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Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

> "Figure 1a shows changes in aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved by MODIS Terra and Aqua"

The US wants to immediately defund these satellites and halt their observations.

https://www.science.org/content/article/dozens-active-and-pl...

I don't know why some people celebrate strength with fear of knowledge. Maybe they're just equally as afraid of knowledge and don't want to look weak and puff out their chests to pretend to be strong. As an American, it really frustrates me to see such bravado celebrated as bravery.

> afraid of knowledge and don't want to look weak

I've come to the conclusion this is basically it, aside from corruption.

Intellectual weakness and cowardice, avoiding what you can't actually do or don't understand.

In the case of anything space related though, I'd look to corruption, trying to cut public resources to reduce competition with private equivalents, shifting money from something publicly owned to something privately profited from.

For those in power, those that point out the problem, become the problem.

Only if those in power don't actually feel powerful but just want to look powerful.

you're assuming this is because of perception of weakness, and not an explicit, decade-long aggressive effort by foreign money + US billionaires to dismantle the US government.

just happens that oil barons & Putin happen to have views that are aligned, and that Trump + his cronies are willing to play ball with the fellow travelers.

i think a decades-long aggressive effort to dismantle the US government might also be from such a place of fear of knowledge or at least, fear of others having control over their right to make profit. I guess I'm just tired of us celebrating the ones who appear strong but really are just acting out of deep fear and wish they (and us) had the courage to see it as fear and express it as such.

Need the money to pay for moving the retired, defunct Shuttle Discovery to Houston in order to lie to the people that space is being funded.

Don't pay money to give your political opponents facts to help oust you.

politics 101.

They're already going to be ousted. This is about temporarily propping up the price of fossil fuel assets that will never practically be monetized. Even an extra 5-10 years could allow vast sums of fake-wealth to be dumped onto other bagholders.

The asset bust coming to Permian basin via fracking is going to be a doozy.

[flagged]

No; the budget cuts the Earth Science division (encompassing MODIS et al.) in half[0]. You need only query at the budget request itself[1] to see it does so with wilful malice, under the rationale that climate science is "woke" and a "radical ideology"[1].

[0] https://www.space.com/science/climate-change/as-nasas-budget... (.... It called for a 24% overall cut to NASA's budget, including a 47% reduction in Earth science funding...")

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...

> "The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life."

You didn’t address what they said though.

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