Trump cuts apparently shutting down NASA’s climate office in New York

Schmidt’s data tampering, as documented in 2016.
As part of the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to trim the federal budget as well as shift the research focus at the federal government’s many science agencies, on April 24, 2025 it revealed that it has canceled the building lease for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York that has existed since 1961 and in 2016 and 2017 was found to be tampering with past climate data with no explanation, lowering past temperature numbers while raising more recent ones in order to make the data fit the as-yet unproven theory that human activity is causing global warming.
Those “adjustments” have never been justified in any way. Nor has Gavin Schmidt, the man who heads GISS, ever done anything to correct them. Moreover, when his office was accused of this tampering in 2016 he not only refused to fix or justify the changes, he responded by claiming “planetary warming does not care about the election.” In the years since it has been his office that annually declares each year “the hottest on record,” using these tampered numbers to do so and demonstrating that he has been acting not as a real researcher but as a political operative of the global warming crowd.
Though the office lease is being canceled, GISS has not been shut down, as of now.
While NASA is terminating the lease on the GISS offices, it is not closing the institute itself. Lystrup said in the email that it will help employees move “to remote work agreements in the short-term as the agency seeks a new, permanent space for the team.”
I suspect this statement is merely designed by Trump officials to dampen the screams of opposition against its actions. It is very likely GISS is going away, and most of its employees will have to find new jobs.
The hope is that new scientists can be hired to review these tampered numbers and get them fixed so that climate research in the future can proceed with reliable data.
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Schmidt’s data tampering, as documented in 2016.
As part of the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to trim the federal budget as well as shift the research focus at the federal government’s many science agencies, on April 24, 2025 it revealed that it has canceled the building lease for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York that has existed since 1961 and in 2016 and 2017 was found to be tampering with past climate data with no explanation, lowering past temperature numbers while raising more recent ones in order to make the data fit the as-yet unproven theory that human activity is causing global warming.
Those “adjustments” have never been justified in any way. Nor has Gavin Schmidt, the man who heads GISS, ever done anything to correct them. Moreover, when his office was accused of this tampering in 2016 he not only refused to fix or justify the changes, he responded by claiming “planetary warming does not care about the election.” In the years since it has been his office that annually declares each year “the hottest on record,” using these tampered numbers to do so and demonstrating that he has been acting not as a real researcher but as a political operative of the global warming crowd.
Though the office lease is being canceled, GISS has not been shut down, as of now.
While NASA is terminating the lease on the GISS offices, it is not closing the institute itself. Lystrup said in the email that it will help employees move “to remote work agreements in the short-term as the agency seeks a new, permanent space for the team.”
I suspect this statement is merely designed by Trump officials to dampen the screams of opposition against its actions. It is very likely GISS is going away, and most of its employees will have to find new jobs.
The hope is that new scientists can be hired to review these tampered numbers and get them fixed so that climate research in the future can proceed with reliable data.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
oh no
anyways…
While ( as has surly been obvious from my comments over the years), I am an absolute advocate of accurate scientific data, and absolutely condemn any “jiggering” with data to fit any any particular theory, there are still reasons to be worried about climate change, whatever the reason.
Satellite views clearly show a reduction in arctic ice, which ( my conspiracy theory) might have something to do with Trump’s interest in Greenland… Previously hidden resources are becoming accessable.
Extreme weather events are certainly becoming more common… Catastrophic hurricanes, tornadoes, storms dropping stupid quantities of rain in one go… All seem to be ramping up in frequency.
And admittedly it’s only a very small data point, but when I first moved here to Sweden (25 ish years ago ), in winter -20c was the norm, and the sea around Stockholm froze over.. it was fun to go out and go ice fishing… I haven’t been able to go ice fishing in over a decade, indeed there has been no ice on both the sea and the lake I live by for a decade.
I don’t think we know enough about the climate to point a finger at the reasons for these pretty rapid changes, and falsifying data isn’t helping any… But I also think we shouldn’t get complacent because of some bad data. Keep researching, collect and analyse genuine data, and draw conclusions based on facts.
I’m certainly not a “chicken little” , but I do think the stakes in this matter are big enough to warrent serious study… I hope for all our children’s sake this is a nothing burger, but we owe it to them to just make sure.