DOGE cut decades-old climate science departments. So 200 scientists are sharing their research on YouTube.

YouTube has always been a place where humans teach each other, and under an administration where basic provable science is being questioned, it’s becoming a vehicle for climate and weather scientists to reach the masses.

More than 200 of these pros are currently hosting a five-day round robin livestream on YouTube aimed at showing how valuable climate science is in the face of Trump admin budget cuts to orgs like NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Geological Survey, and the National Science Foundation.

Hosted on a dedicated channel called The Weather & Climate Livestream, the event is slated to be around 100 hours long, and was organized by about a dozen scientists, including global warming expert Margaret Duffy, climate scientist Jonah Bloch-Johnson, and Union of Concerned Scientists fellow Marc Alessi.

It kicked off on May 28, with initial hosts documenting their last hours at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The GISS was founded in 1966, at the height of the Space Race, and worked on the Voyager program, among others. It was among the casualties of Elon Musk‘s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” and was ordered to shutter by May 31 in what NASA called an “attack” on the agency.

Duffy told Space.com Bloch-Johnson reached out to her with the idea to do a marathon educational stream. She quickly agreed, and the two of them, plus Alessi, “just immediately started reaching out to every contact we knew,” Alessi added.

Once the yeses started rolling in, their organizer team put together a five-day slate of mini lectures, discussion panels, and Q&A sessions. Marquee presenters include former National Weather Service directors, glacier researcher Britney Schmidt, and triple Emmy-winning meteorologist John Morales.

“We really felt like the American public deserves to know what we do,” Duffy said.

As Space.com notes, though, the folks behind this livestream are hoping viewers walk away not just more knowledgeable, but also galvanized to take action. The livestream links out to 5 Calls

, which helps American constituents reach their reps in Congress. The stream’s organizers and presenters want viewers, armed with their newly learned information, to ask Congress to stave off further budget cuts that will affect the necessary scientific departments that do things like predict cataclysmic hurricanes and monitor droughts, so the farmers who grow our food can brace for incoming dry spells.

Stream organizers told Space.com budget cuts–both those already executed and potential future cuts–will have both short- and long-term effects. In the short term, we as a nation could be less prepared for natural disasters. In the long term…well.

“These talks serve as a reminder of the fact that the American public has invested in weather and climate research for decades,” Alessi said.

At press time, there are around ~900 people watching the stream live, and ~7.6K subscribers for the channel. Maybe that response means more events, especially since we’ve got three and a half more years of Trump left to go.

What’s interesting here is that these organizers chose YouTube as the place to meet the general public. YouTube has had misinformation issues (enough that it’s drawn the ire of Poynter‘s International Fact-Checking Network), but has tried to contain them with features like info panels and frontloading authoritative sources in search. And it’s maintained those features, while other platforms like Meta have slashed fact-checking in an attempt to cozy up to Trump.

It’s possible that, over the next three and a half years, more experts will follow this group’s lead and make YouTube a place for candid communication between scientists and civilians.

If cuts worsen the way they’re expected to, it may be one of the only places left.