GISS Gets the Boot: A Seinfeldian Saga
Charles Rotter
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.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/26/giss-gets-the-boot-a-seinfeldian-saga/
