NOAA administrators place fealty to Trump above national interest
On Friday, an official at NOAA who thus far remains anonymous, released the following statement:
From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama. This is clearly demonstrated in Hurricane Advisories #15 through #41, which can be viewed at the following link.
The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.
Former top officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are assailing the agency for undermining its weather forecasters as it defends President Donald Trump’s statement from days ago that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama.
They say NOAA’s action risks the credibility of the nation’s weather and science agency and may even risk lives.
The critics served both Republican and Democratic presidents. Among them are former NOAA leaders and a former disaster response chief.
“This rewriting history to satisfy an ego diminishes NOAA,” Elbert “Joe” Friday, former Republican-appointed director of the National Weather Service, said on Facebook. He told The Associated Press on Saturday: “We don’t want to get the point where science is determined by politics rather than science and facts. And I’m afraid this is an example where this is beginning to occur.”
The previous evening, a NOAA statement from an anonymous spokesperson lent support to Trump’s warning days earlier that Alabama faced danger from Dorian. Alabama had never been included in official hurricane advisories and his information was outdated.
The statement undermined a tweet by the weather service’s office in Birmingham, Alabama, that had said Alabama would see no impact from Dorian.
Former officials saw a political hand at work. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday as to whether it had communication with NOAA before the agency released its statement Friday. NOAA officials also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“This falls into such uncharted territory,” said W. Craig Fugate, who was Florida emergency management chief under Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Democratic President Barack Obama. “You have science organizations putting out statements against their own offices. For the life of me I don’t think I would have ever faced this under President Obama or Governor Bush.” [Continue reading…]
Ten days ago, computer model predictions did present a scenario in which Dorian would strike Florida, enter the Gulf of Mexico and potentially affect Alabama. However, by Aug. 29, when the president was briefed by acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs, that scenario had become highly unlikely. By Sunday morning, when Trump tweeted about the Alabama threat, no credible computer model showed any risk to the state.
The Weather Service’s mission is to protect life and property. By releasing the statement admonishing the agency for an accurate forecast, NOAA may be seen as putting politics before facts. This could undermine forecasters’ ability to carry out their mission to the point where people may come to see its weather forecasts as political and untrustworthy.
Many meteorologists, recognizing Alabama was at no risk, expressed their ire on Twitter, stating Trump should have instead focused on communicating Dorian’s hazards to the Southeast coast and dispensed with his preoccupation with Alabama.
Watch meteorologist Bill Karins debunk Trump’s altered hurricane map. https://t.co/GWRdXabxLm
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 5, 2019
James Franklin, the former chief of a prediction unit at the National Hurricane Center, expressed support for the Birmingham Weather Service office that NOAA admonished.“I thought Birmingham’s statement Sunday morning that Alabama would see no impacts from Dorian was spot-on and an appropriate response to the President’s misleading tweet that morning,” he wrote in an email. The Hurricane Center’s “wind-speed-probability product serves as guidance to forecasters, and it showed only a very small likelihood of tropical-storm-force winds in the state, and essentially zero chance of hurricane-force winds.”
He stated: “I am very surprised that NOAA’s statement today seems to not recognize the value its forecasters add every day to NWS products and services.”
Dan Sobien, president of the NWS Employees Union, stated in a tweet Friday evening that “The hard-working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight.” [Continue reading…]
As so often happens in Washington, a serious dispute eventually devolved into fund-raising. Mr. Trump’s campaign sought to capitalize on the attention by offering to sell pens with the president’s signature on them; a set of five went for $15.
“Buy the official Trump marker, which is different than every other marker on the market, because this one has the special ability to drive @CNN and the rest of the fake news crazy!” Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, tweeted, adding the hashtag: “#KeepMarkersGreat.” [Continue reading…]