By Donald Gilpin
Claiming that three programs are “no longer in keeping with the Trump administration’s priorities,” the Department of Commerce (DOC) last week announced that it is terminating nearly $4 million in funding for climate research at Princeton University.
The DOC stated that one of the programs to be defunded, conducted by Princeton’s Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System (CIMES), “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats” and contributes “to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.”
The announcement’s criticism of the program continued, “Its focus on alarming climate scenarios fosters fear rather than rational, balanced discussion. Additionally, the use of federal funds to support these narratives, including educational initiatives aimed at K-12 students, is misaligned with the administration’s priorities.”
Princeton University Geosciences Professor Stephan Andreas Fueglistaler, who is leading two of the climate research projects impacted by the funding cuts, and the University’s Media Relations department, had no comment on the announcement.
CIMES, a collaboration between Princeton University and the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), includes on its faculty the noted physicist, meteorologist, and climatologist Syukuro Manabe, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in climate science and the prediction of global warming.
NOAA is facing cuts to operations and research totaling about $1.3 billion.
The DOC announcement further stated that the termination of the “cooperative agreement” programs with Princeton University would “streamline and reduce the cost and size of the federal government, consistent with President Trump’s promises for his administration.”
Two other Princeton programs, five-year research projects, that will lose government funding are a study of fluctuations in the Earth’s water availability as a result of global warming and a project to assess risks associated with climate change, including changes in patterns of rainfall, sea-level rise, and coastal flooding.
“Using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this administration and such time and resources can be better utilized elsewhere,” the DOC announcement stated.
Two weeks ago government agencies, including the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Defense Department, notified Princeton University that they were suspending dozens of research grants and contracts that provide about $210 million to the University.
Amidst federal warnings and action to suspend funding to a number of universities, including Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Northwestern, and others, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber has spoken out repeatedly in defense of academic freedom and the necessity for the federal government to provide the rights of due process.
Eisgruber, in an April 9 New York Times podcast titled “The University President Willing to Fight Trump,” in a March 21 essay in The Atlantic in which he described federal actions to defund university research as “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s,” and in interviews with NPR, Bloomberg, and others, has denounced government funding threats.