Physicist Stephen Volz had been working with colleagues at the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for nearly 10 years to produce a new generation of geostationary satellites — instruments that would provide critical observations about atmospheric conditions, climate patterns and weather. But when Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, this long-term project was thrown into disarray.
“This administration canceled three of the five instruments on that program,” Volz, the assistant administrator for NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, who has been on administrative leave since July 2025, told Mongabay. The cancellations applied to instruments that measured air pollutants, tracked lightning to forecast hurricanes and tornadoes, and monitored ocean color to detect events such as algal blooms, sargassum seaweed surges and salinity changes, according to Volz.
“They said, ‘those are all wasted money, they’re climate alarmist, I don’t need air quality, I don’t need ocean color,’” Volz said about the administration’s decision.
The collapse of Science in the US is a globally relevant story for two reasons. 1. It is an instructive example of how a leader in Science can sabotage everything in what feels to the public like a blink of an eye. 2. This collapse will affect the entire world because of how many critical longterm Scientific projects were tied up within the apparatus that Trump and cronies just slashed and burned.