From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
Several media stories have suggested that Project 2025 will be the blueprint for the Trump administration’s termination or break up of NOAA and the National Weather Service.
I have received at least a half-dozen calls or messages asking about it. Let’s soberly consider the Project 2025 recommendations without a political lens.
As many of you know, Project 2025 is a project of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. It is their recommendation to the new administration. According to President Trump, he has nothing to do with Project 2025 and does not feel bound to follow its recommendations:
Let’s consider Project 2025’s recommendations for NOAA.
It starts with a pretty strong statement:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
But when you read the specifics, the tough talk is replaced by less threatening suggestions.
This is what Project 2025 says about the National Weather Service.
Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations.
Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather. Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.2 The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations. NOAA does not currently utilize commercial partnerships as some other agencies do. Commercialization of weather technologies should be prioritized to ensure that taxpayer dollars are invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high-quality research and weather data. Investing in different sizes of commercial partners will increase competition while ensuring that the government solutions provided by each contract is personalized to the needs of NOAA’s weather programs
The Project 2025 folks may have a point here. Commerical forecasts (e.g., from the WeatherChannel or Accuweather or Apple weather forecasts) are generally more skillful than NWS projections. Don’t believe me? Look at specific comparisons, such as those found at ForecastAdvisor.com
The NWS is in 7th place. At least it is ahead of Pirate Weather (pirates are obviously mediocre in weather forecasting). Similar statistics are found at other locations around the U.S. As a specialist in the field, I have a very good idea of why the NWS lags, including the inferior statistical combination of weather forecasts. NOAA models (except for HRRR) are generally inferior.
NOAA could greatly improve forecast skill by contracting with commercial firms for their forecasts, releasing local NOAA meteorologists to interact with local users, and ensuring local observations are well maintained. The savings in reduced local staff could be used to improve national weather prediction models (such as HRRR) and enhance observations.
A win-win situation for everyone, and it is reasonable and defendable.
Next, Project 2025 takes on the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the NOAA Environmental Satellite Service:
Review the Work of the National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service. The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally. Data continuity is an important issue in climate science. Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.
Project 2025 is not calling for the termination of these important NOAA efforts but to present the implications of climate change/global warming more “neutrally“.
As someone who follows this issue quite closely, I really don’t think that the NHC is guilty of consistently hyping the impacts of climate change or making “adjustments” intended to support one side or the other.
But let’s have some perspective here: Project 2025 is NOT recommending the end of the NHC as being claimed by some hyperventilating folks, such as the Huffington Post:
Finally, the report calls for a reduction in NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and to reduce the “preponderance of its climate change research”.
Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). OAR provides theoretical science, as opposed to the applied science of the National Hurricane Center. OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism. The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded. OAR is a large network of research laboratories, an undersea research center, and several joint research institutes with universities. These operations should be reviewed withe an aim of consolidation and reduction of bloat.
I will have to give Project 2025 mixed grades on this. NOAA AOR does BOTH theoretical AND applied science, which Project 2025 folks did not appreciate. AOR does some very good applied and theoretical science. I have worked with them on many projects, so I know. Furthermore, I don’t think it is true that there is a “preponderance” of climate-change research that should be disbanded. Yes, a few scientists in NOAA may have gone a bit “over the top” but most are not and doing good work regarding climate change.
However, there is bloat, duplication, and ineffective spending in NOAA AOR.
Trust me, I know the locations of a lot of the skeletons in the NOAA closet.
In summary, the Project 2025 “analysis” of NOAA has to be given mixed grades (and I did not mention the sloppy writing, with numerous grammatical errors. But if you bother to read it, you will see that it is not calling for the death knell of NOAA as claimed by some media and climate activists.
NOAA Does Need Reform
Although Project 2025 has hits and misses regarding NOAA, NOAA acutely needs reform.
Major reform. Reform that will enable it to serve its mission better. Reform that will make it more effective and reduce bureaucratic bloat. Reform that may well save money.
I say this as someone who has worked with NOAA for decades. I have written several papers on NOAA’s organizational problems, served on national advisory committees, and testified in Congress on these issues.
NOAA has fallen behind in weather prediction. It has failed to use commercial services when they offer better forecasts, are less expensive, or more efficient. There is a huge duplication of effort within NOAA. Large amounts of funding are wasted. There is a lack of partnerships with the University community and particularly the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
In a future blog, I will lay out the details of how NOAA could be reformed and become MUCH more effective. With insightful reorganization and better management, NOAA could provide profoundly better forecasts and environmental information to the American people.
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Very nice Cliff. In a previous post here at WUWT about Newsweek the Newsweek article included this:
“According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s latest projections, sea levels along the U.S. coastlines are projected to rise, on average, around 10 to 12 inches by 2050.”
Is this true? If NOAA actually said this I have a hard time putting any faith in NOAA.
Bob ==> NOAA does in fact officially predict 10-12 inches of SLR by 2050. And, yes, that’s not just unlikely, but barring some major geophysical shift (and change in the laws of physics) that is not going to happen.
Sea levels, even according to the current methods (there are serious questions), are rising at about 3 mm per year. SL Rise would have to increase immediately to over 10mm per year, and remain at that level for the entire 30 years, to accomplish that. That is triple the current rate.
The climate alarmists have HUGE influence at NOAA whenever questions pertain or even touch on the issue of future climate. This is by mandate and fiat.
Kip, crap like that is unacceptable, NOAA needs a major shakeup if it isn’t shut down altogether and it’s functions given to other outfits.
12 inches of sea level rise by 2050 tell you everything you need know about N0aa. They are not doing science. They are preaching religion.
Nothing on NOAA’s NMFS refusing to consider that offshore wind development harms whales and other ocean life?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/12/capping-marine-mammal-harassment-constrains-offshore-wind/
In other words, “Shoot the messenger”!.
Maybe temperatures will stop rising if we just stop measuring them?
The issue is hype not measurement. But the so-called measurements of global surface temp are statistical junk. The satellites are the closest thing we have to measurement.
And the UAH data shows no evidence of warming by human released CO2.
There is no evidence of AGW in the UAH data.. period.
the raw data is inaccurate because it has to be corrected for orbital decay and other factors. With those adjustments, it closely agrees with land instruments, and shows a steady multi decade planetary warming trend of about 0.18C/decade
UAH is checked against radiosonde measurements, which avoids the ever present Urban Heat Island contamination in land sites.
The Urban heat island effect is accounted for in analysis using the land based data. So satellite and land based analysis both show a very similar warming trend of about 0.18C per decade.
The “correction” is by population, not how built up an area is.
No, a correction is specifically made for the Urban heat island effect.
You have zero clue what you are talking about.
Really beetroot…Why do you come here to display your abject ignorance of science ??
Show us the evidence of warming by CO2 in the UAH data..
… remember, the El Ninos have no human causation.
Your turnip-level IQ is not up to it !.
“shows a steady”
UAH does not show a steady warming.
Your comment is junk, based on ignorance..
“The issue is hype not measurement.”
Yep. It’s not “Shoot the messenger”. It’s “Shoot the message”.
Many agencies have been weaponized to promote the “solutions” to a supposed “Existential Threat”.
(How was “The Green New Deal” a solution to anything?)
No, El Nino events and urban warming will continue.
The manic mal-adjustments and anti-science activist hype would stop though.
NOAA are not a messenger, at times they have acted like a propaganda unit.
Their aim, to fool the ignorant and gullible. In you they had 120% success.
Weird how you completely misinterpreted what Cliff wrote. Willful stupidity isn’t a good look. Just saying.
Stop and think about it, friend: yours is the mentality where if a report in the legacy news media told you an asteroid was going to impact the area you live in, you’d invest in an asteroid-proof underground bunker, rather than ask the reporter if the reporter made any effort whatsoever to find out if scientist behind the doomsday prediction can prove the math calculations are right.
That statement you quote is followed by the entire rest of the article
Which apparently you didn’t read.
The average temperature anomaly is not a messenger of what is to come. It’s propaganda. Without good records of temperature records (measured every few minutes and not just min and max) that pepper the globe evenly, you have an average that is meaningless (even anomalies). Creating something worth averaging from what we do have is through making up a profile of anomalies around the globe. Subjective and more than enough evidence that politics permeates the ”research”. It’s not that warming since the late 19th C didn’t happen. That curve has gradually changed to better support the late 20th C warming to be unusual rather than due to the same natural changes responsible for earlier warming.
The recommendation is not to waste money on it rather than not continuing the recording of temperatures.
Part of the NOAA “climate hype” comes from USHCN data altering and ghost station fabrications … https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/28/the-scientific-method-is-at-work-on-the-ushcn-temperature-data-set/
From the article: “Data continuity is an important issue in climate science. Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.Project 2025 is not calling for the termination of these important NOAA efforts but to present the implications of climate change/global warming more “neutrally“.””
Too late for that! The damage: The bogus, bastardized, instrument-era Hockey Stick global “temperature” chart has already been created.
From the article: “Trump infamously took a Sharpie to a federal hurricane projection”
The Leftwing Media bringing up this lie about Trump again.
All the Leftwing Media can do is distort, distort, and lie, lie, lie. They still repeat the “very good people on both sides” Charlottesville lie about Trump. Joe Biden says this lie (which he still uses against Trump) is the reason he decided to run against Trump for president.
One good thing though: The Leftwing Media is losing viewers and credibility.
One very bad thing: Seventy-two million idiots voted for Kamala Harris and the Radical Democrats.
That “Sharpie” moment showed that Trump understood the obvious point of what NOAA itself says about those plots – that the storm impacts extend beyond the displayed cone of the likely path of the storm center. “Journalists”.
NOAA should have NO ROLE in promoting the claim that the increasing concentrations of non-condensing trace gases CO2, CH4, N2O have ANY discoverable and verifiable influence on any trend of any metric of climate interest.
Yet NOAA is being (mis)used to push the narrative, e.g. here
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts
and here
https://cdn.oceanservice.noaa.gov/oceanserviceprod/education/literacy/climate_literacy.pdf
NOAA’s role in space-based observation and visualization is good, e.g., here
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16
NOAA needs to quit presenting speculation about CO2 as established facts.
There is no evidence showing CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
There is no established connection between CO2 and either the Earth’s atmospheric temperatures or how the Earth’s weather unfolds. NOAA should stop claiming there is a connection. These claims are based on nothing.
Somebody should teach the scientists at NOAA the difference between speculation and evidence. They seem very confused. Those who are not confused, are lying about CO2, because there is no real evidence to support their claims, and they have to know that.
About your point, “they have to know that”: Yes, eventually it must come out that they – NOAA as an institution – should have, could have, must have – known that there is no way for CO2 to ever drive the climate system to any kind of bad outcome.
Interesting links, especially linking down into the “executive summaries” of the AR Reports. It’s amazing how they are able to project such certainty into such wild speculation.
Can you cite any scientific papers that contradict the findings of every researching climate scientist on planet earth? I don’t think so.
1… Please provide empirical scientific evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.
2… Please show the evidence of CO2 warming in the UAH atmospheric data.
3… Please state the exact amount of CO2 warming in the last 45 year, giving measured scientific evidence for your answer.
Waiting, waiting.!
“findings of every researching climate scientist”
It is not a “finding” .. it remains a baseless conjecture…
… part of the AGW mantra that “must be believed” and implanted into everything they do….
… but is actually unsupported by any real science.
“It is not a “finding” .. it remains a baseless conjecture…”
That’s what I was thinking, too. 🙂
Why would I take you seriously at all, WB? It doesn’t require a paper in a journal to show the speculative nature of those so-called “findings”. NOAA’s published visualizations of the GOES Band 16 radiances, along with the “vertical integral of energy conversion” values from the ERA5 reanalysis, are already sufficient to demonstrate the point in my comment above.
More here. Please be sure to read the full text description of each of these short time-lapse videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8vhRIT-3uaLhuaIZq2FuQ
A youtube video? YGTBK.
I’ll be sure to read your peer reviewed scientific paper when it’s published. Until then, I’ll go by the published scientific literature which concludes CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning is the cause of about 80% of the fastest rate of climatic warming in millennia.
If you can produce a paper using empirical science to show CO2 warming.
We will read that.
Your problem is, that there is NO published literature that does this.
It remains pure speculation, that “must be obeyed”
There is no CO2 forced warming signal in the whole of the UAH atmospheric data.
If you think there is, then show it.. that means avoiding the El Nino events which are the only warming in the UAH data.
1… Please provide empirical scientific evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.
2… Please show the evidence of CO2 warming in the UAH atmospheric data.
3… Please state the exact amount of CO2 warming in the last 45 year, giving measured scientific evidence for your answer.
Don’t continue to prove yourself to be an abject failure.
“YGTBK.”
ie the beetroot must totally avoid any real scientific explanations else they get past his deep-seated klimate kook brain-washing.
I think we can be pretty sure the red turnip has never actually read any scientific literature, otherwise he could surely produce something that actually contain scientific evidence of CO2 warming, as opposed to brain-dead acceptance of the fallacy.
Get lost, stupid troll.
“There is a lack of partnerships with the University community”
smart , since so many universities are more concerned with DEI etc. than science .
I agree, I don’t think P2025 recommends doing away with the NOAA, I think they mean to bring it under more direct executive control, as P2025 recommends for pretty much every fed agency, and to cripple its climate research and monitoring programs. This still is not a good or desirable thing.
Removing the control of petty brain-washed activist bureaucrats seems like a really good idea.
Oh dearie me.
Some dopey ‘red thumber’ actually WANTS his/her life control by petty brain-washed activist bureaucrats.
What a sad life that must be. !
Must be the sad petty AJ !
Hilarious.. we have a pair of true socialist lackeys, that admit that they NEED petty activist bureaucrats to control their lives.
Very sad indeed… 🙂
Maybe it’s due to the tone of your comments.
“I agree, I don’t think P2025 recommends doing away with the NOAA, I think they mean to bring it under more direct executive control,”
Guess what? NOAA is part of the Executive Branch. Why shouldn’t it be under Executive Branch control?
“as P2025 recommends for pretty much every fed agency, and to cripple its climate research and monitoring programs. This still is not a good or desirable thing.”
Guess what? All those Federal Agencies are also part of the Executive Branch.
“Cripple climate research?!?!
No. Return it to actual science-based research rather than activism research for “The Cause”.
That is a very good and desirable thing.
You can make an argument both ways. Trump and the P2025 authors don’t want the government to act apolitically. They want every federal agency to just do exactly as Trump tells them. Former executives have seen the value and propriety of having agencies that operate independently.
People excited to see Trump in office are acting a little overeager to institute the politicization of these agencies, forgetting that their guy won’t be in office forever.
The NOAA has never stopped doing science based research.
Q: NOAA is part of the Executive Branch. Why shouldn’t it be under Executive Branch control?
A: You can make an argument both ways.
How so?
It is part of the executive branch, that does not mean it should exist merely to cater to the president’s whims. Most presidents have believed some level of independence in these agencies is necessary (imagine a DOJ acting as a branch of retribution against the president’s personal adversaries…), Trump does not. You can make an argument in support of either of these positions. Let me know if I need to clarify things further for you.
You see it as “catering to his whims”, and as being a political action. It could also be seen as reining in an agency that has exceeded its purpose.
You may be able to argue THAT both ways, but since political inclinations will affect what you argue, it’s a pointless argument.
Trump, and the P2025 authors, believe that many of his policy initiatives were stymied during his first term by bureaucratic agencies dragging their feet or resisting his (frequently illegal) directives to them. So it is not surprising that he wants to take total control. Whether you think this is a good thing or not depends on how expansive you think the president’s power should be. Trump thinks it should be absolute. Most prior presidents have understood that there are things they technically could do as president, that often might make their lives easier, that they shouldn’t do as a matter of propriety, Trump has no such qualms.
A lot of pro-Tump people are celebrating this initiative to politicize the federal agencies even further by replacing career civil workers with political stooges because they fail to imagine a future in which the president forcing outward the reach of executive power is not “their guy.”
“The NOAA has never stopped doing science based research.”
ROFLMOA. you really do say the most idiotically gormless things.
They just massively increased the percentage of agenda-driven activist non-science they were do.
Science-based research is now probably in single figures percentage-wises
“just do exactly as Trump tells them”
ie.. act in a non-political way for the benefit of Americans..
… not the globalist wannabees that you bow to.
Trump wants to get rid of the politicization of these agencies, that has become rampant under Obama then Biden.
Ok NPR.
Hey now! What’s with disparaging pirates!? The Dread Pirate Donald has brought a ship(t?)load of renegades and rebels into the fray to fight beside him as he attempts to capture the Ship of Deep State and reverse it’s course away from the Maelstrom! (For you FlatEarthers who believe that a trace gas controls the Sun and our ocean currents, that’s kinda like falling off the edge!)
REAL pirates would likely be quite good at forecasting, so those are probably PINOs!
The “bloat” effect is a characteristic of all taxpayer funded bureaucracies.
Their playbook priorities become control of a political narrative coupled with mission creep.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) are no different to NOAA as bureaucracies in dire need of reform.
Pretty simple really. Fire all the analysts and scientists and scrap every project intended to produce a study or scientific paper. Hire engineers and technicians to design, deploy, and maintain equipment to monitor the oceans and atmosphere and make the data available to anyone who wants to use it to predict weather and climate and erosion. That’s it. We don’t need anyone with a PhD or Masters degree. Just engineers and technicians.
Engineers don’t get Masters and PhDs?
They can get Masters and PhDs, I chose to be a productive worker rather listening to Piling it higher ad Deeper.
“They can get Masters and PhDs,”
Yes they can. 😉
We are repeatedly told the science is settled. So why is N0aa doing science.
The problem with EVERY government agency is that they are filled with would be politicians and armies of bureaucratic gatekeepers that produce no net benefit.
Innovators and facilitators get thrown out because they make the rest look bad. So the only solution is to fire the lot and contract out and regularly switch contractors.
“We are repeatedly told the science is settled. So why is NOAA doing science?”
Who told you ‘the science is settled’?
The ideal job is purchasing agent for any large company or government agency.
“As many of you know, Project 2025 is a project of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. “
Classic Cliff Mass: Categorizing Heritage is a think tank is akin to calling The American Thinker is a journal of ideas.