IF YOU HAVE seen one graph on the subject of climate change, the chances are that it is the one that bears my family name. The Keeling curve, named after my father Charles (who went informally by “Dave”), shows the increase and variation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere over the past seven decades. This iconic graph has, however, fallen victim to budget plans released recently by President Donald Trump’s White House. Those plans call for a wholesale gutting of climate science in America. Among the long list of programmes to be cut is the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where for 67 years key measurements of carbon dioxide have been taken almost continuously. This swing of the axe would certainly be a personal blow. More crucially, it has important scientific as well as symbolic implications.