NOAA Quietly Kills Its Billion-Dollar Disaster Database And Report After Years Of Criticism

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ENB Pub Note: The article from the honest broker only discusses how bad the NOAA report was and that it is being shut down but leaves out some critical points about how it was used. Reports from NOAA were used to influence and manipulate legislation and energy policies in the United States. I added the top section on how it was used for these purposes. The impact was that trillions of dollars were going to be spent from taxpayers’ money through the falsification of reports.

Key Points

Research suggests NOAA climate disaster reports likely influenced Biden Administration’s energy policies and legislation.
The evidence leans toward their use in funding climate resilience and clean energy initiatives.
There is some controversy over the extent of their direct impact, with no explicit citations in laws.

Overview

The Biden Administration has heavily relied on climate data, including NOAA’s reports, to shape policies addressing climate change. These reports seem to play a key role in informing decisions on energy infrastructure and disaster preparedness, supported by significant funding through acts like the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Funding and Policy Connection

The administration allocated funds, such as $15.3 million in October 2024 via the Inflation Reduction Act, to enhance NOAA’s climate projections, which likely incorporate disaster reports. This funding aims to help communities prepare for extreme weather, directly impacting energy policy by ensuring resilient systems.

Legislative Impact

While not directly cited, NOAA’s data appears integral to laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested over $391 billion in climate mitigation, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, with nearly $3 billion for NOAA over five years. These laws likely used NOAA’s reports for planning clean energy and resilience strategies.

Survey Note: Detailed Analysis of NOAA Climate Disaster Reports in Biden Administration Legislation and Energy Policies

This note provides a comprehensive examination of how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate disaster reports have been utilized within the Biden Administration’s legislative and energy policy framework. The analysis is grounded in available public information and highlights the indirect but critical role these reports play in shaping climate and energy strategies.

Background on NOAA and Climate Disaster Reports

NOAA, under the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a leading agency for climate research, providing data on natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Its climate disaster reports offer detailed insights into the frequency, intensity, and economic impacts of these events, which are essential for policy-making aimed at mitigating climate change and enhancing resilience.

Biden Administration’s Climate Policy Framework

Since taking office, the Biden Administration has prioritized climate change as an “existential threat,” as stated during President Biden’s inauguration. This commitment is reflected in major legislative achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of August 2022 and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) of November 2021. These laws represent significant investments in clean energy, environmental justice, and climate resilience, with funding allocations that directly support NOAA’s work.

Funding Allocations and NOAA’s Role

The administration has made substantial investments in NOAA to enhance its climate data capabilities, which likely include the integration of climate disaster reports. Key funding details include:

In October 2024, NOAA announced $15.3 million in funding, supported by the IRA, to improve climate projections of extreme weather and climate disasters . U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo emphasized that this investment would develop new information services to help communities prepare for climate impacts, ensuring safety and resilience in energy systems deployment.
The BIL allocated nearly $3 billion over five years to NOAA for climate initiatives, as announced in June 2022 . This funding is broken down as follows:

Program	Funding (Over 5 Years)	Purpose
Climate Ready Coasts	$1.467 billion	Enhance coastal resilience to climate-driven events like floods and storms.
Climate Data and Services	$904 million	Improve climate data availability for policy and planning, likely including disaster reports.
Fisheries and Protected Resources	$592 million	Support ecosystem restoration, indirectly aiding climate resilience.

These investments align with the administration’s America the Beautiful initiative, aiming to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, and suggest that NOAA’s climate disaster reports are part of the data infrastructure supporting these efforts.

Use in Energy Policies

NOAA’s climate disaster reports are likely critical for energy policy, particularly in planning resilient energy infrastructure. The IRA, with over $391 billion for climate change mitigation, includes provisions for clean energy deployment, expected to increase by 25% in the near term . This deployment relies on accurate climate data to ensure projects, such as EV charging networks ($5 billion under BIL) and methane reduction measures ($20 billion under BIL), are sustainable and resilient to extreme weather events documented in NOAA’s reports.

For instance, the administration’s focus on doubling offshore wind energy by 2030, as noted in environmental policy discussions , requires understanding climate hazards, which NOAA’s reports provide. This data informs decisions on infrastructure siting and design to withstand climate impacts.

Legislative Integration and Indirect Influence

While no specific legislation explicitly cites NOAA climate disaster reports, their influence is evident in the broader policy context. The IRA’s investments in climate-smart agriculture ($19 billion) and urban forest carbon sequestration ($3 billion) likely rely on NOAA’s data for impact assessments and planning. Similarly, the BIL’s $105 billion for public transit and $21 billion for environmental projects may use NOAA’s reports to prioritize areas most vulnerable to climate disasters.

Executive actions, such as Executive Order 14030 in May 2021, directed a report on climate-related financial risks, potentially informed by NOAA’s disaster impact assessments . This report, with $5 million appropriated in August 2022 for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, underscores the administration’s use of climate data for policy-making.

Conclusion

In summary, NOAA climate disaster reports are likely a cornerstone of the Biden Administration’s climate and energy policy framework, though their influence is more indirect, embedded within broader climate data initiatives. Through funding from the IRA and BIL, NOAA’s enhanced projections and tools, such as the CMRA portal, support policies aimed at resilient energy infrastructure, climate mitigation, and environmental justice. While not explicitly cited, their role is evident in the administration’s reliance on scientific data for decision-making, ensuring policies address the growing impacts of climate disasters.

Key Citations

Source: The honest broker

NOAA has quietly retired its Billion-Dollar Disaster list after years of criticism over transparency, accuracy, and scientific integrity.

Last June, my peer-reviewed paper on problems with NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Disaster (BDD) tabulation was published. [emphasis, links added]

Today, NOAA announced that the BDD tabulation would no longer be updated by the agency, explaining that it has been “retired.”

While some media have chosen to make the BDD retirement about the Trump administration, there has also been some excellent reporting indicating that the retirement of the tabulation is a bit more complicated.

CBS News has excellent reporting:

According to a current NOAA employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their job, part of the reason the billion-dollar database is being decommissioned is because it is “not core” to NOAA’s mission, since its focus is on economics and an analysis of various datasets. Additionally, the lead researcher of the database resigned last month by taking a separation incentive package. . .

Criticism had been mounting against the billion-dollar database over the years, driven by Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and faculty at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Pielke argued it needs better metadata, review and documentation. He published a paper in the journal Nature last year about the database, saying it failed to meet NOAA’s “criteria of procedure and substance” based on the agency’s “information quality and scientific integrity policies.”

In a phone interview with CBS News, Pielke said, “I’m a huge fan of NOAA and the National Weather Service, they play a huge public service role, and I’m not happy with the sledgehammer that is being taken to the agency.”

He said having climatologists in charge of the data was problematic and resulted in some quality-control issues that could be addressed by proper economists. He also said the current dataset isn’t fixable at NOAA, but that it would be very important for another federal agency to take disaster losses seriously and track the data.

Interestingly, according to the CBS News report, NOAA leadership under President Biden was quite sympathetic to my critique.

The Washington Post also recognizes the nuance here, building on the paper’s earlier excellent deep dive (by Harry Stevens, now at the NYT) into the Billion Dollar Disaster tabulation:

Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said tracking disaster costs is essential but added that there are better approaches than the one NOAA has since taken. As a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Pielke studied the database and said he found inconsistencies in how loss estimates were calculated or inflation was factored in over the nearly five decades of disasters the agency tracked.

“It’s absolutely important for the federal government to track the cost of disasters; there’s no doubt about that,” Pielke said. “Perhaps this is an opportunity to do things right.”

The Post includes an important nugget of information:

The many recent departures at the agency include Adam Smith, who led the billion-dollar disaster program for 15 years before leaving last week.

Because the methodologies used by NOAA to generate loss estimates are neither public nor (to my knowledge) written down, it may be that with Smith’s departure, the agency may have lost the capacity to carry on.

Keep a lookout for the tabulation to reappear at a climate advocacy group, which is probably where this incarnation best fits.

Interestingly, sometime after my paper was published last year, NOAA added a disclaimer of sorts to the BDD homepage:

This product has no focus on climate event attribution.

After years of saying the opposite, encouraging media to report the opposite, and watching policymakers claim the opposite, it turned out that it was too late for NOAA to get the horse back in the barn.

The Honest Broker is written by climate expert Roger Pielke Jr and is reader-supported. If you value what you have read here, please consider subscribing and supporting the work that goes into it.

Read rest at The Honest Broker

The post NOAA Quietly Kills Its Billion-Dollar Disaster Database And Report After Years Of Criticism appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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NOAA Quietly Kills Its Billion-Dollar Disaster Database And Report After Years Of Criticism

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