Trump Considers 17% Budget Cut to NOAA
White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency, Washington Post
“The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post. The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas. NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level. The Office of Management and Budget also asked the Commerce Department to provide information about how much it would cost to lay off employees, while saying those employees who do remain with the department should get a 1.9 percent pay increase in January 2018. It requested estimates for terminating leases and government “property disposal…. ”
… The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, known as the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, which includes a key repository of climate and environmental information, the National Centers for Environmental Information. Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress.
Washington Post: Trump Proposing 17 Percent Cut to NOAA, Space Policy Online
“The Trump Administration is at the beginning of the process for formulating the FY2018 budget. A broad “budget blueprint” will be released very soon, but the detailed request is not expected for several weeks. The numbers in the four-page memo are subject to change before the request is submitted to Congress, and, in any case, the President’s request is just that, a request. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the “power of the purse,” deciding how much money the government will spend and on what.”
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)
“Here at the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) we provide secure and timely access to global environmental data and information from satellites and other sources to promote and protect the Nation’s security, environment, economy, and quality of life.”
FY 2017 Budget Request Highlights
“The FY 2017 President’s Budget Request for NESDIS is $2,303.7 million. This request funds operations of current satellites and maintains acquisition and launch schedules for NOAA’s flagship satellite programs. The request also ensures reliable and accurate long – term weather, ocean and coastal, and geophysical data and information that are critical for businesses, academic institutions, and government agencies.”
This is not good.
Agreed. A few choice expletives come to mind, but I can’t post them here.
Compared to the amount that he is RAISING the federal budget — $60 BILLION for the military alone, not to mention the many billions it will cost to round up and expel undocumented immigrants — the cuts to NOAA will be trivial. He is doing this for politics alone, NOT to cut the deficit or reduce government spending. He and his Republican allies in Congress do not want climate change and global warming further confirmed.
The proposed raise in the defense budget is ~3 NASAs.
Wow. A major cut not only to our ability to track weather, but our funding for adapting to weather changes and disasters.
Remember how bad the official response to Hurricane Katrina was back in 2005? Now imagine it happening under these conditions.
I’m glad I don’t live on the coast. I remember my grandfather’s story from his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina. Advanced warning of a major hurricane amounted to his aunt saying, “We’re going to have a big storm tonight: All the birds are flying inland.” I had hopped that, despite doubting anthropogenic climate change, no one would doubt the value of weather forecasting. Maybe Darwin had a point.
The policy shift seems to be towards using commercial systems instead of government ones for space observations. I
Commercial systems require a customer. For climate research the government is really the only customer.
NOAA’s budget was already laughably tiny to begin with. Cutting it is like kicking the dog.
I am working on some of the components for one of the instruments in the NOAA/NASA JPSS satellite. This work was funded for I believe at least 3 JPSS satellites. I hope this does not get cut !!
Let’s consider this before declaring the sky is falling, the sky is falling…
How efficient is NOAA at doing what it’s doing, especially the things NASAWatch readers want? No fat or inefficiencies? None? According to whom? NOAA civil service managers and employees?
No bureaucrat or scientist or engineer ever asks for more money than is really believed to be needed, right? 🙂 I bet very few bureaucrats ever seriously look for efficiencies unless either ordered to do so, or offered a reward for implementing efficiencies.
Let’s apply that to the military budget, considering it is 54% of the US budget instead of less than a percent like NOAA, we could find some savings that actually would make a DIFFERENCE.
I think you mean the fraction of federal _discretionary_ spending. Military spending isn’t close to a majority of the total budget (16% for the DoD in FY15, is you will accept a quick number I pulled off Wikipedia.) But, yes, if you think the government is inefficient and want to cut spending, you really ought to look at the >10% agencies, not the <1% ones.
The cut has nothing to do with improving efficiency. It is the president who wants to blindly cut all none defense government agencies so that he can boost the defense budge by 10%. If he wants to improve efficiency, and more importantly to strengthen the NOAA programs, he should start an independent review first to identify places where improvements can be made, and places where more investment is urgently needed. Unfortunately he is doing exactly the opposite: just cut everything he dislike, for example anything related to climate change.
Nope.
The increase in the defense budget is a dog whistle. It’s simply a way to cut the type of spending the Right traditionally abhors.
Win-win. From a certain point of view, anyway.
So much for the proposal that NASA climate science should go back to NOAA.
Now that the proposed budget cut is on the table, the people who work for NOAA will start fighting it. They will remind voters that they produce the data that goes into weather reports. Voters will realize that they depend on weather reports, and the budget cut will die. Fighting carbon restrictions by defunding the weather service indicates that the science is settled, the deniers lost, and now they are trying to cheat. Firing the scientists won’t prepare us for climate change.
Can we assume that since the government agencies have received the new 2017 proposed funding amounts from Trump and we haven’t heard news of a large cut to NASA then the assumption is no cut to NASA? Otherwise, wouldn’t their be a similar article with NASA replacing NOAA in the headline?