Miami Herald - October 11, 2005
Fred Grimm, fgrimm@herald.com

Sure, the Bush administration could fix what ails NOAA's hurricane research program. The Bushies could find money to fix broken buoys, replace faulty weather balloons, repair radar stations and upgrade the obsolete computers employed by hurricane forecasters.

The administration could fund more flying time for the National Hurricane Center jet. Or hire replacements for departed weather scientists.

The additional expenditures would look like a bargain up against the cost of faulty predictions.

But good science hasn't exactly been a presidential priority. Federal research budgets have been cut. Scientific findings at odds with political ideology have been altered or killed by political hacks. Politicos have overruled scientists at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries.

COMPLAINT PETITION

Some 6,000 American scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences, have signed a petition complaining about the Bush administration's dismissive view of science. The administration's political appointees have denied findings by the government's own scientist on industrial mercury pollution, arsenic levels in drinking water, emergency birth control, AIDS prevention, endangered species, abstinence-only education and, most famously, global warming.

Just last month, as Hurricane Rita bore down on the Gulf Coast, Sir John Lawton, chairman of Britain's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said, "If this makes the climate loonies in the States realize we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation."

See what happens when you give a bunch of pointy-headed scientists research money and modern equipment? Nothing but heresy.

The Herald's Debbie Cenziper, in her extraordinary series this week, reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even as it added millions to its administrative budget, has done little to address equipment, manpower and money shortages in hurricane research and forecasting.

Before Cenziper unearthed so many disheartening NOAA memos and e-mails and talked to disillusioned researchers, it was assumed that a more accurate prediction of the path and strength of hurricanes was simply unknowable.

CRIPPLING GAPS

Turns out, too few forecasters have been dealing with crippling gaps in crucial information. Their one-time state-of-the-art equipment has fallen into disrepair.

But fully funding hurricane research would mean empowering scientists, who've been nothing but trouble to George Bush, with all their silly theories about pollution, evolution and endangered species.

Worst of all, they've been warning that global warming, among other problems, causes more furious hurricanes to beat down on coastal cities. More money would only mean more embarrassing data that political appointees would have to stifle.

Besides, the Christian Right, a much more important Bush constituency than guys in lab coats, prefers to think of hurricanes as instruments of divine retribution.

Several Christian fundamentalists groups suggested that New Orleans was targeted by Katrina because of the city's propensity for drunkenness and debauchery. Philadelphia-based Repent America noted that the storm preempted the city's gay pride festival.

Religious prophecy comes a hell of a lot cheaper than funding hurricane research. Who needs hurricane hunter jets and weather balloons? Any sinner inclined to party the night away on South Beach knows damn well where the next Big One is headed.

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