This posting is primarily for people in the field of atmospheric science. A popular weather blog opened yesterday with news of a lawsuit where a taxpayer-funded organization called the "University Corporation for Atmospheric Research" (a/k/a UCAR, a Washington, DC consortium of colleges with meteorology and similar programs) is using taxpayer dollars to sue other taxpayer supported organizations because the Trump Administration wishes to close the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and distribute its programs to other research institutions. UCAR claims that defunding NCAR "violates the Constitution" and doing so will, among other things, harm the U.S. "national security." As I was writing this, a second blog weighed in making similar points .  Meteorology is tiny profession (per Grok, in 2024 there were 9,400 practicing meteorologists in the United States) which is of  far, far greater importance than its numbers would suggest . [I check...

NCAR's headquarters on Table Mesa near Boulder, Colorado. Courtesy of Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.  The Trump Administration has proposed to shut down National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) located in the Rocky Mountain foothills (specifically, Table Mesa) near Boulder, Colorado. The usual suspects are furious or think it is "past time." The issue, as I see it, is that NCAR was originally set up to be the nation's premier institution of applied  meteorological research:   thunderstorm safety, and that type of thing. Unfortunately, just a few years after its creation, it was "captured" by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) -- which changed its focus that atmospheric scientists call "basic" research. An example was (and this is real) how much carbon dioxide is released every time a bee farts?  While there is nothing wrong with basic research, we have an imbalance in the U.S. where too much tax money goes to basic research a...