Throwing the masts overboard
They want to get rid of NOAA and the National Weather Service. Good plan; who the hell needs weather forecasts?
Partisan jostling aside, what does Project 2025 say about NOAA and the National Weather Service?
A [Rep Jared] Moskowitz spokesperson, Keith Nagy, said “while Project 2025 does not call for the complete dismantling of the NOAA, it intends to undermine the agency’s independence from the executive branch and eliminate many of its internal departments. Any threats toward the NOAA or NWS jeopardizes life-saving information about hurricanes, heat waves, and other extreme weather events.”
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Project 2025 includes about four pages on NOAA and the National Weather Service. That part was written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was an official in Trump’s Commerce Department.
The document describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”
The National Weather Service, one of six NOAA offices, provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service within NOAA.
Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather Service. It says the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services,” and “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”
Because accurate information about the weather is not a life or death necessity, it’s a consumer good, like strawberry sun cream and luxury SUVs.
“The climate change alarm industry.” Yeah, look at all those climate change scientists raking in the dough while Exxon executives are reduced to begging in the streets. Time to take down those plutocrats!
the El Faro sank with all hands because of a commercial weather service. Tis isn’t a “what if?” scenario.
It did? Tell us more. I thought it was because the captain failed to avoid the hurricane because the longer route would have been too expensive.
Oh look at that – the NTSB confirms what you say.
Bloody hell.
The Project Late Cretaceous document describes the Astronomical Hazard Assessment Service (AHAS) as a primary component “of the asteroid alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”
I’ve heard it said that dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t have a space program.
What will our excuse be?
I am an aficionado of all things “oops, that’s not good”.
These people don’t even vaguely grasp the concept of “public good”, and they certainly don’t understand “every regulation is written in blood”.
And every deregulation will be too. Many of the inevitable, resulting deaths will have been completely predictable. We’re predicting them right here. The fox has been given control of the hen-house. It will be like going back to the 19th century. Dangerous products, dangerous workplaces, the return of once-contained contagious diseases, increased maternal mortality, decreased life expectancy. We won’t mention slavery and child labour; we don’t want to give them ideas.
We might hope that the monstrous egos of Trump and Musk end fighting over the ice cream and thus ending their little mutual admiration society. (Trump would <i.love to be able to say he’d fired Musk. I’d bet even money it will come to that at some point. The sooner the better, before Musk does too much damage.)