This is the script of my national radio report yesterday discussing
how drastic federal cutbacks in science research and other areas may
lead to more lives lost and property damaged due to extreme weather,
and other negative impacts on people's lives. As always there may have
been minor wording variations from this script as I presented this
report live on air.
- - -
So of course our hearts are all with the people in Texas who have been
affected by the catastrophic flooding there, with many people
including children killed and at last reports many people still
missing. And as you would expect there's already discussion and
finger-pointing about how and why this tragedy occurred. And there
will be formal investigations, but there are already some facts known,
but how they actually impacted this event is more difficult to analyze
right now.
We do know that reportedly relevant national weather service offices
were not fully staffed as they normally would be with meteorologists
and hydrologists, and apparently at least one person who normally
would have been in the loop for helping to get warnings out had
already left having taken the early retirement package that was
offered to most of the federal government. That was a time-limited
alternative to possibly being laid off as part of across the board
employee cuts, many ordered by DOGE.
And even at the time there were concerns that key persons in crucial
roles might leave and not be easily replaced or perhaps replaced at
all. You may recall a number of cases where the early retirement
offers or actual layoffs had to be quickly reversed when it was
realized after the fact that very important roles (including nuclear
weapons safety) were being left empty, because the persons ordering
those specific cuts perhaps hadn't realized that those were crucial
roles.
Of course cutting waste and fraud is extremely important, but there
are real risks when politics and science get tangled up with each
other, especially when it comes to critical areas such as storm
forecasting and other weather research. For example, irrespective of
how one feels about the political arguing about global warming topics,
pretty much everyone agrees that storms and flooding have been getting
more intense in many areas, and increasingly hitting areas that
haven't experienced such intensities and frequencies before.
Hurricanes are an obvious case but also apparently so-called Tornado
Alley in the U.S., where the vast majority of the world's tornadoes
take place, has actually been shifting its position.
If we want to save lives and limit property damage from intense storms
it's crucial that we continue to do the hard science in meteorology
and related areas, and have the scientists, researchers, and support
personnel to make this all work. And there's some amazing work that
has been going on in these areas, much of which has unfortunately
recently been slashed. One of the really positive applications of AI
is in this kind of work, to crunch the massive amount of data required
to better understand and predict and warn about severe weather.
Much of this work has been going on at NOAA -- the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration -- that has had its budget drastically
cut and reportedly is having most of its weather science programs shut
down. Various related work at NSF -- the National Science
Foundation -- is apparently being similarly halted.
The bottom line seems to be that many observers feel that it would
make more sense to fully understand the actual impact of budget cuts
such as those in weather related and other areas, before making broad
cuts and then having to try reverse many of them after the fact when
problems result.
This is true pretty much across the board wherever people and property
are affected -- you'll recall how the Social Security Administration
had to quickly reverse some of their recent changes that were
negatively impacting seniors. Much science and research can take many
years to show results, but those results can often be of great
importance to improving our lives. There's a very old saying about not
getting the cart before the horse, and when it comes to cutting
budgets for weather and much other science research, it seems like a
pretty good saying to always keep in mind.
- - -
L
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
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Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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