by Steve Milloy, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow and Junkscience.com Founder
As Appearing on The Daily Caller
President Donald Trump is driving climate researchers literally to the ends of the Earth as they try to save their taxpayer funding. Expect to see a slew of hand-wringing reports about, and even perhaps from, the Thwaites (aka “Doomsday”) glacier in West Antarctica.
The glacier got its nickname from a Rolling Stone reporter in 2017 in an article titled: “The Doomsday Glacier: In the farthest reaches of Antarctica, a nightmare scenario of crumbling ice – and rapidly rising seas – could spell disaster for a warming planet.”
Past the ominous title, the scare is that the Thwaites is melting and could raise sea levels by 10 feet, which would submerge about 2-3 percent of the global land mass, excluding Antarctica.
Last May, the Trump administration announced it would cut funding for the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a football field-long icebreaker that has been taking researchers to study the Thwaites glacier. In its 2026 budget request, the National Science Foundation said it was terminating the lease. There is no replacement ship on the horizon.
