- European governments are taking steps to break their dependence on critical scientific data the US historically made freely available to the world
- Data on sea-level rise and extreme weather events put at risk by cuts to National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]
- Over the next two years the EU plans to expand its own European Marine Observation and Data Network which collects and hosts data on shipping routes, seabed habitats, marine litter and other concerns.
- In addition, the EU is considering increasing its funding of the Argo program, a part of the Global Ocean Observing System which operates a global system of floats to monitor the world’s oceans and track global warming, extreme weather events and sea-level rise.
- Nordic countries met to coordinate data storage efforts with Norway setting aside $2 million to back up and store U.S. data to ensure stable access. The Danish Meteorological Institute in February started downloading historical U.S. climate data in case it is deleted by the U.S.
- A range of other European countries initiated complementary programs.
US science isn’t a thing.
In the US, they lick their finger and hold it up in the wind.
I was about to go “hey that’s not fair” until I remembered that the head of Health and Human Services basically believes in the idea of miasma instead of germ theory. There’s a lot of smart people doing amazing things in the US, but they are vastly outnumbered by the confidently ignorant.