It has always been my contention that many government agencies, like universities, are hotbeds of political activism. This has been quite apparent for years within the corridors of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Many scientists at NOAA have been using their status to promote their political positions. It is time to drop the facade of respect and push back—which is exactly what DOGE is doing. Here’s this, from the Associated Press:

Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said.

The recent effort by the Trump administration, I believe, is aimed at rooting out these climate activists. However, one cannot be entirely certain. The attack is not coming in the form of a frontal assault on the political activism that has been masquerading as science within NOAA.  Instead, it is coming from DOGE as a mandate to improve efficiency.  There is a certain beauty in using that strategy. The scientists have constructed elaborate defenses to justify their positions on pseudo-intellectual grounds, but I don’t think they have given a thought to defending their jobs based on any efficiency metric. Most of them would probably not know what that means, seeing as they have been sheltered from intruding eyes throughout their careers.

However, they are not waiting to find out what that means. They are trying to convince the American people that firing hundreds of NOAA workers would have a severe impact on day-to-day life for Americans. They assert that … We depend on NOAA workers every day to warn us of weather events, protect our commercial fisheries, support first-responders when disasters happen, and much more. We have already seen the damage Trump and Musk have done to other critical agencies. We have seen how families and communities have paid a heavy price for so-called “efficiency.” NOAA must be defended!

I am not sure the appeal will resonate with the American people. Most Americans are over-informed about weather events, and might only want more predictive granularity if they are planning an ad hoc ski trip to synchronize with a snowfall, a use case that I can attest has some value. In addition, Americans have not seen how families and communities have paid a heavy price for so-called “efficiency.”  It might be indelicate for me to mention but creative destruction is inherent to free market capitalism and should not be thwarted, lest it impede the reallocation of capital from less to more productive resources.

I believe that we might find, as we inspect under the hood of NOAA, waste on a scale that could rival USAID. Although one would not find NOAA sponsoring as many transgender festivals, one would certainly find it sponsoring an abundance of dubious save-the-planet initiatives. Climate justice for sea lions, anyone? Let Elon and the DOGE machine carry on and let aspiring climate activists within NOAA sweat a bit longer.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.