As the number of storms increase and are often more intense, the agencies that have best tracked them and warned people could be dismantled under the Trump administration.
Project 2025, the right-wing document laying out a blueprint of action for a GOP-led federal government, has a section on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was an official in Trump’s Commerce Department. The document calls for eliminating or dramatically downsizing NOAA.
The National Weather Service, one of six NOAA offices, provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. The National Hurricane Center is also part of the National Weather Service within NOAA.
So why would the incoming administration want to undercut the agencies that have the expertise, experience and track record of warning people about devastating and potentially deadly storms? It’s not because anyone thinks NOAA isn’t good at predicting storms, but because of purely political and money driven reasons.
The 2025 report calls NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
So the wealthy Trump backers who will land top positions in his administration will easily sacrifice the safety and lives of Americans so they can make more money on their fossil fuel-driven investments while denying human-driven climate change.
The 2025 plan also says the National Weather Service should be commercialized. In Trump’s first term he suggested that private weather forecasting corporations, whose leaders were friends of his, should be providing weather information, not a federal agency.
But many of those commercial weather services rely heavily on the predictions made by the experts at the Weather Service and Hurricane Center.
The plan to destroy NOAA is just one of many proposals in the 2025 plan aimed at cutting federal agencies and firing federal employees. They would be replaced by those who would only work to help Trump’s conservative business buddies rather than be independent experts who try to serve the American public.