Here’s a consequence of being entrusted to collect critical data, then using that data to peddle a false narrative:
The US government’s weather agency has been dismantled by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after it was accused of peddling “misinformation”.
Hundreds of weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were fired last week as part of Donald Trump’s plans to slash the federal workforce.
In total, at least 800 civil servants are thought to have lost their jobs, including meteorologists, radar specialists and crews of hurricane hunters, who fly aircraft into storms to help forecasters, according to CBS.
Of course, out come the apocalyptic doomsayers:
The job cuts have triggered protests at the agency’s headquarters in Maryland, with some scientists and lawmakers warning that removing staff involved in predicting natural disasters will “endanger American lives going forward”.
No, they won’t — at least, no more than they ever did before. There are several other avenues of getting such warnings — from private enterprise — and not from some Gummint malignancy.
But here’s the critical part, from someone who’s been doing the hard work of tracking this nonsense for a decade and a half:
Prof Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the politicization of science, said that the agency is “reaping the whirlwind” for “cutting corners on science”.
“By not upholding the highest standards of scientific integrity, we’ve opened the door to politicians meddling,” he said.
According to experts, studies and former NOAA officials, the chart proves little about the effects of climate change, and instead shows that disasters are becoming more expensive because Americans choose to build in hazard-prone areas.
“The problem is you can’t use economic data to say anything about climate change,” said Prof Pielke.
Quite right. Collecting data to forewarn of disaster, then using that data incorrectly and unethically to further a boutique (and flawed) worldview — that would be Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©, of course — deserves censure of the second-highest order. (“First-order” censure would be imprisonment and so on.)
So of course this little clique of taxpayer-funded climate alarmists deserves to be shut up and disbanded.
MOAR DOGE like this, please.
When 80% of ALL US gov’t employees and taxes are gone I’ll celebrate by buying everyone their drink of choice and not one second sooner.
I’m fine with cutting the doomsaying branch of NOAA, but this is one gubmint branch that needs a scalpel rather than a chainsaw. There are two major global weather forecasting super-computer models that harvest atmospheric data and crunch the numbers that provide weather forecasts. The Global Forecasting System (GFS) model and the ECMWF (“European”) model. The GFS is funded by American taxpayers and is free for everyone to use. The European model often arrives at a different conclusion and is heavily paywalled. Meteorologists take the data from both throw, out the outliers and provide public and private forecasts.
The danger here is the loss of people and knowledge responsible for the collection of atmospheric data that is needed to fuel these models that are 100% necessary for forecasting. The “climate-change” nonsense has to be separated from the real science. Accuweather and TWC, etc, don’t collect the data needed to make your forecast. They use the GFS and ECMWF and Canadian and Japanese supercomputer models, combined with their own expertise. If NOAA were to be completely defunded the GFS would cease to be and accurate weather forecasting would be back to the dark ages. This one is absolutely a case of Tread Lightly!
A few years back while on a motorcycle trip in southern Colorado, I stopped to get some refreshments to cool down from the summer heat. Walked into a fast food place and there were a dozen or so SF/SWAT looking types, kitted out in khaki uniforms, and fully armed like some kind of special forces. Didn’t see any M-4 type weapons but they could have been in their vehicles. Had not ever seen any U.S. troops with uniforms like that so I got close enough to see arm patches, etc., and by gosh, they worked for NOAA. Can anyone imagine why the weather boys would need shock troops?
Hopefully, they will be eliminated so that they can move on to the regular military.