Summary

Elon Musk’s staffers entered NOAA and the Department of Commerce without clearance, raising concerns over budget cuts and downsizing.

Project 2025, a conservative plan linked to former Trump officials, calls for dismantling NOAA, citing its climate research as harmful to U.S. prosperity.

Critics warn such cuts could impact weather forecasting, ocean conservation, and fisheries.

NOAA declined to comment, while experts fear an aggressive strategy to weaken the agency before legal challenges can halt changes.

  • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    I’d like to remind everyone that NOAA is under the Department of Commerce because, as it turns out, understanding weather patterns, being able to accurately forecast weather changes, is kind of important to businesses.

    • evilcultist@sh.itjust.works
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      59 minutes ago

      I think there have been businesses trying to get it shut down for years because they want to sell the data rather than giving it out for free. I forget which ones, but I’d swear I read about this years ago.

      Just did a quick search with no luck, but apparently it’s part of Project 2025 to commercialize it or get rid of it.

  • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I remember when Musk bought Twitter and then immediately started trying to save money by literally just turning off services to see what breaks.

    That actually wouldn’t have been the stupidest idea if he had done it in a test environment rather than production, or even if Twitter was a small website that didn’t mind downtime. But he did it in production on a huge site that people relied on being up, so it actually was the stupidest idea.

    And now he’s bringing the same stupidest energy to government. No investigation. No calculation. Just a toddler who has been put in front of a lot of switches.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Unless twitter had a test system doing millions of varying actions a second, I’m not sure a test environment would find those problems, or at least not quickly. Sometimes those services get added to help spread loads that you might not encounter otherwise.

      Tbh I’m not sure what level of automated testing these sites have, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if the services are tested in isolation at scale, but not against each other at scale, and that there’s some general understanding that the link between them at scale is okay if both individually are okay?

      Still absolutely terrible to do that to a live environment.

    • ShinkanTrain
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      7 hours ago

      Inevitable. At some point the United States would run out of countries and have to invade the United States.

    • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
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      1 hour ago

      Sorry. Hurricane warnings and forecasts are only for our members with the diamond package. Would you like to upgrade now for $49.99, so you know when you should evacuate?

    • CellarRat@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      Well they did it to themselves, if they just forecasted only sunny days then they could stay! But no they had to keep bringing in illegal Mexican hurricanes!

      spoiler

      /s cause at this point someone might actually believe this

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Rejoice people! We will no longer be terrorized by weather alerts reporting possibly devastating weather events! Trump’s Redhats led by his South African immigrant billionaire henchman will make sure that Trump’s Sharpy of Truth will protect us!

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Maybe this is the inevitable endgame of a society that tries to harness greed the way capitalism does. Something can be working completely sustainably and for the general good, like NOAA does, and they still try to take parts of it away just so they can extract profits by selling to you what used to be free.

    Its why they hate work from home. Covid came along and necessitated that workers en masse be given a benefit, and capitalists werent able to extract any concessions in return because it was an emergency. So, they claw it back, but you might be able to get a special exception if you play ball.

    • SilverCode@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      I get the impression that if you chopped off his head, he would just grow 2 back. Then we would have twice as much bullshit excreting from his blowhole