also had a high degree of integration among disciplines and sites. There was one goal. In my view this is an interesting manifestation of the foundation of the Third Reich. In Martin Davidson’s The Perfect Nazi, Davidson notes that the Nazi party was in many ways a child’s cosplay turned into a nightmare. Davidson writes that one of the key failings of the regime is that it was run by broken people who had more of an interest in catharsis than any real sense of society, advancement, or cohesion.
- tialaramex 1y agoFor radar, RV Jones' "Most Secret War" has an anecdote where the British raid a German coastal radar site (in France), nab the radar operator and are annoyed to discover that they know almost nothing about German radar. Pre-war Germany is already a fascist dictatorship so "ham" radio operators are enemies of the state because they're outside of your centrally controlled narrative. Whereas pre-war Britain has the usual amount of amateurs with radios. So when war broke out and they're conscripting towns at a time the British would see you're a ham and divert you from infantry training or whatever and make you a radar operator - which means the average British radar operator actually has some idea how radio works but the Germans are obliged to basically just pick a soldier and train him to operate the radar from scratch. This apparently had significant operational consequences because if you don't know how it works all you can do when there's a fault is order spare parts. So German radar stations would be offline more often and for longer. Although Chain Home's transmitters were wildly more powerful than anything even a rich British amateur might have seen before, not to mention operating on frequencies unachievable with prior technology, the principles were familiar.
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- englishrookie 1y agoDon't Look Up...
- moralestapia 1y ago™
- alphazard 1y agoWe really need prediction markets for these climate variables. It would do an awful lot to cut through the politicization of what the models can and can't reliably predict. A transaction fee for a market predicting this observatory's measurements could be used to help pay for the up keep of the observatory.
- phtrivier 1y agoPlease give me the (safe) place where I can bet that the CO2 concentration will be higher next year than now. And show me the (solvent) people ready to bet the contrary. My next bet will be about "fire burns" and "water wets", please. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTU38cbXCGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTU38cbXCGQ
- mark242 1y agoGo get yourself some home insurance on a single-family house in Miami.
- supportengineer 1y agoTrump leaned during the first administration that if you simply avoid testing for COVID, the case count drops dramatically. The voters rewarded him for this behavior with a second term.
- NewJazz 1y agoThe voters punished his handling of the pandemic by rejecting a second term, then a few years later they sorta forgot what happened I guess or maybe didn't want to vote for a woman.
- UncleOxidant 1y agoThe electorate has the memory of a goldfish.
- NewJazz 1y agoYeah, it's pretty embarrassing and basically means that if you do something that might have a positive payoff in 5 years, you're basically doing an assist for the other side of the aisle. One party knows this and routinely passes tax cuts that are set to expire almost exactly when they lose power... The other side knows this but I guess tries to do the right thing anyway.
- dylan604 1y agoMost presidents assume they will still be in office in year 5. So it's not as bad of plan as you suggest. It's just risky as elections are not a sure victory for the incumbent.
- toast0 1y agoI'm sure there's some of that, but also ... a permanent tax cut comes with a negative budget estimate. A temporary tax cut doesn't look so bad. Then when it's time for the cut to expiring, making it permanent doesn't look as bad as it did when it was first proposed. Also, make the tax cut now, demand a balanced budget to make spending cuts when the other party is in power. </rant>
- metalman 1y agoalso on the hit list on.the way to setting an all time low for polar ice, right now https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today they are operating under a reprieve for another couple of weeks, and then will have to re calibrate and re validate the data from another less good satelite..... "or something"* * new scientific term
- timr 1y agoWe have other ways to measure atmospheric CO2 that don’t require maintaining a telescope in Hawaii. I don’t know why the funding cut is being made, but this article is leaping to a conclusion.
- throwawaymaths 1y agoMaintaining just the co2 station is probably inexpensive enough that people who care could scrounge for coins under their cushions and keep it alive. I'd happily chip in let's say $50/yr.
- cardamomo 1y agoNo need to scrounge! What if just a tiny bit of our taxes went to this?
- throwawaymaths 1y agowhat if we all paid for things that made the world better out of our own pockets? or do we not believe in those things if it's inconvenient to us?
- cardamomo 1y agoI think taxes are simply one way for us all to collectively pay for important things like basic research, education, healthcare, and transportation.
- dmbche 1y agoThe telescope is studying the sun. Solar events have non negligible effects of the weather. Mauna Loa produces meteorological reports used by sailors and pilots all around the world daily. This observatory is the first one to show CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and their analyses have been cornerstone to the climate discussion since it's inception. Unless it's shown that the observatory is burning millions, it's nonsensical to shut it down. It's not free to set up another equivalent lab. And locations similar to Mauna Loa are not very common, to be clear. It's not gonna be cheaper to set up an equivalent.
- YoCurryOuthouse 1y ago[flagged]
- SoftTalker 1y agoThe graph on that page is suspect. Why does the Y axis start at 320? Why does the X axis start at 1960?
- floren 1y agoIt starts at 1958 because that's when the measurements began.
- ellisv 1y agoMLO was founded in 1956 and began continuous CO2 measurement in 1958.
- icehawk 1y agoIt's really not. "[Mauna Loa Observatory] was founded on June 28, 1956, as part of the US Weather Bureau" And if you look at the tick marks on the graph, it starts before 1960.
- 0_____0 1y agoBecause those are the bounds of the data. There was no attempt to hide this fact in the graph (plot does not intersect "origin", well labeled axes...)
- searine 1y ago>Why does the Y axis start at 320? Because CO2 didn't start from zero in 1960?
- bmmayer1 1y agoDoesn't Mauna Loa spew CO2 by the metric ton on a regular basis? Why is that vantage point the best source of atmospheric CO2 ppm?
- throwawaymaths 1y agohistorical reasons. volcano aside the location is reasonable: altitude and relative isolation from human sources wothout being too out of the way to make maintenance a bear. hawaiian trade winds help with dispersal. as for volcanism Supposedly it's in a rock creche on the mountain face facing away from the volcano, but you're right to be suspicious.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> Doesn't Mauna Loa spew CO2 by the metric ton on a regular basis? The 1960-present chart in the article is anything but regular, instead showing a steady rise, and doesn't appear to blip up for either the 1984 or 2022 eruptions.
- rvbissell 1y ago> anything but regular From context your meaning is clear, but I think you got that idiom inverted.
- treyd 1y agoIt's high up in the atmosphere and has relatively few nearby point sources like cities since it's in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It's a unique environment that provides a valuable data point.
- RandomBacon 1y agoThe Hawaiians have been trying to get rid of the observatory for a long time now, they were finally successful?
- breput 1y agoThere are a number of telescopes on Mauna Loa which have not been removed, just this sensor.
- perihelions 1y agoI don't want to touch that flame hazard with a thirty-meter pole, but, just to clarify context: - The entirety of the Mauna Loa observatory, which is operated by NOAA (weather guys), is being shut down; - The vastly larger Mauna Kea observatories, hosting dozens of federal and international clients, is unrelated
- RandomBacon 1y agoAh, thank you. I might have gotten the two mixed up.
- tito 1y agoSeconded. The facility on Mauna Loa is the Mauna Loa Observatory which is atmospheric sensors and a solar telescope. The famous telescopes are on Mauna Kea (source: I grew up in Hawaii and worked for one of the telescopes, CFHT)
- floatrock 1y agoThat almost sounds like a winning strategy in this whacko-world... "but getting rid of this would be caving to the woke beliefs of the non-christian mountain-god-worshipping natives!"
- jmclnx 1y agoMoney wins all the time and the GOP is happy to take it for supporting fossil fuels. But the climate change fix party (democrats) is more than happy to open up new Oil Fields if they think high gas prices will hurt their election chances. That happened under Biden. So here we are, seeing heat records being broken every year and storms causing more and more damage. Everyone knew this would happen 60+ years ago, but the bribes kept the gov. kicking the can down the road. At least by closing Mauna Loa the facts can be denied going forward. The next kick will probably "melt" the can.
- almosthere 1y ago[flagged]
- apical_dendrite 1y agoThe whole point is to collect time-series data at a location that's isolated from individual sources of CO2 emissions. That way we can see how CO2 concentrations are changing over long periods of time. Your comment doesn't make any sense. If you shut down the measurement, you don't have any data going forward, so the data cannot be "everywhere". And you cannot substitute data collected in another location if you want to measure changes over time - which is a really important thing to measure.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> The data it is collecting is already everywhere. Sure, just slap a CO2 monitor on a smokestack somewhere. These sensors are in a high, dry, very remote area with fresh air for a good reason. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/climate/budget-cuts-climate-observatories.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/climate/budget-cuts-clima... > The air that swirls around the isolated outpost located on a Hawaiian volcano is a mix from all over the Northern Hemisphere. That makes it one of the best places to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is indispensable to scientists around the world.
- almosthere 1y agoIf you can SLAP one somewhere, then slap one on the Mauna Loa and be done with finding an issue with Trump and do something in your god damn life without forcing me to pay taxes for crap.
- ceejayoz 1y agoThere already is one on Mauna Loa, since 1958. People have an issue with Trump here because he's the one getting rid of it.
- const_cast 1y agoNobody is forcing you to pay taxes, you can always leave. And, I think we can all agree that would be beneficial for everyone.
- crystal_revenge 1y agoThe fact that roughly half the comments here are some sort of weakly veiled climate denialism tells me it won't matter how much data we have anyway. If members of a reasonably technical community can't accept what's happening, then there's no reasonable hope that people will ever be able to reason about our situation correctly. We are surrounded by evidence of all varieties in every direction that we are heading down a path of catastrophic climate change, and yet people contort their logic to find ways not to see it.
- bantunes 1y agoWe've made a decision: we prefer to continue having this world (and all its conveniences including steak multiple times a week and flying for cheap) and lose it soon-ish than move to another one right now with less access to... stuff. And the only way we can have it differently is with violence, which nobody wants. So we'll walk to the abyss together.
- Earw0rm 1y ago"but I worked really hard to EARN that steak. I'm not having some goddamn commie take it away from me." "The rich declare themselves poor" - George Michael, Praying For Time, 1990.
- intended 1y agoWe - depends on the definition. If there is a structural force shifting the market places of ideas and decisions, forcing certain choices or protecting and harvesting voting blocs - it’s not “we” in the sense of personal choice. I concede, that if we define corporations as an expression of human desires - then yes, “we” have made that decision.
- scottLobster 1y agoWe already have insane and growing wealth inequality and stagnant wage growth. The one thing that somewhat compensated for it is cheap goods, taking that away is not a winning argument in this environment. It's also a hard sell when Jeff Bezos has a wedding in Italy where dozens of private jets flew in and collectively emitted more carbon for that one wedding than all the gasoline vehicles multiple generations of my family have driven in their lifetimes. And yet I, with my already depressed wages and kids to feed, should sacrifice steak and coach airline tickets? I'm all for climate action, but it has to be policy level. If it's a choice between a warming world where we're solvent with some middle class prosperity, and a warming world where my wife, kids and I are broke because we went into six figures of debt replacing our ICE cars with EVs and retrofitting my house to passivhaus stanadards, I'm taking the former.
- sega_sai 1y agoUS vandalism continues. And that is truly vandalism in the sense of bunch of barbarians coming and destroying what they have little clue about.
- mathiaspoint 1y agoI like Richard Stillman's word for Trump: "the wrecker." It perfectly captures the disagreement here.
- ceejayoz 1y agoIt has a bit of a dual meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union)
- int_19h 1y agoThat's a weird translation of the original Russian term for it. A more accurate translation would be "vermin" (it's the same word in Russian, and it's clearly meant to evoke that image).
- hermitcrab 1y agoIt is so easy to destroy infrastructure and expertise that has taken decades to build. All so Trump and his buddies can get even bigger tax breaks. It is enough to make you cry. BTW 'Barbarian' get a bad rap. They were in many ways more civilized than the Romans. But the Romans were really good at killing people and got to write the history.
- Animats 1y agoPolitically, try framing this as "Trump is trying another coverup, like Epstein and Jan 6th". It's coverups that doom politicians, because they draw attention to the problem.
- ceejayoz 1y agoEpstein is rather unusual for Trump in that it's actually lingering. His other coverups have not had any significant impact on his supporters. Quite a few have been enthusiastically embraced, like the Jan 6 pardons.
- dmbche 1y agoBut Trump already had Jan 6th and Esptein happend to him and nothing happened. I don't think there's a way you can spin it. Like those country leaders in Europe towards the middle of the last century, with the mustache, the newspapers couldn't have spun it away, y'know?
- perihelions 1y agoCoincidentally, the "Space Force" observatory in Hawaii was recently given a $176 million upgrade contract. https://spacenews.com/kbr-wins-176-million-contract-to-modernize-u-s-space-surveillance-site/ https://spacenews.com/kbr-wins-176-million-contract-to-moder...
- boxerab 1y ago[flagged]
- gmuslera 1y agoThe revolution will not be televised. Once we shut down all the alarms they will stop making noise, but that won't address what is triggering them. It is not the only measurement of global CO2 source, anyway, but as a base point for long enough trend.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoIt's not just the NOAA monitoring station in Hawaii that's being closed, but also those in Alaska, Samoa and Antartica. If it was just the Hawaii station, we could quibble over its merics (volcanic activity, etc.), but closing all four means only one thing: the US doesn't want data that tracks climate change. If you don't track it, you don't have to do anything about it. Assuming we survive, I can't imagine how future generations will look back on all these attempts at climate change denialism in their history books, dumbfounded by our stupidity.
- tito 1y agoCatching up here. I visited there as part of building The State of Carbon website (https://carbon.datahub.io/ https://carbon.datahub.io/). This was much upvoted project on HackerNews back when it was first created: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16332595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16332595 Totally bogus. First off, it’s a critical dataset for tracking CO2 levels. And second, it’s just like two people huddling in a metal shipping container with a bunch of sensors on top of a mountain in Hawaii, not some kind of crazy budget.