Loyalty to Trump, Well, Trumps Public Safety At National Weather Service

A new National Weather Service job application
form now has a Trump "loyalty test" 
question on it. 

Yes, you saw the exact same headline on this here blog thingy the other day, except it concerned FEMA, not the National Weather Service.

But the issue is the same, and maybe in some respects worse. 

Let's lay it out:   

We got the good news recently that the National Weather Service will hire about 450 people, reversing the stupid earlier decisions to drastically cut the NWS work force. 

The staff cutbacks  left National Weather Service offices severely short-handed, and raised seriously questions as to whether life-saving storm warnings would go out to the public in a timely manner.

There was healthy public pressure for once, even from some Republicans, so the Trump people reluctantly allowed NWS to start hiring again.  They're taking applications as we speak. 

Sure, qualified applicants need to have a degree and background in meteorology or other related sciences, and prior experience is obviously helpful, as it is with any job.  

The National Weather Service meteorologist job application, though, has applicants explaining how they would advance President Donald Trump's agenda if hired. 

Here's the specific question that's most problematic:

"How would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relative Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired."

Meteorologists outside the NWS and other observers are alarmed by the loyalty test question.

As ABC News reports:

".....some experts said they are alarmed at the prospect that a candidate's ideology could matter for jobs in science. 

'The fundamental question is, will this make forecasts any better? That's the job of the weather service,' said Rick Spinrad, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the weather service, under president Joe Biden. 

'These people should be hired for their knowledge in meteorology or hydrology or information technology or physics - not civics.  Bottom line, I'd rather have a great forecaster who's never read an EO than a policy muck who's taken one meteorology class,; he said, referring to executive orders."

Jeff Masters, a meteorologist at Yale Climate Connection and co-founder of Weather Underground, is also dubious at best at the application question.

"Whether or not you support the President's Executive Orders will not enable a meteorologist to make a better forecast or issue a more timely tornado warning, and should have no place on a job application for the National Weather Service," Masters said. 

What gets tricky in this is weather forecast is intertwined with climate change. Many extreme weather events are now made worse by the world's warming atmosphere. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration denies the existence of climate change. He is trying to shut down clean energy while promoting fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. So if the public or the media has questions for a NWS meteorologist regarding a weather event and whether it had anything to do with climate change, how do they answer, and keep their jobs?

Then there was Sharpiegate, that whole thing in Trump's first term in which NWS meteorologists got in trouble for contradicting Chief Meteorologist Donald Trump on his very wrong prediction that a hurricane would hit Alabama.

Will National Weather Service meteorologists feel pressure to not tell the public something important about the weather if it will displease the Orange God?

It's true this loyalty test job application question is supposedly optional. But if you ran across a job application that really seems to want this info, would you expect to land the job if you didn't answer the question? 

Looking through the NWS job application, we also come find this question:  

"In this role, how would you use your skills and experience to improve government efficiency and effectiveness? Provide specific examples where you improved processes, reduced costs or improved outcomes."

When there's dangerous weather looming, shouldn't a meteorologist be warning the public, and not worried about how to save money in that moment? 

True, any office and workplace can find efficiencies and cost savings, but I worry this sounds like encouraging National Weather Service employees to skimp on complete forecasting. 

This isn't just the National Weather Service. Many government agencies that focus on science are now being told to ignore science, and to instead embrace junk policy. 

Politicizing science has probably already cost American lives. How many more will it cost?