A flurry of newly released e-mails from scientists and top officials at the US government agency responsible for weather forecasting clearly illustrates the consternation and outright alarm caused by US President Donald Trump’s false claim that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama.
A top US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official even called the president’s behavior “crazy.”
What the scientists and officials found even more troubling was a statement later issued by an unnamed agency spokesman that supported Trump’s claim and repudiated the agency’s own forecasters.
The e-mails, released late on Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from The Associated Press (AP) and others, give an inside picture of the scramble to respond to the president and the turmoil it caused inside the agency.
“What’s next? Climate science is a hoax?” NOAA Acting Chief Scientist Craig McLean wrote in an e-mail sent to the agency’s top officials. “Flabbergasted to leave our forecasters hanging in the political wind.”
In a more formal letter, McLean wrote that what concerned him most was that the Trump administration “is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President.”
As Dorian headed for the southeastern US in early September last year, Trump tweeted that Alabama was “most likely to be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”
The US National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, corrected him, tweeting that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”
However, Trump remained adamant and the NOAA came to his defense with the unsigned statement, which claimed some data provided to the president had indicated that Alabama could be hit by the hurricane and scolded the Birmingham office.
The statement was issued after the White House and US Department of Commerce intervened, the AP and others reported at the time.
It provoked angry e-mails from within the agency and from the public.
Gary Shigenaka, a NOAA scientist, wrote to the agency’s acting administrator, Neil Jacobs, asking him to “reassure those of us who serve the public ... that we are not mere pawns in an absurd game.”
In response, Jacobs defended the forecasters and said: “You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science.”
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