Just heard that Trump is putting an end to atmospheric monitoring site NY67 that is run out of my lab. This is one of the oldest NADP sites in the US, continually measuring acid rain and other pollutants since 1977. Closing it down is tragic.
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Indeed, highly tragic. Thinking about this 2024 article "From acid rain to global warming: Adirondack research faces funding crunch" and how monitoring that began in the late 1970s had decadeslong meaningful impact on the many lakes and small communities in the North Country:
This is the dissolution of the United States of America like in the dissolution of the USSR on Dec. 25, 1991, which will enrich MuTrump & enablers. Both parties take oligarchy/corpocracy donations obliging them to pass legislation benefiting their wealthy donors at our expense. We needed a
progressive party decades ago. Instead, we got congressional lifers too greedy/cowardly to take moral actions because they wanted to retain their congressional seats. Republicans don’t give a fig about traditions, decorum, or norms. Yet, Democrats bring feathers to sword fights. They are either
it is ILLEGAL — they have no authority for canceling leases
I'm not a legal scholar, I just know everything they're doing is illegal, unconstitutional, etc. They are ROBBING the public of the things their public money has paid for.
Cornell and NY state and relevant foundations should put together bridge funding to keep it going. We need to treat data streams such as yours like we do crucial bits of habitat that we fight to maintain until we can rebuild the larger ecosystem around it. Every bit we save is precious.
In theory. But it is not just the NY67 site. We use a central, EPA-certified lab that also serves all the other NADP sites. My guess is this is all being shut down.
Ironic that @aaas.org 2026 conference is themed "science at scale" - they and others with govt/foundation/institutional coordination abilities need to get on it asap to save data collection (and training) networks such as yours.
A lot of these purported grant terminations are likely to be overturned in court, it might just take some time. I hope that's being taken into consideration.
Bob - I know there are a lot of environmentalists who would be happy to add one or two more rallies to our Spring and Summer calendar if you think we could get the State to make up the financial difference.
You are such a hero to us!
I should add: this site was started by Gene Likens when he was a professor at Cornell. Likens discovered acid rain in North America back in the 1970s, and set up this site as one of the first monitoring sites. For most of the time since 1977, this site has been run by Tom Butler.
We continue to learn new things from this NY67 monitoring site. For instance, ammonia gas is steadily increasing in our area, with likely profound effects on public health and on the ecological functioning of forests and lakes.
I didn't know ammonia was a consequence of either traffic or animal agriculture. I'm interested in air quality and environmental monitoring in a casual way (actually I got into it after COVID left me with asthma and extreme sensitivity to particle pollution). (1/2)
I'm sorry about the closure of your work, it's shortsighted, petty, wasteful, and destructive. I wish I could do more to support sciences and social programs. Overcoming acid rain was taught to us as kids as a victory. It gave me hope for a less polluted future.
How was don’t start packing up your things yet. Based on the recent court, decision like yesterday about all the fired people being re-hired, your lease may not expire when expected. Also look into who actually owns the land. Is it the government? If a private owner, maybe you can arrange a patron.
When I joined the Cornell faculty in 1985, I inherited some of Liken's old lab space, and Tom Butler who came with the space. I celebrate Liken's vision in setting up such monitoring sites for atmospheric deposition, and Butler's tenacity for keeping it going all this time.
Thank you. And I am seriously thinking about Europe or Canada. My wife and I own a lovely piece of land in the beautiful Finger Lakes of NY, organically farmed. But I am fearful for a future.
Don’t leave! Thank you for your work. Is there a way you can privately measure acid rain and post it somewhere? I am sorry that all this happened to you.
"Tragic"?
How about "criminal"?
Even that is too mild for such an atrocious act. The Trump administration's pro-pollution actions are crimes against humanity.
Like so many things in Donald's life, "getting away with it" is his version of "morality"- definition now adopted by the GOP.
Sorry to hear this, but of course I’ve assumed that Trump will try to eliminate all “inconvenient” data gathering.
Mauna Loa hit.
Tide gauges? @bobkopp.net
It certainly is tragic. My dad’s research in the mid-1970s at Cornell Labs (which then became Calspan) is what identified acid rain and its sourcing to Ohio River Valley power plants, which led to the atmospheric monitoring put in place in 1977.
I'm so sorry. Not just America but the world needs sites like yours, especially now.
But that stupid prick is taking his idiotic dictum of 2020 that there'd be far fewer cases of COVID if only there was less testing, and applying it to everything he can think of now. And Musk is his chainsaw man.
One of my grad student duties was to maintain the NADP site at Mountain Lake, Virginia from 85-88. I remember the UPS guy delivering the black box with the bee bucket inside.
I don’t know what any of that means, but it sounds adventurous and purposeful. Thank you for taking on such an important task that was making the world a better and environmentally more safe place.
back then, there was a collection system for wet and dry deposition - 2 5 gallon buckets, one for collecting "dry" deposition and one for "wet" (rain, snow). the "wet" bucket was changed weekly and the new bucket would arrive by UPS from NADPs central lab and you would return the old one.
@chiembalduk.bsky.social posted a short TikTok video on his TL that is part of Mini Wunderland in Hamburg Germany....Perfect description of the havoc DTcs are doing.
The damage will be far worse than just a 4-yr gap. Both I and the individual who has managed this site for most of the past 50 yrs are retiring within the next 2 years. With this closure, we will not be able to plan a transition.
Maybe folks who were laid off can re-group, combine resources and carry on the work through preservation of not only data but also techniques and methodologies
Part of the growing global far-right program to stop all climate action. Can't alternative funding be found to maintain the site and pass on knowledge? How is it the US govt has the power to stop so much research - who now owns this intellectual property?
I don’t do atmospheric science specifically, but a lot of stuff can be done reasonably easily with a bit of training and a few thousand dollars to blow on equipment.
But there’s also the sampling point and such to consider. You probably won’t be doing it the same way they have.
Tonne of datasets are gonna have a trumphole. In Canada under Harper (Conservative, no where near as bad as trump) there was an attempt to shut down a decades-long lake monitoring program. It was crowd-funded for a while (I contributed) and then picked back up by government. Continuity matters!
I fear for longitudinal datasets from multiple sources, some with public safety implications that aren't always obvious. Streamflow gauges, Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting Program SNOTEL sites, precipitation, soil moisture content, wind gauges, National Resource Inventory, etc.
Not to mention the brain drain this will probably cause because regardless of wage difference Europe is far safer and more secure to be a scientist than America right now.
If there is no hard data on toxic pollutants laying waste to our environment, the administration doesn't have to refute it... reminiscent of every mafia movie that "takes care" of the witness. The first victim is always the TRUTH!
More desperate people are easier to manipulate, they’ve gleaned that from experience. The pair of egos seem too bombastic, short sighted and cognitively unable to recognize the earth isn’t a business but a living dynamic creation that needs complex care & protection. We respond/adapt. They bulldoze.
Remember...the President of the United States is considered a civil servant. A civil servant is anyone employed by the government to serve the public, and the President, as the head of the executive branch, serves the public by fulfilling the duties of the office,
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I'm not a legal scholar, I just know everything they're doing is illegal, unconstitutional, etc. They are ROBBING the public of the things their public money has paid for.
You are such a hero to us!
How about "criminal"?
Even that is too mild for such an atrocious act. The Trump administration's pro-pollution actions are crimes against humanity.
Like so many things in Donald's life, "getting away with it" is his version of "morality"- definition now adopted by the GOP.
Trump and the GOP are guilty of crimes against humanity.
Indeed.
Some cuts do need to be made.
Mauna Loa hit.
Tide gauges? @bobkopp.net
judges rule
the King doesn’t care
Fascism kills.
Every single time.
When will folks in the US wake up and terminate the dictator?
seen from the other side of the Atlantic we are just wondering how to react and how to offer protection to science refugees.
#TrumpImpeachmentASAP
He destroys your democracy in a blink of time, unbelievable
But that stupid prick is taking his idiotic dictum of 2020 that there'd be far fewer cases of COVID if only there was less testing, and applying it to everything he can think of now. And Musk is his chainsaw man.
administration this is. it is actually embarrassing!
*Hopefully only 4 years
Existing data can be archived elsewhere. Data gathering and science is harder but there is already a need for a shadow EPA type entity.
But there’s also the sampling point and such to consider. You probably won’t be doing it the same way they have.
Secchi discs are a good example of a very cheap metric that citizens already often collect on behalf of environmental agencies.