The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: More Trump Attacks on EPA and NOAA
Dear Diary. Its painfully obvious by now that the Trump Administration would like to take apart and end most government bureaucracies using Project 2025 as a blueprint. Extreme conservative mindsets postulate that government should only be in existence to protect people through the military and not much else. Excuses for budget cuts these days mostly center on U.S. debt and government waste. But I ask, shouldn’t good government lift all boats and protect people from not just military but environmental threats? Shouldn’t good government protect people from the worst parts of capitalistic excess, when greed starts to hurt many people?
These questions have been asked and debated for hundreds of years. In my opinion, the healthiest societies in which there is a good balance between government and the private sector are democratic socialist countries located in northern Europe, such as Denmark.
In any case, Trump has threatened to cut science that does protect us, such as that from the National Weather Service, which Is part of the National Aeronautic and Atmospheric Administration, and that from the Environmental Protection Agency. I ask, would it be better that weather and climate services be privatized such that people would have to individually pay for these instead of getting them via tax dollars? I say no because the most vulnerable among us need weather alerts and are not likely to have funds to pay for these out of pocket.
Here are more details from Newsweek:
Fired Federal Environmental Staff Back on Payroll, but Not Back to Work
Published Mar 17, 2025 at 4:49 PM EDT Updated Mar 17, 2025 at 7:58 PM EDT
Following court rulings against the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers, hundreds of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other environmental agencies were notified Monday that they were being reinstated.
However, according to some agency letters and memos viewed by Newsweek and a statement from the EPA, most of those federal workers will be placed on leave while the matter is litigated and will not be allowed to do the jobs they were initially hired to do.
A letter from U.S. Department of Commerce acting General Counsel John Guenther, which was viewed by Newsweek, informs NOAA staffers who were previously terminated that they will be “placed in a paid, non-duty status” until litigation is resolved.
In an email to Newsweek, the EPA press office said that the agency has rescinded the termination notices to comply with a recent court ruling and reinstated approximately 419 people. “Affected employees are mostly in an administrative leave status,” the EPA said.
Demonstrators gather outside the offices of the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on February 14 to protest against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency budget cuts and employee terminations. Bryan Dozier/AFP via Getty Images
Thousands of federal workers including hundreds of staff members at the EPA and NOAA working in weather forecasting, fisheries management and a range of environmental science and policy offices were fired in late February at the recommendation of the Department of Government Efficiency, the quasi-governmental operation set up by Trump administration adviser Elon Musk.
Labor, environment and civil rights groups claimed the mass firings, which mostly affected employees with less than one year of service in their current positions, were illegal. On Thursday, two judges in California and Maryland ruled that many of the fired workers must be reinstated, at least temporarily, while the courts consider the legality of the firings.
“These moves show once again that the Trump team is creating more waste of taxpayer dollars than they are saving,” Jeremy Symons, senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network, told Newsweek via email. The nonprofit group includes former EPA staff and scientists.
Tim Whitehouse, executive director at another nonprofit group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said the organization has been in touch with hundreds of terminated employees who have been informed that they are being placed on administrative leave.
“They are getting paid to not do their jobs—they will have no access to any of their agency computers, emails or equipment,” Whitehouse told Newsweek.
Whitehouse said that paying federal employees while keeping them from their assigned tasks is evidence that the underlying motive is not about efficiency.
“The whole purpose here is to destroy federal agencies that are viewed as problematic for certain parts of our economy,” he said. “It’s not about efficiency, it’s not about lowering costs to the American citizens, it’s about fundamentally changing the way our system of government works.”
The EPA’s press office did not respond to emailed questions regarding how placing staff on leave achieves greater efficiency.
“I just want to do my job,” said Sarah Cooley, a scientist who was fired from NOAA, where she was program director for the Ocean Acidification Program. Cooley said the agency stands to lose people with decades of experience and skills that the government had paid to help develop.
She told Newsweek via email that “sidelining me and all the other NOAA employees who are on this hold doesn’t take advantage of our skills at all.“
More:
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Thursday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)