John Morales is an Ivy League-educated atmospheric and environmental scientist who specializes in hurricanes. He began his career with the National Weather Service and has spent the past two decades as South Florida's leading meteorologist. As hurricane season approaches, Morales has been shouting from the mountaintop about how the war on science is impacting our ability to forecast and prepare for the most impactful storm events.
Morales caught my attention this week when he used his platform on NBC 6 to sound the alarm that southern Florida’s National Weather Service offices are currently 19 to 39 percent understaffed, blaming "the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attacks on science" and a 17 percent reduction in weather balloon launches across the U.S. for degrading the accuracy of our forecasts.
Morales is worried that fewer NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft flights will have us "flying blind" in terms of knowing the strength of a storm before it reaches us. He urged his audience to contact their representatives and demand that the cuts to such critical funding be stopped. As I dug a little deeper, my admiration for Morales’ voice only grew. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, Morales penned a paper in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists titled, Hurricane Helene isn’t an outlier. It’s a harbinger of the future.
In it, Morales provides a detailed yet accessible explanation of the factors that led to the hurricane being so devastating, while noting that it had been “extremely well forecast by the National Hurricane Center.” Despite our best efforts and a good grip on the forecasting, Hurricane Helene resulted in 251 deaths.
Now, imagine a storm of that magnitude hitting Florida this hurricane season, after FEMA and NOAA have been gutted, and you should not have much trouble understanding why Morales’ dander is up, especially after he recounted having been accused of being a “climate militant,” merely for warning people of the Helene’s potential severity in the run up to landfall. This led me further down the Morales rabbit hole, where I found a 2022 essay titled, The role of the scientist in a post-truth world, in which he laments the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and the deleterious effects it has had on his field.
In March, Morales issued a warning as to how DOGE cuts could easily cause scientists to miss the next “nightmare” storm, essentially making the broader case for what he described in this week’s newscast. The ethos of that relatively short video, embedded below, was presented in greater detail in an April paper titled, When scientists and weather forecasters are targeted, everyone loses.
Scientists across just about every discipline are echoing Morales’ concerns as they deal with the real-world ramifications of Elon Musk’s “chainsaw for bureaucracy” approach to trying and failing to cut trillions in government spending, so that the ultra-rich can continue to pay ultra-low taxes, while the government bankrolls his pipe dream of colonizing Mars and becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
Musk and President Trump had a very public falling out this week after Musk, who’s been alleged to have been on a drug-fueled bender throughout the campaign and his time at the President’s side, realized Trump and his lap dogs in Congress were not at all serious about cutting the deficit. With their “Big Beautiful Bill,” Republicans are obviously content to risk tanking the U.S. and even the global economy so long as it pacifies their Dear Leader and his donors.
Worries that Musk would be a “shadow president” were pretty quickly dispelled as it became clear that the administration is taking a patchwork approach of allowing a number of insiders to embark on separate and sometimes contradictory missions, while the president and his family line their pockets from an endless trough of grift that would make the Clinton and Biden families blush. It is estimated that the Trumps have been raking in a billion dollars a month since taking office on their meme coin enterprises alone, while every “deal” the president cuts seems to come complete with some sort of “investment” that benefits his enterprises directly.
Given the rate at which Trump is grifting and Elon’s companies’ stock values are plummeting, it is not impossible to imagine Trump being richer than Musk by the time it’s all said and done, especially when you consider Trump’s not so thinly veiled threats to cancel government contracts and subsidies to Space X and Starlink. But while the palace intrigue of such a public feud may be too tempting for us to look away from the D.C. soap opera, we would do well to remember that Rome is still burning.
We are Floridians, and Hurricane season is upon us. Republicans in Washington have sold us out, and bona fide experts like Morales will be assisting us with one hand tied behind their backs. Those deep funding cuts did not come even close to paying for the so-called big, beautiful bill. But, hey, at least the ultra-rich can keep more of their money to build adequate bunkers for when the climate apocalypse arrives. As for the rest of us, I suppose we can eat cake.
Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection available here.
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AuthorDJAnderson
This paragraph is from Rick Scott’s most recent newsletter. These pieces of legislation seem to be for “helping” citizens pay for their own disasters? Keep an eye on these for the upshot.
“And while you make sure your family is prepared, I'm working as Florida's United States Senator to ensure our federal partners are prepared to show up and support Florida families. It's why, just this week, I introduced the Residential Emergency Asset Accumulation Deferred Taxation Yield (READY) Account Act to help Americans better prepare for natural disasters by allowing taxpayers to establish a tax-free savings account specifically for home mitigation and disaster recovery expenses that would function much like a Health Savings Account. I also introduced the Homeowners Premium Tax Reduction Act to provide American homeowners an above-the-line deduction of up to $10,000 for premiums paid for homeowners' insurance annually on their primary residence. This is just the start of several pieces of legislation I will be rolling out this month to help families this hurricane season, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate and House to get them passed and on the President's desk for a signature.”
Sunday, June 8 Report this
Libby23
As an AMI resident whose home was decimated in Helen's storm surge I am petrified at not having sufficient information during this hurricane season. So what are we going to do about it?
Sunday, June 8 Report this
GoldenGopher
referencing Sen. Scott’s legislation: What will pay for his suggested tax cuts? He is slashing tax revenue with reductions for the top 10%.
Perhaps he thinks we are dumb enough to think that any of his bills will ever see the light of day? He wants us to think he actually is working for us?
Sunday, June 8 Report this
rjckeuka4
Thanks Senator Scott for "rolling out legislation" to help homeowners buy more insurance and save money to take care of their disasters while cutting FEMA dollars to provide a $300 million "golfing account" for the President to spend 25% of his time. So great you continue to work on behalf of the citizens of your State! You might want to consider privatizing Social Security!
Sunday, June 8 Report this
ruthlawler
I trust atmospheric and climate scientist John Morales far more than the pandering of the phony Rick Scott, who supports the Big Ugly Bill that slashes science and climate funding, as well as NOAA. Denying science and firing qualified weather professionals will only make a bad situation far worse. I agree with John Morales that we MUST put pressure on all our elected officials. Last hurricane season was the worst I've experienced in the 65 years I've lived in Florida, yet it will only get worse with the changing climate and severly understafed agencies that are meant to keep us informed. Ruth Lawler
Sunday, June 8 Report this