<
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-goddard-institute-for-space-studies-faces-eviction-under-trump-plan/>
"In the early 1980s, then real estate developer Donald Trump famously tried to
evict a group of New York City residents from a rent-controlled building that
he wanted to replace with a luxury high-rise. The tenants eventually beat back
the plan.
Today President Trump is having more luck with NASA’s Goddard Institute for
Space Studies (GISS).
Ensconced on six floors of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, GISS has
been a small-but-mighty source of world-changing scientific research for more
than a half-century. NASA scientists first moved into the building, which
another federal agency leases from GISS’s institutional partner, Columbia
University, in 1966. Last month, at the behest of the Trump administration,
NASA officials told GISS it had to move out before the end of May. In response,
more than 100 staffers have abandoned the facility, leaving its tastefully
decorated halls and offices littered with boxes, papers and packing tape.
Although it may be best known to the public indirectly (its building often
appeared in the hit sitcom
Seinfeld as the site of “Monk’s Café”), GISS has
been a leader in Earth science and climate research for decades. The work
within its halls was crucial for sparking broader public awareness of
anthropogenic climate change in the 1980s and has contributed to cutting-edge
weather forecasting and multiple interplanetary missions, as well as the
underpinnings of the past, present, and future habitability of Earth and other
worlds.
Yet now that rich legacy and prospects for further breakthrough research are at
risk, GISS personnel say, jeopardized by the White House’s demands for
notionally better government efficiency. Ironically, however, the effective
eviction of GISS may well result in more costs to taxpayers rather than less."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
