With dangerous weather increasingly the norm, the ignorance of this is unfathomable. What can we DO? It appears we have no agency in any of this. So we sit, wondering, feeling helpless, watching everything be destroyed, seeing these . . . I have no words to describe these people . . . gleefully wrecking everything generations have struggled and worked to build (as imperfect as some of it was) while it appears there is NO ONE who can force them to obey court orders or pay attention to the harms being caused, no ability to look ahead to the next huge disaster and how people are supposed to prepare for it. Somehow, someone, someones, WE, have to force them to obey court orders, to STOP the massive destruction. Cripes, weโre only a bit more than a month in. We have 3 years and 11 more months of this. There will be nothing left in a few weeks if that. Itโs going to be a long, hot, violent, deadly summer.
Un-f-ing believable! I live in tornado country and count on the good folks at the NWS to send out warnings. We desperately need the basic and applied science only NOAA can provide. Thank you for the background of this important agency.
JD Vance, the ever-loyal mouthpiece for Trumpโs authoritarian ambitions, took a brief detour from dismantling democracy to enjoy a ski weekend at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont. But instead of a warm welcome, he got a sharp reality check from an unlikely sourceโlocal snow reporter Lucy Welch.
Welch, in an act of bold defiance, used her platform to call out the hypocrisy and destruction wrought by the administration Vance so enthusiastically enables. Her snow report email, a daily staple for skiers tracking conditions, became an unflinching manifesto on climate change, public land protections, and the administrationโs assaults on marginalized communities. It was up long enough to make an impact before Sugarbush management predictably scrubbed it.
๐ฅ The Message That Rocked the Mountain
Welch didnโt hold back. She painted a devastating portrait of what Trumpโs regime is doing to Americaโs forests, National Parks, and institutions like the NOAA and Veterans Affairsโpillars essential not only to skiers but to the nation at large. She called out Vance and his ilk for their blatant disregard for climate change, the gutting of conservation programs, and their attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, immigrants, and veterans. In a statement dripping with justified outrage, she wrote:
๐ โThe world around us might be a scary place, but these little moments of tranquilityโฆ give me, and Iโd guess you, too, a sense of strength and stability.โ
๐ โNational Forest lands and National Parks are under direct attack by the current Administration.โ
๐ โThe Administration also neglects to address the danger, or even the existence of, climate change, the biggest threat to the future of our industry.โ
๐ โI can only assume that I will be fired, but at least this will do even just a smidge more than just shutting up and being a sheep.โ
Her words cut through the fog of complacency like a fresh set of ski tracks on untouched powder. This wasnโt just a snow reportโit was a declaration of resistance. โ๏ธ
๐๏ธ The Bigger Picture: Vanceโs Role in the Rot
Vance, who just yesterday stood in the White House grinning as Trump insulted a foreign leader, is the perfect symbol of the Republican Partyโs soulless transformation. Once a self-styled critic of Trump, he now embodies the servile, power-hungry nature of MAGA politiciansโmen who sell out their integrity for a seat at the table of corruption.
This administration has made it abundantly clear: environmental conservation is expendable, science is an inconvenience, and diversity is a threat. Whether itโs purging federal scientists, gutting climate initiatives, or pushing hate-filled policies, they are hellbent on leaving behind a broken world. The snow-covered mountains of Vermont might look serene, but Welch understands that beneath the surface, the ice is cracking.
๐ The Resistance Takes Many Forms
Lucy Welch may lose her job for speaking the truth, but her courage is a beacon for all of us who refuse to stay silent. This is what good trouble looks like. Whether youโre a journalist, an activist, or a snow reporter with a daily email listโuse your voice. The stakes couldnโt be higher.
And JD Vance? Well, we hope he enjoys the powder while it lastsโbecause if his administration has its way, the only thing left on these slopes will be mud and regret. ๐๐ฅ
Thanks for this information, Bill, it's important. Please consider contacting General Contractors and letting them know that continuing to rebuild houses with lumber is the height of stupidity. Wood burns, and is against the law in most countries in Europe and Asia. Cost issues are minor: Framing is 23% of cost, but we can price match via zero waste, noncombustible specifications, and long term use: American houses last for 60 years on average. The figure is several times that amount in developed countries that typically avoid the use of flammable materials. Our biggest problem is that American General Contractors don't like to change: They will have to learn new tools and superior methods, such as light gauge steel framing. Western Los Angeles burned down. Local GC's are already repeating business as usual, even after the dozens of deaths from fires. Let's do this right, and build houses that last for centuries, not decades. It's not hard. mike.greenframe@gmail.com
Thank you for TRUTH TELLING what is going on behind the doge and pony show, Bill! I have been sick to my stomach since we know King trumps court is heavily stacked with greedy fools intent on turning out National Forest lands into โgold minesโ for his billionaire cronies to drill baby drill. The doge team is trashing the system to recodify all systems to mine map all natural resources. This while they โfix the forest actโ with policies written by the likes of Russel Vought intentional in โtraumatizingโ all environmental protection agencies and turning timber into cheap fuel to sell to distant lands while the plan is to resurrect decaying infrastructure on shore and offshore to fuel their dirty ambitions. I have been watching california sadly destroyed by misguided energy policies that favor big oil exploit our natural resources and deny the truth that Fires like the Thomas Fire, the Paradise fire, the palisades and the eaton fire were sparked by the deteriorating TRANSMISSION lines and crumbling power infrastructure. Yet PGE blames โstrike force treesโ denying their liability and creating a media campaign while the board spins the spread sheets in their stakeholders favor to recoup a profit at the expense of the land and the customer. Can we even believe corporate public utilities are still using WOODEN POLES designed to transmit telegraphs (1880s?) and dangling wires that need to be โde energizedโ. Talk about deny divert and destroy politics and policies to match. Meanwhile we Burn Baby Burn in California - cant wait for summer! Perhaps by then we will have remobilized our stunned parts into a unified force to be reckoned with. Like after the tragic oil spill off the beautiful santa barbara coastline that sparked a movement called GOO. And if i remember correctly Get Oil Out was driven by the young adults attending UC SB and it sparked a revolution. Lets go.
During the past 45 years, in just the blink of an eye, the GOPโs unregulated corporate benefactors have been destroying our environment, destroying our health, and now their closing in on completing their destruction of our democracy. And here we are, the fate of our democracy awaiting the decisions of six people with a history of obfuscating the law in favor of their benefactors.
Makes one wonder what their business plans will be after theyโve killed-off all of their customers.
thank you - it is so easy to break and dismantle things, and so hard to build them, and especially to build them to last. I would say that the breakage has been happening for many decades, due to the fossil fuel industries and particularly the oil companies - and the US government. But now the damage is being done at breakneck speed. So yes, this is going to be lasting, and once things get lost, they don't easily come back.
In Barrow Alaska out on the tundra is a laboratory in a trailer with only one window, the portal in the heavy steel door. This where NOAA monitors carbon in the atmosphere, secondary to the one on Mona Loa. I visited during the George W Bush years. They operated below the political radar for a mere $38,000 a year, one staff and an intern. When leaving the facility there was big sign Beware of polar bear and a rifle on the wall rack by the door. If polar bear was sighted one was to shoot the rifle to frighten away bear. At that time the polar population was rising with increasing bear-people encounters. I gave him my contact information saying if weather or polar bear take out any equipment on the roof call me from the hardware store with bill. The call for assistance never came. Somehow, against the odds and despite howling political winds, the infamous carbon hockey stick graph was drawn without any breaks.
Thank you despite the fact that every fact you report is one of injury to our beloved and singular planet. How can we not want to know everything we can about the earth we live on and with? How can we allow the muskrats to strip our government of the civil servants who put their knowledge and skills at our service? We need to honor civil servants as much if not more than our veterans. Military service is honorable but civil service is essential regardless of the politics of war and peace. The risks of climate change are just the last of the enemies they are peacefully fighting.
Wonderful post! I've come to the realization that, "We" have misinterpreted DOGE mission. They have been very clear, it is to cut costs. Implicitly, many of us think that means to solve problems.
But they insist their mission is to cut costs. The tragedy is the problems still remain. The time, spending, social, moral impact of recovering and addressing the problems will outshadow any savings they create.
But again, solving problems does not appear to be their job.......
Bill - thanks so much for your moving account of the nihilistic crimes of Musk, RFK jr. and other Trump cronies against NOAA, EPA AND NIH scientists and their professional livelihoods. More than โjustโ (!) tragically dismantling their lives and work, these crimes seek to cut off the American people and the world from the very knowledge and shared reality that allow us to combine scientific research with our collective capacities to save our world from fossil fuels, I.e. to be an adaptive species.
I want to make one modest proposal. In parliamentary systems, the opposition out of power has formed shadow ministries that could maintain this connection between scientists and good public policy - and could track and document the denials and distortions of reality of the people in power. I donโt deny the terribly destruction being wrought on the labs, computer systems, facilities and data bases - will they even allow arduously collected prehistoric ice cores to be destroyed? Still our most precious resource are our scientists and public servants in NOAA, EPA, HHS, EPA, CDC, NIH and their accumulated knowledge. Itโs urgent that a shadow ministry of science be formed and supported financially to collectively support our scientists in exile and to help them preserve what can be saved, archived - and to plan for a post-authoritarian future after Trump and Vance are thrown out. A shadow ministry of science will give us a headstart in recovering what can be retrieved from the destruction, and rebuild. It could organize commissions of inquiry to document Trump and Muskโs unconstitutional destruction of our public scientific infrastructure and what reparations Trumps clique owes the American people for the damages theyโre doing.
Unfortunately the Dems donโt have enough sense to think of this on their own, but they need to be pushed to initiate this and get civil society (philanthropies, university faculty, civil organizations, churches etc) behind it and Union of Concerned Scientists to lead it. Itโs urgent.
This couldnโt have happenedโTrump, Musk, the attack on parks, our health, our securityโwithout decades of Rush Limbaugh, the Fox network, and hundreds of others spewing the propaganda of oligarchs.
With dangerous weather increasingly the norm, the ignorance of this is unfathomable. What can we DO? It appears we have no agency in any of this. So we sit, wondering, feeling helpless, watching everything be destroyed, seeing these . . . I have no words to describe these people . . . gleefully wrecking everything generations have struggled and worked to build (as imperfect as some of it was) while it appears there is NO ONE who can force them to obey court orders or pay attention to the harms being caused, no ability to look ahead to the next huge disaster and how people are supposed to prepare for it. Somehow, someone, someones, WE, have to force them to obey court orders, to STOP the massive destruction. Cripes, weโre only a bit more than a month in. We have 3 years and 11 more months of this. There will be nothing left in a few weeks if that. Itโs going to be a long, hot, violent, deadly summer.
Thanks for chronicling truthfully and completely our nation's retreat from reason and responsibility, Bill. In dark times your witness unites us.
Un-f-ing believable! I live in tornado country and count on the good folks at the NWS to send out warnings. We desperately need the basic and applied science only NOAA can provide. Thank you for the background of this important agency.
โ ๐ฅ๐๐ฆ๐๐ฆ๐ง๐๐ก๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐ข๐ฅ๐ง
๐๐ผ๐ผ๐ฑ ๐ง๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐: ๐๐ ๐ฉ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ ๐ฎ ๐ฉ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐บ๐ผ๐ป๐ ๐ช๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒ-๐จ๐ฝ ๐๐ฎ๐น๐น ๐ฟโ๏ธ
JD Vance, the ever-loyal mouthpiece for Trumpโs authoritarian ambitions, took a brief detour from dismantling democracy to enjoy a ski weekend at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont. But instead of a warm welcome, he got a sharp reality check from an unlikely sourceโlocal snow reporter Lucy Welch.
Welch, in an act of bold defiance, used her platform to call out the hypocrisy and destruction wrought by the administration Vance so enthusiastically enables. Her snow report email, a daily staple for skiers tracking conditions, became an unflinching manifesto on climate change, public land protections, and the administrationโs assaults on marginalized communities. It was up long enough to make an impact before Sugarbush management predictably scrubbed it.
๐ฅ The Message That Rocked the Mountain
Welch didnโt hold back. She painted a devastating portrait of what Trumpโs regime is doing to Americaโs forests, National Parks, and institutions like the NOAA and Veterans Affairsโpillars essential not only to skiers but to the nation at large. She called out Vance and his ilk for their blatant disregard for climate change, the gutting of conservation programs, and their attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, immigrants, and veterans. In a statement dripping with justified outrage, she wrote:
๐ โThe world around us might be a scary place, but these little moments of tranquilityโฆ give me, and Iโd guess you, too, a sense of strength and stability.โ
๐ โNational Forest lands and National Parks are under direct attack by the current Administration.โ
๐ โThe Administration also neglects to address the danger, or even the existence of, climate change, the biggest threat to the future of our industry.โ
๐ โI can only assume that I will be fired, but at least this will do even just a smidge more than just shutting up and being a sheep.โ
Her words cut through the fog of complacency like a fresh set of ski tracks on untouched powder. This wasnโt just a snow reportโit was a declaration of resistance. โ๏ธ
๐๏ธ The Bigger Picture: Vanceโs Role in the Rot
Vance, who just yesterday stood in the White House grinning as Trump insulted a foreign leader, is the perfect symbol of the Republican Partyโs soulless transformation. Once a self-styled critic of Trump, he now embodies the servile, power-hungry nature of MAGA politiciansโmen who sell out their integrity for a seat at the table of corruption.
This administration has made it abundantly clear: environmental conservation is expendable, science is an inconvenience, and diversity is a threat. Whether itโs purging federal scientists, gutting climate initiatives, or pushing hate-filled policies, they are hellbent on leaving behind a broken world. The snow-covered mountains of Vermont might look serene, but Welch understands that beneath the surface, the ice is cracking.
๐ The Resistance Takes Many Forms
Lucy Welch may lose her job for speaking the truth, but her courage is a beacon for all of us who refuse to stay silent. This is what good trouble looks like. Whether youโre a journalist, an activist, or a snow reporter with a daily email listโuse your voice. The stakes couldnโt be higher.
And JD Vance? Well, we hope he enjoys the powder while it lastsโbecause if his administration has its way, the only thing left on these slopes will be mud and regret. ๐๐ฅ
๐ต๐๐๐ฝ๐://๐๐๐ฏ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ.๐ฐ๐ผ๐บ/@๐ฝ๐ฎ๐๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ฎ๐๐น๐?๐๐๐บ_๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ฒ=๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ-๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐
Thanks for this information, Bill, it's important. Please consider contacting General Contractors and letting them know that continuing to rebuild houses with lumber is the height of stupidity. Wood burns, and is against the law in most countries in Europe and Asia. Cost issues are minor: Framing is 23% of cost, but we can price match via zero waste, noncombustible specifications, and long term use: American houses last for 60 years on average. The figure is several times that amount in developed countries that typically avoid the use of flammable materials. Our biggest problem is that American General Contractors don't like to change: They will have to learn new tools and superior methods, such as light gauge steel framing. Western Los Angeles burned down. Local GC's are already repeating business as usual, even after the dozens of deaths from fires. Let's do this right, and build houses that last for centuries, not decades. It's not hard. mike.greenframe@gmail.com
Thank you for TRUTH TELLING what is going on behind the doge and pony show, Bill! I have been sick to my stomach since we know King trumps court is heavily stacked with greedy fools intent on turning out National Forest lands into โgold minesโ for his billionaire cronies to drill baby drill. The doge team is trashing the system to recodify all systems to mine map all natural resources. This while they โfix the forest actโ with policies written by the likes of Russel Vought intentional in โtraumatizingโ all environmental protection agencies and turning timber into cheap fuel to sell to distant lands while the plan is to resurrect decaying infrastructure on shore and offshore to fuel their dirty ambitions. I have been watching california sadly destroyed by misguided energy policies that favor big oil exploit our natural resources and deny the truth that Fires like the Thomas Fire, the Paradise fire, the palisades and the eaton fire were sparked by the deteriorating TRANSMISSION lines and crumbling power infrastructure. Yet PGE blames โstrike force treesโ denying their liability and creating a media campaign while the board spins the spread sheets in their stakeholders favor to recoup a profit at the expense of the land and the customer. Can we even believe corporate public utilities are still using WOODEN POLES designed to transmit telegraphs (1880s?) and dangling wires that need to be โde energizedโ. Talk about deny divert and destroy politics and policies to match. Meanwhile we Burn Baby Burn in California - cant wait for summer! Perhaps by then we will have remobilized our stunned parts into a unified force to be reckoned with. Like after the tragic oil spill off the beautiful santa barbara coastline that sparked a movement called GOO. And if i remember correctly Get Oil Out was driven by the young adults attending UC SB and it sparked a revolution. Lets go.
During the past 45 years, in just the blink of an eye, the GOPโs unregulated corporate benefactors have been destroying our environment, destroying our health, and now their closing in on completing their destruction of our democracy. And here we are, the fate of our democracy awaiting the decisions of six people with a history of obfuscating the law in favor of their benefactors.
Makes one wonder what their business plans will be after theyโve killed-off all of their customers.
thank you - it is so easy to break and dismantle things, and so hard to build them, and especially to build them to last. I would say that the breakage has been happening for many decades, due to the fossil fuel industries and particularly the oil companies - and the US government. But now the damage is being done at breakneck speed. So yes, this is going to be lasting, and once things get lost, they don't easily come back.
In Barrow Alaska out on the tundra is a laboratory in a trailer with only one window, the portal in the heavy steel door. This where NOAA monitors carbon in the atmosphere, secondary to the one on Mona Loa. I visited during the George W Bush years. They operated below the political radar for a mere $38,000 a year, one staff and an intern. When leaving the facility there was big sign Beware of polar bear and a rifle on the wall rack by the door. If polar bear was sighted one was to shoot the rifle to frighten away bear. At that time the polar population was rising with increasing bear-people encounters. I gave him my contact information saying if weather or polar bear take out any equipment on the roof call me from the hardware store with bill. The call for assistance never came. Somehow, against the odds and despite howling political winds, the infamous carbon hockey stick graph was drawn without any breaks.
Thank you despite the fact that every fact you report is one of injury to our beloved and singular planet. How can we not want to know everything we can about the earth we live on and with? How can we allow the muskrats to strip our government of the civil servants who put their knowledge and skills at our service? We need to honor civil servants as much if not more than our veterans. Military service is honorable but civil service is essential regardless of the politics of war and peace. The risks of climate change are just the last of the enemies they are peacefully fighting.
Great post, Bill. how stupid the MUMP administration is to think that if they don't say the words 'climate change' it will magically disappear.
This is very bad news.
My academic colleagues are panicking or quietly filled with dread. This work is getting harder.
Signed up for Third Act. Thank you
Wonderful post! I've come to the realization that, "We" have misinterpreted DOGE mission. They have been very clear, it is to cut costs. Implicitly, many of us think that means to solve problems.
But they insist their mission is to cut costs. The tragedy is the problems still remain. The time, spending, social, moral impact of recovering and addressing the problems will outshadow any savings they create.
But again, solving problems does not appear to be their job.......
Bill - thanks so much for your moving account of the nihilistic crimes of Musk, RFK jr. and other Trump cronies against NOAA, EPA AND NIH scientists and their professional livelihoods. More than โjustโ (!) tragically dismantling their lives and work, these crimes seek to cut off the American people and the world from the very knowledge and shared reality that allow us to combine scientific research with our collective capacities to save our world from fossil fuels, I.e. to be an adaptive species.
I want to make one modest proposal. In parliamentary systems, the opposition out of power has formed shadow ministries that could maintain this connection between scientists and good public policy - and could track and document the denials and distortions of reality of the people in power. I donโt deny the terribly destruction being wrought on the labs, computer systems, facilities and data bases - will they even allow arduously collected prehistoric ice cores to be destroyed? Still our most precious resource are our scientists and public servants in NOAA, EPA, HHS, EPA, CDC, NIH and their accumulated knowledge. Itโs urgent that a shadow ministry of science be formed and supported financially to collectively support our scientists in exile and to help them preserve what can be saved, archived - and to plan for a post-authoritarian future after Trump and Vance are thrown out. A shadow ministry of science will give us a headstart in recovering what can be retrieved from the destruction, and rebuild. It could organize commissions of inquiry to document Trump and Muskโs unconstitutional destruction of our public scientific infrastructure and what reparations Trumps clique owes the American people for the damages theyโre doing.
Unfortunately the Dems donโt have enough sense to think of this on their own, but they need to be pushed to initiate this and get civil society (philanthropies, university faculty, civil organizations, churches etc) behind it and Union of Concerned Scientists to lead it. Itโs urgent.
Kakistocracy.
This couldnโt have happenedโTrump, Musk, the attack on parks, our health, our securityโwithout decades of Rush Limbaugh, the Fox network, and hundreds of others spewing the propaganda of oligarchs.