Summary
Hundreds of NOAA employees, including National Weather Service meteorologists, were fired Thursday as part of Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal workforce under Trump.
The layoffs, affecting up to 10% of NOAA’s workforce, targeted probationary employees.
Lawmakers and experts condemned the cuts, warning they will jeopardize public safety and disaster preparedness.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) called the firings “unconscionable,” while climate scientists warned they would weaken the country’s ability to respond to extreme weather and climate disasters.
This has been one of my biggest worries this go around. The national weather service provides intensely important information and provides it freely. At this point, I’m waiting for them to hack it up and sell the remains to the parasites at AccuWeather or something and start charging for what was always a free product.
Didn’t AccuWeather mostly just pull from nws anyway? Now they’ll need to do all that work themselves and it won’t be free anymore.
They won’t do it themselves. They can’t. They’ll just offer a worse forecast.
That’s the thing that’s confused me a bit. Project 2025 definitely calls for the dismantling and privatization of NOAA, but I didn’t see anything specifically mentioning AccuWeather. IIRC the CEO of AccuWeather said it’d be way too costly for them to pick up all of the responsibilities they depend on NOAA for. At this point, I’d fully expect Musk to say his companies can handle it.
Also nws gets data from private entities which may not be as hot to share with a for profit that competes with them.
I wonder where they’ll find the money