I’ve been quiet on this blog for the past few months as Trump and his disciples have dismantled the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)—all of which have made U.S. science the best in the world. Ok, so maybe the taxpayer should not have been asked to fund the myriad of studies of natural history that fill the pages of Ecology and other such journals, but the science within the EPA protects us all from toxic compounds that the chemical industry might inflict upon us in the name of better weed or insect control.

With the announcement that among its scientific endeavors the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will close out its laboratory on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, I can be silent no longer.  This is where the long-term record of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere began in 1957.  Its continuous rise (from fossil fuel combustion) and rhythmic oscillations (from seasonal photosynthetic activity) are well known and grace the entrance walls of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences along with a picture of Watson and Crick’s double helix structure of the DNA molecule—as the two greatest discoveries of twentieth century science.

We now know that oscillations in oxygen follow in mirror image to the seasonal oscillations in carbon dioxide—an index of how the biosphere impacts the concentrations of this life-sustaining gas.  The rise in carbon dioxide is unprecedented in the geologic history of the Earth. To discontinue these records would be a travesty that no one in science should tolerate.

My late colleague at Duke, Dan Livingstone, once described the oscillations of the Mauna Loa curve as a record of the beating heart of the biosphere.  If Donald Trump can flat-line that with his favorite black marker, we will witness the end of our stewardship of Eden.  Is this really what we meant to elect in 2024?