{"id":56446,"date":"2025-02-20T21:29:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T18:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/opinion-save-a-nickel-kill-a-thousand\/56446\/"},"modified":"2025-02-20T21:29:47","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T18:29:47","slug":"opinion-save-a-nickel-kill-a-thousand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/opinion-save-a-nickel-kill-a-thousand\/56446\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Save a Nickel, Kill a Thousand"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n


\n Rick Spinrad, Ph.D.<\/span>
\n
\n February 20, 2025<\/span>
\n \n <\/p>\n

\n

I know how to reduce the federal budget by $7B, if we are willing to kill a few thousand Americans every year, put our economy further into debt, and guarantee the loss of real property around the country.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It can also be done without eliminating many services currently provided by the federal government, except you\u2019ll just have to pay hefty user fees (assuming you\u2019re actually allowed access) to a private company to get those services. And this all assumes that someone is also willing to absorb the capital expenses associated with operating their own air force, navy, and space force.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The way you do this is by defunding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)<\/strong>, or just simply invoking a reduction in force by removing personnel and incapacitating the agency.<\/p>\n

With the threat of eliminating NOAA, or even just splitting up its parts, or arbitrarily firing employees, and conducting what amounts to a fire sale, that is the outcome we will see. \u201cWill\u201d, not \u201cmight\u201d. \u00a0The predicted impact to lives, livelihoods, and property isn\u2019t hyperbolic. In fact, just look back to where we were before we had the benefit of many decades of investment in what NOAA does for America \u2026 at a cost, oh by the way, of 6\u00a2 per American per day. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Before modern NOAA existed (established, incidentally by President Richard Nixon<\/strong> in 1970), an unforecasted hurricane hit Galveston in 1900 destroying the city and killing about 8,000 people<\/strong>. A devastating geomagnetic storm in 1989 (before NOAA developed its current capacity for space weather) wiped out large portions of North America\u2019s electrical grid, shutting down the Toronto stock exchange, causing widespread communications blackouts, and impacting military operations around the world, because there was insufficient warning to prepare for impacts. The great droughts of the 1930s in the mid-west were mostly unpredicted, and left millions of Americans destitute and starving, and millions of acres of farmland lost. NOAA now protects people and property from these (and countless other) disastrous weather, ocean, and climate events every hour of every day.<\/p>\n

But, you may say, we didn\u2019t have Accuweather<\/strong>, and\u00a0The Weather Channel<\/strong>, and the rest of the private weather enterprise back in those pre-NOAA days. That\u2019s true, and those companies have been extremely helpful and economically prosperous \u2026 due to their reliance on NOAA\u2019s data and forecasts. \u00a0It\u2019s NOAA that operates 122 Doppler weather radars, 16 environmental satellites, 15 ships (that provide accurate nautical charts and sustainable seafood), and 10 airplanes (including the Hurricane Hunters, and the planes that monitor atmospheric rivers). \u00a0Without NOAA, someone would have to pick up the bill for all of those assets, and their continuing operations and maintenance costs. \u00a0And that someone will be the privileged few willing to pay the private sector the fees and subscriptions that would have to be charged, like one does for Netflix or Amazon Prime. \u00a0Wanna know when that hurricane\u2019s going to make landfall, or where those tornadoes are going? \u00a0Pay up.<\/p>\n

NOAA has historically been grossly under-resourced to fully implement its stated mission:\u00a0<\/p>\n