Fired climate scientist: NOAA workforce reductions won't make anyone safer

Tom Di Liberto, a former public affairs specialist and climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said in a Monday interview that the drastic cuts to the federal workforce at NOAA won’t “make anybody safer.”

“A ton of people got fired. That's basically going to lead to a short-staffed agency, that was already short-staffed, now trying to do more with less,” Di Liberto said in a CNN interview. “And that is just asking for a disaster to happen.”

“We know extreme weather is going to happen — hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms — and now we're asking an agency to basically try and forecast these, make the public aware of the impacts, but do it with less people,” he added. “You're just asking for a mistake to happen. You're asking for burnout to occur.”

Di Liberto, who was fired from NOAA last Thursday, said he is especially concerned about the effect of the steep cuts as hurricane season approaches.

“You’re taking a situation that's already fraught — hurricane season — that's so important. We always see the impacts of this every single year. And now you're saying, 'Oh, let's tinker with this,’” Di Liberto said.

“That's a horrible idea,” he continued. “In no world does that make anybody safer.”

NOAA and the Commerce Department, which houses it, have not disclosed how many people were cut or which offices they belonged to.

But a source with direct knowledge of the matter told The Hill that the original list of probationary employees submitted for dismissal comprised some 1,100 workers, and the original Thursday round of firings affected up to 800 people.

Speaking with reporters on Friday, Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA under the Biden administration, put the figure at at least 600.

These numbers put the cuts at between 5 percent and 9 percent of the agency’s 12,000-person staff.