The Trump administration is opening up an "irreparable blind spot" in the nation's ability to predict natural disasters, according to experts.
The National Science Foundation announced plans to dismantle a $368 million deep-sea observation system just days after President Donald Trump fired all members of an independent board that oversees the foundation, and CNN's Bill Weir explained what that vast undersea network monitors and what will be lost.
"This is a very key moment in time for humans to be paying attention to what's happening in the oceans," Weir said. "There's so many different forces at work. A super El Niño developing, sea level rise, underwater tsunamis, acidification, and the Ocean Observatories Initiative is this U.S.-funded, National Science Foundation-funded monitoring system uses some 900 different instruments to measure ocean conditions and and forecast a whole host of things."
"Well, now the Trump administration, in keeping with their just complete dismantling of climate and earth science, they want to ditch this deep sea monitoring system," Weir added. "This is a $368 million program. It was set up a couple of years ago, it was supposed to be running for the next 30 years, but will now be dismantled over the next 15 months. Removing instruments from the coastlines both in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and this is, the critics say, will create major gaps in monitoring and our ability to understand what's happening to the deep oceans."
A spokesman for the NFS insisted the program was not being canceled entirely, although it's not clear what data collection would remain active, but Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) accused the Trump administration of ending the initiative at the behest of the fossil fuel industry.
"Former oceanographers and those who work for nonprofits say this is going to create an irreparable blind spot for the country," Weir said. "This, according to Chris Robbins from the Ocean Conservancy Conservancy, a blind spot when it comes to predicting earthquakes and fishery health, storm forecasting, coastal flooding, and more, quote, 'It just doesn't make any sense.'"
"Who knows if we'll see if there's any pushback from the public or for from other states, as we've seen in the courts before," he added. "But just the latest example of the Trump administration really turning off the measurement systems that keep us abreast of so many forces of nature that feed economies and keep forms of life alive at every level."
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