{"id":8572,"date":"2025-07-13T22:11:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=8572"},"modified":"2025-07-18T00:25:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T22:25:43","slug":"unsere-recherche-zeigt-trump-betreibt-faktisch-klima-und-wetterterrorismus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/unsere-recherche-zeigt-trump-betreibt-faktisch-klima-und-wetterterrorismus\/","title":{"rendered":"Our investigation shows: Trump is effectively engaging in climate and weather terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

It doesn\u2019t begin with a thunderclap. It begins with silence. With the voice that no longer warns. With the data that no longer arrives. With weather services standing empty. And it ends with water in the streets, with houses collapsing, with people who were not evacuated in time because there was no one left to tell them they had to go. As the United States moves toward a future that is hotter, more unpredictable, more dangerous, the government under Donald Trump is dismantling the protective mechanisms that were built up over decades \u2013 through research, experience, and a sense of responsibility. Observers call it the dismantling of the state. The government calls it efficiency. But what President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are currently carrying out goes far beyond cutting budgets. It is a systematic gutting of the institutions that were designed to make sure a nation doesn't get left out in the rain \u2013 literally. The National Weather Service has lost hundreds of positions in recent months. On the very day the Guadalupe River overflowed, the San Antonio office was missing its lead coordination meteorologist \u2013 the person who liaises with local authorities, plans evacuations, and sets alert levels. He was gone. Early retirement, offered by a government that would rather pay professionals to leave than to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n

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More than 672 staff members (as of July 13, 2025) have been cut from the Weather Service. Nearly half of all regional offices have lost over 300 employees, and some offices no longer operate at night. Weather balloons are now only sporadically launched. \u201cWe are preparing for degraded operations,\u201d the service itself says \u2013 a euphemism for what is essentially a breakdown of function. And it doesn\u2019t stop there. Ten NOAA laboratories \u2013 the agency responsible for weather and ocean research \u2013 are to be shut down. NOAA currently operates around 21 major research laboratories, including the Hurricane Hunter center in Miami, whose planes used to fly into storms to measure wind speed, temperature, and humidity \u2013 exactly the data needed to save lives. What is being lost here is a \u201cgenerational loss\u201d for forecasting research. But President Trump apparently sees no harm in any of this. His budget proposal cuts another two billion dollars from NOAA \u2013 27 percent. The agency\u2019s scientific division is to be eliminated entirely. Satellites that have been monitoring the atmosphere and oceans for decades are being decommissioned. NASA\u2019s Earth observation will be cut in half. What remains is a country flying blind. A country that refuses to look \u2013 while the storm has already begun.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Yet as this scientific retreat unfolds in plain sight, Europe remains strangely silent. Hardly anyone seems to notice that the consequences will be felt on this continent too \u2013 and not in the distant future, but during the next storm season, the next river flood, the next drought. Europe\u2019s early warning systems, the ECMWF weather models, the Copernicus satellite program \u2013 they all depend on the continuous, high-resolution data stream from the United States. Without the Hurricane Hunter flights, without NOAA satellites, without U.S. river gauge and ocean data, European forecasts will also become less accurate, reaction times longer, protective measures weaker. Trump\u2019s destruction of the American climate infrastructure is not an isolated domestic experiment \u2013 it is a global assault whose full force will only become visible once it\u2019s too late. And Europe? Europe remains silent \u2013 and will soon be standing in the rain. This is a destructive restructuring that does not happen by accident but with full intent \u2013 coldly calculated, ideologically driven, and carried out by a government that views science as the enemy and nature as disposable. With renewed force, Trump is promoting coal plants, allowing entire forests to be cleared for industrial megaprojects, lifting emission limits, and pushing the EPA systematically to the edge of collapse. The result is a double catastrophe: while the physical foundations of climate security are being destroyed, climate change itself is being accelerated. It is not just negligence \u2013 it is the active sabotage of the future.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Even emergency response itself is being gutted. FEMA, once the backbone of America\u2019s crisis response, is being shaken to its core. Trump doesn\u2019t want to reform it \u2013 he wants to eliminate it. Already, 3.6 billion dollars in promised aid funds have been frozen. No new money for house reinforcements in hurricane zones, no budget for the resilience program \u201cBuilding Resilient Infrastructure and Communities,\u201d which totaled 882 million dollars. In the last six months, FEMA has lost 2,000 of its 6,800 full-time employees. 18 of the 61 coordinating officers who lead disaster responses are gone. The head of the disaster command center? Vacant. The chief of the agency: a man with zero experience in disaster management. And the US Geological Survey has not been spared either. Its river gauge networks, which collect water level data every 15 minutes, are to be cut by a fifth. 25 research facilities are losing their leases \u2013 this affects virtually the entire national infrastructure. The alternative? Those who can pay will still get information. Those who can\u2019t? Will be left in the water. At a time when the US faces an average of 27 billion-dollar disasters per year, the government is cutting the future out of the budget. A policy of unlearning. A government that abandons weather forecasting and climate protection \u2013 because it doesn\u2019t trust either prediction or reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n