ATLANTA — An automotive executive tapped by then-President Donald Trump to help lead the Commerce Department wants to break up the primary federal agency that studies climate change and “commercialize” the National Weather Service.
The proposal is one of a number of substantial changes to the federal government laid out in Project 2025, a policy blueprint for the next Republican administration published by the conservative Heritage Foundation with input from hundreds of influential Republicans, including at least six Trump cabinet secretaries.
In recent weeks, as coverage of Project 2025 has ramped up, Trump, the Republican nominee once more, has sought to distance himself from the initiative and said it does not represent his platform. The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. The Republican Party platform makes no reference to climate, but does promise to encourage oil, gas and coal production, the use of which would increase the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, the Project 2025 chapter pertaining to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service was written by Thomas Gilman, a former Chrysler CEO. Gilman, nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate, served as the Commerce Department’s chief financial officer and assistant secretary from 2019 to 2021.
In Project 2025, Gilman targets NOAA, which is over the Weather Service, as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and, as such, a threat to “future U.S. prosperity.”
“It should be broken up and downsized,” he wrote.
The document goes on to say that the Weather Service should focus on “commercial operations,” and the work of the National Hurricane Center should be “reviewed” to ensure its work is presented “neutrally” without supporting “any one side in the climate debate.” The proposal says appointees should be screened to ensure they support the aims of the administration.
“Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy,” Gilman wrote.
The overwhelming global scientific consensus is that the climate is warming as a result of human activity, primarily burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil for energy.
Project 2025 declined to make anyone available for interview, and did not respond to detailed questions about what commercialization of the NWS would look like, including how severe weather advisories and warnings would be handled if the Weather Service is no longer the official authority for public safety.
In a statement, Project 2025 spokeswoman Ellen Keenan, said: “There’s a distinction between privatization and commercialization. Using commercial products to provide a better result for taxpayers at a lower cost is nothing new.”
She emphasized that the proposal does not say the public should have to pay to access forecasts. The Project 2025 document is vague. It says the federal government should “fully commercialize its forecasting operations” and “invest” taxpayer dollars in “commercial partners.”
John Knox, associate director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, called the Project 2025 proposals “fiscally … and scientifically stupid.”
“Is there climate alarmism? Not within the federal government,” Knox said. “With regard to climate, the data tell a story that the authors of Project 2025 don’t want to hear, so their answer is to shoot the messenger.”
Red flags
The National Weather Service was established under a different name in 1870 and originally placed under the military to collect and report weather data. By 1890, it had been moved under the Department of Agriculture and began issuing forecasts and warnings, as it has done ever since. Today, it is under NOAA, which is a part of the Commerce Department, and oversees hundreds of monitoring sites that collect temperature and other data on ocean, land and air. The Weather Service is also responsible for issuing warnings for threats including hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, and works closely with state and local emergency managers.
Currently, commercial weather services rely heavily NOAA data, which is free and public, for their own predictive models, which they sell as a commodity. Knox said the document was fuzzy on the details of commercialization, but seems to indicate that the authors want NOAA to continue the expensive and difficult work of collecting data, but leave the forecasting to the private sector.
He said the proposal raised red flags, particularly when it comes to public safety and liability in life-threatening emergencies.
“I don’t want my forecasts coming from a corporation that I can’t trust,” Knox said. “We’ve seen all too often that when the companies have control of information, they don’t play fair with it.”
This isn’t the first push to privatize aspects of the Weather Service. Prior attempts during the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush proved unpopular and failed.
In 2017, Trump nominated Barry Myers, then the CEO of private forecaster AccuWeather, to lead NOAA. Myers was a vocal critic of the agency, particularly the Weather Service, which he cast as a competitor, and his company lobbied for years to restrict how it shares information with the public. After two years without a confirmation, Myers withdrew from consideration.
JoAnn Becker, a meteorologist and president of the union representing 4,000 NOAA employees, said everything the agency does and publishes is driven by data and guided by its mission to protect life and property.
She said the Project 2025 proposals could make government scientists vulnerable to political pressure.
