But… why? Climate change is very much real and even stubborn deep-right voters like my father now ‘believe’ in it. Ok, some people make some cash. But wouldn’t they anyway? I don’t understand this need to keep pandering to a minority and to destroy ecosystems.

I don't believe Trump himself makes any of these decisions, and as for deals I don't think he remembers what happened yesterday let alone a deal made on the campaign trail. Parties in his administration are actively trying to destroy science and cripple any kind of climate research or green energy development, even if it costs nothing. Whoever they are, they make these plans and then get him to sign while he's awake.

That cheapest option may not be the cheapest option in the long-term when the next Democratic president would re-activate the devices.

Same reasoning as removal of many post office boxes in last days of Trump 1 term.

The crazy thing is that the oil companies confessed to a misinformation campaign and at least publicly talked about change/reform (of course, they're still oil exploration/refinement companies so not abandoning that). But they did discuss responsible use of fossil fuels in transition towards renewables.

But Trump was fooled and is more committed than ever to the since-abandoned misinformation campaign. It took on a bigger life than Exxon ever could've imagined.

The snowflakiest of them all - they can't handle unbiased readings from instruments that survey our planet.

To be honest this sounds more like an excuse and cover for having a bunch of ships and submarines in places they'd normally wouldn't be at.

Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.

Everything is changing. Including our influence.

> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?

Well, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for months despite Iran's military supposedly being decimated, and the President of the United States is now threatening to bomb one of our closest Mideast allies (Oman), a reasonable person might ask where this military hegemony and political influence you're referring to is.

If we have military hegemony, then why can't we open the strait of Hormuz?

Not nearly as clear cut as you make it out.

We haven't been able to produce a complete F-35 since Feb 2026 because we lack the necessary rare earths to do create their electronics.

Why? Because we stopped doing that work (and science) in the 90s and now China produces over 90% of rare earths on the planet and said the US can't have any for military purposes (its being negotiated).

There are zero under and post graduate programs that specialize in rare earth extraction and refining outside of China. None. And China has barred their scientists from collaborating with any colleagues from the US on the topic.

Sooooo, you're right, the F-35 program offers a lot, but can it do so "by itself" and does it provide that value in an economically viable way? Much less clear cut of an answer.

Curious -- from where do you think the basic research originated that allowed the F-35 program to exist at all?

We are certainly not naive enough to think that Lockheed Martin does basic research.

If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen

In the right case just one. The US invasion of Afghanistan required some extremely rare language knowledge to be successful.

> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?

All good questions 3 years ago. How many would rely on US weapons or their US relationship today?

And then there is the unimpressive show in the Middle East.

The frustrating thing for me, having worked as an avionics technician, is that the F-35 is actually a waste of all that money

After potus ordered massive degradation of F16 radars used by Ukraine on his emotional whim making them useless, which btw were gifted by other NATO countries (!!), nobody, absolutely nobody wants US jets anymore, F35 or not.

Every single European country that already ordered them had immediately afterwards long hard talks about completely cancelling those orders and most ended up at least loweing massively the ordered amount (I presume due to contractual requirements and some money already sent, nobody expected backstabbing crooks on the other side when they were signed).

At this point its trojan horse and much worse than having nothing - it gives illusion of certain (extremely expensive) capability, but only if you lick specific ass hard and frequently enough, peppered with a billion here and there flowing in the right hands. Even then, the other side may be licking harder and thats it. Its ridiculous, and intensively insulting to every decent human being.

Without those people being trained at the level of grad school in workforce, you would not have enough people to even maintain a good checklist for F35. The program will go down within a year.

Grad schools do more than research, they train people for these industries, for the shop floor.

Manned aircraft are largely a waste of money in the era of drone warfare.

The F35 program is essential! When the USA will finally conquer free healthcare?

Well, US is actively pulling back from doing just that as well and leaving the job to NATO.

All it takes is one announcement that the US is cutting on efforts to understand future climate disasters for that “influence” to disappear.

You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.

I hope Canada cancels our contract to buy these from USA. I don't care the cost, it's not worth it.

Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.

The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.

Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.

> the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides

Hilarious to say this, given the very public and very significant failures of US foreign policy these past couple decades, not least of all the current special military operation.

America had scientific hegemony and political influence over its allies.

All of tech traces its roots to American academia.

American tech enthralls more of humanity than American military has ever fought.

None if catastrophic climate change kills everyone.

Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?

I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished

Where did you get that the number of federally funded graduate students is 3.1 million?

Note that many will have industry, international or self funded (for MS it is less common to have funding). The 9B figure for maintaining the F35 you just said is very close to the entire annual budget of the NSF. Which is the main funding source of most of non medical research.

Also we are not talking about military budget, just the F35 maintenance program here.

You are both comparing stuff that is nonsensical to compare $ amounts on. Would you give up science for more F-35s or vice versa? probably not or not by much.

Ok, but the military is being used for bad things not good things in one of the most easily defended countries in the world, a pure waste.

The poster said they work in academia, not the part that has to do with science, so it seems unfair to compare the F35 to all of academia when they were complaining about science being cut.

Later, after the math showing that graduate students as a whole are more expensive than the F35 program, you claim that the U.S already spends more on education and science than the military.

The claim is of course somewhat unclear, because what comprises science spending. Is Darpa science and not military. Does Nasa count as science in this claim? If Nasa does then it might be that you throw all the budgets of NOAA and the EPA and other similar organizations into the Science pile. I say it just because I am unsure how you are calculating one part of your budget. Actually the education part I am going to suggest that is just higher education.

Higher education is around 100 billion a year, without student loans which doubles that.

The U.S government spends also approximately a couple hundred billion for Science, if I am reading this correctly https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26314 which does a lot of work putting government and business spending together which gives you a number essentially what the government spends on the military.

I can easily construct something that shows the U.S does pay more for science and education than it does for military, but only by being IMHO somewhat misleading, for example by throwing K-12 spending together with the higher education payments and mixing federal and state monies, so to clarify what I mean when I say the U.S in these kinds of conversations and what I think most people mean is "the federal government"

I suppose that the original poster also meant the federal government or it wouldn't make any sense to mention F-35s either.

Under this limitation I believe that the combined ratio of science and higher education is at best 0.8% of GDP and military is 2.8%.

Although it is not really possible to trust very much the data one receives from the American government any more so I am uncertain.

for example this document - I am just having a hard time to trust what data goes into these various parts as federal spending in that area.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

At any rate the military 2.8% I am quoting based on looking around is historically low. I would expect, especially given Iran, that it would be more in line with the historical 4.1%.

pgpf on https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-spends-more-o...

Kings don’t make mistakes. The people under them do.

Some of that money goes to the grad students.

Source: I paid grad students the majority of my research funding for 16 years, and so did all my colleagues.

Unless you’re building a new facility at CERN, etc, the bulk of research cost is people.

Basic science is often cheap, I don't know where you're getting it's generally expensive. I've yet to meet someone whose equipment costs as much as any of the stuff my friends design for defense contractors. Even the head of the lab I'm in is making less than my friends are making as engineers and the lab equipment is pretty cheap compared to the stuff my friends are designing (we have a radar that cost maybe a couple hundred thousand but that's the majority of the equipment cost for the past decade).

Idk what your idea of budgets are for these sorts of labs but I think most engineers would be shocked at the shoestring budgets they run on (at least the ones I know are a fraction of the cost of a single engineering team).

You have about as much political power as a US party in the minority of all three branches. Mind letting us know what you’re going to do about it?

Or scientists know how to count and see that one number is larger than another; and understand that that's an important factor in many political systems.

Look, all I know is DOGE made huge cuts to the NOAA and the National Hurricane Center. And well the 2025 hurricane season speaks for itself.

Sat it out, or were forced out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

If those who sat out were forced to vote for one of the two major party candidates, Trump’s margin may have been larger.

I think liberals and progressives have a higher propensity to vote, so you can’t assume the non voters are less likely to lean Trump.

There's no one to blame but the left. The worst candidate in american history and somehow they still lost?

So 164,339,764 made it happen?

I don’t like any direction this administration has taken, but acting like it’s not the completely legitimate will of the people is BS.

Missed Tim Cook.

Let’s map their names to the companies they run. Then reflect on whether we buy their products: Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla/SpaceX, Meta.

It's basically 'Don't Look Up' at this point, stripped of all metaphor and potential to entertain.

Brockman

Dell, Lawnmower Man

Ellison and Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia

Unlike the stable genius who's bragging how he "aced" not one, but four! cognitive tests

Clown show antics!

* Using the FCC to control the press

* Arresting American citizens because of their brown skin

* Talking about menstruation

> the senile grandpa was awakened and paraded around when it was strictly necessary, but for the most part, it was lunatics running the asylum

Unfortunately now we have both.

> just look at this for example https://xcancel.com/USDOL/status/1795879796599111997 and try to imagine the kind of people who wrote and/or approved that message.

What exactly is your problem with it? "just look at this" while pointing to a normal tweet doesn't exactly convey a point.

This adds nothing; it is a very common problem on the left -- taking the words literally and out of context. Watch his entire comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN1eptTaWVM His point was that many countries were not reporting cases accurately and that, at the time, the US had the most advanced testing so of course we were going to have more cases. He made the "very few cases" comment as an aside and a comparison. Grow up. The problem for the left is that middle-of-the-road folks objectively notice all this. The article highlighted at the top also illustrates this, masquerading as "news" without giving any discussion about the other side's view. It's not news. It's opinion.

There’s also the deluded cynics who profit from fossil fuels. Why mess up their good time??

I think you may have a hard time monitoring the Atlantic current if your sensors are all deployed off the coast of Oregon so it seems to me that this administration would jump at the opportunity to deploy those sensors off of the Oregon coast. Then they could tell the people that they are carefully monitoring the situation and can't find a problem. Nothing to see here, literally.

This comment brought to you by "just ignore the check engine light, it's been on for weeks but the car still moves when I hit the gas"

That doesn't happen overnight, or in time for the program to not be dismantled.

Private control of public data which is needed for the commons has worked very well so far.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Good one.

That's why I drive with my eyes closed. Looking at the other cars on the road isn't going to have any effect on them.

Or our reaction to and preparedness for consequences of early collapse? Is course correction impossible?

Don't worry we're not going to do anything to mitigate their collapse either. Especially not with this attitude.

> Tracking the currents isn’t going to have any effect on the currents.

That's exactly why I never get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases. I mean, I'd rather not know, right??

/s

Oh fuck off. Everything you're posting in this thread consists of rhetorical fallacies. This time, well-poisoning.

>What? It’s just data.

Exactly! Just like those photos of earth from space are data. Just save the file bro lol it's not hard..

/s

I don't trust the trade corrected numbers, China uses a ton of coal still and is ever increasing in their manufacturing of good sent to the US. The number for the US has mostly gone down due to switching to natural gas from coal.

All the more reason as to why it should be Canada monitoring that portion of the ocean.

Assuming the interlocutor is stupid, at any scale, 1-1 to the whole of american politics probably just highlight that you don't fully grasp their point of view, because then it wouldn't be stupid. You'd be able to explain it to them and get them to see the matter from your perspective. If you can't do that, then you don't know you're right, you might be, but there's no way for you to know, truly.

https://abc7news.com/post/report-finds-lack-police-efficienc...

https://abc7.com/post/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-att...

It’s directly relevant. You change data collection to present a false narrative and there are many ways to do it. Shutting down the ocean data infrastructure is one example. It presents a false narrative on climate change.

The same is possible in other contexts like crime stats. You can avoid crime data collection by creating friction in reporting crimes. Or change incentives to report crime by not doing anything with reports. Or not submit data to places that collect it. And so on.

I’m not saying “only democrats” either - they aren’t - but it’s a common issue in blue cities that have obvious crime issues despite government PR about crime rates.

If it's economically valuable wouldn't the evil capitalist bastards squeeze their reserves or peasants a little drier to create their little money printing weather trend predictor? Or you mean it's economically valuable but negative or low ROI?

Evidence?

What does it mean to be not expensive? How much do all the not very expensive endeavors as up to?

The answer in general is we monitor things to understand them, so we know how they will affect us. Same thing we do for all the metrics that allow us to forecast the weather every week.

Won’t markets adjust to that though. Market needs will lead to just-in-time innovation! If not, then victims can sue after damages incurred to recover their losses.

> 1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.

What an awful take. The point of news shouldn't be "assume I'm right and the readership takes my word for it". It should help the reader come to a conclusion, because it's news and not opinion. If you have to go do your own research not to dig deeper but because the article failed to even cover the basic arguments, it has utterly and completely failed.

> 1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.

Assume the opposite direction. If you don't bring the data, then you're not doing your part to convince others on your position. Assumption of "default data" is a significant contributor in the breakdown of communications.

> 2) does that answer satisfy you?

No, in fact it leaves open more questions than before. From the article provided (https://archive.is/fZ9CN):

>> The $48 million annual budget for the observation network was small compared with the value of the data it collected for understanding the oceans and the climate, Dr. McLean said.

- Why didn't aligned charities step in to plug the gap? Billions flow through charities each year, and yet none have stepped in? One or 2 stepping in and still not being able to plug the gap, I can accept. None at all?

- If the data is that important, then there should be multiple efforts in collecting it, not just one. Why did everything get lumped into a single basket?

A point that can be made is that just throwing money at something that doesn't produce meaningful results can be good to cut. having a bunch of data for data sake doesn't make it useful.

Your explanation is what I would expect the article to cover. The article clearly has failed to provide meaningful context.