Plan to break up Noaa claims its research is ‘climate alarmism’ and calls for commercializing forecasts, weakening forecasts

Climate experts fear Donald Trump will follow a blueprint created by his allies to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), disbanding its work on climate science and tailoring its operations to business interests.

Joe Biden’s presidency has increased theprofile of the science-based federal agency but its future has been put in doubt if Trump wins a second term and at a time when climate impacts continue to worsen.

The plan to “break up Noaa is laid out in the Project 2025 document written by more than 350 rightwingers and helmed by the Heritage Foundation. Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president.

The document bears the fingerprints of Trump allies, including Johnny McEntee, who was one of Trump’s closest aides and is a senior adviser to Project 2025. “The National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the proposal says.

That’s a sign that the far right has “no interest in climate truth”, said Chris Gloninger, who last year left his job as a meteorologist in Iowa after receiving death threats over his spotlighting of global warming.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Russia’s main exports are oil and natural gas. If the world reduces its reliance on fossil fuels, and demand appreciably shrinks, Russia loses economic power.

    So it’s not so much that Putin is against climate change, as it is that Russia benefits directly if the effects of climate change is de-emphasized, and the world continues to burn fossil fuels.

    • trebuchet
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      7 months ago

      So there’s no evidence whatsoever then.

      This conspiracy theory makes as much sense as claiming the reason Republicans are against global warming is Saudi Arabia.

      People on this site lose their minds when the word Russia or Putin appears in a sentence. We don’t need dehumanized foreign bad guys to explain away and play cover for the actual bad guys we have domestically in the United States. We have the receipts. It’s Exxon and other big corps, not Russia.

      • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        While I agree that it’s not right to tie this specific issue to Russia. It’s perfectly reasonable to think Putin wants more climate change. They ALSO want more continuous shipping of their fossil fuels out of the North Sea, which climate change benefits. They also have expanded growing regions and seasons in a warmer world.