By Robert Bradley Jr.
Want to know why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration needs a massive downsizing? Because it is a political organization masquerading as a weather forecast center. And the climate lobby is upset at the clean-up.
Monday between 10:00 am and noon eastern, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network / Action Fund is hosting a “Hands off NOAA!” rally at NOAA’s headquarters in Silver Springs, MD. Here is CCAN’s announcement:
The Trump Administration and Elon Musk continue to recklessly demonize dedicated federal workers who provide critical services everyday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who provide critical services from the National Weather Service to seafood safety is not immune from DOGE’s intimidation tactics to fulfill the promise of Project 2025 to eliminate NOAA.
But we are NOT going to sit back and watch.
On Monday, March 3rd at 10am Congressional leaders and advocates will gather at NOAA HQ in Silver Spring, MD (right at the Silver Spring Metro stop) to tell Trump and Musk to keep their hands off of NOAA.
The call-to-action continued:
Firing hundreds of NOAA workers would have severe impacts on day-to-day life for Americans. We depend on NOAA workers everyday to warn us of weather events, protect our commercial fisheries, support first-responders when disasters happen, and much more. We have already seen the damage Trump and Musk have done to other critical agencies. We have seen how families and communities have paid a heavy price for so-called “efficiency.” NOAA must be defended!
On the contrary, NOAA workers with their nice severance package can find employment in the private sector, even if it means a career change. Foundations can take over functions considered vital to human wellbeing to reemploy the displaced. But climate lobbying is over on the taxpayer’s dime.
————
Sarah Guy, executive director of Ocean Defense Initiative, stated on social media.
💙💙💙 is with NOAA employees who lost their jobs today as DOGE sows chaos across federal agencies. But as Chesapeake Climate Action Network says here, “we are NOT going to sit back and watch.”
I commented:
The private sector can pick up the NOAA ex’s who add value to weather forecasting services, and foundations can underwrite research. Others should alter career paths into teaching or who-knows-what.
Political jobs are risky, and the US is broke! www.usdebtclock.org
and:
That a climate group is leading the protest is exactly why NOAA is being downsized!
In another post regarding NOAA, I noted that this agency’s weather forecast for Texas in the winter of 2020/21 was so wrong that it contributed to the Great Texas Blackout from Storm Uri.
Other voices of despair were heard with the announcement. Jane Lubchenco, Deputy Director for Climate and Environment in Biden’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stated:
The mass firings today at NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration are a national disaster and a colossal waste of money. Destroying NOAA’s ability to provide life-saving information, keep our ocean healthy, and strengthen the economy makes no sense—no sense at all. NOAA is a lean agency, with highly skilled, impressively dedicated people –I know because I have worked with them for years. We need them; all of them.
A lean agency? Need every last employee? That’s one bureaucrat protecting another, part of the Climate Deep State in this instance.
Check out this function of NOAA that screams for budget cut for ecological improvement.
Apparently, according to the government union, there is no such thing as an unneeded government employee. Each and every one of them is critical.
That;s the impression the Democrats are trying to give us.
We aren’t buying it! 🙂
I saw these people protesting this morning on the news. They were standing there singing. I had to laugh.
The US Constitution does not call for Democrat-infested NOAA, and EPA, and NPR, and PBS, and US Education Department, and NEA, and Voice of America, etc.
They are federal government mission-creep
All those entities are unconstitutional.
So not just standing there and watching? They kept their word. 😉
Yes, but there weren’t many of them there. A couple of dozen at the most. They were singing a protest song.
Secretary of the Interior, Burgum, said there were about 10 million jobs in the United States looking for employees.
These guys should stop protesting and start submitting resumes.
and each one is more critical than the next…
Objections show a huge mismatch between how under 40 y/o private industry and over 60 y/o public USA workers think about what a job is and how the relationship between employer and employee works. Some older government employees (and there are few young ones) speak as if one has to do something wrong to become unemployed. They are not finding the sympathetic ears they may have expected.
They are not finding the sympathetic ears they may have expected.
All they’re doing is showing how out of touch they are with the rest of the country. I would think that most non-government workers have faced layoffs at some time in their lives. Welcome to reality.
When we have a “federal government shutdown” while congress plays a game of funding chicken, non-essential workers are furloughed. Are NOAA employees part of that non-essential government workforce? And why do we have non-essential workers? especially with the magnitude of the federal debt and interest payments on it.
I remember visiting NREL one time and they had their hallways set up like the game “Candy Land” and the organizers were giving out candy to participants in the game. It seemed like good fun to be paid for by taxpayers.
And NREL – the renewable energy font of knowledge – had to ban e-bikes from being brought into their headquarters building.
To many spontaneously combusting batteries.
What’s up with that?
Which building was this in?
One of the one’s they rented off the main campus but pretty close to Denver West, on Cole Blvd, I think. It had a lot of corridors, so it was set up pretty well for Candy Land.
Denver West Office Park across the freeway then, probably before they built the huge Research Suppression Facility with the G.W. Bush cash. All those big brown buildings have 3 floors plus a roof floor.
Lobbying with appropriated funds? Instead of doing their purported jobs?
The liberal wailing and nashing of teeth is a sure sign NOAA downsizing was over due. Other (local CO) press reports lament the disproportionate impact on NOAA Boulder CO. Delightfully, that is NCAR and the climate gang.
NO impact reported locally concerning NHC here in south Florida.
Local (anywhere) press might not be welcoming shoulders to cry on in this particular case. Local print press has been an early-regular-and-often target for efficiency improvements.
We have another townhall tomorrow. I got booted off a previous one for some reason and couldn’t log back in because the number of participants exceeded the service’s capacity.
I feel sorry for those losing their jobs but employees at my site largely have not returned to their offices and labs, going back to 2020. Sometimes it’s like me and the Chinese guys are some of the few that show up for work. Nothing says non-essential like remoting in from your vacation home in Florida.
I think there will be some downward pressure on Boulder real estate prices.
On his Substack today, Roger Pielke Jnr has posted an essay critical of DOGE’s NOAA staffing downsizing.
He sums it up by asserting that governments need lotsa staff who “think about things”.
I can see where Roger is coming from, but my qualification of his observation would be that governments don’t so much need people that “think about things”, rather they need people that –
“THINK THINGS THROUGH“
or as Warren Buffett was also quoted elsewhere today about what should be the response to every bureaucratic policy proposal –
“and then what?”
Pielke had a lot of enemies at CU and he got booted around because of that.
That’s one bureaucrat protecting another, part of the Climate Deep State in this instance.
There are so many feedback loops like that in the country, the world!
“…a thriving New Blue economy” HA! HA! That is insane, another leftist utopian scheme, sure to crumble.
In related news, OPM issued another ‘weekly ‘pulse check’ email this morning. Unlike the previous one, ‘voluntary response’ was OMITTED. And also this morning, both DoD and HHS made it a mandatory response by midnight tonight excepted for uniformed military—unlike the previous round where they both declined to respond. My guess is Hegseth and RFKJr both had a brief discussion with 47 after the last Cabinet meeting. Good times.
I remember the days when weekly status/progress reports were sent to managers.
Apparently keeping managers informed is no longer critical.
If status reports were sent in, it would be simple to forward those (observing security protocols).
How many of the protestors were “working” from home?
NOAA maintains three global climate models, NASA two and NCAR (funded by the government’s National Science Foundation) one. That is six models funded by you and me to the tune of $millions per year. The rational is that climate models are really hard so we have to try lots of different ways. Despite decades of trying lots of different ways, the models remain far apart. The only model that comes close to measurements is called INM5 or is it 6 by now? It’s the Russian model. They only have one. Let us drop all 6 of the US models, buy a copy of the Russian one, and focus on understanding why it works. With any luck, a bunch of the people laid off at NOAA are the modelers.
Why do we need so many climate models in the first place? If models really worked, only one would suffice.
BUT think of all the careers that would destroy and all the money that would save! You heartless DOGEr.
A man with one clock always knows what time it is, a man with two clocks isn’t so sure. Three clocks is over-kill. Six is insane.
Well wouldn’t you need six bureaucrats to adjust the current clocks to synchronise with the Doomsday Clock Department?
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
INM CM5, in CMIP6.
And they already explained why it ‘works’—no tropical troposphere hotspot, ECS1.8. Published a long paper on this that I archived at the time.
They simply parameterized ocean rainfall according to what ARGO is observing, all publicly available. ‘Ocean freshwater store’ via decreased near surface salinity measurements was one of the original three ARGO design goals. (Detailed explanation on how and why in long ago post here ‘ARGO—fit for purpose?) About twice expected rainfall, so about half the water vapor feedback and voila. A model that ‘works’.
So we don’t even need to buy it?
Yes, yes, the missing hotspot. A bit of a problem they seem to have forgotten all about.
INM model does not actually “work”. It is as unreliable as all of them but it is just not as warm as the others.
There are two simple tests for all climate models –
Do they produce a cooling trend in the Southern Ocean.
Do they produce zero or slightly negative trend in the Nino34 region.
All climate models are blind to solar power so completely ignore the precession cycle that drives climate trends.
Is it correct to say that an increase in sunspots leads to an increase in solar wind which leads to an increase in charged particles which leads to an increase in warming the upper atmosphere which leads to an increase of pressure on the polar vortex which causes the polar vortex to move south which leads to colder weather in the NH?
Is that what solar cycle 25 is causing?
Cliff Mass maintains that the European weather forecasting model is much superior to NOAA’s efforts.
He wants NOAA to concentrate more on weather forecasting for US regions rather than climate stuff, and bring its results up to or superior to the European weather models.
Some Cliff Mass numbers from memory, a few years ago. NWS spending on improving weather models, about $40 million. EMWFS about $200 million. So of course outperform on things like US hurricanes.
US climate models, about $4 billion.
Who pays the piper (Democrats), calls the tunes.
But a $4 billion bill?
(and most of it just the tip)
Rationale.
Connect the dots. .Climate change policy such as Keystone pipeline permit halting pushing energy prices up allowing Russian energy to finance Ukraine invasion. Nord Stream is in there too.
We do not need NOAA at all. Close or and sell off its assets. The military has its own weather forecasters and there are many high-quality commercial companies from which government and news media can buy weather information. As for “climate” data, models, etc., give them to Universities if any want the trouble of running and maintaining them.
if someone can explain why we need a government organization to do what NOAA does, I’d be happy to listen.
There are four different concretely valuable NOAA things. The NWS both operates the weather forecasting models, and the network of Doppler radars used to detect tornadoes. They operate the network of coastal tide gauges, CO-OPS. They operate the NHC—crucial here in Florida.
The rest is a lot more optional.
I think the CRN is also worth keeping, and expanding to Europe, Africa and Asia.
And Australia , please. Although that is something BoM should have done ages ago.
The problem isn’t that NOAA and NWS are meant to provide useful info and services, such as the Doppler radars to detect tornadoes.
The problem is the people that add a political “spin” to the info on the taxpayers’ dime. 😎
And an organizational spin also on the taxpayer’s dime.
If their weather forecasts were accurate, they might be useful. As it is, most everybody I know uses another service for up-to-the-minute weather information.
Starzmom, they are OK out to about 4-5 days, at least in this part of the world. Of course, we don’t get a lot of weather fronts like elsewhere.
My meteorologist father used to say that the most accurate short term forecast used a weather string hung on a nail outside an openable window. If the string was horizontal, it was windy. If you couldn’t see the string in daytime, it was foggy. If the string was dripping, it was rainy….
How many people does it actually require to forecast the weather? I’m guessing you might generously need two or three people to remotely gather the local weather data and quality check it and maybe one person to examine the data and maps and produce the actual forecast from the data? Throw in a supervisor to oversee the whole thing? I don’t know, I’m just guessing here. So, what is the rest of NOAA doing? Just asking.
Reports
Actually, it takes about 3 to 6 each ‘locally’ to provide 24;7 coverage. They don’t just rely on weather forecasting models. Real time temperature, humidity, cloud cover, wind…all integrated into the weather forecast. My father had a masters in meteorology.
As for four other important things, see subcomment just above.
I think you’re right Rud. I read my local NWS Area Forecast Discussion and can see 3 or 4 authors listed. Generally not too bad for 3 or 4 days ahead. And in the Northeast these are very complicated weather patterns. Sometimes they actually surprise me for 7-10 days.
The government hires a lot of scientists which is de facto a form of welfare. As pointed out above, we are spending beyond and means and this can only go on for so long.
We don’t need no stinkin’ efficiency.
NOAA should be terminated as it is and be required simply to maintain demonstratably-correct temperature and other records which cannot (by statute) be changed.
Every 4/8 years, a new definition for “correct”?
The Gulf of Demonstratably-Correct?
Demonstratably-Correct fries?
The last number I saw was 600-650 employees let go.
Out of 120,000 at NOAA, that’s about 5%.
There are high tech firms out there who have an annual decimation, they get rid of 10% of their employees every year. It is assumed that about 10% really don’t want to be there or are useless.
The annual review process puts employees into one of three categories: 1) Outstanding 5%, 2) accomplished 85%, 3) Needs Improvement (NI) 10% (this may be given to people who quit). The NIs are given 60 days to move on or they are fired.
Back when I was a senior partner at BCG, we spent an enormous amount of time and effort each year trying to recruit the best and brightest from the world’s top business schools. But we also had high expectations. The reality was, 70% did not make it past 2 years and their first serious performance review after maybe 10/15 cases/clients. Perhaps an extreme.
GE under Jack Welsh removed the bottom 10% every year.
Shows how far DOGE has to go.
GE acquired a company that I worked for, and Matt Lauer was the master of ceremonies for the closing which ran on closed circuit TV. That was a happy day, although I could have timed my stock sales a little better.
Anyway, they left us alone for a couple of years, while we were making money, but then slowly the GE culture took over. At one point multiple palettes of PCs and laptops showed up followed by a crew of a couple of dozen GE employees from India to replace and integrate all the IT.
GE has its own font, GE Inspira.
They might have to resurrect Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap? 🙁
650/120,00 = 0.0054 = 0.5%
600-650 employees let go.
As I understand it, most if not all were probationary too.
(minor correction – I think you added a 0 – 12,000)
120,000 people.
Would be very interesting to see the work product demographics.
One germane is how many are not working on oceans or atmospheric studies, weather forecasting, data collection, etc., but on climate.
NOAA is not supposed to be in the climate business.
I’ve seen 2 numbers now. 120,000 and 12,000.
I suspect the 12,000 is correct.
Can someone confirm?
12,000 – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/noaa-layoffs-trump-musk-doge/
Thank you.
DOGE – Can you provide a list of 5 results you achieved in the last week.
NOAA Scientist –
A. I made adjustments tio the temperature data to ensure February was the hottest month on record.
B. I made further adjustments to the temperature data for 2024 to ensure it was the hottest year on record.
C. I specified a new algorithm to make automatic cooling adjustments to the 1930-1940 temperature data so they would be harder to detect.
D. I participated in the international zoom meeting on best practice in temperature data homogenisation hosted by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
E. I attended a protest rally on DOGE invasion of privacy of Federal Government employees.
A few years ago I did voluntary work on hiking trails. Each trip might result in ½ to 2 hours of hiking (with tools) and 4 to 5 hours of actual work. Upon getting home, my wife might ask (or maybe not) “What did you do today?” Long answers were common. Five bullet points wouldn’t come close to an explanation.
I wonder what some of the many agency people can say when a spouse asks that question.
JH, memories, although before wife. After I became an Eagle Scout and before leaving for college (so 4 years), I was one of a few Eagle Scouts from the area that were assigned to maintain a ‘local’ section of the famed Appalachian trail. If I recall correctly, we did about 15 miles and one shelter near the middle. Great weekend camping at the shelter/hiking/‘work’ excuse. Best part was, NPS provided transportation and provisions. All we had to do was show up.
Musk also noted it was a “pulse” test… to see if people actually existed.
No reply, you obviously don’t exist and can be crossed of the books.
I saw a bunch of “Defend Science” posters show up over the weekend. An upcoming event is to take place at a local microbrewery. I’ll check it out if they promise to have government paid for beer.
You’re terrible, Muriel.
Lol.
Erm… That reminds me of something… Ah yes. The kerfuffle at the Education Department. Didn’t help them then, I certainly hope it doesn’t help them this time either.
I can imagine DOGE’s response.
https://youtu.be/z4uivPpzCGo
Get that security guard on the job.
He looked a little bored with all those Dem representatives yelling at him. 😎
“We depend on NOAA workers everyday to warn us of weather events…”
I dunno- I don’t feel a need to be warned about weather events.
Weather event warnings aren’t the problem.
Cut those that give us “Climate” event warnings.
“NOAA workers with their nice severance package can find employment in the private sector, even if it means a career change.”
In my younger days I lost a few jobs- without any severance package. I hear these are extremely generous. These are highly educated folks. They’ll survive. What about the millions of blue collar workers who lost jobs as corporations moved to cheap labor nations? Most got little or nothing and many fell into poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, family turmoil, etc.
All true.
Not only highly educated & the cream of the crop … all those training sessions that they struggle to make time to attend keeps them at the top of the game.
The headhunters will come out of the woodwork to find these invaluable workplace assets.
There should be no problem for a NOAA biologist to be able to find a private sector job advocating for something that hinders the economy & and increases taxes.
Yuh, especially for some states, like MA, NY, CA, WA, etc. Here in Wokeachusetts, such biologists are considered heroes in the battle to save the planet. 🙂
Getting let go really sucks, it can be very traumatic. I sympathize with those who were let go. However I feel a reduction in government is absolutely necessary. What bothers me is the wailing about how the information we depend on from NOAA may not be available. The numbers I have seen are that NOAA had 12000 employees, 800 were let go. That is about six percent. So these guys are telling us that the remaining 11200 employees can’t get the job done? Keep in mind that many of those let go are probationary workers. I think this says a hell of a lot about the 11200 who are left, they need to get busy and do their job. If they can’t manage then we need another round of firings starting at the top, then perhaps we can get on with the business NOAA was intended for.
Ocean Defense Initiative gets Government grants. (Taxpayer dollars handed to them.)
Does Chesapeake Climate Action Network? (or it’s parent NGO?)
“The Trump Administration and Elon Musk continue to recklessly demonize dedicated federal workers who provide critical services everyday.”
Not too bright. They don’t even know the difference between “everyday” and “every day”.
Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Seems they are big on removing invasive vines and doing tree surveys. (According to the website.)
And staging political protests.
There is a gross lack of credibility that they have any insights into what NOAA does or is chartered to do. Parroting rhetoric is not the same as comprehending.