UFFS!(Friday Night) NOAA backs Trump on Alabama hurricane forecast, rebukes Weather Service

[underpants]

NOAA backs Trump on Alabama hurricane forecast, rebukes Weather Service for accurately contradicting him

The federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service has sided with President Trump over its own scientists in the ongoing controversy over whether Alabama was at risk of a direct hit from Hurricane Dorian.

In an unusual move, the statement also admonished its National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Ala., which had released a tweet contradicting Trump’s claim and stating, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”

The NOAA statement said: “The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time."

Released six days after Trump’s first tweet on the matter, the NOAA statement was unsigned, neither from the acting head of the agency nor any particular spokesman. It also came a day after the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser released a statement justifying Trump’s claims of the Alabama threat.

The NOAA statement Friday makes no reference to the fact that when Trump tweeted that Alabama was at risk, it was not in the National Hurricane Center’s “cone of uncertainty,” which is where forecasters determine the storm is most likely to track. Alabama also had not appeared in the cone in days earlier, and no Hurricane Center text product ever mentioned the state.






https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/09/06/noaa-backs-president-trump-alabama-hurricane-forecast-rebukes-weather-service-office-that-accurately-contradicted-him/

[spanone]

1. Well, that will change Zero minds...

[underpants]

13. Huh?

Not a reaction to your post. This will get drilled into the believers head. Written in stone.
Everyone else else will hear it and say "Huh?"
This is beyond ridiculous (a microcosm of the Clustertrump) Good GAWD! Just GIVE. IT. UP. !

Ironically, the sharpie covers any cover story up.

[mopinko]

2. man. so many cowards. every fucking where.

[Blue_true]

10. We are seeing in real time how Hitler got what he wanted.

All that is needed to empower a dictator are cowards.

So when Trump loses in 2020 and January 21, 2021 comes, then what? Will the Secret Service frog March his ass out of the White House if he refuses to acknowledge the incoming President?

[Ms. Toad]

19. Please stop saying "when."

The vast majority of DU treated his run for president as a joke - and ridiculed those of us who suggested we ought to be treating it more seriously. While I certainly hope he is voted out of office, our lives depend on treating him as a serious candidate.

[Blue_true]

21. Oh, I treat him as a serious candidate and serious threat.

That is not an issue. But if out side does not screw itself again, he does not win. The issue is us, will we show up in November 2020 united?

[Ms. Toad]

22. We wont' if we take it for granted that we will win. n/t

[Blue_true]

28. Being united is taking him seriously, dead seriously, more seriously than our differences. nt

[still_one]

12. This is worse than being a coward.

[pbmus]

3. Stupid is as stupid does....

[keithbvadu2]

4. "unsigned"

[brush]

5. Pretty obvious this was done under orders from the White House. The fool can't admit he was wrong...

and just let it go.

Impeach the megalomaniac now.

[montanacowboy]

6. Collaboraters everywhere

they all bend to kiss the ring, even the military now refusing to cooperate with Congress over the refueling debacle

this is the way a Vichy state starts

[Blue_true]

16. Those people are afraid of losing jobs that are hard to get other places.

Since their exposure to that jackass is limited, they can't write best selling tell-all books. So Trump orders them to basically lie, their choice is to refuse and give up high paying jobs, or lie and hope it all blows over fast.

My guess is administrators of the unit that refuted Trump in that Sunday tweet are likely under job pressure right now, that asshole Trump is that evil, he will keep digging for ways to fire them in the most humiliating way possible.

[Ms. Toad]

20. I would refuse - and become homeless, if necessary,

rather than compromise my integrity.

[Blue_true]

25. As a graduate engineer, I went into the working world all full of

idealism and a belief that right always won out over wrong. My parents were poor, but they always did what was right and just, and they helped those with less.

So I enter the working world and saw things that were just wrong, I also knew my coworkers knew about those things happening. No one did or said anything because they were concerned about losing their high paying jobs. Fast forward years and I see the same things happening. You, and I am sure me (as I did as a young engineer) would call out against injustice and face retribution, but I no longer expect that I will have an army of people backing me.

Those people had a choice, face down Trump and his unethical administrator of their agency and likely get demoted or lose the jobs outright, or lie to placate Trump and hope that ends it.

I no longer look for heroes in life like I did when I was a young engineer. People are going to protect their self-interests, rarely have I met ones that just did what was right.

[Ms. Toad]

30. I'm close to retirement -

but my morals and integrity have not changed.

I expect others to behave morally and with integrity. I have a long life of experience with others who don't live up to those ideals. But the moment I stop expecting it is the moment I give my blessing. And sometimes people live up to the expectations placed on them.

[Blue_true]

33. I don't give my blessing to wring doing, I still fight it.

I just no longer have on the rose-colored glasses that assume others will see my righteousness and join me in the fight. Sometimes fighting for what is right can be a lonely proposition, that is my experience and is what I was trying to convey.

[Ms. Toad]

35. I have some experience of expressing high expectations -

and having others live up to them simply because I made the expectations explicit.

[MBS]

7. To have science agencies fold is a nightmare scenario n/t

[Eugene]

8. I suspect the author was either Meredith McIver or John Barron.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

15. Barry Myers. See #14.

[Iliyah]

9. Was it signed?

That is why I do not trust the monthly status report on the economy each month. Bush's administration did the same thing. If shithole or whoever can influence major entities to play by their tune, knowing it's false, what else is not factual from this fucked up so called government. Plus, the USA's national security has been deeply compromised.

I do not feel safe in this country.

[underpants]

17. Yeah it was

[secondwind]

11. WTF??!?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Betcha kroner to krugerrands Barry Myers is behind this.

He's the current head of NOAA, and he's another typical Trump appointee - a businessman without any formal scientific training who opposes the agency he heads, and who has typical Trump administration ethics, or lack of them.

When President Trump first nominated Barry Myers, then the CEO of AccuWeather and a fierce critic of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, to head the very agency he had spent decades attacking, many who care about government ethics sounded the alarm. The announcement seemed extreme, even by the loose ethical standards of the Trump administration — which is partly why his first nomination stalled in the Senate in 2018. On Wednesday, the Senate GOP leadership plans to ram through Myers’s renomination without a hearing despite his failure to address any of the major ethics issues that were raised the first time he went through this process. If anything, Myers’s financial activity since his first nomination expired only heightens concerns about his ethics.

Myers’s ties to AccuWeather remain deeply concerning. He recounted for the Senate how he and his family built the company from the ground up to become a dominant player in the weather forecasting industry. In addition to Myers serving as its CEO, his wife was its director of executive projects, and his brothers held more than 90 percent of the company’s stock.

When his nomination was first announced, we were concerned about whether Myers could be relied on to oversee an agency that can directly affect his family’s business. AccuWeather uses NOAA’s free weather data to make its own predictions, which it then sells to the public. AccuWeather has also argued that NOAA should reduce the amount of weather information it releases directly to the public — that is, much of the data generated by NOAA with our tax dollars would be available exclusively to private companies like AccuWeather that could then sell us forecasts based on that data. Myers himself has advocated that NOAA do less for America so AccuWeather can increase its profits.

Now Myers is back with a new nomination and a mysterious financial arrangement. A year ago, one of us, writing for the Campaign Legal Center at the time, warned the Senate that “nothing in his ethics agreement would prevent him from selling his shares of AccuWeather to his family and, upon leaving the government, offering to repurchase those interests for the same price — possibly even at a negligible price or, at least, without incurring any capital gains.” And indeed, a few months ago, Myers sold his stock under a redemption agreement, which is a contract that lets a closely held company or its shareholders buy back an investor’s stock. Financial disclosure forms show that Myers sold for a fraction of what he previously claimed it was worth.

The rest: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/03/senate-is-rushing-confirm-this-trump-nominee-despite-ethical-concerns/

[dalton99a]

23. +1. Barry Myers doesn't give a shit about data integrity

[Tanuki]

32. He hasn't been confirmed yet, has he?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

34. You're right - I thought he'd finally been confirmed. Mea culpa.

So maybe the culprit was Wilbur Ross, since NOAA is under the Commerce Department. Or maybe the acting administrator, who wants to keep his job.

[Ms. Toad]

18. So I just sent them an email.

I had truly hoped that the statement I read online attributed to NOAA was from the Onion, or another satire source.  I am deeply disappointed that NOAA has chosen politics over science.

The reports that Dorian would impact Alabama were made Wednesday/Thursday in the last week of August, and even at that time predicted a less than a 20% chance that a small corner of Alabama would experience sustained winds of less than 39 MPH - barely a tropical storm.

By the time Trump mistakenly reported that Alabama might be in line for a direct hit (that there was a 95% probability that Alabama would get hit; that virtually all of the the paths went through Alabama, etc.) those reports were history.  His mistaken statement risked panicking Alabamans, and NOAA-Alabama was absolutely correct in their assessment that - as of Sunday night, when they appropriately tweeted to allay the fears of Alabamans that Alabama was not at risk  You should not have undermined its credibility, as lives depend on the ability of US citizens to rely on reports of dangerous storms.

Weather.gov has been my "go-to" source for weather.  My father uses the wind projections for planning controlled burns.  But unless this statement is retracted, it is clear that I can no longer rely on NOAA to accurately report the weather, because politics is apparently more important than science. 

Whoever crafted this statement should have resigned rather than compromise their integrity.

[underpants]

26. Outstanding. Everyone should read this.

[littlemissmartypants]

24. Barry Myers

Barry Lee Myers is an American attorney and businessman who served as chief executive officer and general counsel for AccuWeather, a privately owned for-profit weather-forecasting company founded by his elder brother, Joel Myers.[1] As an AccuWeather executive, Myers lobbied unsuccessfully to restrict or undermine the National Weather Service, a governmental service which provides free weather forecasting and thus competes with AccuWeather's business model.[2]

Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere
Assuming office
TBD*
*Pending Senate confirmation

In 2017, Myers was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).[3] Myers's nomination was controversial because he lacked scientific expertise (in contrast to previous NOAA leaders) and because of concern over Myers's financial conflicts of interest,[3][4] and as of April 2019 Myers's appointment had not been voted upon by the U.S. Senate. In 2018, a federal investigation found rampant, pervasive, and severe sexual harassment at AccuWeather, and determined that the company, under Myers's leadership, ignored the harassment and retaliated against victims who complained.[5][6]
...snip...

Prior to becoming CEO of AccuWeather in September 2007, Myers served as the company's executive vice president and general counsel. Since 1990, Myers has been a member of the board of directors of the American Weather and Climate Industry Association,[8] the weather industry's trade association, serving as the industry's chief federal-relations office. Myers also served as an advisor to the director of the U.S. National Weather Service at the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization Meetings in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2001 and 2008.[9]

Political activities

Myers has donated to the campaigns of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney.[10] Myers also donated to Rick Santorum's campaigns for U.S. Senate.[10] In 2005, Santorum sponsored a bill entitled the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005, which failed to pass.[10][11] Myers publicly supported the bill, which would have required the National Weather Service to stop providing weather information to the general public.[10]

On January 6, 2019, it was announced that Myers had departed AccuWeather on January 1 and had sold all his interest in the company to move into a role leading the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under President Trump.[12]

Nomination to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Edit
On October 12, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Myers to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.[13] Myers has said he will liquidate his holdings in the family-owned company.[10] His brothers will remain as the president, chairman of the board, and chief operating officer of AccuWeather.[10] At his confirmation hearing, opponents of his confirmation hearing pointed out that the family connection would still represent a major conflict of interest.[14]

Myers was selected for the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere position by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.[10] Myers's deputies will include Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere Timothy Gallaudet, a Navy Rear Admiral with a doctorate in oceanography, and Assistant Secretary for Environmental Observation and Prediction Neil Jacobs, who was chief atmospheric scientist at the Panasonic Avionics Corporation.[15] If confirmed, Myers will be the second NOAA administrator without a science degree, and the first since Richard A. Frank left office in 1981.[16] The agency employee's labor union opposes Myers nomination, citing his support of the Santorum bill.[10]

His nomination was returned to President Trump by the Senate on January 3, 2018,[17] resubmitted on January 8, returned on January 3, 2019,[18] and resubmitted on January 16.[19]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers

[DeminPennswoods]

27. The scientists and forecasters will just roll their eyes

and carry on. No one doing the actual work at federal agencies gives a hoot what the head of the agency says.

[rockfordfile]

31. This is corruption. Lets see what Democratic Congressmen do

I would haul his ass in so the American people can hear the lies from that corrupt republican.