Local opinion: Science under siege — from Carl Hodges to Project 2025

In the mid-1980s, I sat in a quiet office at the University of Arizona’s Environmental Research Laboratory (ERL) and looked at a series of printouts that felt like a transmission from a frightening future. My friend and colleague, the late Carl Hodges—founder of ERL and a visionary climate scientist—had just returned from a visit to Boulder, Colorado. He had been meeting with his friend Walter Orr Roberts, the founding director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Carl laid out data generated by NCAR’s then-cutting-edge Cray supercomputers. These machines, the most powerful of their era, had been programmed with the first sophisticated models of our planet’s atmosphere. The projections were stark: a relentless, upward curve of global temperatures driven by the human-caused increase of atmospheric CO2.

I remember the alarm in Carl’s voice. He wasn’t a man prone to hyperbole; he was a scientist who believed in solutions, from seawater agriculture to "greening the desert." But the NCAR data was undeniable. It predicted exactly the world we are living in today — the record-breaking Arizona heatwaves, the dwindling Colorado River, and the erratic, intensified storms. Those 40-year-old projections have proven to be astonishingly accurate.

Today, that legacy of foresight is being dismantled.

The current administration has moved beyond science hostility into active destruction. This month, the White House announced plans to dismantle NCAR, calling it a "source of climate alarmism." This is not just a budget cut; it is a lobotomy of American science. By stripping funding and changing the mission of NCAR — one of the institutions that gave us the tools to understand our changing world — the Trump administration is attempting to blindfold the nation to the realities of the 21st century.

This is a direct page from the Project 2025 playbook, an anti-science manifesto that seeks to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and privatize weather data. It views scientific inquiry as a political threat rather than a public service. When we stop measuring the problem, the problem doesn't go away — we just lose the ability to survive it.

The University of Arizona became a global leader in environmental science because researchers like Carl Hodges saw the Cray projections and acted. The Environmental Research Lab, Biosphere 2, and our world-class hydrology programs were born from a commitment to reality.

When the federal government defunds research, it’s not just "bureaucrats" in Colorado who suffer. It is:

— Our Economy: Arizona’s agricultural and tech sectors rely on the precision weather data and climate modeling NCAR provides.

— Our Safety: Wildfire prediction and flash flood warnings depend on the atmospheric science now on the chopping block.

— Our Future: We are robbing our universities of the grants that drive innovation and train the next generation of problem-solvers.

We are witnessing a new "dark age" by design. The anti-science agenda of the current administration and the architects of Project 2025 is a betrayal of the intellectual rigor that made America a superpower.

We cannot wait for the next set of accurate projections to tell us we’ve run out of time. We must put every ounce of effort into affecting the outcome of the 2026 congressional elections. We need a Congress that respects the scientific method and understands that atmospheric physics doesn't care about political polling.

Carl Hodges spent his life "greening" the planet because he trusted the kind of data he brought home from Boulder four decades ago. For the sake of our university, our country, and especially our children and grandchildren, we must protect the science that protects us.