Russell Vought announced that the National Science Foundation will “break up” the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado calling it a source of “climate alarmism” and saying its work should be dismantled and redistributed.
NCAR isn’t an advocacy group. It’s one of the most important weather and climate research hubs in the world.
Its science underpins:
– Hurricane and severe-storm forecasting
– Drought, wildfire, and flood prediction
– Infrastructure and disaster-risk planning
– Climate models used by governments, universities, and emergency agencies worldwide
Breaking NCAR apart fragments expertise, slows research, and weakens forecasting systems that directly protect lives and property. You can’t just scatter teams and expect the same results weather models, supercomputing, and long-term datasets depend on continuity.
This decision doesn’t just affect researchers. It affects:
– Early warning systems
– Disaster preparedness
– Farmers, insurers, airlines, utilities
– America’s leadership in science
There’s still no clear plan for where these programs or scientists go, how the work continues, or how disruptions are avoided. Congress could intervene but for now, this is a deliberate move to dismantle core public-safety science under the banner of ideology. Weather doesn’t care about politics, but preparedness absolutely does.
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