In July 1970, when he was proposing the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, President Richard Nixon wrote to Congress, “We face immediate and compelling needs for better protection of life and property from natural hazards, and for a better understanding of the total environment — an understanding which will enable us more effectively to monitor and predict its actions, and ultimately, perhaps to exercise some degree of control over them.”
If you live in hurricane territory, then you know that the ability to predict when and where “natural hazards” might happen has life and death consequences.
If you live in hurricane territory, as I have most of my life, then you know that the ability to predict when and where “natural hazards” might happen has life and death consequences. And you also know it’s reckless for President Donald Trump (or is it Elon Musk?) to be haphazardly slashing the agency that does that important work.
How many more people might have died during Hurricane Katrina, for example, if the National Weather Service, an office of the NOAA, hadn’t issued what’s been called a “doomsday” warning. How many people might die in the future if these cuts in personnel — 800 as of Thursday afternoon — degrade the agency’s ability to predict deadly weather and warn those who are at risk?
Bringing NOAA to heel was an expressed goal of Project 2025 (the Heritage Foundation’s de facto blueprint for Trump’s second term), which has described the agency as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” Slashing NOAA’s workforce, then, is Trump putting American lives at risk to own the libs. “Libs,” in this context, means anybody who dares report what climate data shows.
In that sense, the move is reminiscent of “Sharpie-gate.” On Sept. 1, 2019, as Hurricane Dorian moved across the Atlantic Ocean, Trump tweeted that Alabama was among the states that “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Ten minutes later the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, reportedly responding to needlessly panicked Alabamans, tweeted, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”
And Alabama wasn’t impacted.
Even so, Trump altered a map with a black marker rather than admit he’d been wrong regarding the latest news of the storm’s potential path.
While it obviously wasn’t the most significant scandal of Trump’s first term, “Sharpie-gate” stands out as one of his more cartoonish attempts to portray himself as the expert on all things and to retaliate against those who do have the relevant knowledge.
What do you think the National Weather Service should have done? Inform people who weren’t at risk that the president was wrong — or remained cravenly silent?
You won’t have to guess Trump’s position. Then-acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney sent Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross an after-hours email saying “it appears as if the NWS intentionally contradicted the president. And we need to know why. He wants either a correction or an explanation or both.”
NOAA’s communications chief later told the Commerce Department inspector general’s office that she’d been told by a Commerce Department official that “there are jobs on the line. It could be the forecast office in Birmingham. Or it could be someone higher than that.”
Five days after the Sept. 1 tweets, the NOAA issued an unsigned statement: “The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”
It was an embarrassing capitulation for an agency we should expect to prize facts over the president’s feelings.
That may have satisfied Trump’s ego. But it was an embarrassing capitulation for an agency we should expect to prize facts over the president’s feelings.
After an investigation, the Commerce Department’s inspector general concluded, “Instead of focusing on NOAA’s successful hurricane forecast, the Department unnecessarily rebuked NWS forecasters for issuing a public safety message about Hurricane Dorian in response to public inquiries — that is, for doing their jobs.”
In case you’d forgotten Trump’s modus operandi, the first few weeks of his second administration should have reminded you. One of the overarching themes of this term is the meaningless of expertise. Not only has Trump staffed his Cabinet with people who lack the experience and qualifications to perform their jobs, but he has also been ridding the federal workforce of people who do have experience and qualifications.
It seems that in every situation, if Trump has a choice between hiring someone who knows what they’re doing but doesn’t grovel before him, and someone who grovels but doesn’t know what they’re doing, he’s going with the groveler. Even if it leaves the United States and its people worse off.
Slashing the staff of NOAA because the agency has published data about climate change isn’t going to stop Americans from suffering the brunt of climate change. It will only mean the United States government is abdicating its responsibility to do something about it. And if those cuts impact the National Weather Service, then we already know what might happen. Forecasts of life-threatening weather risk becoming less about data and more about whatever satisfies Trump.