Trump, weather forecasting, and your safety
And Marjorie Taylor Greene's "weather manipulation"
Let’s start with the absurd
So, as with so many things that I write about in this newsletter, you sometimes just can’t make this stuff up. On Saturday, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (MJT)announced that after “researching” weather manipulation for several months, she was introducing a bill that prohibits “the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity.”
She now joins a group of conspiracy theorists who believe the federal government or “shadowy organizations” have been manipulating the weather by releasing chemicals in the air, leaving white streaks in the sky which they call chemtrails. To be clear, this is insane. The Environmental Protection Agency has explained that the cloud-like lines are condensation trails left behind after hot exhaust from aircrafts collide with cold air at high altitudes. MJT’s bill may, at first glance, just seem hilariously funny but it’s not - it’s part of a dangerous pattern that Trump and the GOP have put in place that attacks and defunds the very people who’s job it is to track the weather, predict its impact, and warn us of it’s impending danger.
Trump’s cuts to forecasting and Texas floods
After Trump’s initial cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS), staffing at the service’s 122 field offices have dropped to a 19 percent vacancy rate. Fifty-two offices are now considered “critically understaffed,” meaning a shortage of more than 20 percent, and some branches are down by more than 40 percent. While it’s unclear whether the disaster from the Texas floods might have been exacerbated by these cuts, it is the case that the Austin-San Antonio office that oversees that area was missing a warning coordination meteorologist — a role that serves as a critical link between forecasters and emergency managers. And initial reporting suggests that some information from the forecasters did not make it to the local emergency management departments. Irregardless, it is the case that the drastic cuts Trump and the GOP imposed on the NWS were wrong - so much so that the agency is now back to hiring for positions that were eliminated. Clearly, they made a mistake - and they know it.
The importance of NWS
From a cost-benefit analysis NWS is a winner. It costs the average American only about $4 per year to fund the agency but it provides an overall benefit of $100 billion to the economy (this is roughly 10 times what the service costs to run). According to one report, the recent improvements to hurricane forecasts alone have saved up to $5 billion for each hurricane that hit the U.S. since 2007. The NWS saves lives.
The bottom line
Trump’s firing of personnel and the cuts imposed by his recent budget bill put people at risk. Whether it’s cuts to food for children, cuts to healthcare for the infirmed, or cuts to the NWS - it all means we, as a nation, are less safe and secure.
As one meteorologist noted this weekend about Taylor-Greene’s bill, “It’s not a political statement for me as a Harvard-degreed atmospheric scientist to say that elected representative Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’d be equally qualified to fly a Boeing-737, practice nuclear medicine or train zebras.” The same could be said about Trump.