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U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

e360.yale.edu

261–270 of 540 posts

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#261
post #108

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> I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project That's the problem. > This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. You shouldn't rely on just one article to make an "informed decision." Indeed, anyone who genuinely wants to make "informed decisions" must cultivate the habit of actively seeking out to be better informed rather than passively relying on a single…

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

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#262
post #169

Here's a frankly better article from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatori... A few points: 1. The ocean observation system began operating in 2016 and was expected to continue for 25 years. 2. It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress…

[flagged]

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

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $9B figure is total amortized to yearly: research, development, production, and maintenance across the near century of lifetime (1990s-2080s). I took the total number of graduate students, to spread the money across them. We could also look at the same number as, eg, funding an increase from 3.1M to 3.3M or 3.4M graduate students. I stand by my original claim: A 10% increase in graduate salary or number of studen…

$9B/yr is less than half of the Pentagon's more recent estimate of $2T through 2088 for the F-35 program (according to Wikipedia and its sources, which is all I have to go on).

And again, the F-35 is not synonymous with the entire air force.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#264
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The republicans can have 1 senator in the senate and they somehow shuck and jive to get their way. They never fucking lose in implementing their outright evil. Break some rules, use strategy, set up some game pieces. Do something, anything. The democrats couldn’t even get a Supreme Court justice seated with 6 months to go for the next election.

> 1 senator… Oh, please, that’s not true. But yeah, you need 60 seats there in order to just ram things through. Right now Democrats don’t even have a plurality of the voting public so it’s not surprising that they are completely powerless. > Democrats couldn’t even get a SC Justice… On this one though I’ll fully agree with you, they were 100% ratfucked on Garland’s nomination. In no universe was that more than 0% et…

The Supreme Court displays Democrat in abilities in a nutshell.

Republicans ignored ethics to not-seat Garland. But equally RBG decided not to retire when democrats held the presidency and senate, despite her age.

She is not the first person to put personal ambition ahead of country. There are plenty other examples, on both sides of the isle.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#265
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The republicans can have 1 senator in the senate and they somehow shuck and jive to get their way. They never fucking lose in implementing their outright evil. Break some rules, use strategy, set up some game pieces. Do something, anything. The democrats couldn’t even get a Supreme Court justice seated with 6 months to go for the next election.

The last time Democrats had a full majority they passed the most consequential climate legislation ever. The time before that, health care reform. Republicans couldn’t do anything to stop it. It’s how the system works. It’s not some movie script.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#266
post #75

What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.

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 ? Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.

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.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#267
post #233
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the case that if someone doesn't do something some time then they can't do that thing? Like, if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him and said "dunk this!' and Lebron said "no, I'm not willing to" does this mean Lebron can't dunk? Because personally, I'd still take Lebron on a basketball team even if he wasn't willing to dunk the ball that one time.

> if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him Yes, this is a terrible analogy for the war in Iran. Hugely unpopular, costing Americans vast sums of money daily, headed for possible catastrophe. Very much not a low-stakes "Lebron walks by" situation. Better analogy with Lebron would be: championship game with a title on the line. He gets possession as time runs down and the…

I will remember from now on that you can compare war to Lebron playing in a championship game but not to him playing in a pickup game.

But to be clear, the comment I replied to was one in which you made an abstract point that it doesn't make a difference to someone if you can do something but in practice don't/aren't willing to and I think that this is obviously wrong (just because Lebron didn't dunk doesn't mean he can't or is a bad ball player). You don't like the Lebron analogy, that's fine. Let's use a war analogy: in 2025 Pakistan and India, two nuclear armed countries, exchanged significant fire. Neither was willing to use their nuclear arsenals. Should we now conclude from this that they can't use their nuclear arsenals and are therefore equivalent to being non-nuclear countries? I mean who cares if they have nuclear weapons which can (can't?) kill millions if this one time their political will wasn't there for them to use them in their defense?

> Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.

Be careful not to trip over your rhetoric in an attempt do display profundity. If war is politics by other means, then doing war is always done with politics. This whole statement is word salad nonsense.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#268

I'm asking in good faith here. If it's so critical, then why couldn't the same data be collected and published by another sovereign nation?

I'm guessing you need permission to go deploy a bunch of buoys off the coast of Oregon, and that permission may be difficult to obtain for foreign research projects in the current US political climate.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project That's the problem. > This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. You shouldn't rely on just one article to make an "informed decision." Indeed, anyone who genuinely wants to make "informed decisions" must cultivate the habit of actively seeking out to be better informed rather than passively relying on a single…

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

Your expectations are unrealistic.

Every type of content will have some restrictions. Structural, ideological, financial.

Just about every type of written content on a platform has word limits imposed by its editors. Word limits restrict how much context can be provided in any single article.

Style guides, personal beliefs, management directives, and legal risks impose ideological and political restrictions. Even if an author is candid in the draft copy, reviewers and editors make them tone it down or tone it down themselves without asking the author.

Also doubtful whether a reputed university for elites like Yale will directly point fingers at the rightwing in power or at an elites' blueprint like Project 2025.

Personally, I think all these criticisms of this article are actually a form of centrist deflection and pretense. Centrists support rightwing policies but also don't want to come across as morally bad in such fora. So, to justify their centrism, they criticize the messengers through bikeshedding.

Re: U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse

#270
post #75

What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.

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 ? Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.

> 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.

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