Among its many sweeping calls for change in American government, a conservative platform document known as Project 2025 urges the demolition of some of the nation’s most dependable resources for tracking weather, combating climate change and protecting the public from environmental hazards. “Break up NOAA,” the document says, referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its six main offices, including the 154-year-old National Weather Service. “Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.
S. prosperity,” the document says. The call to dismantle a vital federal department has raised the hackles of experts who say NOAA provides not only important free data, such as weather forecasts and satellite observations, but also life-saving information about hurricanes, heat waves, atmospheric rivers and other extreme events — many of which have been shown, through myriad studies, to be worsening due to global warming.
“The National Weather Service, and NOAA more generally, is a key agency in tracking what’s happening with our climate — and in particular the ways in which humans are changing the climate,” said Matthew Sanders, a lecturer at Stanford Law School and the acting deputy director of the Environmental Law Clinic. “To propose undercutting, breaking up and quote-unquote streamlining NOAA is really an effort to block and make .