Project 2025 Goals: Take Away Free, Accurate Weather Forecasts and Warnings, Make Them Expensive And Less Accurate

Among the many bad ideas in the Heritage Foundation's
Project 2025 is breaking up NOAA and probably
putting what are now free, accurate weather forecasts
and warnings behind paywalls. 

 There's lots of buzz about Project 2025 and the great harm it would cause if Donald Trump goes along with this blueprint.  

Project 2025 is  detailed, 922-page plan put together by the conservative Heritage Foundation of how they see the federal government radically changing if Trump is elected. Trump himself says he knows little to nothing of the plan, but a lot of observers aren't buying that.  

If enacted, it would concentrate power in the presidency, leading to the risk of abuses of that power. It would impose a hardline religious agenda. And it would gut numerous federal agencies, and do things like abolish the Department of Education,  intensely slash Medicaid, and purge the government of federal employees and replace them with Trump loyalists and hacks.  

Which brings us to a topic more related to the point of this here blog thingy. Which is what it Project 2025 would do to the National Weather Service and NOAA.

Project 2025 would make it harder to obtain weather forecasts - even those that have life-saving warnings. Chances are it would make the forecasts less accurate. It would end research and information into climate change. And would flood the agency with all those loyalists and hacks I mentioned. 

PAYWALL FORECASTS?

The United States - like in most developed countries - delivers free weather forecasts, storm warnings, and often life-saving advice on coping with dangerous weather. Think about how many lives must have been saved over the years because National Weather Service meteorologists issued tornado, hurricane, flood and winter storm warnings to the public. 

Those warnings are available to everybody.  As The Atlantic points out, all this is available for the low, low price in taxpayer dollars of $4 per person annually. 

One of many scary things about Project 2025 is that it might privatize weather forecasts, which could put them behind a paywall. Which means people who can't afford such forecasts would be out of luck.  

"What you do not want is a paywall system of weather where only paying customers can find out if they're about to drive into a tornado," John Oliver once said. 

He was then referring to a now- abandoned proposal by AccuWeather some years ago to take over forecasting services from NOAA.

But this is precisely what we'd get out of Project 2025. As Outside Magazine writes, this proposal would have a private company like AccuWeather take over many of NOAA's functions, and we'd have to start paying for weather reports a warnings. 

Forget people with low incomes. They high and mighty hard core right wing clearly believes only people with money "deserve" life-saving weather warnings and information. 

That's a slap in the face to everybody, including who knows how many Vermonters who were saves by cost-free warnings during the extreme flash floods we had last month. 

AccuWeather, to their credit, rejected the idea of their organization replacing the National Weather Service, unlike their public stance several years ago.  But Project 2025 backers would likely just find another organization - probably one much less reputable than AccuWeather, to do the weather forecasting. 

Which begs the question, how accurate would those privatized forecast be, if you had enough money to afford them? Perhaps not very. Especially since these forecasts might not be produced by scientists, but political hacks who would put spin for their Dear Leader above actual facts. 

The Project 2025 document makes the false claim that private weather firms offer more accurate forecasts than the National Weather Service. Besides, private weather forecasting companies rely on NOAA data to make their forecasts. 

After all, one of Project 2025's goals is to "ensure appointees agree with administrative aims."

Will these privatized forecasts tell you the hurricane is headed your way? Or will it falsely tell you it's headed somewhere else to satisfy the whim of Trump or whoever is in charge?

The track record isn't good. Meteorologist in Chief Trump back in 2019 said massive Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama. Real meteorologists with the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service disagreed, saying Dorian would miss Alabama.

Those professional meteorologists were of course correct, as Alabama escaped unscathed from Dorian, but Trump could not stand to being contradicted by those lowly dumb scientists. Which is why he produced a hurricane prediction map, suspiciously altered by a Sharpie to "show" that Dorian was headed toward Alabama. 

You can see how Trump, if he's re-elected, or some other egomaniac would go further and really try to mislead the public about dangerous storms 

That's especially true because most scientists believe climate change is a real threat. The fine folk at the Heritage Foundation beg to differ. In their Project 2025 scheme, they would stop anything that even hints at climate research.

For instance, as Outside reports, Project 2025 would downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. That bunch provides scientific research so that forecasters can better understand tornadoes, hurricanes, other storms, climate change and ecosystem health. 

"The source of much of NOAA's climate alarmism," sniffs the folks at Project 2025.  

Lately, you've probably seen on the news that some Republicans, including Trump, have been backing away from Project 2025, whether they explicitly say so or not.  

That's because there's so much in there that so many people don't like. Remember, though, they're just going to keep it relatively quiet unless and until Trump is elected. Then they'll unleash this monstrosity, whether you like it or not. 

Florida Republicans To Outdoor Workers: Drop Dead

Summers in Florida are brutally hot, dangerous for 
outdoor workers. Florida Republicans, in their
latest act of cruelty, are making the 
heat even more dangerous. 

 On June 20, 2023, I headlined a post in this here blog thingy as such: "Texas To Summer Construction Workers: Drop Dead."

It turns out I can now write an almost identical headline about Florida.

What is it about Republicans in states with the hottest weather that they want to give outdoor workers all heat stroke? 

Just as Texas did last year, Florida is on the cusp of banning local ordinances that dictate break times for water, shade and rest.  The Florida Senate passed the measure 28-11 along party lines. 

I guess the people who harvest our food in the torrid, humid summertime sun of Florida are disposable. 

If they die, just replace them with all the compassion I have when I need to change a light bulb.  Florida is following the Texas script line by line. 

As WLRN reports:

"Under state legislation under consideration, local governments would lose the ability to guarantee outdoor workers access to shade, clean water, rest breaks and even heat safety training. Instead, state lawmakers would have the sole authority to determine heat protection standards that go beyond federal rules."

Florida Republicans are using the same argument Texas lawmakers made when they shot down heat standards for workers. They said they didn't want a hodgepodge of rules across the states, saying that would be a burden on businesses.

The solution would have been to enact a statewide Texas heat standard but Republicans didn't want to do that for some reason.

Florida is taking the same tack: They don't want that "hodgepodge of rules" but they won't introduce a statewide standard. 

Furthering the awfulness, the legislation removes protection for workers who report heat-related safety concerns and eliminates record keeping rules related to heat exposure. 

To make this all even more insulting, the legislation bars Florida from enacting statewide heat safety rules until at least 2028? Why? I dunno. I guess the cruelty is the point.

I'd easily bet my next paycheck that Florida won't enact new heat laws in 2028, unless the current crop of Republicans are somehow voted out of office. 

  In pursuing this legislation, it appears Florida Republicans feared some rumblings from places like Miami-Dade County that would have enacted heat safety rules for workers.  Apparently, such local ordinances are insufficiently sadistic to those lowly farm workers, landscapers, construction workers and the like.

The CDC recommends shade breaks and plenty of cool water for workers who must work during heat waves. However, there's no official rules to that effect from OSHA.

OSHA does have a general rule that workplaces be "free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm," and the agency does list heat as a hazard. But those OSHA rules are almost never enforced.

Meanwhile, here's the reality for outdoor workers in Florida, as WLRN reports:

"Palmetto Gay resident Pedro Trejos, 41, has worked in construction for about two decades. His typical shift is eight hours, with one 30-minute lunch break. Some of the subcontractors that have employed hi don't offer water or rest breaks, Trejos explained in Spanish. And taking time off due to heat-related illness is risky, he said. 

'The biggest issue I see is that if you want to take an involuntary leave of absence for yourself to cool off if you don't get permission from the boss and you don't show up for one or two days, the boss will fire you,' Trejo's said. 'They fire you almost in anticipation of a health problem surfacing later.'"

The heat illnesses Trejos says he sees sound very dangerous, including severe headaches, nosebleeds and weakness. That's a prelude to heat stroke, which is fatal if not treated quickly. 

Trejos continued:

"One time a boss was being really excessive..... And he said we couldn't get down from the roof in the middle of the workday in order to drink water. And so I said, 'You know we have rights in this country as workers, and what the boss did was he said, 'You know what, here's your money for the time that you you worked, now is your time to leave.'" 

Other than this so-called hodgepodge fear, I could find nothing in media reports as to why these Republicans are bullying outdoor workers like this.

The answer is probably a mix of racism, classism and a general disdain among some white Republicans towards anyone who they perceive as less successful than themselves.

(Editors note: I would regard all of those outdoor workers as far more successful individuals than the majority of Florida's legislature).

Don't you just love how some Americans think workers - particularly nonwhite ones, I must add - are just disposable pieces of cheap equipment. If they die, so what? I also wonder why these legislators seem to want people to die. What are they trying to prove?

I hope that those Florida Republicans come back in another life in a world much hotter than now rom climate change as outdoor farm workers that don't get water or rest breaks.

I wonder how long they'd last? 

This assholery from the Florida GOP comes as climate change makes Florida summers even hotter. Oh, I forgot. Most of the GOPers think climate change is a hoax.