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.

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
    201·
    7 months ago

    After thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that climate change is actually completely in the far right’s advantage:

    -It’ll make the poor poorer and the rich richer

    -It can be used as a “demon” to scare people into submission, or the other way around, by denying it

    -It can be used to divide the populace further along the lines of race, age, education… (and not along class lines, as it should be)

    -It will exacerbate current issues and divides between well-off nations and poor ones

    It’s win/win for them. The other political side actually has to be able to prove things somewhat in order to use climate change as something to garner votes. For the far right, it suffices to either pretend it doesn’t exist or to laugh at it.

    • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
      2·
      7 months ago

      This polarizing aspect of the whole thing has really confused me for this very reason as well as a few others. I think about it a lot like flat earth. In both cases the opponents or “deniers” for lack of a better term point largely to this like conglomerate corpo science-y entity that has a rooted financial interest in spreading these lies all for monetary gain. This idea that “big science” genuinely wants people to believe in a fake scenario of the earth’s clomate getting fucked by humans is so strange. And this works politically too.

      Like I don’t have any research to back this up but I’d bet my left ass cheek that the large majority of climate scientists AS WELL as climate progressive politicians would absolutely love there to be completely no issue with climate change. Given the choice, not having to worry at all about that for the present and future would just be a big load off every one’s plate. Now I’m sure there are some people that have a lot of their eggs in the renewable, green energy basket and could stand to gain prosperity from society moving in a green energy direction. There’s no doubt. But something tells me that they are more or less cancelled out by the amount of people who are already profiting or stand to profit more from petroleum based energy means.

      I just don’t get the whole realistic motive behind scientists and politicians pushing an agenda that they know to be false. Do people really think scientists don’t have anything better to do than just make stuff up? Genuinely? And it’s not like just a few of them. We’re talking well over 90% are pushing this fake agenda. That is complete and utter market saturation lol. I just can’t fathom how that would work. Just like the flat earth thing, what is there to gain from this for the large majority of these people? Like why?