Twitterstorms and Hurricanes
I thought now was as good a time as any to speak about the unfortunate events that unfolded at the end of last summer. Like many people I know, I was dismayed by them: as such - and following much reflection - I think the time for silence is over and some things simply need to be said.
Hurricane Dorian was an extremely powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that devastated the northwestern Bahamas and caused significant damage to the Southeastern United States and Atlantic Canada in September 2019.
On September 1 2019, NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - issued a statement saying that the ‘current forecast path of Dorian does not include Alabama.’
However - on that same date - President Donald Trump tweeted that Alabama, among other states, ‘will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated’.
Therefore – as is their legal mandate - the Alabama office of the National Weather Service (the NWS is a part of NOAA, but smaller and under its control) issued a tweet later that same day that directly contradicted Trump, saying that Alabama ‘will NOT see any impacts from Dorian’. Keep in mind that in US law, deliberately providing false weather predictions is an unequivocal criminal offence.
Now at this point we have to take a second to make sure that we understand a little about the positioning of the NOAA in the American government. Due to a complex and frankly strange set of events during the Nixon administration involving Walter Hickel, the NOAA was set up in 1970 within the Department of Commerce, instead of the Department of the Interior (where all other scientific and geographic arms of the US government are hosted) as would make sense.
In other words, NOAA is directly in a chain of command that comes under political and partisan pressure. Until last year this pressure had never been exerted, but the chain of command has nonetheless always been there.
On September 4 2019, Trump displayed an August 29 map that was altered with a black marker to show that Hurricane Dorian may hit Alabama. This alteration was in fact illegal – as said earlier, it’s a criminal offence – and was done exclusively to back up an existing false narrative.
Social media – and the press – obviously found this entire process laughable. So far, this is business as usual for the Trump regime.
But then Trump instructed Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney (remember him?) to in turn instruct U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross – remember, NOAA sits in a weird political place - to contact Neil Jacobs, acting administrator of NOAA. Jacobs was told to publicly support President Trump's claim or else he and other high-level NOAA staff would lose their jobs.
This is important, so allow me to clarify this point: whilst the truth was empirical and clear, the head of NOAA was put under direct pressure to bow to political agendas. In other words, to manage the reputation of his organisation over the integrity of standing up for science, for facts, for his own employees, and for the principles of protecting American citizens.
What this means is that – because they were coming under political pressure, and were panicking about their own jobs and the perceived reputation of their organisation – they were now under pressure to agree with whatever short-sighted and false narrative was being pushed onto them.
Their choice here was simple: they could either hold the line and stand by the hard, diligent work of the NWS who ceaselessly worked under them in the interest of American citizens…or they could say whatever it took to placate this short-term outrage. Outrage that comes from a source that we have all seen flare up unpredictably again and again without any basis in fact, and without any moderation or maturity.
And so – predictably – the very highest levels of leadership in NOAA caved to politics, pettiness and a desire for a short-term resolution.
What followed was a rare unsigned statement from NOAA later that same day – September 6 2019 – clearly disavowing the NWS position that Alabama was not and never had been at risk. Instead, Trump’s empirically false statements from September 1 and September 4 were corroborated. The statement also labelled the Alabama branch of the National Weather Service's contradiction of Trump as incorrect, stating that the NWS tweet ‘spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.’
This has the twin features of being both unprincipled jargon and also completely false.
Instead of standing by the work of their own employees – the NWS – the leadership at NOAA decided to fly in the face of all the science, all the evidence and all the expertise, and instead to cow to the strident voices of an unhappy but influential minority. They were so afraid of the negative press and the negative consequences that instead of maintaining their own integrity, they spun to say and agree with whatever it would take to make this problem go away.
This not only does a huge disservice to the hard-working members of the NWS, it does a crippling disservice to the innocent American citizens who rely on the NWS to provide them guidance when they need it most. One can only assume that the highest levels of leadership in NOAA really have no experience – and no fundamental interest in – helping real people.
Now. The next part is really really important. Because the next bit is the thing that is so remarkable.
Following NOAA’s capitulation to political agendas, the president of the NWS Employees Organization responded by tweeting ‘the hard-working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight.’
Conscious that the leadership of NOAA had frankly done nothing to defend NWS staff - and in fact had willingly allowed them to be inaccurately accused of incompetence and unprofessionalism – the NWS then took matters into their own hands.
On September 7 2019, the NWS sent an email to all their staff saying that ‘We want to assure you that we stand behind our entire workforce and the integrity of our process. We continue to embrace and uphold the essential integrity of the entire process that was applied to ensure public safety first and foremost.’
Again, let’s take a moment to consider how very unusual this is. In a world where ‘no blame’ culture is used to focus on processes instead of teams and people, there is also - inevitably – often a ‘no exoneration’ culture. NOAA possessed neither the backbone nor the basic human decency to back their NWS staff. But the less senior NWS leadership did.
On September 9 2019, speaking at an Alabama NWS meeting, the Director of the NWS gave a speech supporting his employees, stating that the team stopped public panic and ensured public safety whilst maintaining their own integrity.
He received a standing ovation.
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What the above situation reminds us is that standing by your principles is never an easy thing to do when it matters.
When it doesn’t matter – when everyone agrees with you and the tide of popular opinion can support your actions – then standing up for principles like truth and justice is easy.
It is when it is not the easy thing to do that it really matters. It is when you are the lone voice against the storm that your words mean the most.
I’ve heard it summed up best by Mark Twain, in his famous essay on what it means to be a patriot.
‘Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.
Let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country. Hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.
It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. Republics are founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe in, no matter the odds or consequences.
When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move… your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:
“No. You move.”