You're kidding, right?

Illustration by The New York Times

Lack of knowledge regarding how the environment functions, in this case, the weather, can kill you. If one doesn't know where and when a hurricane will strike (think Florida or Louisiana), the probability of one buying the farm raises exponentially so when Musk and company actually think about not renewing funding for NOAA, a case of intense puckering comes to mind, right?

One way Donald Trump may try to differentiate his second term from his first is by slashing the federal work force and budget and consolidating and restructuring a host of government agencies.

For people who care about weather and climate, one of the most concerning proposals on the table is to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The authors of Project 2025, a blueprint for the administration crafted by conservative organizations, claim erroneously that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and should be “broken down and downsized.” An arm of Mr. Trump’s team, the Department of Government Efficiency, to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to eliminate $500 billion in spending by cutting programs whose funding has expired. That could include NOAA.

For starters, I don't think this will happen but one never knows, do one?

With the rising costs of and vulnerability to extreme weather in a changing climate for the United States, dismantling or defunding NOAA would be a catastrophic error. Rather, there is a golden opportunity to modernize the agency by expanding its capacity for research and innovation. This would not only help Americans better prepare for and survive extreme weather but also keep NOAA from falling further behind similar agencies in Europe. While the incoming administration may want to take a sledgehammer to the federal government, there is broad, bipartisan support for NOAA in Congress. It is the job of the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to invest in its future.

Weather of a different kind