What to do with the inconvenient truth? Destroy the evidence, and pretend it doesn’t exist
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
Fereidoon Sioshansi
Aug 28, 2025
Climate, Commentary
The Mauna Loa Observatory was built in 1956 on the northern flank of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii’s big Island at an elevation of 3,397 meters, or 11,135 feet above sea level.
Starting in 1958, Charles Keeling began measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere creating the now famous Keeling Curve, which unambiguously shows the upward trajectory as humans continue to burn fossil fuels, which cause climate change.
It maintains the world’s longest uninterrupted record of measurements of atmospheric CO2. The iconic graph (below) shows— to skeptics and believers alike – a clear upward trend in CO2 concentration since 1958, unequivocally demonstrating the impact of combustion of fossil fuels on the global atmosphere.
These days people disagree about many things and come up with alternative facts, but hopefully the evidence produced by the Keeling Curve is not one of them.
It is, however, not the type of evidence that climate skeptics want to see – and they certainly don’t want anyone else to see it.
This explains why President Trump wants to eliminate funding for the Mauna Loa Observatory in his 2026 budget proposal. Unless the proposal is rescinded, this decision will virtually obliterate the atmospheric monitoring budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Already, many official US government websites have eliminated references to forbidden and embarrassing topics that contradicts the administration’s ideological views – no matter how scientifically flimsy or absurd they may be.
Totalitarian governments in the past destroyed or restricted access to books by liberals, communists, socialists, pacifists and others whose views contradicted their ideology – censorship aimed at suppressing dissenting voices while imposing their own.
When it comes to climate change and atmospheric research, that is not far from what the Trump Administration is doing. They prefer alternative facts to the ones they do not like.
Not only have they cut back or eliminated funding for research they are doing their best to obliterate references to the existing research data and publications previously available at various official government websites.
In 2021 on the 125th anniversary of The New York Times’ Book Review, the newspaper asked readers to vote for the best book written in the previous 125 years. George Orwell’s 1984 was ranked second.
Those who have read the book may recall the reference to a slogan posted on the Ministry of Truth which read IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, a pertinent line.
If the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases unpleasant job growth data, fire its head. There is a clear pattern here. Inconvenient facts are dismissed, ignored and destroyed from the public record as are the messengers. If we don’t measure and report the data we don’t like, it is easier to pretend that it does not exist.
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