1.  The American Geophysical Union finds that in just this past year, the federal government has removed data from federal websites, frozen or canceled grants for climate research and weakened regulations designed to protect public health and the environment.  At the same time, it is pouring billions of dollars into propping up failing coal-fired power plants whose carbon emissions are responsible for human-caused climate change, according to the World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists who study the causes of extreme weather events.  Heat and cold waves, downpours and drought in the past couple years are afflicting the U.S. with inflation-adjusted billion-dollar weather disasters twice as high as just 10 years ago, and four times higher than 30 years ago.  Climate experts and scientists at NOAA, Climate Central, and FEMA warn that communities and infrastructure built within the last 100 years of past weather are "starting to break," as evidenced by "insurers walking away."  

2.  In addition to cuts to federal funding and the firing or early retirement of thousands of government scientists this year, the latest cut to science is to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, one of the world's premier climate and weather science institutions.  The center's 830 employees conduct research on weather, climate, and energy systems, and operate supercomputers that are used by thousands of scientists across the globe.  The center's research led to technological advances in aviation, hurricane prediction and space weather, and helped inform the insurance industry to better predict risk from extreme weather.  Now is the time to join together and demand that our elected leaders represent our communities and prioritize public safeguards informed by science.

3.  In 2009, the National Science Foundation (NFS) allocated $386 million to build the Ocean Observatories Initiative (strings of stationary buoys and moored instruments in four locations around the U.S.) that measure the ocean's long-term shifts in ocean circulation affecting climate  change, and other disruptions.  The observatories were completed in 2016, but the federal government this past year has slashed the $40 million each year needed to keep the 900 scientific instruments running, according to senior scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  With a Super El Nino warm phase of the Pacific brewing (a natural process amplifying background warming triggered by burning fossil fuels), state meteorologist Paul Douglas cautions that while the last three years have been the warmest on record, worldwide, this year will bring perhaps the worst wildfires we have experienced yet.  Be an advocate for the science that helps us navigate the challenges we face.