Famed weatherman Al Roker is urging the Trump administration not to follow through with its plan to dismantle a climate research facility in Colorado.
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought has targeted the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism.” Vought, 49, wrote on X that “a comprehensive review is underway and any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”
Roker, the longtime weather anchor of NBC’s Today, pushed back on Vought’s claims.
“Please don’t do this. This is not a center for alarmism. The science that comes from @NCAR_Science has made the United States a leader in tracking severe weather, modeling extreme floods, and even the effects of increased solar activity and how it impacts our atmosphere here on Earth,” Roker, whose career in meteorology spans 51 years, replied.
“Research that comes from here benefits us all from a safety and infrastructure standpoint,” Roker, 71, concluded. “And, economically, the science helps mitigate a growing number of billion-dollar weather disasters.”
The National Center for Atmospheric Research, which was formed in 1960, has about 830 staff through the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency, paid that university group $123 million in the 2025 fiscal year, Science magazine reports—less than 0.3 percent of the amount Trump allocated for a U.S.-Mexico border wall in the budget bill he signed into law in July.
The “woke” elements of the Colorado facility the White House took issue with, according to USA Today, are a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that aims to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered.”
The Trump administration is also griping about an art series to build “our relationship with water through mediums such as recycled materials, photography, oil paintings, and more,” along with wind turbine research to “better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
Trump has a long-running feud with wind-powered energy dating back some 20 years, when wind turbines threatened the views from one of his golf courses in Scotland.
The 79-year-old president has also called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job,” and his Environmental Protection Agency has made moves to roll back protections like the ban on cancer-causing asbestos. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that windmills cause cancer.
Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, said in a statement that the president is attacking science and putting public safety at risk.
“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” Polis said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
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