Summary
Hundreds of NOAA employees, including National Weather Service meteorologists, were fired Thursday as part of Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal workforce under Trump.
The layoffs, affecting up to 10% of NOAA’s workforce, targeted probationary employees.
Lawmakers and experts condemned the cuts, warning they will jeopardize public safety and disaster preparedness.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) called the firings “unconscionable,” while climate scientists warned they would weaken the country’s ability to respond to extreme weather and climate disasters.
Gonna be a real shame when all those trump supporting midwesterners get their trailers leveled by a storm that could have been predicted but wasn’t. Oh well…
Great decision right as we head into hurricane season. At least we haven’t been setting records for the number and intensity of hurricanes, or this would be extra stupid
/s
The next hurricane season might have just gotten very interesting. Nobody will tell the good people on Florida or Texas about all that nasty climate change, or the hurricanes that will come because the Hottub of America (formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico) will turboboost more smaller storms to nasty little category 5s. No annoying evac orders! Hurray! Americans just take things as they come!
What’s the point of this? From their perspective? I don’t get it.
Probabaly a mix of lowering government costs to give billionaires a tax break and if we don’t monitor it the climate change numbers don’t get worse.
Also, private companies selling you tornado warnings for the small price of 50 dollar/month soon.
But arent services like accuweather just reselling data gathered and processed by NOAA?
Yes. I have a friend in meteorology and they said that the Weather Channel doesn’t actually have any meteorologists on staff, they just repackage what NOAA and the NWS report instead of crunching numbers themselves.
Petty revenge for contradicting trump about that one hurricane.
Good! I DONT care if my House gets RAZED to the Ground by a Random Tornado I was Unprepared for as LONG as we can Afford to Give President Elon Musk, LEADER of DOGE, more MULTI BILLION DOLLAR CONTRACTS!
This has been one of my biggest worries this go around. The national weather service provides intensely important information and provides it freely. At this point, I’m waiting for them to hack it up and sell the remains to the parasites at AccuWeather or something and start charging for what was always a free product.
Didn’t AccuWeather mostly just pull from nws anyway? Now they’ll need to do all that work themselves and it won’t be free anymore.
That’s the thing that’s confused me a bit. Project 2025 definitely calls for the dismantling and privatization of NOAA, but I didn’t see anything specifically mentioning AccuWeather. IIRC the CEO of AccuWeather said it’d be way too costly for them to pick up all of the responsibilities they depend on NOAA for. At this point, I’d fully expect Musk to say his companies can handle it.
Also nws gets data from private entities which may not be as hot to share with a for profit that competes with them.
They won’t do it themselves. They can’t. They’ll just offer a worse forecast.
