Maybe they prefer uncertainty

Science has an article "NOAA Loses Funding to Gather Long-Term Climate Data" (available from Science if you
have the subscription; it looks like the full text is available from
here anyway).

To quote: Congress has eliminated funding for a fledgling network of 110 observation stations intended to provide a definitive, long-term climate record for the United States..

And more cuts too, including to the CO2 monitoring at Mauna Loa. This is bad: long term monitoring of the climate is boring but necessary. The current US adminstration policy on climate change, as near as I can understand it, is that the uncertainties are so great that more research and data is needed: I don't agree with them about the uncertainties but I do agree that data gathering is good. So why are they cutting the data? Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center
for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is quoted at the end of the article as saying: It's almost as if some people don't want to know how the climate is changing, he says. Maybe they prefer uncertainty, so that they can avoid taking action. Seems plausible to me.