Trump's Allies Are Trying to Force You to Pay for Weather Reports

Nickel and dime you, come rain or shine.

No Free Hunch

Howdy, fellow Americans. Do you enjoy having free access to weather forecasts and crucial extreme weather alerts? Well, here's a rude reminder that you've been taking that government amenity for granted, which could very soon be ensnared by the tentacles of privatization.

As The Atlantic reports, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which gathers the overwhelming majority of all the data used by the National Weather Service and even commercial services like AccuWeather, is the target of being defunded into the ground by allies of former President and once-again presidential candidate Donald Trump.

That would have massive consequences for meteorology and climate science in the US — but its most immediate to the average American is that they would no longer get free, government-provided weather forecasts. Instead, by kneecapping the agency, Trump-hopefuls aim to free up room for a commercial market — thus paving the way for a future where accessing even basic weather reports is locked behind something resembling the tiers of a Netflix subscription.

"Every non-billionaire American should dread this plan," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told The Atlantic.

The Brewing Storm

The bold proposal is detailed — and buried — in the roughly 900 pages of Project 2025, a policy agenda put forward by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. It states, per The Atlantic, that NOAA "should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories."

Supposedly, by fully commercializing the NWS's weather forecasts — and weakening NOAA, which gathers some of the most valuable weather and climate data in the world — this would actually improve weather forecasts for everyone. The flip-side of the coin, of course, is that this would also limit which Americans get quality forecasts on the basis of money. In a fully commercial market, poorer municipalities could be locked out of getting the same level of forecasts as a wealthier one, which could be disastrous in our age of increasing extreme weather events and deadly heat.

Beyond worshiping its conception of a free-er market, there's another politicized motive at play. Project 2025 also calls for culling NOAA's scientific research arm, because its authors are offended by the agency's alleged "climate alarmism."

"The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded," it states.

Outlook: Cloudy

As The Atlantic notes, Trump has publicly tried to distance himself from Project 2025. But not only was he caught on tape cheering the project, some of its authors are alumni of his administration.

Regardless, the conservative animus towards the agency has transparent origins. It's thanks to NOAA's data repository, which includes the much-vaunted ice-core and tree-ring samples, that climate science exists as it does today — and by extension, why we know climate change is real and human-driven.

For being at the forefront of climate science, NOAA is regularly accused by some conservatives, especially those at the fossil-fuel-industry-funded Heritage Foundation, of having a "climate agenda." But to meteorologists just trying to do this job, these accusations are baffling.

"We're not pushing an agenda," JoAnn Becker, a senior meteorologist at NOAA, told The Atlantic. "We're looking objectively at the changes in our climate overall."

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