By Lauren McCauley
The amount of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere is now officially off the charts as the planet last week breached the 410 parts per million (ppm) milestone for the first time in human history.
Tens of thousands of people celebrated Earth Day Saturday by taking to the streets in a historic day of action for science and truth. A massive March for Science took place in Washington, DC, and more than 600 sister marches took place in other cities around the world.
This Saturday's March for Science is inherently connected to the April 29 People's Climate March, climate scientists and environmentalists say: one march is about listening to science, the other is about acting on it.
Science isn't everything. But it is crucial to governing, decision-making, protecting human health and the environment and resolving questions and challenges around our existence.
As President Donald Trump takes aim at Earth science with his proposed NASA cuts, the Autonomous Space Agency Network (ASAN) has launched the "first protest in space."
In an effort to understand how climate change is altering the carbon cycle, a project between the University of Oklahoma and NASA is headed to space. Orbiting 22,000 miles above Earth's surface, this host of instruments will track carbon as it flows through the Earth delivering real-time data and helping scientists quantify just how much humans are affecting the planet.
By Brenda Ekwurzel
I have had the thrill of sharing the latest discoveries in the classroom with students who asked probing questions, when I was a faculty member of a university. That journey of discovery is one that parents and family members delight in hearing about when students come home and share what they have found particularly intriguing.
The March for Science has announced three honorary national co-chairs for the April 22 march in Washington, DC.
They are: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and key whistleblower of the Flint water crisis, Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff, a biologist who made critical contributions to how bacterial cells could be used to generate insulin, and Bill Nye, beloved science educator and CEO of The Planetary Society.
The Trump administration released its first official 2018 budget proposal this morning and copies obtained by multiple outlets yesterday confirmed deep cuts across the board for climate- and science-related research, grants, programs and agencies.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one of the budget's biggest targets, would suffer a cut of $2.8 billion or nearly a third of its $8.1 billion current budget—much higher than previous estimates of 25 percent—including a $100 million cut for climate programs.
Funding for climate finance in the State Department budget, clean energy research at the Energy Department and funds for NOAA and NASA research also take serious hits in the draft proposal. The budget is one of the "skinniest" first budget documents in history and experts predict many of its short-on-policy-detail proposals will not sit well with Congress.
"Money talks, and Trump's budget proposal screams that the only thing that matters in his America is corporate polluters' profits and Wall Street billionaires," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. "If Trump refuses to be serious about protecting our health and climate, or our publicly owned lands, then Congress must act, do its job, and reject this rigged budget."
Manish Bapna, managing director of World Resources Institute, agrees: "The administration should respect science and continue to respond to the growing impacts of climate change, which is understood by the scientific and security communities alike. It's now up to Congress to restore funding, recognizing that America's economic and security interests are intertwined with the well-being of people and the planet."
For a deeper dive:
General: New York Times, Washington Post, AP EPA: Washington Post, WSJ, Politico Pro, Bloomberg, Reuters State: Washington Post, Reuters
NOAA: Washington Post NASA: Washington Post DOE: Science Mag
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