After Senate vote, Trump admin backs off plans to kill ocean monitoring

在参议院投票后，特朗普政府撤回了终止海洋监测计划的决定

In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network’s role in tracking climate change. 今年五月，联邦政府在毫无预警的情况下宣布，将拆除一个耗资超过 3.5 亿美元建立的海洋监测系统网络。政府并未说明关闭“海洋观测倡议”（OOI）的原因，但外界的怀疑立即集中在该网络在追踪气候变化方面的作用上。

But the OOI also provides data that’s useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading to widespread opposition. Today, it appears that the opposition has won, as the government will announce that it’s reversing the decision. The big remaining question is how much damage the OOI took during the intervening month. 然而，OOI 同时还提供对天气预报和渔业管理有用的数据，这引发了广泛的反对。如今，反对者似乎已经获胜，因为政府即将宣布撤回这一决定。目前遗留的最大问题是，在过去的一个月里，OOI 遭受了多大的损害。

As of now, there is no formal statement available from the federal government. However, The New York Times reports that the decision will be announced later today, and Ars received a statement from Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, indicating that the decision has been made. 截至目前，联邦政府尚未发布正式声明。不过，《纽约时报》报道称该决定将于今日晚些时候公布，Ars 也收到了众议院科学委员会民主党领袖佐伊·洛夫格伦（Zoe Lofgren）的声明，证实该决定已经做出。

The OOI is a federally supported resource that provides ocean data for use by academic researchers, government planners, and private companies. It consists of arrays of monitoring systems in several locations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that can track things like currents, salinity, chemical levels, temperatures, and tectonic activity. (There are over 100 individual entries on the page that display the data gathered by the system.) OOI 是一项由联邦政府支持的资源，为学术研究人员、政府规划者和私营企业提供海洋数据。它由分布在大西洋和太平洋多个地点的监测系统阵列组成，能够追踪洋流、盐度、化学水平、温度和构造活动等指标。（在该系统的网页上，有超过 100 个独立条目展示了所收集的数据。）

Obviously, there are many potential uses of that data. The fact that it has been gathered continuously for a decade means it can help track changes in how carbon dioxide and heat enter the oceans. This is probably what made it a target for the climate change denialists who helped set the Trump administration’s policy. 显然，这些数据有着多种潜在用途。由于这些数据已连续收集了十年，这意味着它有助于追踪二氧化碳和热量进入海洋方式的变化。这很可能使其成为了协助制定特朗普政府政策的气候变化怀疑论者的目标。

Those policymakers are perfectly happy to annoy people with environmental concerns, but they apparently neglected to consider how upset everyone else would be about losing access to the other data. The ensuing public backlash led the Senate on Wednesday to unanimously agree with a measure that would block the government from taking down the OOI. 这些决策者非常乐于激怒那些关心环境的人，但他们显然忽略了其他人因失去这些数据访问权限而会感到多么愤怒。随之而来的公众强烈抗议促使参议院在周三一致通过了一项措施，旨在阻止政府拆除 OOI。

Today’s decision may indicate that the administration recognized it had gotten itself into a fight it knew it was losing. The big question is whether some of the monitoring equipment has already been removed. “We also don’t yet know how much damage they have already done,” Lofgren’s statement said. “To be clear, this should have never happened. This pathetic scheme was illegal.” 今天的决定可能表明，政府已经意识到自己陷入了一场注定会输的斗争。目前最大的问题是，是否已经有一些监测设备被拆除。洛夫格伦在声明中表示：“我们还不知道他们已经造成了多大的损害。明确地说，这本不该发生。这个可悲的计划是违法的。”

For now, however, it appears that this is one instance where we won’t have to wait for the courts to decide whether that last claim is accurate. 然而就目前而言，这似乎是一个我们无需等待法院裁决上述说法是否准确的案例。