I support Trump and the effort to balance the budget. However, the significant reductions to NOAA by the administration will have serious consequences.
Balancing the budget is important, but gutting unbiased research and public information sources will have long-term repercussions. The free market isn’t the solution here—because the free market serves its own interests, not the public interest.
This issue separates those who truly understand the system from those just repeating political talking points. The National Weather Service (NWS) will still issue warnings as needed. Having run a radar during a severe weather outbreak, I know firsthand how fatigue can lead to human error. While computer-aided identification parameters and trained spotters (SKYWARN) help mitigate that risk, individual severe weather incidents within the overall event will be under-identified.
The bigger problem isn’t forecasting—it’s information dissemination and research. The NWS doesn’t chase ratings or clicks. It simply does its job, ensuring the public gets accurate, unbiased weather information. When gaps develop, they will be filled by those with financial incentives—fear-mongering social media “weather” pages that thrive on engagement, ad revenue, and media seeking ratings.
Even more concerning, reputable-sounding private entities will gain prominence. “John, a consultant for ACME Insurance, must be reliable.” But John is beholden to ACME and its bottom line. His forecasts may be accurate, but they will carry an invisible bias, even if he tries to remain objective.
The real harm, though, will be in research. Research won’t stop—it will shift. Without unbiased federal funding and government-employed scientists, studies will follow the money. Businesses will fund research that aligns with their interests, as they should. But this means fewer independent verification studies.
We already see this in the insurance industry. Laboratory-based hail impact studies, often funded by insurers, set the foundation for claim evaluations. But when real-world field studies tested actual hail impacts on hail pads, they revealed significantly more severe impacts than the lab studies suggested (presumably from microfractures in the lab generated hailstones created during the injection process). Despite this, the insurance industry continues to rely on the original lab studies in disputes, while the real-world research struggles to gain traction.
Now, apply this pattern more broadly. With NOAA’s research capacity gutted, industry-backed studies will dominate, shaping policies and public understanding. The lack of independent, government-backed verification will mean that whatever the private sector finds convenient will go largely unchallenged. The impact of these cuts won’t be immediate, but over time, they will distort how weather-related risks are assessed and responded to—until it’s too late.
Greg, did you see Trump and JD Vance today in their Oval Office Ambush of Zelensky? Stunning. Shameful. We are on a fast track to Fascism. What say you?
Good to hear from you Loren.
No one should be surprised about what happened in the White House today. This isn’t the first time Zelensky has been told he needs to show gratitude and his personality comes across as entitled.
Zelemsky can’t read a room, and its been clear the two personalities were a powder keg waiting to explode. The situation called for shuttle diplomacy not a face to face meeting.
Fundamentally Zelensky is correct when he says security guarantees need to be in place, but that’s a detail that should have been worked out before heading here. He shouldn’t have agreed to come here if the deal wasn’t ready.
The only winner in this fiasco was Vladimir Putin. His laughter can be heard outside the Kremlin walls.
But to say we are on a fast track to Fascism is simply absurd.
The NWS and NOAA are not enumerated powers of the federal government. They are unconstitutional and ought to be eliminated.
Ignoring for a momemt they are a part of the Commerce Department, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution authorizes their creation and functions.
Everybody wants to do ox goring stuff until it’s time to start doing ox goring stuff.
Our government is $ 37+T in actual debt plus who knows how much unfunded liability we have outstanding for pensions, Social Security, and other entitlements.
Everyone here is probably cheering about cutting fraud, waste, and abuse, but once that rough cut is done, we need to start cutting the “nice to have, but can’t afford” stuff, too. I mean, it would be nice to have new carpet installed in your house, but if you’re trying to get out of debt, maybe you should just consider having your existing carpet cleaned and trying to make it last longer, or, failing that, maybe just vacuum it and use dish soap and a hand towel to try and make the stains a little less pronounced. .
We are trillions in debt. It has to be fixed. Closing branches of government doesn’t mean that we are eliminating all of the work. It could very well mean that those services will be transferred. Good to keep an eye on it though.
Who is going to replace this work? When I worked for the EPA I was 1 of 2 meteorologist in the organization.
Contrast to something like Social Security (which we could discuss efficiency at length) where no particular specialized knowledge is needed. Something like Social Security could have significant reductions as long as appropriate efficiency measures were implied.
NOAA/NWS is a specialized field where you don’t have redundant government functions to take up the slack.
What if nobody does the work? Our country made it a long time with nobody doing that work. Is it nice to have work? Has some benefit? Sure, and sure. Could our country survive without that work? Again, sure.
And can I just speculate that NOAA and NWS have also been infected with leftists, just as most of the rest of government has? Anyone have their political contributions handy? I don’t know, but suspect that these agencies have been enlisted to help promote the global warming, new ice age, hole in the ozone, and now, man made climate change propaganda campaigns.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe these agencies haven’t been enlisted to participate in that, but Greg, here’s a question for you:
If employees and management of those agencies have participated in the man made global warming narrative, do we really need to keep employing them, or could we boot them just like we’re booting the dei crew from the .gov? It’s like those 5,000 fbi (intentionally lower case) agents who did nothing for 4 years but persecute J6’ers. Can we just agree that we don’t need those positions now that persecuting pro-America partisans isn’t a platform of government anymore?
“What if nobody does the work?”
Then air traffic control suffers since NWS coordinates meteorological data for flights. The economic harm should be self evident.
Widely diverging severe weather and hurricane forecasting with the resultant economic harm follows.
“Could our country survive without that work? Again, sure.”
Completely the wrong question. This is a question of does the work create a net economic gain or loss. That’s the question the cuts should be viewed through.
“And can I just speculate that NOAA and NWS have also been infected with leftists, just as most of the rest of government has?”
Now we get to the heart of the matter. The anti government drum beat is based on speculative motives. Which in this case are largely incorrect.
Back when I worked for the EPA the rank and file lab worker just went about doing their job without political involvement. The regional offices had political types, but generally the lab was politics free in function.
The same holds true for the rank and file NWS employees I know. They go about doing their job w/o politics because forecast verification is apolitical. Now some of the higher ups functions and some NOAA activity is more politically entangled, but the basic day to day work isn’t.
“It’s like those 5,000 fbi (intentionally lower case) agents who did nothing for 4 years but persecute J6’ers. Can we just agree that we don’t need those positions now that persecuting pro-America partisans isn’t a platform of government anymore?”
You couldn’t be more wrong about the way the forecast offices work. They produce weather forecasts. They produce aviation forecasts. They coordinate aviation meteorological data. Nothing political about it, and it’s easily verified information. The forecast is either accurate or inaccurate.
NWS is a different creature than many other government functions. This isn’t unaccountable bureaucracy that a trained AI model can sift through to reduce workload. This isn’t something where all that’s needed is policy understanding and application.
Some fair points, and it’s THE question to ask….is our investment in weather observation and prediction a net profit center for the country, as in, we save more on ships not being sunk and planes not going down than we spend on predicting the weather? I’ll just ask….are there not overlapping military, industry, and commercial news employees working largely on the same thing? What if we put monitoring buoys and the hurricane hunter aircraft under the auspices of the military? I’m sure our Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force folks have weather forecasters, and probably the Army and Marines, too., We know they have air traffic controllers they need to inform on weather. ls there really no redundancy in this area of government? We should all support efficiency in government.
And you sidestepped my question about politics. Were and are NOAA resources being utilized to promote or sensationalize ‘man made climate change’/CO2 narratives? I don’t know the answer to that. I know our government did indeed push this stuff on the country, which has had a deleterious effect ON our country by making energy prices skyrocket, but I don’t know which agencies were actually involved. Maybe NOAA, their directors and staffers weren’t involved? I think that’s what you’re saying here, that NOAA stayed out of the political fray and the propaganda effort.
“are there not overlapping military, industry, and commercial news employees working largely on the same thing?”
Industry and commercial definitely do not have the same capacity. Even if they do have the human resources they don’t have the data capacity for the modeling. Lose the modeling and prediction becomes extremely difficult. This isn’t just theoretical, they want to cancel the lease for the building where the hardware is located.
I suspect the military also cannot replicate what occurs, but who knows what all technology they have hidden away.
“ls there really no redundancy in this area of government?”
Personnel wise probably, but things like hurricane reconnaissance flights is already a military function. However, data compilation the redundancy isn’t present.
As far as the political aspects go the probationary employees aren’t going to be pushing agendas in their work product regardless of their beliefs. They’re going to be the front line forecasters.
This isn’t just planes and ships. It’s needless evacuation for Rita repeating. It’s protecting citrus crops in Florida from a late season surprise freeze. It’s prerelease of water from dams so you don’t have emergency releases like what happened in Harvey.
I wonder if we could all agree that planes won’t fall out of the sky if we don’t get another installment of “Teek and Tom Explore Planet Earth” from they/them. I mean, damn, the last episode racked up a whopping 150 views, which, I suspect, were mostly from people like me who watched it just to see how insane and inane it is. Trying to groom children using the weather? This they/them, the they/thems that hired and supervised this guy….ALL can be fired as far as I am concerned, with no loss to the taxpayers.
https://dailycaller.com/2025/03/03/teek-and-tom-noaa-childrens-cartoon-doge-cuts-climate-scientist/
“Fired NOAA Worker Decries DOGE Cuts After He Spent Millions Creating Cartoons About ‘Gender-Neutral’ Space Alien
A now-fired “public affairs specialist” who created a multimillion-dollar cartoon for his agency is now warning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) budget cuts could weaken disaster preparedness.
Tom Di Liberto, the ousted employee, called his termination from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “ridiculous” in a Monday interview with CNN’s John Berman, adding that he expects DOGE’s reductions to hinder hurricane and disaster readiness. Di Liberto was the creator and star of “Teek and Tom Explore Planet Earth,” an animated series produced by NOAA at a cost exceeding $3 million, according to federal spending records. ……..
……The five-part series, intended to educate children about Earth’s weather and climate, stars Di Liberto as himself alongside Teek, an apparently androgynous, cyclopean extraterrestrial from the planet “Queloz.” Teek is addressed using they/them, or “gender-neutral” pronouns in transcripts provided on NOAA’s website. The series’ most popular installment, “Episode 4: An Ocean of Data From Cool Technology,” has amassed over 150 views on YouTube as of Monday.”
You’re using the extreme to justify the norm.
The radar specialists, the individuals involved with physics modeling for hurricane forecasting, the leases for the buildings that hold essential infrastructure. That’s where the harm comes in the ongoimg indiscriminate cutting.
Individual expenditure reviews catch the problematic issue you have pointed out.
Bill, here’s some data for you. The National Brueau of Economic Research notes that increases in hurricane wind speed accuracy between 2007-2020 has resulted in an average savings of $5 billion per hurricane.
Working Paper 32548
DOI 10.3386/w32548
Issue Date June 2024
https://www.nber.org/digest/202409/value-improving-hurricane-forecasts