DOGE’s threats to cut staff and slash the budget suggests the Musk-led team may be following “Project 2025,” a proposed plan for reshaping the US government authored by a conservative think tank that calls for dismantling NOAA and distributing its responsibilities among other agencies. However, Howard Lutnick, a longtime financial services executive and Trump’s pick for secretary of commerce, testified at his confirmation hearing that he believes the agency should remain intact. But some small-government conservatives have long argued weather forecasting should be privatized, and Lutnick stopped short of promising to protect the National Weather Service.
Trump’s pick to oversee NOAA, atmospheric scientist Neil Jacobs, will likely face questions about NOAA’s future during his confirmation hearing sometime in the coming weeks. Jacobs led the agency in an acting capacity during the first Trump presidency.
Can private weather forecasters replace the National Weather Service?
Project 2025 calls for privatizing the work of weather forecasting, pointing to the availability of forecasts from AccuWeather and other companies.
But doing so is complicated. Commercial forecasters are heavily reliant on NOAA’s data and models. “The Weather Channel’s ‘Weather on the Eights’ wouldn’t exist without NOAA,” said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “All these weather apps on your phone — none of them would work.”
Federal weather and climate data is also embedded into models used across the insurance, finance and banking sectors, said Craig McLean, who served as NOAA’s acting chief scientist during Trump’s first presidency. “The decisions they make and the risks they’re willing to underwrite are based on the information they get from NOAA,” McLean said.
Additionally, there are strategic reasons why the US government has long invested in predicting weather and climate. Officials see these investments as key to national defense. (The US government launched its first weather satellites during the Cold War, hoping to gain a strategic edge over the Soviet Union.) Tracking environmental trends can help identify geopolitical hot spots in the making. NOAA forecasts monsoons and droughts — which can lead to regional instability, raising the risk of war and disruptions to commerce and supply chains — far beyond US borders.
There are public safety considerations within the US, too: Federal forecasters help train local emergency managers to prepare for severe storms and wildfires. The National Weather Service also hasaccess to the US Emergency Alert System. That allows the government to push localized alerts to cell phones when tornadoes or flash floods are imminent. Experts said it’s not clear what would happen to those functions if forecasting is privatized.
Break Up NOAA.
The single biggest Department of Commerce agency outsideof decennial census years is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and other components. NOAA garners $6.5 billion of the department’s $12 billion annual operational budget and accounts for more than half of the department’s personnel in non-decadal Census years (2021 figures).
NOAA consists of six main offices:
l The National Weather Service (NWS);
l The National Ocean Service (NOS)
l The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR);
l The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS);
l The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); and
l The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps.
Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.
NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
trump declared the hurricane would reach Alabama. NOAA mentioned it would not as by their forecast. NOAA is toast. Joy.
I do not like this timeline.