The report, whose findings were accepted by NOAA’s leadership and released Monday, found that Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator, and former NOAA deputy chief of staff and communications director Julie Kay Roberts twice violated codes of the agency’s scientific integrity policy amid their involvement in the Sept. 6 statement. “The Panel concludes that Jacobs and Roberts felt that the situation they were in was out of their hands and their actions were driven by the direction of unnamed and uninterviewed Commerce officials who may well have been the subjects of the redactions,” McLean writes. Tonko had made an integrity complaint and is the sponsor of a bill that would increase accountability for such violations across federal science agencies. Her storied... Sign and send the petition: The Senate must wait until after Inauguration Day to confirm a new Supreme Court justice. Because he hadn’t bothered to look at a report in days, Trump mistakenly reported that Dorian represented a threat to the state of Alabama. However, these findings and the pending results of a Commerce Department inspector general’s report may cloud his prospects on the Senate floor. Jacobs and Julie Roberts did not believe it was a good idea to release a statement, but felt significant external pressure to do so. If not the single highest person in NOAA, who will stand for the Scientific Integrity of the agency and the trust our public needs to invest in our scientific process and products?”, “NOAA welcomes the report and its recommendations, which would strengthen the policy of consulting NOAA scientists in developing communications materials involving their expertise,” said Scott Smullen, NOAA’s acting director of communications.
When he was corrected, rather than admit to making an error, no matter how small, Trump amateurishly redrew the boundaries of the possible path to make himself “right.” And when weather service professionals tried to give out the correct information, Trump’s hurricane-sized ego meant that he launched a vendetta against meteorologists that left the public confused and actually increased the threat from the storm. Any election results reported on November 3rd will be incomplete and inaccurate. Editor focusing on extreme weather, climate change, science and the environment. The NOAA statement, issued Sept. 6, 2019, contradicted its own meteorologists at a weather forecast office in Birmingham, Ala. Her storied 27-year tenure as the... Sign the petition: Traditional media cannot make premature calls on Election Night. By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. “However, when the edit was not incorporated, they chose to release the statement as a NOAA document.”, Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official who directs the Union of Concerned Scientists Center for Science and Democracy and who was one of the complainants to NOAA, said: “There are absolutely no consequences for those who actually engaged in misconduct.” He called it “very disappointing.”, “It’s hurricane season again,” Rosenberg said in an interview. Sign the petition: Pledge to continue Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy of fighting for women’s rights. Western states are entering an active wildfire season just as coronavirus cases spike. NOAA leaders violated agency’s scientific integrity policy, Hurricane Dorian ‘Sharpiegate’ investigation finds. The requests were made in the wake of NOAA’s issuance of a Sept. 6, 2019, statement that criticized the National Weather Service forecast office in Birmingham for a tweet that contradicted Trump’s inaccurate assertion from Sept. 1, in which the president claimed that Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from the Category 5 storm. During its review, which lasted from December to March, the NAPA panel found Jacobs and Roberts violated NOAA’s scientific integrity policy in two instances, doing so “intentionally, knowingly, or in reckless disregard” of the agency’s code of scientific conduct. Instead, the report recommends that various guidelines and training materials be updated and that changes be made to the integrity policy procedures to ensure this does not happen again. And yet, Ross’ team is claiming this information “cannot be made public.”. Trump has nominated Jacobs to the Senate-confirmed position to lead the government’s primary oceans and atmospheric science agency, and his nomination has cleared the Senate Commerce Committee. The inspector general’s memo makes that clear enough: “ [this] appears to be directly linked to the content of our report and the findings of responsibility of the high-level individuals involved.” Donald Trump was wrong. “Dr.

However, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has blocked the release of the report. NAPA, a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution dedicated to facilitating good governance, conducts assessments for government agencies. Second, it concluded that Jacobs and Roberts violated the same code for their role in developing and releasing the statement, which “compromised NOAA’s integrity and reputation as an independent scientific agency.”, NOAA predicts Atlantic hurricane season will be unusually active, Jacob’s four-page response to NAPA’s report disputes he violated any policy, arguing that NAPA ignored the actual substance of the statement. Why would that be? “It will be clear to anyone reviewing the accounts captured in this highly credible, independent Scientific Integrity report that the political leaders who interfered in our emergency response system need to publicly apologize or resign,” said Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. Importantly, the NAPA panel was not permitted to interview the Commerce Department officials who demanded the statement be released.
All of this led to investigations, the results of which are ready—except that Trump is now blocking the release. It doesn’t matter whether the question is on the environment, the economy, the military, or anywhere else, Trump cannot admit a mistake. The scandal over the forecast for Hurricane Dorian has come to be known as “Sharpiegate,” after President Trump displayed a modified NOAA forecast map during an Oval Office briefing to depict the storm threatening Alabama. They recommended, at two different points, that the reference to the Birmingham WFO be removed — an edit that, if accepted, may have avoided the policy violation,” Volz wrote, using the acronym for a National Weather Service forecast office. It’s simply not in him. New bill would prohibit the president from nuking a hurricane, As a busy hurricane season looms, NOAA’s credibility has taken a hit, new emails show, Siberia’s persistent, freakishly mild weather is reverberating around the world, From national parks to the deep sea, plastic pollution is showing up wherever scientists look, National Weather Service proposes eliminating ‘advisories’ to simplify severe warning system. In September of 2019—a time that now seems at least a decade ago—Donald Trump told a series of lies centered around his response to Hurricane Dorian. And, as The New York Times reports, they’re pretty damn happy about that.