In the early hours of Friday, July 4, catastrophic floods roared across Texas Hill Country. In less than an hour, the Guadalupe River rose nearly 30 feet. Emergency systems were lacking. Warnings were unheard or unheeded. More than 120 people have been confirmed dead, and that figure is expected to continue rising, as more than 160 are still missing. Most gutting of all is the devastation at Camp Mystic, where 27 counselors and campers, between the ages of 7 and 17, were killed.

First and foremost, we must recognize the destruction and loss of life in Texas as the tragedy it is. Our hearts are with the victims and their families. But in these times of unimaginable loss, we must not give ourselves over to despondency.

As we grieve and, eventually, start to heal, we must also do the difficult work of looking to the future to learn how we can do better next time — because there will always be a next time. Natural disasters are simply part of living in this world. And climate change is unquestionably making them worse.

In the face of this changing world, though, our obligation to attempt to mitigate the scope and scale of these disasters remains.

The core of this work must focus on reducing our contributions to climate change — lowering our emissions, transitioning to renewable energy sources, creating more climate-resilient communities. Simultaneously, we must also aim to harden our communities against these worsening natural disasters.

Absurdly, the Trump administration is attempting to stymie all of this work, from climate change research to natural disaster warnings, as part of its concerted attack on America’s knowledge industry. Nothing exemplifies this policy of self-sabotage better than the administration’s recently proposed budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The budget for NOAA, made public at the end of last month, would eliminate the agency’s research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and shutter four labs at Boulder’s Earth System Research Laboratories: the Chemical Sciences Laboratory, the Global Monitoring Laboratory, the Physical Sciences Laboratory and the Global Systems Laboratory.

These cuts would be crushing for Boulder’s economy. But more importantly, the loss of vital information and scientific knowledge would be catastrophic for the whole country. Congress must reject this dangerous crusade toward willful ignorance.

The Boulder labs’ areas of focus include improving weather and wildfire forecasting, studying air quality, conducting long-term monitoring of greenhouse gases and ozone, as well as improving knowledge about water availability and extreme weather.

As climate change accelerates and the world changes around us, the information produced by these labs is only going to get more valuable. In the face of change and uncertainty, knowledge is our friend — even when facing the truth is uncomfortable and scary.

This administration’s approach, though, seems to be the opposite. Science, knowledge and information are dangerous because they define a truth that can be at odds with the party platform.

Instead of seeing climate change as the humanity-threatening problem that it is, our government appears to see the work that acknowledges climate change to be the issue.

The tragedy in Texas underscores just how ruinous slashing funding to NOAA and the National Weather Service can be. If we are already unprepared for natural disasters, slashing funding to these agencies is only going to make us even less prepared.

In a statement on the potential cuts to NOAA, Sen. Michael Bennet said, “As Colorado and the West face increasingly severe drought and wildfire seasons, NOAA’s work is more important than ever. These labs employ hundreds of Coloradans who work tirelessly to ensure the rest of the country is protected from and educated on extreme weather. In response to proposed cuts and the dismantling of NOAA, I have been demanding answers and urging the Trump Administration to reverse course. I will continue to work with my colleagues to sound the alarm on these short-sighted cuts.”

Sen. John Hickenlooper struck a similar note. “Science and research are not government waste,” he said in a statement. “Shortsighted cuts to NOAA without any plan will weaken Colorado’s ability to respond to wildfires or track the West’s worsening drought. … Climate change is making natural disasters more extreme. The last thing we should be doing is pulling back from NOAA and dismantling the critical work these scientists in Boulder and across the country do to save lives.”

The scale and scope of government bureaucracy is not sacrosanct. In any institution the size of our government, there is bound to be bloat and waste. As such, trimming back the federal workforce and reducing spending are not inherently bad things — done right, they could help get us on the path to a balanced budget.

Careful, considered cuts to eliminate waste and increase efficiency would be done with a scalpel. As we’ve all seen, this administration has preferred the chainsaw.

Slashing NOAA’s budget is like using this chainsaw to cut off your nose to spite your face.

Back in March, when the Trump administration was making its first round of cuts to NOAA staff, we spoke to Dr. Alexander “Sandy” MacDonald, the former director of the Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, who said, “NOAA’s job is to protect people from the things that nature can bring: flash floods, tornadoes and hurricanes.”

To reiterate: NOAA’s job is to protect people from flash floods.

Our Congressional leaders must be able to see the absurd irony here, too.

NOAA is one of our most important tools in helping us protect ourselves from the dangers of the natural world. In the face of a changing climate, we need that protection now more than ever.

“We’re fighting these efforts in Washington and working on the ground with Coloradans to build public pressure against these cuts,” Sen. Hickenlooper said. “Americans should be fully aware of what is on the chopping block and the potential drastic consequences.”

We are grateful that Colorado’s Democratic elected leaders understand the stakes of this issue. What’s necessary now, then, is to continue sounding the alarm. To continue coalition building against this nonsensical anti-intellectual shift toward willful, self-sabotaging ignorance. To continue fighting to convince Republicans, both in Colorado and across the country, to face reality and acknowledge that we need science, we need knowledge, and we need NOAA.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board