And it also bears mentioning that Trump’s Sunday tweet wasn’t just a prudent assertion of the “need to be prepared”. He went way overboard with the alarmist rhetoric:
That statement at the time he made it was FALSE. As of Sunday, it was not “most likely”, or even likely, or even remotely possible, that Alabama would be “hit (much) harder than anticipated”.
Which was why it was possible for the National Weather Service in Birmingham to contradict Trump’s lie so strongly a bare 20 minutes after he tweeted it:
Face it, Magiver, President Trump on Sunday made a stupid and ignorant alarmist misstatement that was inconsistent with known data at the time, and caused a lot of unnecessary and unjustified concern among the people naive enough to trust his claims. That is not defensible behavior.
They also appear to consider him an expert in everything. The generals don’t know anything (but he’s got the best generals. But they don’t know anything). The weather people can’t even figure out which side of a Sharpie you draw with. He’s got the best people, the best people, believe me, but they can’t do anything without him but he never knew the guy.
The majority of two-year-olds are better at staying on track than he is.
He actually mentioned that. He said that on the map with many lines, each line representing a model, and in all cases Alabama was hit.
Can you find the map that shows every model of the hurricane’s predicted path hitting Alabama? Because I can find him saying that he had a map showing that.
What about Louisiana and Mississippi? Shouldn’t they have been concerned too? Why didn’t Trump include them in his warning?
Maybe you think that’s going too far? But the NHC map didn’t go far enough? So Trump’s Sharpie doodle got it just right?
This is Through the Rabbit Hole shit, man. Donny Jay could be the greatest statesman and president who ever lived and he still would have no business overruling qualified meteorologists. Who would even do that? And why?
That logic goes both ways. If this is such a no-hill, why are Trump, and you, spending any effort trying to prove that he was right? If you think other people need to demonize the President, why do you have such a need to defend him even when he’s demonstrably wrong?
This. If Trump had made a misstatement about the danger to Alabama, and when the National Weather Service corrected him had said “Sorry Alabama, my bad”, then I’d agree that people shouldn’t still be squawking about OMG Trump fucked up the hurricane forecast, how terrible.
But Trump didn’t apologize or admit his error: on the contrary, he’s been the one incessantly doubling down on this stupid and fundamentally trivial situation. (Probably in order to distract attention from some worse shit in his administration, or to rile up his base because he’d rather look flat-out stupid than conscious of his fallibility.) It’s one thing to make a dumb mistake, but it’s not cool to continue stubbornly and outrageously bullshitting the public you’re supposed to be serving.
It’s not “common sense” to alter a forecast map that has been prepared by trained meteorologists who use actual data to come up with the map.
No.
It’s not “common sense” to take a map made by scientists for the purpose of informing the public of a major weather event, and scribble on it with a sharpie to show you were right, and all the scientists who made the map were wrong.
I remember watching Baghdad Bob comically assert stuff that was clearly false, and thinking in some sort of superior fashion that I was happy to live in a culture where such things were utterly impossible. I apologize for being so incredibly naive.
Sure, anybody with common sense who doesn’t have a degree/experience in meteorology, or experience with the general tendency of gulf-/atlantic-coast storms to hook toward the northeast at some point during their life cycle. Why do you suppose the NHC (you know, the people who are qualified to make hurricane forecasts) never released a forecast indicating Alabama was in harm’s way?
While I still think this was just a mistake on his part that he’s no doubling down on, does he have any interests in Alabama? Is it possible he was trying to include Alabama in the forecasts in order to divert relief funds to that state or a business in that state?
The man can clearly draw a pretty good circular arc. I wonder if it was free hand, or if he used an old-school compass or an anchor point of some sort, about which to rotate his sharpie marking.
Supposedly he spent too much time looking at interior decorating patterns for his projects, so it would not surprise me if he took several copies of the map and just kept drawing on new ones until he got a good approximation of a circle.
Doug Jones is a Democrat who replaced Jeff Sessions in the Senate via special election. He has to run again in 2020. Trump needs every Republican senator he can get.
On September 4th he drew a line in sharpie that extended the NOAA forecast from the morning of August 29th into Alabama to back up his claim that on September 1st he had new information that Alabama was going to be hit.
“And, I will say, the states – and it may get a little piece of a great place: It’s called Alabama. And Alabama could even be in for at least some very strong winds and something more than that, it could be. This just came up, unfortunately. It’s the size of – the storm that we’re talking about. So, for Alabama, just please be careful also.”
The dates of these things matter. There was no forecast on September 1st showing a danger to Alabama. Altering a forecast from August 29th does not retroactively create a forecast on September 1st showing that Alabama was in danger.
About a third the way down the page one can the NOAA forecast from September 1. It is quite clear that Alabama is not in danger and even extending that forecast would not put Alabama in danger.
It was incredibly irresponsible for the president later that same to day to say that he had new information that Alabama was in danger when he did not. It is also not possible for the forecast from the 29th that he extended into Alabama on the 4th to have been that new information.
You miss several important points.
First, the NOAA forecast chart that was altered is an official government document that describes the results of the model+forecast. It doesn’t show Alabama because Alabama wasn’t in the forecast-the forecast is for a limited time, which is carefully documented and tested for validity. Obviously, common sense would have you realize that if the storm did in fact reach Tallahassee Alabama would feel the effects soon. But the NOAA map isn’t based on just common sense, it is based on a forecast for a limited time. The NOAA forecast WAS accurate at the time. It accurately described the results of the forecast. That the forecast turned out to change with additional data is inevitable and not a criticism of the forecast. That ALWAYS happens. To alter the map is to change what NOAA said. That is a bad thing.
Second, NOAA weather service forecasts are by law special. If the weather service makes a prediction that a storm is or isn’t going somewhere, many expensive and dangerous things start to happen. Evacuations, stockpiling, personnel relocations, etc. NOAA has been sued before for blowing a forecast which resulted in the loss of life. If it were some guy on Youtube speculating on the future course of the storm that would be one thing. But the President is a Government official. What he says matters. He was needlessly exposing the Government to possible legal liability. NOAA is very protective of their forecasting responsibility. For good reason. I live in Louisiana and the legal and practical consequences of a weather forecast are immediately obvious to us several times a year.
To cite a few examples, if a Tropical Storm or Hurricane is anywhere in the Gulf one can’t buy flood insurance. The window closes completely. So you can’t buy or sell a house when that happens. Which makes for a tense time down at the mortgage lenders offices whenever a storm is predicted. Large refineries and oil rigs have to suddenly shift operations and fly people around when a storm is predicted. And those decisions are not optional. No one is allowed to say, aw heck, the storm isn’t really coming here. I could go on. But millions of dollars are always spent and lives are put at risk (and occasionally lost) based solely on the NOAA weather forecast.
Yes, no one would take Trumps prediction seriously. But you could also bet that a business facing a large bill would try to make a case out of a top Government official making his own weather prediction.