Last week, he was among hundreds abruptly fired in a sweeping government purge which, critics warn, will delay hurricane forecasts, cripple climate research and disrupt vital fisheries.
“This is the dream job -- everything I want to do with my life,“ Di Liberto told AFP.
“We knew it was coming,“ he said. “But it’s never good to get such a dry, cold, callous email saying you were fired because your skills weren’t needed.”
“People won’t be evacuated on time from natural disasters,“ she said. “They could lose property -- or their lives.”
Around 700 NOAA employees -- out of a 12,000-strong workforce -- have been fired, though the agency has not confirmed a final number. According to The New York Times, the total, including resignations, could soon reach 20 percent of staff.
It also seeks to privatize the National Weather Service (NWS), forcing Americans to rely on commercial services.
“This is being carried out in a completely lawless and irresponsible manner.”
“But at the end of the day, loss of the work at the federal level can have a very extensive effect,“ she told AFP.
Flagship climate agency
“If they aren’t there to do their important jobs, these fisheries may not go forward, they may not open for the year,“ Gib Brogan, a fisheries expert at nonprofit Oceana, told AFP.
But it is NOAA's role as a cornerstone of global climate monitoring that has made it a prime target.
Its datasets inform major climate groups, he said, warning that severe cuts would amount to “willfully blinding ourselves to avoid the uncomfortable truth about the rapid changes the world is experiencing.”
“I am aware of several research groups that have preemptively downloaded the current version of their NOAA datasets of interest to mitigate some of the risks,“ Leonard Borchert, a climate statistician at the University of Hamburg, told AFP.
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