Opinion: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cannot be ‘broken up and downsized’

Just as the arrival of autumn brings with it the changing colors of the leaves, it also marks the end of both hurricane season and the traditional election cycle.

Throughout our Republic’s history, these two events have successfully coexisted without issue.  During Superstorm Sandy’s terrible landfall in the closing days of the hotly-contested 2012 presidential election, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, fully coordinated disaster preparation and recovery efforts with Democratic President Barack Obama. Rabid partisan hacks infamously blasted Christie’s bipartisan display – but the moment represented a clear declaration of where politics should end: at the storm water's edge.    

A dozen years later though, our weather and our politics have both become vastly more volatile, and they’re crashing into each other with increasing frequency. With extreme storms worsening, now more than ever, we must keep politics away from severe weather reporting and response.  This has been on jarring display following Hurricane Helene, which recently killed more than 200 of our fellow Americans as it tore through North Carolina and the American Southeast.  Conspiracy theories, fear-mongering and outright lies about FEMA’s response significantly undermined relief workers’ ability to deliver help to people in need, with some responders actually facing death threats.  

But the signature policy vision of far-right conservative allies of Donald Trump threatens to inject even more naked politics directly into weather alerts and forecasting. Project 2025 is an extreme MAGA governing blueprint, and one of its proposals is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – which operates the National Weather Service – to be “broken up and downsized.” Deceitfully smearing NOAA as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” Project 2025 wrongly claims NOAA is “designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”  

As a former NOAA and NWS official, I can tell you how the National Weather Service helps communities save lives. We can – and must – plan for the “unplannable” because that's the only way we can prevent death, minimize destruction to our communities, and put lives back together after a catastrophic storm. The ability to prepare for impending deadly weather before it strikes, and then quickly respond to any damage it causes, is exactly how we preserve and grow prosperity in the midst of an intensifying climate crisis.

To sneeringly dismiss real climate change fears as alarmist because it makes political dogma inconvenient is to willfully ignore what the science clearly shows, and what we all experience in our daily lives. The fact that Hurricane Helene could flood a major American city like Asheville –  nearly 400 miles from the coastline – is just the latest sign that dangerous weather is becoming both more intense and more frequent. This is not a political view or an ideological assertion; data show more storms are more combustible, and destroy more homes, more lives and more families.

New York knows this first hand, suffering multiple, record-breaking severe weather events in just the past few years.  Recent tropical storms to wallop our region reads like a long guest list at a party no one wants to attend: Irene, Lee, Sandy, Fred, Isaias, Elsa, Henri, Ida, Ophelia, Beryl, Debby. The state has already had 32 confirmed tornadoes so far this year alone, a record and three times more than in a typical year. And from Lewis County near Lake Ontario, to Suffolk County on the Atlantic Ocean, historic rainfalls are pounding communities up and down our state.  

Thankfully, NOAA’s National Weather Service is a vital partner for New York State to prepare for and mitigate these events. The NWS provides crucial – and free – weather information and forecasting to the news media, to government agencies, and directly to the general public. You recognize these public alerts, watches and warnings from the Emergency Alert System on your TV and radio, and through Wireless Emergency Alerts on your phones. These messages warn the public about incoming weather in their area, and give life-saving protective directions. The NWS also provides briefings in real time, giving emergency managers and first responders valuable data to shape their response to weather threats immediately and save lives. 

Between July and August of this year alone, NWS issued for New York State more than 200 severe thunderstorm warnings, over 60 tornado warnings, and over 60 flash flood warnings. On one day in July alone, as the remnants of Hurricane Beryl blasted the state, the NWS released 42 tornado warnings and 13 total flood warnings, each delivering life-safety alerts to people in those afflicted areas. 

Project 2025’s proposal to gut NOAA and the National Weather Service and to privatize what’s left, as climate change makes our weather more violent, is dangerous and irresponsible.  It views the National Weather Service as a rival to private industry, and would weaken and marginalize the NWS by transferring its forecasting and analysis functions to for-profit ventures.  For the climate-denying Project 2025 architects, it would empower like-minded big business titans with the ability to manipulate data, or restrict what the NWS can make public. 

This is by no means a screed against private enterprise; we want and need a vibrant business sector in New York and nationwide, including a thriving weather enterprise. But the loss of free, easily accessible storm data in real time means people will die needlessly, and preventable community destruction will occur more regularly.  When profit motivation trumps open access to vital public information in the face of impending disaster, the public good suffers, with catastrophic consequences.  

This fall, with kids back in school, New York back in the World Series, and Halloween decorations making way for Thanksgiving just ahead, it's worth pausing to think about a world without the National Weather Service. If emergency officials and first responders lose access to accurate reports of tornadoes, hurricanes, and torrential storms, preparation and recovery work will be impaired, and the lives of our neighbors imperiled.  The only ones who benefit here are the business moguls who ignore scientific fact to advance a political agenda that also makes them richer.