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heatwaves
In 'Disservice to the Public', Trump Fires Content Team for Climate.Gov
"Hiding the impacts of climate change won't stop it from happening, it will just make us far less prepared when it does," one fired contractor said.
Jun 11, 2025
In its latest attack on climate science, the Trump administration has fired everyone who produced content for Climate.gov, the public-facing website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office.
A former contractor who asked to be anonymous told The Guardian that their entire team had been let go from their government contract on May 31, the outlet reported Wednesday.
"It's targeted, I think it's clear," Tom Di Liberto, a former NOAA spokesperson who was fired earlier in the year, told The Guardian. "They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for Climate.gov. I mean, that's a clear signal."
"I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that's not at all what it was."
The site's former program manager Rebecca Lindsey, who lost her job in the Trump administration's mass firing of probationary employees, agreed.
"It was a very deliberate, targeted attack," Lindsey told The Guardian, explaining that her former boss had told her that the orders came "from above" to cut the team's funding from a larger NOAA contract slated for renewal in May.
Climate.gov is currently well-respected for providing accurate, accessible information about the causes and consequences of the climate emergency.
"We were an extremely well-trusted source for climate information, misinformation, and disinformation because we actually, legitimately would answer misinformation questions," the anonymous contractor said. "We'd answer reader emails and try to combat disinformation on social media."
Oliver Milman, an environmental correspondent for The Guardian U.S. who did not break the news, described it as "one of world's leading sources of information on climate change."
Now, its ultimate fate is uncertain. The contractor said that a few pre-written pieces were scheduled to be posted on the site during June, but after that, it is unclear whether the site would continue to update or remain visible to the public.
There is also what Lindsey termed a more "sinister possibility": that the administration would use the site to publish false or misleading information dismissing the reality and risks of the climate emergency.
"I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that's not at all what it was," the contractor said.
The administration did keep two web developers on staff, which means it is possible it intends to keep the website running with new content.
In either case, however, the firing of the content team builds on a pattern in which President Donald Trump and his administration are making it harder for the public to access accurate scientific information, thereby impeding people from making informed decisions. It follows moves such as the dismissal of all of the scientists working on the National Climate Assessment and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's purging of a panel of vaccine experts.
"To me, climate is more broad than just climate change. It's also climate patterns like El Niño and La Niña," the contractor said. "Halting factual climate information is a disservice to the public. Hiding the impacts of climate change won't stop it from happening, it will just make us far less prepared when it does."
Outside scientists responded to the news with dismay.
"Sigh," wrote Robert Rohde, the chief scientist at Berkeley Earth.
Eliot Jacobson, a retired professor of mathematics and computer science, called the firings "your 'moment of kakistocracy' for today," referring to government by the least qualified.
The move comes amid other attacks on Americans' ability to prepare for and respond to the climate emergency and the many extreme weather events—from heatwaves to more extreme hurricanes—that it fuels.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warned on Tuesday that the Trump administration's firings of heat experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System would make it harder to respond to heatwaves—the deadliest type of extreme weather in the U.S.—as summer intersects with global heating to increase risk.
"Instead of investing in keeping people safe as temperatures spike, the Trump administration's staff and budget cuts to NOAA have left local weather service offices serving millions of people in hundreds of U.S. counties without the experienced leadership of meteorologists in charge. And firing federal heat health experts will further jeopardize protections for people," Juan Declet-Barreto, a bilingual senior social scientist for climate vulnerability at UCS, said in a statement.
"The president's proposed budget calls for more massive cuts to agencies like NOAA doing lifesaving work," Declet-Barreto continued. "And its regulatory rollbacks and cuts to climate and clean energy funding are aimed at increasing the use of fossil fuels, which are largely responsible for these rising temperatures. So, while the country suffers in what could be record-breaking temperatures, especially outdoor workers and vulnerable populations, fossil fuel executives will sit back in their air-conditioned offices watching President Trump do their bidding and grow their profits."
Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday offered a timeline for winding down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—which he has long threatened to eliminate.
"I'd say after the hurricane season we'll start phasing it out," Trump said, as NBC News reported. In the future, Trump said, more responsibility would fall with the states, any federal disaster relief would be dispersed directly from the president's office, and less money would be offered.
However, a FEMA higher-up toldCNN that the president's proposal was unrealistic.
"This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the federal government in emergency management and disaster response and recovery, and it's an abdication of that role when a state is overwhelmed," they said. "It is clear from the president's remarks that their plan is to limp through hurricane season and then dismantle the agency."
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A Dispatch From the Trumpocalypse
The long and short of it is that the world was going in the wrong direction even before Our Trump returned that second time and turbocharged that all too unfortunate trajectory.
Jan 22, 2025
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet light, warming the planet. It actually absorbs infrared light, and the article has been edited to reflect this.
My name isn’t important, only what I have to say. I’m writing with a pencil because I need to conserve my batteries tonight. It’s Year 24 of Our Trump (though he himself, of course, is no longer with us, just his kids who are running things). I feel like I should try to explain our era to whoever opens this time capsule a century from now, though you may need scuba gear to get at it. A lot of records could be lost by then. The Chinese climate hoax was less of a hoax than we thought at the time. Forgive me, Donald, but despite what the New Evangelical Church says, you were anything but infallible—even if I still can’t say so publicly.
I’d like to move away from the coast, maybe even go north. But real estate in the interior is too pricey, especially at higher elevations away from the flood plains. Looking on the bright side, though, my bunker has held up alright so far, even during the usual Cat 7 hurricanes, and I’ve stocked plenty of canned soup. I do worry, though, about being submerged by a storm surge. No one wants to end up like those poor people in Galveston.
In short, we used up our carbon budget twice as fast as anyone had predicted, though I wasn’t paying attention at the time. My friends then would have thought me crazy if I had.
I only hope that the state police won’t find my solar panels, which charge my contraband batteries to keep the AC going down here. We’re all haunted by that Black August in Palm Beach. It turns out that they had 100% humidity then. Combine that with temperatures reaching 120ºF and it dead-on kills you. Your sweat just can’t cool you down anymore, and you end up with terminal heat stroke. Of course, most of them could have been saved by air conditioning if it hadn’t been for the blackout at that new nuclear plant. Bad timing. It turns out such plants use water for cooling and, that day, the local water was so hot they had to shut the plant down.
Tipping Point
There was an unforeseen climate tipping point we blundered into. Looking back, I now realize that the U.S. put out 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the year before—yes, before!—the Second Advent of Our Trump. Horrific as that may have been, it was only about 11% of total global emissions, which hit 41.6 billion metric tons that year before the Second Advent (up from 40.6 billion tons in 2023). In short, we used up our carbon budget twice as fast as anyone had predicted, though I wasn’t paying attention at the time. My friends then would have thought me crazy if I had.
Even a few years ago, such facts and figures would have seemed unbearably wonky to me. I didn’t realize my wife would divorce me over them and I’d end up alone here in my bunker, doomscrolling the dark web looking for the catastrophes they don’t let the mainstream media report anymore. Don’t worry, I use a virtual private network and I don’t think the NSA can trace me. The long and short of it is that the world was going in the wrong direction even before Our Trump returned that second time and turbocharged that all too unfortunate trajectory.
Some people think we should flee the Big One. For me, it’s too late. The highways are a parking lot, and the price of gasoline is too steep because of the fracked fields going dry. Maybe Our Trump shouldn’t have banned EVs. And I can’t fly out of here anymore (even if I could afford to). It’s too hot for the airplanes to take off. I hadn’t known it, but flying depends on the air having a certain thickness, and hot air has less volume because the molecules speed up and spread around. That’s what Alfred, my PAIC (Personal AI Chatbot), told me when I asked him. Not sure I understand, but it doesn’t matter. The planes are grounded, and so am I.
The Resurrection and the Triumph of Coal
When Our Trump and Secretary of Energy Joe Manchin put billions into reviving Big Coal, that shot U.S. emissions up to 6 billion metric tons of CO2 in just a couple of years, then 7 billion, and so on, launching an international trend as Trumpist-style parties took over ever more governments globally.
As you might expect, once Elon Musk bankrolled the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and helped put it in charge, its Fourth Reich held huge rallies in soccer stadiums where they piled up banned solar panels and wind turbine blades and burned them. Then they rounded up immigrants to use as slave labor in Germany’s revived coal mines. When the European Court of Justice ruled against them, the fascist government in Berlin promptly annexed Belgium. And that essentially marked the end of the European Union.
The Queens neighborhoods near Jamaica Bay are thoroughly waterlogged. Wasn’t Our Trump originally from Queens?
Russia also doubled down on coal. Even in the early 2020s, its Kuznetsk Basin in Siberia was one of the world’s largest coal producers. When Our Trump gave Eastern Europe back to Moscow, the Russian Federation prohibited electric cars and heat pumps so it could sell its oil and gas. Poland predictably returned to being all coal all the time and the Le Pen cartel in France, taking its marching orders from Russia, soon legislated the same prohibitions on green tech. Europe’s carbon dioxide production soon skyrocketed.
But the worst problems lay in Asia, an area about which I’ve only recently started to get up to speed. The leaders of China and India insisted that they were damned if they would make sacrifices and risk labor unrest shutting down their coal industries, when the U.S. and Europe were planning to go all out promoting theirs. Imagine the Chinese communists being afraid of their own workers and, worse yet—something I hadn’t faintly realized then—but at the time half the coal mined in the world came from China and even before Our Great Leader came to power a second time, the Communist Party already had plans to mine a billion more tons of it per year.
With America’s implicit permission, Beijing promptly ramped up production. I found out that they were already putting out 70% of the world’s methane emissions from coal mines in the early ’20s. Even then, there were 1.5 million Chinese coal miners while more than 6% of that country still depended on coal plants for electricity. All those numbers only went up when the Communist Party, citing Our Trump, ramped up coal production, sending billions of tons more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Alfred says methane is up to 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even if for a shorter period of time.
In the early part of this century, India was already increasing its coal-fired power plants. When the Hindu nationalists fell in love with Our Trump, however, they became yet more bullish on coal. Their CO2 emissions went through the proverbial roof. They say that, given the smog in New Delhi, the capital, nowadays you can’t see two feet in front of you on a typical day, and 10% of Indians have chronic bronchitis.
The Indians had rejected criticisms of all those carbon-dioxide emissions from low-lying Bangladesh as “anti-Hindu propaganda.” Our Trump used to say that we’d just get more top-notch beachfront property out of sea-level rise, but now I realize that was a sick joke. If you keep heating up this planet, it melts the surface ice, which goes into the ocean and does indeed cause its level to rise. Warmer water also takes up more space, contributing to sea-level rise. So, the Bay of Bengal did indeed rise to claim the capital, Dhaka, along with 20% of the rest of the country. Famine left tens of millions of its people gaunt or skeletal. When millions of Bangladeshi climate refugees then tried to get into India, its army committed what’s now known as the Great Bangla Genocide. Historians say killings on that scale had never been carried out before.
Goodbye to Trump Tower
At an old, banned National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site on the dark web I found a document that said, “Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever—accelerating on a steep rise to levels far above any experienced during human existence.” That was from 2024, and whoever wrote it may now be in one of those reeducation camps for Beijing Ministry of State Security spies accused of promoting what the Trump Environmental Protection Agency branded “the climate hoax.” I might find myself there, too, if anyone discovers just how I feel these days.
I now realize that scientists have known for over a century that carbon dioxide absorbs the infrared light reflected off the Earth’s surface, keeping more of the sun’s heat in our atmosphere. I guess those UV rays used to hit this planet and then radiate back into outer space at a significantly greater rate, leaving us so much cooler than we are now. I never paid attention to any of this back in the twenties of this century. Since then, however, I’ve had time to get up to speed. After all, what else is there to do in this bunker?
Believe me, it was kind of embarrassing in 2034, even to me, when The Tower of Our Trump collapsed in Manhattan. Of course, as he said then, it was absolutely not his fault. Instead, he blamed the immigrant construction workers who built it, but they weren’t to blame, either. These days, at least 3 or 4% of the buildings in New York City are at risk from groundwater table rise. And it isn’t just that. Every time another big storm hits, flooding damages tens of thousands of buildings and turns the subway into a swimming pool.
Worse yet, more than a third of the buildings in New York are at risk from storm surges in year 24 of Our Trump. I read somewhere that the southern tip of Manhattan, the East Village, the Upper East Side, and the Tribeca and Canal Street areas now flood for some months of the year. Likewise, the Queens neighborhoods near Jamaica Bay are thoroughly waterlogged. Wasn’t Our Trump originally from Queens?
And to jump across what’s left of this country for a moment, today I caught someone on the dark web reporting from Phoenix, Arizona. It seems like the population there is just a quarter of what it was 25 years ago. Half of the year now it’s dangerously hot and there isn’t enough water. And the electricity blackouts that take out your AC are evidently a nightmare and a half. Same problem, hot river water can’t cool the plant equipment.
That fellow reporting from Phoenix said those local diehards who refuse to leave call themselves Fremen like in the remake of the Dune film and say they need stillsuits. When the Proud Boys won the election for city council there, Our Trump told them to deep-six the local climate action plan, which he swore was for “pussies.” Painting everything white, he insisted, made the city look like a tomb and he wanted the urban tree cover to be cut down for firewood.
Trump’s will be done, as they say.
At least Phoenix is still there. Los Angeles wasn’t so lucky. As it got drier and drier every fall, the Santa Ana winds regularly whipped up wildfires, and one neighborhood after another was turned into cinders. When Beverly Hills went up in flames the way Pacific Palisades had 20 years earlier, that was the nail in the coffin.
The Big One?
Now, I spend my days thinking about the Big One, about how it could all go down. When Chinese forces fired on that American destroyer off Taiwan, the Trump dynasty went ballistic. They said they would bring pain to Beijing like the world had never seen before. They didn’t want to send in ships or troops though, claiming their Dad had been against wasting money on foreign wars.
That was when someone on Fox & Friends (the only “news” show still allowed) suggested a symbolic response, an attack on that big new Chinese military base on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The Trump family immediately ordered a nuclear strike there. I hear Tiffany was the only one who didn’t think it was a good idea. But it melted a lot of the Thwaites glacier, one of the biggest in the world, and the rest of it slid into the ocean. They say it will raise sea level by two feet globally and pretty darn quickly, too, because of that nuke melting so much surface ice. Count on one thing: it will truly be a Trumpocalypse.
That would put my bunker under, of course. I only hope it’s watertight.
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Electing Our Future: NYC Needs a Climate-Conscious Mayor
Let us use Eric Adams’ indictment as a moment to not only address the city’s corruption but to turn the page from a local government complacent with climate inaction to one that is invested in climate justice.
Oct 23, 2024
Hurricanes Helene and Milton have once again brought climate change to the attention of many voters. With so much dialogue regarding hurricane response directed toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the president, it is important to remember that local governments play a vital role in climate change initiatives.
Local governments are significant actors in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts through city policy, zoning decisions, funding distributions, and the enforcement of emissions laws. As New York City grapples with the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams and a fast-approaching mayoral election, residents should look south for motivation.
NYC needs a mayor that is a champion for the climate justice movement to curb emissions, increase local resilience, and build adaptive capacity to help avoid the catastrophic scenarios witnessed this month from Florida to North Carolina.
Reign of Error
Following the “reign,” as he recently put it, of Mayor Eric Adams, the city’s emissions projections remain bleak. In 2022, according to the emissions inventories provided by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, New York City released 53.7 million tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, a 17% decrease from the city’s 2005 benchmark. This is markedly short of the city’s goal to reduce emissions by 40% (from the benchmark) by 2030 and clearly not on track for the goal to achieve an 80% reduction by 2050.
According to the “One City, Built to Last” report released in 2014 under Mayor Bill de Blassio, two-thirds of these emissions reductions will need to come from building efficiency. A goal of 35% building emissions reduction by 2025 was set under this plan. Now, just two months from 2025, the reduction of buildings emissions is just 22%. Law 97, an attempt to decrease building emissions by 40% by 2030, has proven to be largely ineffective. The penalty set in place by the law is much too low for the world’s top financial and real estate companies at just $268 dollars per ton of carbon over the limit. Also, with only 30 staff members dedicated to enforcing the law, the estimated 3,700 buildings that are not complying with the law may never be held accountable. Additionally, Mayor Adams has created another loophole for these non-compliers, Renewable Energy Credits that will allow the owners of these buildings to buy credits to offset their emissions while maintaining their dangerous emissions levels.
Transportation, the second largest emitting sector in the city, has decreased only 3% from the 2005 benchmark. The vast majority of transportation emissions comes from on-road vehicles, 58% of which are privately owned according to a recent New York Times report. A policy passed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to decrease the number of vehicles in the city, Congestion Pricing, was shot down by Gov. Kathy Hochul before it even took effect. The response from Mayor Adams? He undermined the policy by agreeing with the governor’s decision. NYC was set to be the first city in the country to introduce congestion pricing, which may have served as a model and had a lasting impact on the future of green cities in the U.S..
A City in Peril
As Eric Adams continues to pander to the financiers of the fossil fuel industry, (who helped fund his campaign) and ultra-wealthy real estate owners, climate change projections for the city are becoming increasingly frightening. The New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) 2022 report on climate risks states that sea level rise (SLR), flooding, and heatwaves will be among the most threatening climate change impacts for the city.
SLR estimates are dependent on global trends in emissions and associated warming so are difficult to predict on a local level. At the low end of the NPCC estimates, SLR is expected to reach 12 inches by 2050 and, at the high end, 23 inches. By the end of the century, SLR will be between 25 and 65inches, making many low-lying areas like Brighton Beach, Rockaway Beach, and Midland Beach uninhabitable, and leaving areas across NYC extremely vulnerable to flooding. Increasingly intense and unpredictable tropical storms and cyclones will make Superstorm Sandy level events more frequent, consequently threatening lives and depleting disaster recovery funding.
Heatwaves are expected to increase in frequency and intensity, which could be detrimental for New Yorkers living and working in an already deadly heat island that claims 350 lives per year. Extreme heat events are increasing at a rate of 0.47 days per decade in Central Park and about one day per decade at LaGuardia. Heatwaves and increasing temperatures will affect low-income communities disproportionately where the heat island effect is greatest due to a lack of tree coverage and green spaces.
The Case for a Climate Justice Mayor
Let us use Eric Adams’ indictment as a moment to not only address the city’s corruption but to turn the page from a local government complacent with climate inaction to one that is invested in climate justice. We need a mayor that does not have deep ties with the funders of global warming but one that has deep ties in community organizing. We need a mayor that understands the dire consequences climate change will have on the city, from the economy to people’s livelihoods. We need a mayor that can help transform the city into a living example of a sustainable and equitable city. We need a mayor that cares about the future.
Of course, a mayor alone cannot not fix the plethora of climate change related issues the city is facing. But here is what a climate and community focused mayor could do for the city.
- Use New York City’s political and economic power to challenge Gov. Hochul when she makes irresponsible decisions, like shooting down Congestion Pricing and refusing to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act.
- Enforce existing buildings emissions caps and propose stricter emissions laws.
- Advocate for zoning laws that will promote renewable energy production.
- Create building codes that require greater energy efficiency while simultaneously ensuring infrastructural resilience to climate change impacts.
- Increase the pace of electrifying the city’s fleets and adding solar to all public buildings.
- Work directly with low-income communities to increase their climate resilience while protecting the areas from climate gentrification.
- Work directly with young activists and students who will be affected by climate change for their entire lives.
- Stop cop city, as it is part of a carceral system that disproportionately affects Black and brown communities, leading to inequity and increased vulnerability.
- Divert funding from the police system to climate change initiatives, homelessness services, and community organizations.
- Fix the city’s corruption.
As we saw this month in the South, entire cities’ futures rest on our ability to mitigate climate change and adapt to its powerful impacts. A climate justice mayor will lower the city’s emissions and increase the city’s resilience and adaptive capacity by focusing on improving social services; ending the city’s corruption; and working directly with civic groups, young people, and low-income communities. New Yorkers and the media must make climate justice the forefront of campaign issues as the mayoral election heats up.
Sunrise Movement NYC is a youth movement pushing to replace Eric Adams with a mayor who takes bold action to make environmental, economic, and racial justice the NYC standard. Follow the Sunrise Movement NYC Hub or @sunrisemvmtnyc on instagram to get involved and learn more about the future we are fighting for.
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