Heritage Foundation: Eliminate NOAA; "Preponderance Of Its Climate Research Should Be Disbanded"

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In Project 2025’s chapter on NOAA’s parent agency, the Department of Commerce, Thomas Gilman, a senior official in the department during Trump’s first term, wrote that “the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration should be dismantled,” misstating the agency’s name. Many of NOAA’s functions should be eliminated, outsourced to states, moved to other agencies or privatized, he argued, and the National Weather Service, NOAA’s weather forecasting operations, should focus on commercializing its data. Gilman called NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and singled out its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research to say the “preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”

Such actions could have severe consequences in the West, experts warn. NOAA’s products “are crucial to everything from agriculture to farming and ranching, and then of course wildfires: wildfire management, wildfire protection, wildfire planning or things like controlled burns,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan advocacy group that works to protect Western land, water and communities. NOAA tracks, studies and maps a vast array of natural phenomena across the globe—including wildfires, drought, hurricanes and space weather. Its data underpins the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s heat risk tool and the country’s drought monitoring map. Shipping companies, retail manufacturers, fisheries and insurers rely on NOAA for weather forecasts to predict utility costs and manage financial risk. Airlines and the communication industry count on NOAA to monitor space weather, which can disrupt an aircraft’s navigation system and satellite communications.

The agency has a network of buoys criss-crossing the Earth’s oceans to better understand marine life and predict changes in climate as a result of the warming and cooling patterns of El Nino and La Nina cycles. This June, NOAA conducted test runs of two wildfire identification tools the agency says will be able to “speed fire detection and warning.” There are 330 members of the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps, one of the country’s seven uniformed services deployed around the country to respond to land and sea emergencies. The Defense Department leans heavily on NOAA’s Arctic weather forecasts and climate models as part of its developing strategy in the region, Iris Ferguson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience, said in July. She called that collaboration “vital to U.S. national security” as Russia and China ramp up interest and activity in the Arctic.

Privatizing NOAA’s weather forecasts and eliminating its climate science is “not just a terrible idea,” Weiss said. “It’s a dangerous one.” “This is a proposal that would lead to people dying,” he said.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102024/threats-to-the-west-if-trump-dismantles-noaa/