Does Project 2025 call for closing the National Hurricane Center? No, that's not true: Nowhere in Project 2025's book, "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," does it say that. Instead, it calls for a review of the National Hurricane Center's work. It does recommend breaking up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, under which the National Hurricane Center operates.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on September 26, 2024, under a finger-pointing-down emoji 👇. The post's meme said:
Good time to remember Project 2025 plans to close the National Hurricane Center.
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Sep 30 16:02:27 2024 UTC)
"Mandate for Leadership," the official name of the 887-page comprehensive policy guide for the Project 2025 initiative, says very little directly about the National Hurricane Center (NHC). A single paragraph about the agency appears on page 675 of the book:
Review the Work of the National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service. The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally. Data continuity is an important issue in climate science. Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.
However, Project 2025 has plenty to say about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Also, on page 675, it states that the government agency, which includes six major offices, "should be broken up and downsized."
One of those offices is the National Weather Service (NWS), which operates the National Hurricane Center. The other five offices include:
- National Ocean Service (NOS)
- Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
- National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS)
- National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
- Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps
Project 2025 offers this assessment of NOAA's six offices:
Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry's mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.
Continuing, Project 2025 says it would largely outsource the operations of all the NOAA offices:
NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
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Other fact-check agencies also have reviewed this and similar claims, including US
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims involving Project 2025 can be found here.
