The satellite photo that accompanies this column, tracking the devastating trajectory of Hurricane Helene, comes to us courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As Helene prepares to pound the Florida coast with potentially Category 4 winds, the NOAA and its subsidiaries – the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center – are already busy saving lives.
Local emergency officials, echoing NOAA’s dire forecasts, are spurring mass evacuations on the Gulf Coast and warning of 20-foot storm surges that may not be “survivable.” The sudden overnight strengthening of this hurricane, fed by Gulf waters made warmer by climate change, will also trigger, in NOAA’s words, “catastrophic, life-threatening inland flooding” that will likely extend all the way to the western mountains of North Carolina.
The federal agency says it’s just doing its job: “Climate, weather, and water affect all life on our ocean planet. NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict our changing environment, from the deep sea to outer space, and to manage and conserve America’s coastal and marine resources.”
Bravo to NOAA, the NWS, and the NHC for all that they do…but wait! Way down on page 664 of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 – the fascist blueprint he falsely says he knows nothing about – we find this pithy paragraph:
“The National Oceanographic 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.” Because NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
My message to the undecided voters: You say you don’t know enough about Kamala Harris, but if you open your eyes and ears, you’ll realize that you know more than enough about what Trump and hus minions would do if restored tom power. And with climate change wreaking increasing havoc with our weather, do you think it’s a bright idea to dismantle our national earlty-warning system?
My message to Floridians, in particular: Year after year, you’re experiencing the most dire consequences of climate change, and the worst is yet to come. The presidential election is only 40 days away. You’d be well advised to revisit your fealty to the MAGA movement and recognize how insanely stupid it would be to vote against your first priority, which is saving your own asses.
Indeed, this week, the Miami Herald editorial page is speaking the truth:
“In Florida, we live and die – sometimes literally – by what the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service, which are parts of NOAA, tell us. For six whole months every year, from June to the end of November, we’re in the hurricane season…We cling to the utterances of the weather pros during these times of high stress, as we huddle in our homes or debate whether to flee an on-coming storm. We want – no, we need – forecasts that are free of hype, a profit motive and the taint of politics.
“There are many reasons to staunchly oppose Project 2025…But today, as we watch the brewing storm and feel the dread of those directly in its path, we’re thinking about NOAA and the NHC and the NWS, all critical to our survival of this major storm and so many others. If we needed a reminder, Hurricane Helene is handing it to us.”
This imminent hurricane has been rapidly supercharged by record-warm water. Climatologists say that the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico is exceptionally warm for this time of year – thanks to climate change, which comes to us courtesy of fossil fuel pollution. And by the way, Trump’s Project 2025 has a few things to say about climate change:
“The Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding…the perceived threat of climate change (is) a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public…Climate-change research should be disbanded.”
A new national poll says that, of all Americans who’ve heard of Project 2025, only four percent view it favorably. The big question is whether its stench will prove sufficiently malodorous to tilt this election toward sanity and spare us a Category 4 regime.