The New York Times recently reported that the National Weather Service is understaffed just as storm season is heating up. And while the Times doesn’t go into the details, anyone who was paying attention last year when the DOGE (pronounced “dodgy”) minions were running rampant through the government knows the absurd cuts they made are why the agency is short-staffed.
According to the article, the current director is saying that restructuring is good, but I don’t think anyone would want to begin their restructuring with massive cuts and loss of both experienced personnel and the new people they were mentoring.
Mind you, the Weather Service was one of our government’s great successes. Forecasting is so much more accurate now than it used to be. That’s in great part because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the Weather Service, put together world-class research.
NOAA in general is under attack from the regime, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, set for closure.
While this damage is already showing up in the forecasts for tornadoes and other storms and makes us all wonder what happens if this year turns out to be a big one for hurricanes, the odds are it’s going to leave us with less than adequate weather forecasting for years to come.
And it’s that ongoing effect – one that’s not limited to the Weather Service – that really bothers me.
Paul Krugman had an excellent piece this week on how the various cuts in social programs during the Reagan administration – a time that gets treated like history today though there are still quite a few of us who remember just how bad it was – have affected life expectancy in this country. Continue reading “The Damage Keeps Growing”…