As A Coastal State, New Jersey Is Heavily Reliant on NOAA’s Work
Over 2,00 scientists signed an open letter to Congress denouncing Trump’s dismantling of NOAA.
There were just 47 sign ons from New Jersey, a rather weak response from a coastal State that relies so heavily on NOAA research and is so impacted by the climate emergency and the ocean. I sense that scientists are intimidated and are self censoring.
Here’s the letter in full (emphases mine) – perhaps it can prompt NJ media, universities, environmental groups, and government officials to wake up and organize a comprehensive strategy to defend NJ from Trump’s dismantling and looting of the federal government.
Or maybe they’ll wait until Elon Musk develops a paid app for weather reports and storm warning information, see:
To:
Representative Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader
Senator John Thune, Senate Majority Leader
Senator Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader
Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce
An Open Letter to Congress and the Trump Administration
We write to you with great alarm as we watch the critically important science conducted at many US agencies, institutions, and universities come under increasing assault. This includes threats to the budgets, staffing, and scientific work of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Undermining the ability of scientists at NOAA to produce independent, world-class science will lead to devastating impacts on the United States and global climate and weather research community. These kinds of harms to NOAA would affect people around the world who depend on this life-saving information.
We call on you as the leaders of Congress and the Department of Commerce to take urgent action to stop these attacks, protect the resources and staffing at NOAA, and uphold its scientific integrity policies.
NOAA is one of the foremost US federal science agencies. Its foundational work has immense value for people’s daily lives and for the national and international economy. NOAA is the primary provider of critical, widely used forecasts for a range of extreme weather events, including hurricanes, heatwaves, and drought. It also provides projections of sea level rise and high tide flooding, and monitors wildfire smoke, marine heat waves, and other dangerous but less readily observable threats. This vital information is then used by emergency responders, policymakers, the private sector and the public to help prepare and protect communities, critical infrastructure and commerce. It must remain freely accessible so that all can reliably use it, not just those who are able to pay.
NOAA is a global leader in weather and climate monitoring and prediction, contributing to essential scientific research that helps us understand and respond to changes on our planet. It manages global climate and weather forecasting models; collects, processes, and distributes critical satellite and earth observation data; and conducts rigorous scientific research used by the global scientific community. Further, NOAA provides typhoon and cyclone monitoring systems, maintains famine early warning systems, and assists in international climate model intercomparison projects. The last are crucial in improving models and quantifying uncertainties in projections of climate change. In short, NOAA is the linchpin in global weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and climate research. NOAA staff work collaboratively with scientists around the world, to the benefit of people in the United States and of every other nation.
NOAA was officially created in 1970 by President Nixon and a bipartisan act of Congress. Part of the agency traces its roots back to the 1800s, with the establishment of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 and the Weather Bureau in 1870 (now the National Weather Service). Since 1970, NOAA has been fulfilling its mission to better understand the causes of changing weather and climate and to protect the people and resources of the United States. Dismantling NOAA would have dire consequences for American lives and livelihoods, as well as for the country’s economy and infrastructure. Undermining the agency’s work would also be a significant loss for the world’s weather and climate prediction community, which relies heavily on NOAA data and the expertise of its researchers.
Without a strong NOAA, a cornerstone of the US scientific research enterprise, the world will be flying blind into the growing perils of global climate change. It is unequivocal that human-induced climate change, primarily driven by burning fossil fuels, is the leading cause of the rapid heating of the oceans, the land surface, and the lower atmosphere. The harmful impacts of human-induced increases in heat-trapping emissions are readily apparent in accelerating sea level rise, worsening heat waves and flooding, longer and more intense wildfire seasons, altered rainfall patterns, the retreat of Arctic Sea ice, ocean acidification, and many other aspects of the climate system that are currently monitored by NOAA.
We call on the US Congress and the Trump administration to ensure that NOAA and its sub-agencies remain fully funded and staffed, and that the independent, trusted science the agency produces continues to be protected. A world without NOAA and other leading US science institutions would not only upend decades of invaluable scientific research, it would also signify an abdication of US leadership in climate science, and an erosion of US status as a scientific powerhouse.