Taxpayer-supported PBS again failed its own congressionally mandated test to “provide objectivity and balance” when covering issues. PBS News Weekend this Sunday featured a spokesman for a liberal scientific advocacy organization as its only guest to feed liberal fear-mongering about Project 2025.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is an activist group that does not “stick to science,” as its political criticism of Georgia’s decision to count ballots by hand demonstrates. The organization, founded in 1969, has a history of pushing left-wing causes, even those that are not connected to scientific studies such as the deployment of a missile defense shield (it even issued a book opposing Reagan’s “Star Wars” program) and was criticized for its hysteria over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply.
But none of this context was raised on Sunday night, as PBS anchor John Yang set up his UCS guest, policy director Rachel Cleetus, who was not given a liberal label, to knock down “conservative” arguments unopposed.
John Yang: North Carolina’s historic rainfall this past week is the sort of extreme weather event that’s become more frequent and more severe, according to the union representing its employees, by July, the National Weather Service had issued some 13,000 severe thunderstorm warnings, 2,000 tornado warnings, and 1,800 flash-flood warnings. The Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, are targeted for drastic changes in Project 2025, that’s the roadmap for the next conservative president….
Yang invited Cleetus to provide a smashing rebuttal to Project 2025.
Yang: ….the section on NOAA in this Project 2025 is written by Thomas Gilman. He was in the Commerce Department in the Trump administration. He was an executive at Chrysler before that. The section says that “NOAA has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry, and as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. It should be broken up and downsized.” What do you say to that?
Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director, Union Of Concerned Scientists: Well, that is an extremely damaging attack on an agency that is providing science that helps keep people safe….
Over images of homes destroyed by weather events, Cleetus claimed “the climate crisis is accelerating, getting worse,” in defense of NOAA.
Yang: And it’s more than just the Weather Service in in NOAA, when they talk about the National Hurricane Center and the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office, they call it the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism, and say that their data should be presented neutrally. What do those offices do? What do those agencies do? How does it relate to research on climate change? And what do you take of their saying that the data should be presented neutrally?
Yang kept setting Cleetus up with pseudo-challenging T-ball questions, then inviting her to smack them away.
Yang: And on the Weather Service, the Project 2025 notes that a lot of the forecasts people get are from private forecasting companies, and that they say that they’re actually more reliable than the Weather Service, so they say that the weather service should fully commercialize its forecasting operations. What do you think about that?
He bowed to the liberal activist as a fount of climate policy wisdom, inviting her to head NOAA.
Yang: If you had your own Project 2025, laying out a roadmap for the next administration, whoever it is, what sort of things would you be prescribing for NOAA?
But are NOAA’s sometimes-dire predictions always right? On May 23, PBS News anchor Geoff Bennett carried water for the agency’s maximalist climate-change views: “U.S. weather officials are predicting that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be extraordinary. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects up to 25 named storms, the most they have ever forecast in May.”
(Environmental activists point to increased hurricane activity as a sure sign of a dangerously warming planet.)
Yet as of September 24 (the official storm season runs from June 1 to November 30) there have been only seven named storms, eight including Hurricane Helene now threatening the Florida Panhandle, making NOAA’s dire forecast unduly pessimistic so far.
This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.
A transcript is available:
PBS News Weekend
8/23/24
7:05:22 p.m. (ET)
John Yang: North Carolina’s historic rainfall this past week is the sort of extreme weather event that’s become more frequent and more severe, according to the union representing its employees. By July, the National Weather Service had issued some 13,000 severe thunderstorm warnings, 2,000 tornado warnings and 1,800 flash flood warnings.
Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, are targeted for drastic changes in Project 2025, that’s the roadmap for the next conservative president.
Many of its authors are former Trump administration officials, although the former president has tried to distance himself from it.
Rachel Cleetus is policy director in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Rachel the section on NOAA in this Project 2025 is written by Thomas Gilman. He was in the Commerce Department in the Trump administration. He was an executive at Chrysler before that.
The section says that NOAA has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry, and as such, is harmful to future us prosperity. It should be broken up and downsized. What do you say to that?
Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director, Union Of Concerned Scientists: Well, that is an extremely damaging attack on an agency that is providing science that helps keep people safe, helps keep critical infrastructure and our economy safe.
As you pointed out, NOAA’s Weather Service is providing information that helps communities get prepared ahead of things like extreme heat waves, major storms and hurricanes, when we have these flooding events, when we have wildfires, this agency is crucial in providing the kind of information that helps first responders get out ahead, helps communities prepare and saves lives, frankly.
So attacking this agency, attacking the science that it’s doing is really damaging to the public. They would like the private sector to run rampant and not be fettered by any kind of guardrails. And we all know that the climate crisis is accelerating, getting worse, having an impact on our economy as well as the environment.
We’ve seen homes get destroyed, infrastructure get destroyed. Insurance rates skyrocket. This is about our country’s healthy future, our prosperity, our children’s prosperity.
So this document is just an incredible assault on science based policy making, and it will have a disproportionate impact on low income communities and communities of color who have long borne the brunt of pollution in our nation.
John Yang: And it’s more than just the Weather Service in the — in NOAA, when they talk about the National Hurricane Center and the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office, they call it the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism, and say that their data should be presented neutrally.
What do those offices do? What do those agencies do? How does it relate to research on climate change? And what do you take of their saying that the data should be presented neutrally?
Rachel Cleetus: Look, the reality is, climate change is a scientific fact, and we are seeing it in the impacts all around the country today, we’ve seen these extreme weather events. We’re seeing billion dollar disasters mount around the country. We have seen incredible extreme heat waves. Just this year in our country, major wildfires, Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Francine, that stalled out with major rainfall. This is the reality.
This is not about climate alarmism or whatever that might mean. This is about climate reality. This is an agency that is not policy prescriptive. It’s providing essential scientific facts that track both the day to day weather as well as the long term trends, including that caused by climate change, which is driven by fossil fuel emissions.
The most recent NOAA data shows that the January to August period is the hottest in 175 years of tracking these records. So once again, we’re seeing these record breaking years and then the trend, which is truly concerning this year, 100 percent of the U.S. population saw an extreme weather alert everywhere in the country. Wherever you live, you’ve been under one of these alerts, you’ve maybe experienced some of these damaging impacts.
John Yang: And on the Weather Service, the Project 2025 notes that a lot of the forecasts people get are from private forecasting companies, and that they say that they’re actually more reliable than the weather service, so they say that the weather service should fully commercialize its forecasting operations. What do you think about that?
Rachel Cleetus: People may not realize that a lot of private companies that are providing you information are getting the underlying data from NOAA. So whether it’s AccuWeather or your local TV forecaster, the data that they’re relying on is coming from NOAA, and the fact that that data is freely and widely accessible is really important. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a wealthy community. You can access that information.
The other piece of data that people may not be aware of is known as tide gage data, which is providing information all along our coastline of the impacts of accelerating sea level rise that’s already causing sunny day flooding, even without extreme storms. So this is the kind of data that we’re all relying on, and may not realize it.
John Yang: If you had your own project 2025 laying out a roadmap for the next administration, whoever it is, what sort of things would you be prescribing for NOAA?
Rachel Cleetus: Well, I think one thing we should all want is independent, scientific information that can help us get to better policy making so agencies like NOAA providing that information, that their scientific integrity is protected, that their scientists can provide the information and not be afraid of intimidation, and that that information can help guide policy makers, that can help us both in the near term as well as in the long term, prepare for the impacts of climate change.
So having NOAA be an independent, well-resourced agency that can do its work, essential work that we depend on, that’s what we should be looking for as a nation.
John Yang: Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists, thank you very much.
el Cleetus: Thank you so much for having me.
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