The New York Times - 12.09.2019

A20 0 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

and on Wednesday, a Democrat-
controlled House science commit-
tee kicked off its own inquiry.
As a result, the furor over Mr.
Trump’s storm prediction has
evolved from a momentary em-
barrassment into a sustained po-
litical liability for the administra-
tion — no longer just a question of
a president unwilling to admit a
mistake but now a White House
seemingly willing to pressure sci-
entists to validate it.
The New York Times reported
this week that Mr. Ross warned
NOAA’s acting administrator that
top employees at the agency could
be fired if the situation were not
addressed. Mr. Ross’s spokesman
has denied that he threatened to
fire anyone. A senior official on
Wednesday said that if Mr. Ross
did make such threats, it was not

at the direction of Mr. Mulvaney.
After The Times disclosed Mr.
Mulvaney’s role on Wednesday,
The Washington Post reported
that he was acting at Mr. Trump’s
direction, which the senior official
confirmed to The Times. But when
Mr. Trump was asked by a report-
er if he told his chief of staff to in-
struct NOAA to “disavow those
forecasters,” he denied it.
“No, I never did that,” Mr.
Trump said. “I never did that.
That’s a whole hoax by the fake
news media. When they talk about
the hurricane and when they talk
about Florida and they talk about
Alabama, that’s just fake news. It
was — right from the beginning, it
was a fake story.”
The White House had no com-
ment beyond the president’s re-
marks. The senior official made a
distinction between telling NOAA
to “disavow” the forecast and to
“clarify” it. The White House argu-
ment was that the forecasters had
gone too far and that the president
was right to suggest there had
been models showing a possible
impact on Alabama.
The release of the NOAA state-
ment provoked complaints that

the Trump administration was im-

properly intruding in the profes-

sional weather forecasting system

to rationalize an inaccurate presi-

dential assertion. In opening its in-

vestigation, the Commerce De-

partment’s inspector general said

the events could call into question

scientific independence.

The House Committee on Sci-

ence, Space and Technology ex-

pressed similar concerns as it an-

nounced its own investigation into

Mr. Ross’s actions on Wednesday.

“We are deeply disturbed by the

politicization of NOAA’s weather

forecast activities for the purpose

of supporting incorrect state-

ments by the president,” wrote

Representative Eddie Bernice

Johnson, the chairwoman of the

committee, along with Represent-

ative Mikie Sherrill, the chairman

of its oversight panel.

The latest challenge to Mr.

Trump’s credibility has its origins

in one of the more prosaic duties a

president has: warning the nation

when natural disasters like Hurri-

cane Dorian threaten communi-

ties.

On Sept. 1, as Dorian gathered

strength over the Atlantic and

headed toward the East Coast, the

president wrote on Twitter that

Alabama, among other states,

“will most likely be hit (much)

harder than anticipated.” Earlier

forecast maps had suggested that

Alabama might see some effects

from the edge of the storm, but by

the time of the president’s tweet,

the predictions had already

changed.

A few minutes after Mr. Trump’s

tweet, the National Weather Serv-

ice in Birmingham posted its own

message on Twitter flatly declar-

ing that “Alabama will NOT see

any impacts from #Dorian. We re-

peat, no impacts from Hurricane

#Dorian will be felt across Ala-

bama.” The forecasters were cor-

rect; Alabama was not struck by

the hurricane.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump was fu-

rious at being challenged and kept

insisting for days that he had been

right. He displayed or posted out-

dated maps, including one that

had been apparently altered with

a Sharpie pen to make it look like

Alabama might still be in the path

of the storm. He had his homeland

security adviser release a state-

ment backing him up.

After Mr. Trump told his staff on

Sept. 5 to address the matter, Mr.

Mulvaney called Mr. Ross, who

was in Greece traveling for meet-

ings. Mr. Ross then called Neil Ja-

cobs, the acting administrator of

NOAA, at home around 3 a.m. Fri-

day, Washington time, and in-

structed him to clear up the agen-

cy’s contradiction of the presi-

dent, according to three people in-

formed about the discussions.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the de-

mand and was told that the politi-

cal appointees at NOAA would be

fired if the situation were not

fixed, according to the three indi-

viduals, who requested ano-

nymity because they were not au-

thorized to discuss the episode.

The political staff at an agency

typically includes a handful of top

officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and

their aides. They are appointed by

the administration currently in

power, as opposed to career gov-

ernment employees, who remain

as administrations come and go.

The statement NOAA ulti-

mately issued later on Friday

faulted the Birmingham office for

a tweet that “spoke in absolute

terms that were inconsistent with

probabilities from the best fore-

cast products available at the

time.”

Dr. Jacobs has since sought to

reassure his work force and the

broader scientific community con-

cerned about political interfer-

ence.

“This administration is commit-

ted to the important mission of

weather forecasting,” Dr. Jacobs

said at a weather conference on

Tuesday in Huntsville, Ala. “There

is no pressure to change the way

you communicate or forecast risk

in the future.”

In the speech, Dr. Jacobs

praised Mr. Trump, calling him

“genuinely interested in improv-

ing weather forecasts,” and ech-

oed the president’s position that

Dorian initially threatened Ala-

bama. “At one point, Alabama was

in the mix, as was the rest of the

Southeast.”

He also said he still had faith in

the Birmingham office. “The pur-

pose of the NOAA statement was

to clarify the technical aspects of

the potential impacts of Dorian,”

Dr. Jacobs said. “What it did not

say, however, is that we under-

stand and fully support the good

intent of the Birmingham weather

forecast office, which was to calm

fears in support of public safety.”

Unassuaged, the House science

panel has demanded documents

and information related to the

NOAA statement and its origins.

In addition to emails, memos,

texts and records of telephone

calls, the committee asked Mr.

Ross to answer a number of ques-

tions, including whether any rep-

resentative of the Executive Office

of the President directed NOAA to

issue Friday’s statement or speci-

fy the language in it.

Committee members also re-

minded Mr. Ross of statements

that he made under oath in his con-

firmation hearing that he would

not interfere with science, particu-

larly at NOAA, which in addition to

weather forecasting is the agency

responsible for understanding and

predicting changes in the earth’s

climate.

“Science should be done by sci-

entists,” Mr. Ross testified in that

January 2017 hearing. “I support

the release of factual scientific

data.”

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Mick Mulvaney, above, the acting White House chief of staff, told

the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, left, to have the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavow forecasters’

view that Alabama was not at risk from Hurricane Dorian.

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

President Intervened

To ‘Clarify’ Forecasts

Concern scientific

independence could

be jeopardized.

From Page A

uty assistant for emerging tech-

nologies.

His signature effort was a plan

to establish a panel to question the

scientific consensus that climate

change is caused by humans and

is a growing threat to national se-

curity. The effort was blocked by

other senior White House and ad-

ministration officials, including

members of the military and intel-

ligence communities.

Dr. Happer also tried to edit sci-

entific facts about climate change

in testimony to Congress from a

State Department intelligence an-

alyst. His suggestions, first re-

ported by The New York Times,

included objecting to the phrase

“tipping point” to describe when

the planet reaches a threshold of

irreversible climate change.

“ ‘Tipping points’ is a propagan-

da slogan for the scientifically illit-

erate,” Dr. Happer wrote in a mar-

gin comment captured by track

changes in working documents.

“They were a favorite of Al Gore’s

science adviser, James Hansen.”

The White House and a spokes-

man for the National Security

Council did not respond to a re-

quest for comment, and Dr. Hap-

per did not respond to an email

seeking comment on Wednesday.

His departure was first reported

by E&E News, an energy policy

news site.

The three people familiar with

Dr. Happer’s plans noted the for-

mer Princeton University profes-

sor just turned 80 and had always

intended to stay at the White

House for one year.

“There’s this big hole now,” said

Steven J. Milloy, a member of

President Trump’s transition

team for the Environmental Pro-

tection Agency who runs the web-

site junkscience.com, which is

aimed at casting doubt on the es-

tablished science of human-

caused climate change.

“There’s nobody in the White

House to pick up where Will left

off, except the president.”

Environmental activists

cheered Dr. Happer’s departure

but said they are still bracing for

continued attacks on climate sci-

ence from the White House.

“Someone who denies the exist-

ence of nuclear weapons or terror-

ism would never be given a senior

position at the National Security

Council, and that should have

been true on climate change,

which is recognized across parties

as a security threat to the United

States,” said Francesco Femia, a

co-founder of the Center for Cli-

mate and Security, a nonpartisan

think tank. “So while this is good

news, he never should have been

there in the first place.”

Rob Vessels, a campaign man-

ager with the Sierra Club, an envi-

ronmental group, said it was “an

indictment of the Trump Adminis-

tration’s dangerous denial of the

climate crisis that countless de-

niers like Happer continue to be

welcomed with open arms.”

Dr. Happer’s exit is the latest

White House shake-up in an ad-

ministration that has seen near-

constant turnover and comes on

the heels of President Trump’s

ouster of John R. Bolton, his third

national security adviser. Mr.

Bolton was a supporter of Dr. Hap-

per’s positions on climate change

in the White House, according to

several people with knowledge of

their relationship.

WASHINGTON — William
Happer, the White House archi-
tect of a stalled plan to attack the
established science of climate
change, is leaving the Trump ad-
ministration on Friday, according
to three people familiar with his
plans.
Dr. Happer, a physicist who
gained notoriety by claiming that
the greenhouse gases contribut-
ing to warming the planet are ben-
eficial to humanity, and for lik-
ening attacks on fossil fuels to “the
demonization of the poor Jews un-
der Hitler” in a 2014 interview,
serves on the National Security
Council as President Trump’s dep-

Adviser, Who Rejected Climate Science, Is Said to Leave Post on Security Council

By LISA FRIEDMAN

Exclusive

Sale

Enjoy 20% off the entire

B&B Italia collection

from September 10th - 24th.

Tofindyourlocalstore:

http://www.bebitalia.com/stores