Postscript to Presidet'sDorian/Sharpie Affair

Two or three days after I last posted, I realized the Dorian/Sharpie affair was much simpler and even more damning than I wrote in last week’s post.  In my recounting of events, I could have stopped on September 1:

• The President warns the people of Alabama that they are endangered by Hurricane Dorian’s projected course;
• Twenty minutes later, the Birmingham Weather Service (BWS) tweets that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian;”
• Three hours later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sends a confidential memo to the agencies it administers (including BWS) that they should “only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon.”  In other words, the Birmingham office should have kept their mouths shut and not contradicted President Trump’s warning even though he was wrong.

Weather predictions must be as accurate as possible so that civilians, businesses, the military, official government agencies, and others can make appropriate, sometimes-life-altering decisions.  In this case, however, NOAA is telling its government agencies they should not tell the truth if it means contradicting the President, even when he is clearly wrong.

In other words, even without any direct intervention or pressure from the higher-ups, a government administration is forgoing the truth to protect the President’s reputation.

NOAA’s decision is not an attack on democracy itself; it is almost worse: a demonstration of how far we have fallen.