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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump admin tries to kill the most indisputable evidence of
human-caused climate change by shuttering observatory
By Andrew Freedman, CNN
Updated:
8:50 AM EDT, Tue July 1, 2025
Source: CNN
The Trump administration’s proposed budget seeks to shut down the
laboratory atop a peak in Hawaii where scientists have gathered the
most conclusive evidence of human-caused climate change since the
1950s.
The Mauna Loa laboratory in Hawaii has measured atmospheric carbon
dioxide, which — along with other planet-warming pollution — has
led directly to climate change, driving sea level rise, supercharging
weather and destroying food systems.
The president’s budget proposal would also defund many other climate
labs, including instrument sites comprising the US government’s
greenhouse gas monitoring network, which stretches from northern Alaska
to the South Pole.
But it’s the Mauna Loa laboratory that is the most prominent target
of the President Donald Trump’s climate ire, as measurements that
began there in 1958 have steadily shown CO2’s upward march as human
activities have emitted more and more of the planet-warming gas each
year.
The curve produced by the Mauna Loa measurements is one of the most
iconic charts in modern science, known as the Keeling Curve, after
Charles David Keeling, who was the researcher who painstakingly
collected the data. His son, Ralph Keeling, a professor at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, now oversees collecting
and updating that data.
Today, the Keeling Curve measurements are made possible by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric administration, but the data gathering and
maintenance of the historical record also is funded by Schmidt Sciences
and Earth Networks, according to the Keeling Curve website.
In the event of a NOAA shut down of the lab, Scripps could seek
alternate sources of funding to host the instruments atop the same peak
or introduce a discontinuity in the record by moving the instruments
elsewhere in Hawaii.
In 1958, when the Keeling Curve began, the concentration of CO2 in the
Earth’s atmosphere was 313 parts per million. In 2024, that had risen
to 424.61 ppm, and this year, monthly average CO2 levels at Mauna Loa
exceeded 430 ppm for the first time.
The proposal to shut down Mauna Loa had been made public previously but
was spelled out in more detail on Monday when NOAA . It made more clear
that the Trump administration envisions eliminating all climate-related
research work at NOAA, as had been proposed in Project 2025, the
conservative blueprint for overhauling the government.
It would do this in large part by cutting NOAA’s Office of Oceanic
and Atmospheric Research entirely, including some labs that are also
involved in improving weather forecasting.
NOAA has long been one of the world’s top climate science agencies,
but the administration would steer it instead towards being more
focused on operational weather forecasting and warning
responsibilities.
CNN has reached out to NOAA and Scripps for comment.
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