In a move that’s as poetic as it is ironic, the Trump administration has yanked the lease out from under NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), sending the climate science hub packing from its quirky perch above Tom’s Restaurant in Manhattan. Yes, the very same diner immortalized as “Monk’s” in Seinfeld—a place where Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer debated the minutiae of nothing—is now the backdrop for a real-world drama that’s got the climate establishment clutching their pearls.
Back in 2009, our own Anthony Watts, stumbled upon the delicious coincidence that GISS, led by the ever-smirking Dr. Gavin Schmidt, was housed at 2880 Broadway, right above the iconic diner. With a wink and a nod to Seinfeld’s absurdity, Watts mused that the climate models churned out by GISS might just be as fictional as a Vandelay Industries import-export scheme. “The show about nothing,” he quipped, seemed a fitting metaphor for a lab that, in the eyes of many skeptics, produced more heat than light on global warming.
Fast forward to today, and the Trump administration has delivered a plot twist worthy of Larry David himself. According to a CNN report, the lease for GISS’s Columbia University digs has been canceled effective May 31, 2025, forcing the lab’s scientists to scatter to the winds of remote work. The email from NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center’s director, Mackenzie Lystrup, was as somber as a Soup Nazi ban: GISS employees will transition to Zoom calls and home offices while NASA scrambles for a new “permanent space.”
The timing couldn’t be more delicious. The Trump administration, locked in a feud with Columbia University over issues ranging from antisemitism policies to DEI programs, seems to have found a convenient target in GISS. With billions in federal research funding already on the chopping block and a federal judge recently curbing the administration’s ability to withhold funds over DEI disputes, this lease cancellation feels like a calculated jab. As one NASA source told CNN, the move is “demoralizing” for GISS staff, who are now “waiting for the axe to fall on the mission of Earth science” itself. Oh, the humanity! Or, as George Costanza might say, “We’re living in a society!”
Let’s not kid ourselves—GISS isn’t just any lab. It’s a cornerstone of the global climate narrative, tracking temperature records and running computer models that project apocalyptic futures. Its supercomputers, safely tucked away in Maryland, might keep humming, but the symbolic eviction from Manhattan’s Upper West Side is a body blow to the climate establishment’s ego. As Anthony noted in ’09, GISS’s proximity to Seinfeld’s fictional world always carried a whiff of farce. Now, with the lab’s physical presence reduced to a memory, one can’t help but hear Elaine’s voice: “Fake! Fake! Fake!”
Dr. Schmidt, ever the optimist, insists to CNN that “the work continues” because “science is done by people, not by buildings.” A NASA insider, speaking anonymously (because who wants to be that guy?), admitted to CNN that remote work will make GISS’s mission “more difficult” and has left the workforce rattled. And with an administration budget proposal looming that could slash NASA’s science programs by nearly 50%, the future looks about as rosy as Kramer’s get-rich-quick schemes.
For those of us who’ve long questioned the overheated rhetoric of GISS’s climate projections, this eviction is a moment to savor. Watts’ 2009 satire, complete with Seinfeld-inspired rebuttals to GISS’s claims (“The data has been adjusted, why can’t you comprehend it?”—Jerry: “If it’s in the garbage, it’s garbage!”), feels downright prophetic. The lab that once dismissed skeptics with a Soup Nazi-esque “No soup for you!” now finds itself on the receiving end of a bureaucratic “Serenity now!”
I’ve complied a list of commonly seen issues and phrases used on RC and appropriate rebuttals from Seinfeld characters:
- The data has been adjusted, why can’t you comprehend it? – “If it’s in the garbage, it’s garbage” – Jerry
- Send it to my email and I’ll have a look – “When you control the mail, you control information!” – Newman
- This year is the hottest ever! – “It’s gold Jerry. Gold!” – Bania
- Ban Ki Moon and the IPCC says so. – “Butros, Butros, Gahli!” – Jerry
- I’m not going to use McIntyre’s name, he doesn’t deserve the credit. – “That’s not funny, how about ‘your cranium called…it has space for rent!” – Elaine
- Come back when you understand climate science – “NO SOUP FOR YOU! COME BACK ONE YEAR!” – The Soup Nazi
- This is why your argument [snip] – “I won’t tolerate infestation!” – Frank Costanza
- Sea level, ocean acidification, it’s all obvious! – The ocean called, they’re running out of shrimp! – Reilly
- Check the peer reviewed literature. – “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” – Jerry
- Your interpretation is totally wrong! – “Oh yeah? Well I had sex with your wife!” – George
- The data hasn’t been updated, do you think all we do around here is sit around and wait for GHCN to update? – “Significant shrinkage.” – George
- The tree ring based temperature reconstruction has been reviewed and proven correct time and again. – “Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!” – Elaine
- It is “robust”. – Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, – Elaine
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/21/nasa-giss-a-division-of-vandelay-industries/
So, here’s to GISS, booted from its Broadway perch, left to ponder its next move like Kramer contemplating a risk-free life. Will they find a new home? Will the climate models keep churning out “gold, Jerry, gold”? Or will this mark the beginning of a long-overdue reckoning for a field that’s too often leaned on shaky data and overheated narratives? Quoting Jerry: “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
In the meantime, let’s raise a Junior Mint to the Trump administration for delivering a plot twist that’s got us all saying, “Yada, yada, yada.” Stay tuned, folks—because when it comes to climate science, the real show about nothing is just getting started.
No actual climate scientists were harmed in the writing of this piece, though their egos may be slightly bruised.
Live by being political suck-ups, die by being political suck-ups.
Maybe they’ll actually start doing… oh I don’t know… space studies…
I would only observe that the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) never studied space, only ‘climate change’. DOGEing their NYC Columbia lease seems an appropriate first step toward shutting it down completely.
As Ev Dirksen (former IL senator) reportedly once said, ‘A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.’
Born and raised in Illinois, I remember: “A billion here, a billion there, it all ads up!
The late senator’s other famous quip was: “That is just so much hogwash!”
Re “…(GISS) never studied space, only ‘climate change’.”
Here is R. Lindzen’s recent account of the GISS-NYC’s evolution:
———————
That the claim of consensus was always propagandistic should be obvious. But the history of the claim itself is interesting in its own right. Global warming was first introduced as a concept to the American public in a 1988 Senate hearing, at which James Hansen from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York testified. This, itself, was somewhat surprising. Hansen was primarily a space scientist. He was not considered a specialist in climate. How he came to be the voice of climate alarm is worth recounting.
In the 1960’s, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland created a satellite center in New York, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) that was headed by Dr. Robert Jastrow. When Jastrow left GISS in the 1970’s, Greenbelt attempted to close GISS, and, indeed, most of the people at GISS returned to Greenbelt. However, a small group, led by James Hansen, decided to remain in New York. NASA cut their funding. But EPA came to their rescue with the proviso that the research at GISS turn to climate. Apparently, Hansen’s friend, Michael Oppenheimer, then the Barbara Streisand Scientist at Environmental Defense (subsequently a professor of climate policy at Princeton), was on the EPA review panel that recommended this. In covering Hansen’s testimony, Newsweek Magazine printed a cover showing the Earth on fire with the subtitle “All scientists agree.” This was at a time [1988 hearing ] …
—————
Source: https://americanmind.org/salvo/manufacturing-consensus-on-climate-change/ Salvo11.21.2024
“”In covering Hansen’s testimony, Newsweek Magazine printed a cover showing the Earth on fire with the subtitle “All scientists agree.” This was at a time [1988 hearing””
Our officials and our news media have been lying about CO2 and the Climate since the very beginning.
And still, even today, climate change is at the bottom of the priority list for most people.
Btw, another good article Charles. Thanks.
When I see NASA and NOAA making claims of “hottest year evah!”, I think: Fake! Fake! Fake!
“Seinfeld” was a good show.
Yes, this one is special. (Filed under ‘Humor’, but ‘Life imitates parody’ or maybe just ‘Schadenfreude’ would be more specific categories.)
P.S. re your “Fake! Fake! Fake!”, I have a slender book somewhere here, which quotes eyewitness testimony ( ~ March 2020) from Wuhan City, that when the Central-CCP officials finally returned there, the people lined the streets to shout “Fake! Fake! Everything is Fake!” Goes to show that you can’t fool all the people, all the time.
P.S. this faux disclaimer — “No actual ‘climate scientists’ were harmed in the writing of this piece, though their egos may be slightly bruised.” — could be appended, to hilarious effect, to just about everything at WUWT
Is it true that at that Senate hearing- on a very hot day- they turned off the air conditioning?
According to legend, it was a hot August day (in 1988), and U.S. Senate (think ‘Al Gore, D-TN’) staffers were instructed to open the hearing-room windows that morning, to let in the oppressive humidity of the
D.C. swamp (before it was called ‘The Swamp’) . . . genius.
Then-Senator Timothy Wirth organized it. He was looking for an activist-scientist to push global warming, and found it in James Hansen.
Wirth contacted the Weather Bureau to find the day most likely to be the summer maximum temperature, and scheduled Hansen’s testimony for that day, which turned out to be June 23.
It was Wirth who had the A/C turned off and the windows left open. The day was sweltering and Hansen testified that he was 99% sure that fossil-fuel-emissions-caused global warming was upon us.
Wirth proudly admitted it all to PBS.
Thanks for the correction!
Sen. Wirth takes full credit.
That other guy (Sen. Gore), what was he known for?
Oh yeah:
He ‘invented the Internet‘ … authored a pop-culture book (‘… in the Balance‘?) … was defeated by hanging chads in the year-2000 race … produced & starred in a own sci-fi horror-flick (Truth!) … won a Nobel Peace(-they-cried)-Prize … made a fortune with his hedge-fund … and has lived to see the day of generic ozempic.
What a country!
What was it that Bismarck was wont to say?
‘God watches over drunks, fools & the U.S.-of-A.’
(Probably sounded better in Prussian.)
Robert Jastrow was a terrific scientist. When he left, NASA decided to terminate GISS.
But it was rescued by the EPA, at the behest of a guy — Michael Oppenheimer — trained in science but activist first.
So, the GISS we know was born of activism. It’s never produced any worthwhile science. Ever.
But it’s had the NASA/Columbia brand to masquerade credibility for garbage.
Mere shuttering is too good for it.
The NSS biography gives slightly different dates than Lindzen’s essay (‘Manufacturing Consensus‘) for the GISS under Jastrow (1961 — founding director; 1981 — retirement from NASA) . . . leaving only max 7 years (’81-’88) for the EPA contracted program prior to the 1988 hearing.
Re “Mere shuttering is too good for it.” Perhaps a Museum dedicated to the dangers of mission creep(s) or ‘forced consensus’ ?
It seems that there’s a movement afoot to abandon the word ‘consensus’ altogether:
One concept that creates misunderstanding is“scientific consensus.” It’s time to stop using this short-hand and make clear what it really means.
So sayeth a new essay* signed by AAAScience Editor H. Holden Thorp (an old friend who, to my knowledge, has never done harm).
What do you think of this rephrasing?
“... correctly portraying scientific consensus as convergent evidence rather than scientists’ opinions …”
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.ady3211
Deinstitutionalising mentally ill people is the modern fad. Home care could be beneficial for the deranged people who have been coddled in the GISS asylum.
Imagine if these people take a moment outside the asylum to look up in the sky and contemplate the clouds; how they form and what they do. It would be a major step in recovery from their climate fear.
“Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)” is an important sounding name.
That it was located above a coffee shop reminds me of that scene in Journey to the Center of the Earth (with Brandon Frasier) where they find that the “volcanology institute” in Iceland that they were looking for was located in a broken down barn.
The difference being that the volcano institute, in the SciFi movie was correct in taking Jules Verne’s story as fact. GISS discredits the name of Goddard.
(Goddard was an early pioneer in rocketry.)
Trump is a punk if he doesn’t shut down that operation.
Tell the warmunists that the science is settled so we don’t to do anymore. Watch their heads explode.
The operation would probably self-deport if the Climate Central offices were moved out into the Heartland. I suggest Lenexa, Kansas – in the middle of the USHCN, on the Interstate, close to Kansas City (heck, Both Kansas Cities!).
Fargo, ND
Thule AFB, Greenland
South Georgia. Greenland is too close, they might escape during the winter when the sea is frozen.
Not bad. They might have a different take on warming winters. They might even notice that there is still snow and that local children still know what snow is.
Or just a couple of miles from Lebanon, KS. The center of the contiguous US. Of course, there is always Leavenworth…
I was thinking more like leasing a hunting cabin in Alaska’s wilderness. If they don’t want to move to the new office they can always quit.
I was lamenting the bloated and coopted federal agencies many, many years ago. The only thing that changed is someone willing to clean out the rats nests. Core agency work and mission might actually be worked on in the aftermath. Dems were trying to make federal agencies the block voting machines that explain most big city and blue state governments and they were well on the way to that Russian-style system of administrative class conformity until the voters spoke up. The remaining problem is that the vast majority of voters don’t understand all these cobweb issues of federal agencies and make work advocacy collaborations bloating the budget– thanks in large part to collaborative bias at ‘news’ outlets.
Always resented using that office for climate things with a name we should all revere for rockets/spaceflight – Goddard.
The fellow proved we could build liquid fuel rocket engines and not be stuck with fireworks-type solid fuel motors. Maybe we can have NOAA fill in here and do studies/forecasts under their own moniker.
Gums sends…
NOAA lies about the temperatures, too. They are not an improvement over NASA GISS.
Do away with both, and use UAH satellite temperature data instead. UAH temperature data puts the lie to the “hotter and hotter and hotter” NASA/NOAA meme.
Look at the UAH satellite chart below. Do you see any years between 1998 and 2016 that were hotter than 1998? There are none, according to this chart. Yet, NASA and NOAA see 10 years between those dates where each of those ten years was hotter than the previous year, and they eagerly claimed that each successive year was the “hottest year evah!”.
If they used the unbiased UAH chart, they could not make such claims. That’s why they don’t use the UAH chart: It’s not scary enough for them. A bunch of Damn Liars and Scaremongers is what NASA GISS and NOAA are, when it comes to the Earth’s temperatures.
It’s beginning to feel a bit like Festivus around here.
Dr. Schmidt, ever the optimist, insists to CNN that “the work continues . . .
_________________________________________________________
That is to say that data all the way back to January 1880 will continue to be rewritten as needed to keep the climate story on track to ever rising temperatures.
GISS should be made to write
a forced confessiona close-out report about how the pre-stabilized models and the framing of incremental CO2 as a matter of “forcing” + “feedback” was a circular exercise all along. They had to know this. The “warming” was always baked in, and still is.Here, here. Once one assumes that Schwarzschild’s equation for radiative transfer applies to thermal radiation absorbed by GHGs in the lower troposphere, the conclusion that additional GHGs will ‘force’ additional ‘warming’ is inevitable, and therefore circular.
Thermal radiation ? No such thing …
There certainly is such a thing. CO2 absorbs and reradiates at about 15 microns (in the atmospheric window.) A black body that radiates at 15 micros would be a block of dry ice.
There are three main “atmospheric windows.” The “radio window” used by radio astronomers; the “optical window” used by most seeing creatures; and the “infrared window” that helps to cool the Earth. It’s funny, but silly Wikipedia states that the IR window goes from 8 microns to 14 microns (some sources say 8-12 microns). That would put the 15 micron CO2 absorption band (and other CO2 absorption bands) outside of the IR window. I remember arguing incessantly concerning the affect of that 15 micron band has on the IR window–i.e., it has no affect.
But in which direction??
Steve, by definition a black body emits and absorbs radiation at all wavelengths. The emission spectrum of solid CO2 (dry ice), which is ‘condensed’ matter, would exhibit a Planck curve consistent with its temperature, whereas gaseous CO2 would just exhibit the spectral lines we’ve all come to know and love, specifically 15 mu.
Well, that’s obviously true. Apart from every single object in the universe. They all radiate heat, aka thermal radiation.
Oooops!
Is it your contention that the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere radiate heat? How would IR cameras work?
Objects radiate thermal radiation according to their temperature. Gases like oxygen and nitrogen aren’t objects and don’t absorb or emit thermal radiation, at least in the range of temperatures and pressures found on Earth.
The Schwarzschild equation is based on energy transport via photon absorption and emission in an atmosphere without convection.
The Earth’s atmosphere has convection.
Also, the loss of energy from CO2 molecules in the lower atmosphere is overwhelmingly NOT by emission.
“The loss of energy from CO2 molecules in the lower atmosphere is overwhelmingly NOT by emission” so how and so what?
It’s 99.997% by collisional transfer at 1 atm, Bill.
The radiative decay rate comes to equal the collisional decay rate at 74 km.
Thanks Pat.
Think it was Happer that estimated 50000:1 (collisional: emission)
You’re Welcome. 🙂
I get the numbers from Curtis & Goody, 1956.
Do you have a cite for Happer? – I know that Shula & Ott specifically did the calculation for CO2 and got 50K:1.
b,
I’m aware of all that. Note that my response to David specifically said that the assumption of energy transport a la Schwarzschild and the ‘finding’ that the addition of GHGs will result in warming is a circular result, i.e., incorrect.
And…because they use GISS data to “train” their models, there is also a load of maladjustment and urban warming baked into their “model parameters”.
GISS, formerly, did fine work before Hansen went down the climate rabbit-hole. Gavin Newsom, no, no, Gavin Schmidt (they are easily confused), asserts that humans are 100% responsible for climate change. Since we have no significant measurement that climate change is other than ZERO, he could be right. Gavin and his predecessors for the past 50-60 years assert, concomitantly, that climate variation (the non-human part) is zero. If they are correct, the next glaciation will be long delayed! I like that.
Now, if we could just melt all that ice in Greenland…
“Now, if we could just melt all that ice in Greenland…”
That would not be a good idea. There’s enough ice on Greenland to raise the ocean level by a foot or two–maybe more. That would not make Obama happy.
I’d prefer finding a way to post comments without bold text far more important
Was there deliberate criminal intent to embark on “adjustment” of observations for the purpose of “homogenization”?
We all knew at the time that if you adjusted gold assays at a new mine discovery, you would go to jail.
Indeed, I helped one such offender to that tenancy here in Australia.
Having done adjustment, it was only a matter of time before the scenario of “whatever it takes” to promote the ideal of a return to a primitive world by global warming hysteria.
How inappropriate that this happened at an institute for space studies.
Geoff S
Good point, Geoff. The slow personal transformation from advocacy to adjustment.
Steve McIntyre was in mining. He made the same point as you concerning adjustments of climate data, that if a mine promoter adjusted the core analyses in that way, there’d be jail to pay.
This is a nice start. Now strip them of the computer time, far more important things for those computers to be running on.
I never cared for the Seinfeld show. Seinfeld himself became extremely wealthy because of it- but the real talent was Larry David. I loved “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.