Storm Warning from Washington - How Trump's Allies Want to Destroy America's Weather Services and Project 2025 Provides the Blueprint

What is more dangerous - a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico or a strategy document from the White House? If the planners of the "2025 Presidential Transition Project" are to be believed, the answer is: the state itself. More precisely: NOAA - the federal agency that for decades has been responsible for weather warnings, satellite data, climate research, hurricane forecasting, and fisheries protection. It is to be dismantled. And with it, the idea that public safety is a public good.

Behind dry technocratic language lies an ideological earthquake. According to the strategy paper, NOAA has become one of the "main drivers of the climate change alarm industry" - a dangerous force that, with its focus on forecasting and risk management, undermines American prosperity. It is time, the authors argue, to liberate ourselves from the "fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable." The conclusion: NOAA may not be useless, but its current structure corrupts its useful functions. It must be "broken up and downsized." What sounds like bureaucratic reorganization is in fact a fundamental departure from the principle of public service. Most affected is the National Weather Service (NWS) - the agency that issues tornado warnings, assesses flood risks, and has saved millions of lives through precise forecasting. According to the paper, the NWS should in the future limit itself to collecting raw data - actual forecasting should be handled by private companies, above all AccuWeather. The argument is transparent: private providers are supposedly cheaper, more flexible, more reliable. And because many radio stations and colleges already get their weather data from companies like AccuWeather, the state can largely withdraw from forecasting. The NWS should "fully commercialize its forecasting operations," the paper says. What is not mentioned: many of these companies still obtain their raw data free of charge from the NWS - and sell it at a profit to consumers, media, and insurers. The idea that a commercial weather market is more efficient and objective than a publicly funded one is not only economically questionable - it is dangerous. Warning systems that depend on ability to pay do not save lives. They create information inequality. And they leave the interpretation of data to actors who are not accountable to the public, but to the quarterly figures of their investors.

The attack on science goes even further. The National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service are also to be reviewed - with the goal of "prioritizing commercialization" and creating "performance-based organizations." That sounds harmless, but in the logic of the document it is nothing less than the start of dismantling public climate data - and thus a move toward programmed ignorance. Behind this dismantling stands a worldview that has nothing to do with rational risk management. For the authors of the plan, climate science is an ideological product that undermines the free market. Weather forecasting is seen not as a life-saving service but as a political weapon. And state institutions like NOAA are no longer guardians of safety, but suspects in a supposed conspiracy against economic freedom. NOAA manages a budget of 6.5 billion dollars - more than half the Department of Commerce’s total budget. It employs tens of thousands of scientists, technicians, pilots, marine biologists, and meteorologists. Its knowledge has defused, warned against, and mitigated countless natural disasters. Those who dismantle it dismantle more than just an agency. They dismantle a country’s ability to recognize the truth in times of climate change - before it is too late. But maybe that’s the goal. Because in the logic of the new power elite, it is no longer knowledge that protects. It is control that wins. And control begins with who is allowed to read the sky - and who is not.