Gilman Thomas Commerce
---
Project 2025 plans to dismantle the federal agency that tracks hurricanes
Right-wing media have attacked NOAA and climate science for decades
Special PROGRAMS
CLIMATE & ENERGY
WRITTEN BY ALLISON FISHER
PUBLISHED 05/31/24 MMA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that predicts changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coastlines and provides data that informs lifesaving forecasts such as tracking hurricanes, is in the crosshairs of Project 2025, the conservative battle plan for a potential second Trump presidency which describes NOAA as a “colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” But researchers have pushed back on these charges and defended NOAA’s climate data and meteorological work — while forecasters are predicting an “extremely active” Atlantic hurricane season and experts say this summer could rival last year’s record heat.
Project 2025’s call to dismantle NOAA by eliminating or privatizing key functions of the agency is the endgame of years of attempts by conservatives and right-wing media to attack the credibility of the agency and the veracity of the data it produces. It also illustrates that the conservative plan is not just to dismantle U.S. climate policy, but also to scrub the climate data that underpins it.
Project 2025 calls to end NOAA’s “climate alarmism” and “fully commercialize its forecasting operations”
Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan to guide the next GOP presidential administration organized by right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, is the conservative movement’s most robust policy and staffing proposal for a potential second Trump White House.
Project 2025’s chapter attacking NOAA was penned by Thomas Gilman, a former Trump Commerce Department official who recommends that the agency “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”
Among other recommendations for how NOAA “should be broken up and downsized,” Gilman’s chapter for Project 2025 calls for the National Weather Service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations”; demands that research from the National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service be reviewed to ensure it is “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate”; and suggests the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research “should be disbanded” as “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]}:}:
Experts say Project 2025’s cuts to NOAA could have devastating impacts on climate research and weather forecasting. E&E News notes: “The National Hurricane Center’s mission is centered on informing and warning the public about potentially deadly storms, and as part of that work, it has connected the effects of climate change to hurricane intensity. The brushback it gets in the Project 2025 playbook speaks to past insinuations from Republicans that government agencies are manipulating data to make climate change appear worse.” Speaking to The Guardian, former NOAA official Andrew Rosenberg said the agency “basically reports the science as the scientific evidence accumulates and has been quite cautious about reporting climate effects,” adding, “It’s not pushing some agenda.” And meteorologist Chris Gloninger said Project 2025’s recommendations are “a sign that the far right has ‘no interest in climate truth.’” [E&E News, 4/10/24; The Guardian, 4/26/24]
Right-wing media’s long war on climate and temperature data
For decades, climate deniers working in right-wing media, government, and fossil fuel-funded think tanks have cast doubts on climate research and falsely suggested that NOAA’s temperature data has been altered to push climate change.
In 2010, right-wing media boosted the false claim that NASA and NOAA “cherry-picked” the locations of weather observation stations in order to bias their temperature records in favor of warmer temperatures. The claim was made by meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo, a longtime climate denier who at one time received funding from the Heartland Institute, and computer programmer Michael Smith. Climate experts pushed back that Smith and D'Aleo's claims were flawed and based on “misunderstanding or misrepresentation” of how global temperature data is calculated and compiled, explaining that there is “certainly no evidence of deliberate manipulation.” [Media Matters, 1/27/10; Desmog.com, accessed 5/30/24]
During a record 2011 heat wave, Rush Limbaugh suggested that the heat index was a government conspiracy. “They are playing games with us on this heat wave,” Limbaugh said. “The heat index manufactured by the government, they tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there — 116. When was the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature? It hasn’t been, but it looks like they’re trying to get away with doing that now.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/20/11]
Citing a 2017 blog post from a former agency scientist, right-wing media and congressional Republicans insisted that NOAA “‘played fast and loose’ with temperature data to disprove the theory of a global warming ‘pause’" ahead of the 2015 Paris climate accord, though the claim of data manipulation was meritless. “Climate skeptics have called that proof of massive fraud among federal climate researchers and said it allowed world leaders to be ‘duped’ into signing the Paris climate agreement to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel use,” E&E News wrote, but the former NOAA scientist behind the claims later said “he was actually calling out a former colleague for not properly following agency standards for research” and denied the idea that there was any data fraud. [Media Matters, 9/25/17; E&E News, 2/7/17]
In June 2023, Fox’s The Ingraham Angle hosted the Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, a former television weatherman and climate skeptic, who pushed the false claim that NOAA is manipulating temperature data. Watts claimed that “96% of the weather stations in the United States used to measure climate by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration are compromised.” Watts has been making this claim since at least 2009, when Heartland published his first study on the subject, although his conclusions have been widely debunked. [YouTube, 7/10/23; Wattsupwiththat.com, accessed 5/22/24; PolitiFact, 8/19/22]
As multiple countries suffered dangerous and ongoing heat waves in July 2023, right-wing media influencer James Lindsay downplayed the severity of extreme heat and promoted a purposeful misinterpretation of “wet-bulb” temperature to his followers. A chorus of social media users also echoed his sentiment, with some even suggesting that wet-bulb temperatures — a way to measure the stress that heat puts on the body relative to humidity — are a hoax fabricated by the government to frighten people. [Media Matters, 7/21/23]
When media outlets reported on the announcement that 2023 was the hottest year on record, Fox host Jesse Watters repeated the bogus claim, based on the debunked Heartland Institute study, that NOAA’s placement of thermometers on urban concrete skewed temperature data. “Concrete and asphalt attract heat and retain heat a lot more than the countryside,” Watters said. “No wonder we think the earth’s warming. We’re literally cooking the books.” [Media Matters, 2/1/24]
Right-wing media undermine and attack the science that links hurricanes to warming temperatures
Right-wing media have long attacked data that links increasing ocean temperatures — fueled by climate change — to increasingly intense hurricanes, suggesting those reporting the connection are politicizing or weaponizing the weather.
After Hurricane Irma devastated parts of the U.S. in 2017, Fox News hosted climate denier scientist Roy Spencer to undermine the science that links more intense storms to a warming planet. Spencer, known as Rush Limbaugh's “official climatologist,” claimed: “As you go through time, there has been no increase in the number of major land-falling hurricanes in Florida, and there's been no increase in their intensity.” While climate scientists predict that “storm frequency will either decrease or remain unchanged” due to climate change and studies consistently show “no discernible trend in the global number of tropical cyclones,” data has confirmed that warmer temperatures have increased their intensity — including stronger wind speeds and greater precipitation. [Media Matters, 9/13/17; Yale Climate Communications, 7/8/19]
On Fox’s Hannity, climate-denying meteorologist Joe Bastardi said that those who make the connection to climate change are “weaponizing weather” and claimed that hurricane activity was decreasing. Bastardi said: “The amount of hurricanes [in] the last 50 years, from Florida to New England, is 37% of what it was the previous 50 years, so if there’s climate change going on, it's actually decreasing the amount of major hits.” Discussing the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. to disprove the impact of climate change on storms is a red herring that is frequently used by bad actors as climate scientists discuss the impacts of warming temperatures on the intensity of storms, not how often they occur. [Fox News, Hannity, 9/14/18; Media Matters, 8/17/11; PolitiFact, 9/9/21]
While discussing Hurricane Dorian on The Story with Martha MacCallum, Spencer downplayed climate change’s impact by stating that there is “no long term trend in either their intensity or in the number of major hurricanes … that have hit Florida.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 9/2/19]
In the days after Hurricane Ida’s remnants ravaged the Northeast in September 2021, Fox News and Fox Business together aired at least a dozen segments that claimed Democrats were using the storm as a pretext to implement a massive climate agenda. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, guest host Brian Kilmeade claimed that President Joe Biden is “using these disasters for political purposes … to pass his infrastructure bill to stop climate change,” while Bastardi claimed that the frequency of bad storms from the past disproves this connection between climate change and the intensification of hurricanes. [Media Matters, 9/10/21; Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/8/21]
In 2022, Fox News relentlessly attacked climate science as Hurricane Ian approached and made landfall in Florida. After citing a NOAA research overview highlighting that hurricanes are predicted to become more intense, then-Fox host Tucker Carlson insisted that “the claim is never proven” and that “there’s no science behind these claims.” Carlson later added: “They’re called natural disasters. … They’re products of nature, God is in charge.” [Media Matters, 9/30/22]
During Donald Trump’s presidency, he attempted to remake NOAA and took several steps to roll back climate action and undermine the science that underpins it — all while being cheered on and supported by right-wing media
On Trump’s Inauguration Day in 2017, “climate” was scrubbed from the White House website. Six months later he withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord – a move that drew cheers from the right-wing media, and over the course of his presidency he systematically rolled back more than 100 climate and environmental policies. [The Atlantic, 12/4/23; Media Matters, 6/1/17; The Washington Post, 10/30/20]
In 2018, Trump attempted to bury a landmark scientific report produced by the federal government’s own scientists including those working for NOAA. In the aftermath of the release, climate deniers and right-wing media figures fanned out on TV news networks to spread falsehoods and ridiculous claims about the report — including suggestions that climate scientists who contributed to the report are driven by money. [The New York Times, 11/25/18; Media Matters, 12/4/18]
In one bizarre example of Trump undermining weather forecasting in 2019, also know as Sharpiegate, the former president baselessly claimed that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama despite assurances from the National Weather Service that the state was not in its path. NOAA then rebuked the NWS scientists in support of the former president. The New York Times reported that NOAA knew the hurricane would not hit Alabama when it chastised the scientists, noting that the emails proving that “shed new light on how the weather can turn political in an administration that demands loyalty to Mr. Trump even when his positions are at odds with scientific facts.” [The Guardian, 9/4/19; The Washington Post, 9/6/19; The New York Times, 11/7/19]
In 2020, while in California visiting the site of a destructive wildfire, Trump claimed that the Earth was actually cooling and blamed forest management for the fires. While national cable and broadcast coverage pushed back against Trump’s comments, Fox News ran cover for Trump by keeping up a steady drumbeat of climate denial and misinformation. [Media Matters, 9/24/20, 9/17/20]
---
e and e grnwire
A former Trump Interior Department official has one overarching recommendation for his old boss, should former President Donald Trump win a second bid at the White House: undo what President Joe Biden did.
That directive from William Perry Pendley — who served as the de facto head of Trump’s Bureau of Land Management from 2019 to 2021 — is part of a policy road map advanced by the Heritage Foundation along with dozens of conservative groups, called Project 2025, that would help Trump swiftly reestablish his policy prerogatives should he prevail in the November election.
The road map’s Interior section, written by Pendley, would reinstate some of the department orders from Trump’s first stint in the Oval Office that Biden reversed. Pendley’s plans include reopening most of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to oil and gas developers, cutting new protections for migratory birds, and relocating the BLM national headquarters back to Colorado.
Pendley called for a reinstatement of Trump-era secretarial orders, revoked by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for being “inconsistent with protecting public health and the environment,” to limit National Environmental Policy Act reviews and expedite permitting for oil and gas developers.
Pendley hammered on the oil drum, calling for a new five-year offshore oil plan, a robust drilling program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the reinstatement of quarterly oil and gas lease sales on public land in all oil- and gas-producing states.
“No other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons,” Pendley wrote.
The document also argues for a reduction in royalties for oil and gas to the minimums set in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Several regulations written in the last three years would face the chopping block, including the BLM’s methane waste reduction rule.
Pendley also recommended the new administration relocate BLM’s national headquarters office back to Grand Junction, Colorado, and out of Washington for the second time in four years.
Haaland reversed the contentious Trump-era headquarters move, completed in 2020, that also included the relocation of hundreds of other Washington-based positions to BLM offices across the West. Haaland designated the Grand Junction office a “Western hub” for the bureau.
“BLM headquarters belongs in the American West” where the “overwhelming majority” of the 245 million acres the bureau manages and 97 percent of its employees are located, Pendley wrote.
Pendley called the headquarters move the “epitome of good governance,” and wrote that it had the support of BLM staffers, even though 135 staff members left the bureau or retired rather than transfer. Pendley wrote that they worked with employees who could not leave the Washington area to find positions at other Interior agencies. “It is hard to please everyone, but the Trump Administration’s BLM did just that, putting the lie to assertions, by some, that the BLM was trying to ‘fire’ federal employees,” he wrote.
He also suggested targeting recent BLM efforts to update resource management plans covering millions of acres, writing they should be up for review, “and, when necessary,” revised “to restore the multi-use concept” mandated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the 1976 law that governs how the bureau manages the lands under its care.
BLM in the past year has proposed revising resource management plans in California, Colorado and Wyoming to add conservation designations to hundreds of thousands of acres.
A second Trump administration should also revert policies at the Bureau of Reclamation, Pendley wrote, focusing on water projects that benefit agricultural users in California and the Pacific Northwest.
Pendley said the next president should reinstate Trump’s 2018 directives to boost water to California’s Central Valley project, along with the Klamath irrigation project and the Columbia River Basin system.
Trump should also focus on building new reservoir and storage capacity in the West, he wrote.
The plan calls for dismantling NOAA, describing the agency as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and a harm to U.S. prosperity. NOAA, which is part of the Commerce Department, should have its functions “eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized or placed under the control of states and territories,” according to the plan. It said that much of the work done by NOAA Fisheries already overlaps with Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service.
The recommendations for NOAA came from Thomas Gilman, a former Chrysler executive who served as the Commerce Department’s chief financial officer during the Trump administration.
The plan also recommended that rules set by the National Park Service and the FWS on bear baiting and predator control should be revoked, calling them “matters for state regulation.”
Additionally, specific calls to loosen protections for migratory birds and remove gray wolves and Yellowstone-area grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protections accompany more sweeping recommendations to turn back the clock on some broader ESA regulations.
*Reporters Michael Doyle and Rob Hotakainen contributed.
---
Thomas F Gilman - Add Relationship - LittleSis
1/ of 5
Republican National Committee U.S. political committee that leads the Republican Party of the U.S., a/k/a The Grand Ol' Party/GOP
• 13 contributions · 207,000 USD ('12→Feb 16 '18)
• 3 contributions · 75,000 USD (May 31 '11→Feb 14 '13)
Mitt Romney U.S. senator from Utah, former Massachusetts governor
• 3 contributions · 49,000 USD ('11→Jun 25 '12)
National Republican Congressional Committee
• 6 contributions · 32,675 USD ('11→Nov 26 '14)
• 1 contribution · 30,000 USD (Oct 27 '14)
7th District Republican Committee
• 2 contributions · 20,000 USD ('12→Feb 14 '13)
Trump Victory Donald Trump's Joint Fundraising Committee
• 2 contributions · 12,700 USD (Jun 16 '16→Oct 31 '16)
Donald Trump 45th President of the United States
• 4 contributions · 10,800 USD (Jun 16 '16)
David Schweikert US Representative from Arizona (R-AZ 01)
• 4 contributions · 10,300 USD (Aug 19 '13→Mar 29 '18)
Every Republican is Crucial PAC Affiliate: Eric Cantor (R-Va)
• 2 contributions · 10,000 USD ('11→Feb 14 '13)
Schools
Villanova University Catholic university 12 miles west of Philadelphia
p 2
2 / 5
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee
• 1 contribution · 10,000 USD (Nov 3 '14)
• 1 contribution · 10,000 USD (Jun 30 '14)
North Carolina Republican Executive Committee
• 1 contribution · 10,000 USD (Oct 31 '14)
4 / 5
• 2 contributions · 3,300 USD ('12→Aug 31 '12)
• 2 contributions · 3,300 USD ('12→Nov 2 '12)
Massachusetts Republican State Congressional Committee
• 2 contributions · 3,300 USD ('08→Nov 1 '12)
Ben Sasse University of Florida president, former Senator from Nebraska
• 1 contribution · 2,700 USD (Mar 30 '18)
Trey Gowdy Former US Representative from South Carolina
• 1 contribution · 2,700 USD (Jul 21 '16)
Todd Young US Senator from Indiana 2017-present)
• 1 contribution · 2,700 USD (Sep 30 '16)
Pat Toomey former US Senator from Pennsylvania (2011-2023); former US Representative
• 1 contribution · 2,700 USD (Sep 9 '16)
Keith J Rothfus Former US Representative from Pennsylvania (2013-2019)
• 1 contribution · 2,600 USD (May 19 '14)
David Perdue Former: Georgia US Senator, head of Reebok, Dollar General
• 1 contribution · 2,500 USD (Apr 17 '18)
Chrysler Service Contracts Inc. Political Support Cmte
• 1 contribution · 1,040 USD ('96)
• 1 contribution · 10,000 USD (Oct 27 '14)
Roger Wicker US Senator from Mississippi (2007-present); former US Representative (1995-2007)
• 3 contributions · 8,100 USD (May 11 '17→Sep 8 '17)
Eric Cantor Former US Representative from Virginia/House Majority Leader; Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Moelis & Company
• 10 contributions · 7,601 USD ('11→Jun 8 '15)
National Republican Senatorial Committee Campaign committee for Republican U.S. Senate candidates
• 2 contributions · 7,375 USD ('12→Apr 30 '18)
Ben Quayle Lobbyist | former US Representative from Arizona
• 4 contributions · 7,300 USD ('10→Jun 1 '12)
• 2 contributions · 7,250 USD (Jul 16 '12→Oct 17 '12)
Martha McSally Former US Senator from Arizona (2019-2020); former US Rep. from Arizona (2015-2019)
• 4 contributions · 6,400 USD (Oct 26 '16→Mar 30 '18)
p 5
Kevin McCarthy Former House Speaker, US Representative from California (2007-present)
• 1 contribution · 500 USD (Nov 19 '15)
• 1 contribution · 500 USD (Nov 19 '15)
Kansas Republican Party - Federal
• 1 contribution · 128 USD (Oct 31 '16)
• 1 contribution · 128 USD (Oct 31 '16)
Missouri Republican State Committee-Federal
• 1 contribution · 128 USD (Oct 31 '16)
• 1 contribution · 128 USD (Oct 31 '16)
Republican Party of Virginia Inc
• 1 contribution · 128 USD (Oct 31 '16)
• 1 contribution · 128 USD (Oct 31 '16)
---
ggl 6 24
[### Policy Agenda
Project 2025
https://www.project2025.org › policy](https://www.project2025.org/policy/)
This book is the product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country.
[### Trump allies target NOAA climate research
E&E News by POLITICO
https://www.eenews.net › Articles](https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-allies-target-noaa-climate-research/)
[
Apr 10, 2024 — A planning document for a second Trump administration also recommends the National Weather Service commercialize its forecasting operations.
Missing: commerce | Show results with: commerce
[### Trump Would Gut and Privatize US Climate and Weather ...
Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com › politics › 2024/04 › do...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/donald-trump-gut-privatize-noaa-weather-forecasting-storms-climate-alarmism/)
Apr 27, 2024 — Climate experts fear Donald Trump will follow a blueprint created by his allies to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ...
[### Darius Nassiry's Post
LinkedIn · Darius Nassiry
40+ reactions · 1 month ago](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/darius-nassiry_trump-will-dismantle-key-us-weather-and-science-activity-7189575028403773442-HwJn)
Plan to break up NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration claims its research is 'climate alarmism' and calls for commercializing ...
[### Project 2025 Publishes Comprehensive Policy Guide ...
The Heritage Foundation
https://www.heritage.org › press › project-2025-publish...](https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-publishes-comprehensive-policy-guide-mandate-leadership-the-conservative-promise)
Apr 21, 2023 — The book builds upon the legacy of the 1981 edition of “Mandate for Leadership,” which appeared on The Washington Post's paperback bestseller ...
People also ask
---