What’s the Weather? NOAA knows

 

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Transcription

David Martin: This is the Good Government show.

Craig McLean: In 1970, the government reorganized in order to put everything oceanic in in one place and under one roof. And that was what became NOAA. So what? No, it does on a daily basis is understand the ocean, understand the atmosphere. But no is a whole lot more than than snorkels and weather balloons. $4 per citizen for a weather forecast per year.

That’s not a lot of money. That was a nickel a day. Writ large for people. Why should the United States lead? The United States has been a moral, scientific, and economic leader for decades, since the Second World War, and one has to wonder why we’d want to give that up. And to whom would we seed that international leadership to?

These people will walk on broken glass atop hot coals just to come to work. And I’ve seen that and their loyalty and their dedication is exceptional to the mission and also to the purpose of serving the public.

David Martin: Imagine you’re a New England lobsterman and it’s time to set the traps. Or you’re a farmer in Iowa trying to figure out when to plant the corn. Maybe you’re about to head out on vacation and trying to decide whether to pack your rain gear for the hike you planned. Think about that for a minute. Each one of those people, the fisherman, the farmer, and maybe somebody just like you needs to know what the weather will be like.

They need to know if the water is clean, if the air is pure, and when the sun’s coming out, all those people, whether they know it or not, go to the same place. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA. Welcome to the Good Government Show. I’m your host, Dave Martin. What’s the weather? How many times have you asked that question?

Well, I get a chance to ask that question of Craig McLean. Until recently, Craig was assistant administrator for research at NOAA. He was also acting chief scientist at NOAA and all. He served for 41 years there. As you’ll hear the work, they do it. NOAA affects us all here on the Good Government show. We wanted to look at different government agencies and find out what they do, how they do it, and how they spend our money.

NOAA, like many federal agencies, is currently facing potential massive budget and workforce cuts. We wanted to hear how they really worked for us. Remember, government spends our money. So I wanted to hear what we get for the money. No expense. As you’ll hear, they do a lot. They’ll tell you what the weather will be. More importantly, they tell local weather forecast what they’re seeing.

So when they give their weather report, it comes from the most accurate and scientific information available. They also look at weather patterns for 50 years in the future. And they can tell you how many fish there are in the ocean. Well, they can’t exactly tell you how many fish there are on the ocean, but they’ve got a good idea.

And Craig will also tell you the reason why your lobster roll is going to cost more. So coming up, NOAA’s former chief scientist, Craig McLean, he’s going to tell you what NOAA does and how they do it. That’s coming up right after this.

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Welcome to the Good government show. I am very happy to have with me Craig McLean. He was for 41 years with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA. You recently retired as the assistant administrator for research. You had that role for a few years prior to that, you were the acting chief scientist, for five years.

You were a member of the US delegation to Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission? Unesco organization. You were on many, UN commissions and other commissions across the board and across the world. Welcome to the Good Government show. Great to have you.

Craig McLean: Thank you, David, very much. And may I just please say thank you for having such a show? Good government is very important to the people of the nation, and I appreciate that you’re highlighting these matters. Thanks.

David Martin: Well, thank you for coming on. And what I wanted to do is you are no longer with, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for here on call, just NOAA. Just tell everybody. What do you do? What? What is NOAA’s mission? Let’s start.

Craig McLean: There. If I could start with a little bit of history. Sure. We go back to the technologies that were born in the Second World War to fight the war, making the underwater transparent, to find enemy submarines, having radar that could penetrate the skies to find aircraft. In peacetime, those technologies were turned to science so that we could learn more about the ocean.

We could learn more about the atmosphere. Fast forward then, to realizing that science had a lot of opportunity in the wake of Jacques Cousteau and and other writers of the time, Rachel Carson, with with the sea around Us and many other.

David Martin: I was with all those Jacques Cousteau specials when I was a kid.

Craig McLean: So you and I have a similar vintage would resonate with that?

David Martin: Yeah.

Craig McLean: In 1970, the government reorg organized in order to put everything oceanic in in one place and under one roof. And that was what became NOAA. So NOAA was established with several missions in mind to get a handle on marine resources. Fish mostly, but that included minerals that included the resources from the sea. Beyond marketable harvestable fish to make nautical charts, to continue to make nautical charts that would enable safe navigation and the transportation of goods into the country.

It brought in the weather service because people in, as of 1970, were tuned in well enough to realize that the weather is driven by the ocean. And to understand that relationship would be very important for the future of weather forecasting, and looking at the development of a better scientific understanding of what’s happening in the ocean, where I think as many of your your viewers may know or may be surprised to know 50% or even more than 50% of the oxygen we breathe comes from.

And I know you’re about ready to say trees, because that’s what was in all of our textbooks. We were kids, but it’s the ocean. It’s the planktonic layers through the upper, upper few hundred meters of the ocean. They’re photosynthetic and they are generating oxygen. So what NOAA does on a daily basis is understand the ocean, understand the atmosphere.

But no is a whole lot more than than snorkels and weather balloons. Right. The ocean side.

David Martin: Right is.

Craig McLean: Integrated with the atmospheric side is integrated with the weather forecasts, which is integrated with what we know and understand today about climate. So NOAA answers what I would like to refer to as for God level questions.

David Martin: Level questions. Go ahead for one.

Craig McLean: How many fish are in the sea? NOAA has to answer that. You have to understand the entire marine ecosystem in order to answer that question.

David Martin: I got a question. How many fish are in the sea?

Craig McLean: More than two. It’s. It’s a dynamic number.

David Martin: All right.

Craig McLean: It’s a dynamic number. And and seasonally, annually, NOAA is out measuring what those populations are so that a safe harvestable amount of fish can be, consumed or harvested. And so and then also to understand where those critical parts of the habitat are that we have to protect so that those fishery nurseries can continue to rear their young and have productive fisheries.

1970s had a lot of fisheries and collapse and decline. The United States has recovered from that. Many other nations haven’t. So the United States has done very well through NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service, making sure that fresh seafood is available and that those stocks are capable of being harvested without doing permanent damage to those stocks.

David Martin: Why is that so important? If you’ve got other countries in the world that aren’t abiding by the same rules? I know there are other countries that are overfishing, and they’re fishing in places where in us fishermen can’t go. So if they’re not playing by the rules, why do we have to and why do we have to make those rules?

Craig McLean: I think that’s an argument that could be applied to just about everything. Should the United States be a leader in fishery conservation? Number one, it helps us with our domestic stocks. Number two, it helps us as a world leaders, show others how they could and should and and eventually will behave. The same can be said in the in the climate setting, which is why Trump wants to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

Why should the United States lead? I think that’s more than a rhetorical question. Why should the United States lead? The United States has been a moral, scientific, and economic leader for decades, since the Second World War, and one has to wonder why we’d want to give that up and to whom would we cede that international leadership to? So how many fish are in the sea?

There’s an answer every year, and it’s dynamic, but it’s a it’s an answer that looks at the entire composition of the ocean itself biologically, chemically, physically, etc. so it’s comprehensive ocean knowledge. Next question. What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow? That’s the National Weather Service of NOAA. And they put their forecasts out every day several times a day.

And David, you know this from your broadcast career, but doctor Bob, doctor Sue on channel six, channel eight, it doesn’t matter where they are. They get their information from the National Weather Service, from the NOAA satellites, the NOAA aircraft that are penetrating hurricanes or flying over storms from these tsunami weather buoys, dedicated weather buoys, many other attributes and aspects that that are providing that information.

But perhaps the most important thing in letting people know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, whether it’s fire weather, tornado warnings, hurricane warnings is the fact that the weather service doesn’t just put that forecast out. They make sure that the forecast goes to what the weather service describes as the last mile, delivering it to the citizens so that the citizen knows how to respond to what this warning is.

If we increase the tornado warning to 25 minutes, we want that citizen to say, well, I’ve got 25 minutes, maybe I’ll go to the laundry first, pick up the laundry, and then find my way to the tornado shelter. We need to understand how people think, and the weather service has done that. The research component of the agency has done that.

To really understand the social science aspect. But what is the weather going to be like tomorrow? NOAA does that with accuracy. NOAA shares that with the broadcast meteorologists so that they have a wider reach in disseminating what that forecast is. But also it’s the backbone of a $10 billion annual industry of private weather services and private weather. Custom forecast weather.

David Martin: Why can’t I just get why can’t I just get my weather from a private meeting? I go sailing and before I sail, I take out my WeatherBug app and I check the wind and I check the tide. And, you know, why isn’t that good enough?

Craig McLean: Well, where’s it coming from? It’s coming from the National Weather Service, NOAA, and it’s repeated by those subscription based services that you pay for. But you could also get it for free from NOAA.

David Martin: Yeah.

Craig McLean: No, it’s not trying to put those those services out of business. No, it enables those services, as I say, to the tune of $10 billion a year, revenue in those industries to privatize it. Do you want to be in the market of saying, who gives me the most favorable weather? Or is it is it a marketplace of favor?

As to who I get my weather subscription from right now, the citizen can get the solid well forecast. Official, legally official weather forecast from the United States government through the National Weather Service at NOAA. You additionally can get it from the Weather Channel. You can get it from other small providers. You can even look on your cell phone and see the integrated radar image that is being provided by a third party.

David Martin: Right?

Craig McLean: Frankly, those third parties do often a better job of conveying to the citizen some of the visual information than what what the weather service is, is prepared to do.

David Martin: But there’s a there’s a joke. I’d love to be a weatherman on TV, because all you have to do is be wrong all the time. So, you know, you’re laughing. Explain that. Why is why is the weather forecast always wrong? Doctor, I don’t.

Craig McLean: Think the weather forecast is always wrong. I think the weather forecast is right so many times. So first of all, what are we forecasting? What do we expect the National Weather Service to forecast for us for a cost of about $4 a year, your tax dollars, $4 of your tax dollars a year, pay for the weather service forecasts that you get that channel six, channel five, whomever that they rely on their forecast from.

And being a weather forecaster is more than more than the jokes which even they can chuckle at.

David Martin: Right?

Craig McLean: But when I see a weather forecaster offering a life threatening forecast and puts in the forecast itself, significant loss of life can result if you don’t follow or heed these warnings. And if you don’t understand that, here is my cell phone number. Call me. And when I saw that more than once, I realized the level of dedication that these forecasters have, and I also have seen what their emotional reaction is when something happens where they realize the citizens didn’t take heed and take warning, such as in tornado outbreaks where the warnings were well in advance of the event.

But people chose not to to take you to the warning. It’s emotionally impacting for these forecasters because they know their job is to save lives. Now is the weather the way it was originally forecast? So I’m sitting here in the shadow of Washington, D.C., Ocean City, Maryland, a very high tempo vacation resort in the summertime. The weather service job is not to tell you whether it’s going to be sunny and 64 degrees or partially sunny and 63.5 degrees, it’s for safety of life and property.

That’s what the taxpayer is paying for. And then to go beyond that and to have refinements of that weather. I am in agriculture, and I want to know if I should be irrigating the next month more than I did last month. Do I need to budget for that? You can look at the seasonal forecasts that NOAA gives you for that.

But then there’s also custom forecasts that commercial commercial industries put forward that that are enabled by the free information coming from the weather service paid for by the taxpayer. So years ago, David, there was a proposal to eliminate the weather service in the congressional proposal was so uninformed that the sponsor of the bill actually suggested that we don’t need the weather service because we have the Weather Channel.

And if you go to the Weather Channel, they would be the first ones to tell you all their product comes from the National Weather Service, and it’s free and it’s paid for by the taxpayer.

David Martin: I checked western Long Island Sound weather every time I go out.

Craig McLean: And I’m betting that you could honestly say it’s not wrong. Most of the time it’s better than 51%.

David Martin: And I have on my on my radio VHF. I do play the weather loop, you know the updates. Yeah.

Craig McLean: There you go. Okay, so how many fish in the sea check. Right. What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow? Check. What’s the weather going to be like 50 years from now? 100 years from now? That’s climate science. And that NOAA has specific legislation that commands the performance of that mission. And the reason I say 50 and 100 years, it could be three years.

It could be any period of time. Most commercial paper mortgages and the like, they’re sold very quickly on a rapid turnaround, three years being a magic number for commercial paper. But 50 years, 100 years. That’s a magic number for infrastructure. When we build infrastructure in this country, we build it, unfortunately, with a resident complacency of how much rain do we get today or how much winds do we have today?

But the climate is changing and the severity of weather impacts is increasing. So not too far from my home was there an incident of torrential rainfall? A 500 year rainfall, which unfortunately those are happening more frequently than 500 years now. Based on the statistics genesis of insurance companies, and then also based on the data from the National Weather Service.

But the water could not fit, the volume of water could not fit in in the standpipe. That would take away the drainage. And it the tide wound up rising in an in an unheard of inundation of an apartment complex, and loss of life ensued. People couldn’t get out in time. It was a flash flood, and largely attributable to the fact that the infrastructure that had been installed 50 years ago never anticipated that volume of water having to be evacuated, and then people built near it.

So the idea of what’s the weather going to be like in the future has many consequences to us. Climate science and climate is declared as a bad word by the current administration. The president lacks the ability to understand the complexity of science. Perhaps, but for some reason he has discounted climate science. And and what we find ourselves in is the reality that not only did government and academic scientists forecast the future we’re now living, but scientists from Exxon, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, coal companies 50, 30 years ago, the science papers that were coming from the scientists who worked for these companies said the same thing.

So the science stands on its own merit. We don’t elect science. We elect policy every four years. We don’t elect science.

David Martin: I’m I’m, you know, from Miami, sort of. And, I know that when they have high tides and rain, on Miami Beach, the roads flood and all the water comes up through the, through the sewage system. Is that kind of stuff you’re talking about?

Craig McLean: That’s the kind of stuff.

David Martin: That’s not planned for, right?

Craig McLean: That’s right. That’s sea level rise. Those are circumstances that are changing. And our current infrastructure is not capable of accommodating. And it raises a series of questions for coastal landholders and also raises questions for people in the middle of the country as well as the climate is changing. But those impacts are a signature of a change in climate.

And to be honest, and we need to be honest when we talk about science, there’s also a matter of subduction. So while the ocean is rising and and expanding as it warms, there also is subduction of certain land points, some areas greater, some areas lesser, some parts of the landmass are actually elevating, not subducting. So that complex of phenomena that is taking place, the one is a geological phenomena.

The subduction, but the other is because the Earth is warming. We’re seeing oceans expand, we’re seeing wind patterns change. We’re seeing water blown onto Miami rather than carted off with the the Gulf Stream. So those aspects or those impacts are part of what is changing around us. And they are they are well forecast. So the forecast future is not optimistic.

We’re going to be facing significant land based expenses of coastal sediments, major cities. We’ve been stable for 6000 years in in civilization, building on the sea level as we have known it. And it’s going to be changing.

David Martin: So but you look at the weather right.

Craig McLean: I right now I, I have a, I have a place near the beach.

David Martin: I walk.

Craig McLean: To the beach, I want to be beach from there. And my eye is on that. David, how long do I hold on to that property? When is the value going to be impacted? I have friends up in parts of the country where where houses are falling off of the bluffs that that they had been comfortably settled on for 100 years.

And now that erosion is taking place because the storm patterns are changing. I.

David Martin: Picture my house on Cape Cod that said, you know, this house is slowly slipping into the ocean and there’s there’s no front yard anymore.

Craig McLean: Right? Yeah. Right.

David Martin: So so that’s three. So, so far we’re up to how many fish in the sea. What’s the weather tomorrow. What’s the weather in 50 years where we keep track of your four point. Sorry.

Craig McLean: And here’s your here’s your curveball now. All right. Is it is it wise to build on shifting sands?

David Martin: Probably little.

Craig McLean: A little quasi biblical reference there. But basically that’s coastal zone management and the coastal science, the largest deposition of wealth in the nation is not necessarily Elon Musk. It is private ownership aggregated across all of the coastal states, Great Lakes and the like. It’s basically those waterfront communities, and that’s private wealth. And those coastal areas are under threat because of a change changing climate, increased storm ferocity, sea level rise.

It’s it’s a it’s a question of how long can you sustain the economic investment at its current level of worth before you you wind up seeing that the house falls off the bluff on Cape Cod, or the storm frequency in places like Miami start to devalue and cause the lack of insurable property. If you can’t insure property, you can’t get a mortgage, you can’t get a mortgage, you can’t buy a house.

What happens to the real estate market? And these are not doomsday prophesies. These are just informed forecasts, the timing of which we don’t accurately have in the palm of our hand, because we need to do more work in order to figure out what’s going to happen. We know the what, but when will it happen and how bad?

David Martin: I want to throw some numbers out to you because I’ve read a lot of numbers. I think I saw somewhere that, Oh, here it is. NOAA has a $6.7 billion budget. What do we get for $6.7 billion?

Craig McLean: You get much more than $6.7 billion of economic security. That number would pale compared to what is traded in a futures market that’s looking at the seasonal forecasts that NOAA prepares. Because we measured the ocean, because we measure the land, the atmosphere and the like. No, it produces any number of information products that are a distillation of the science work that’s done inside of the agency.

But the the breakdown in the NOAA budget is roughly like $1 billion for the weather enterprise, about 2 billion for the satellite enterprise. And then the aggregate of each of the others, including a fleet of of 18 ships and aircraft, are part of the operation that we have. It’s a sophisticated agency that has a lot of intricate parts that work together in order to give the kinds of $4 a day weather forecasts of your tax money.

Right. That six point some billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, $4 per citizen for a weather forecast per year. That’s not a lot of money. That was a nickel a day, writ large for people.

David Martin: Well, I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to quote you now, NOAA is a $12 billion agency trapped in a $5.5 billion budget. You said that. Is that.

Craig McLean: True? Yes I did, yes, I did. It is. Yeah. Yes. If, David, if we look at what Congress has asked NOAA to do, and in the lawful state that we have, federal agencies are created in order to fulfill the laws that were charged to them. If we look at what NOAA is asked to do, at the time I made that statement, I believe that was that.

The House science, Committee, a House Science Committee hearing? I believe it was I.

David Martin: Think I was 20, 21 is what I have in my notes. Yeah. I read about a year or so.

Craig McLean: The NOAA budget was slightly less than it is today. But at that point in time, a pencil sketch of all the authorizations. Those are the instructions from Congress. Those are the laws from Congress that tell a federal agency what it needs to do in order to do that job. There’s no way that NOAA, even at the current budget, could fulfill its complete obligations at the level of spending that’s allocated for that mission.

There’s probably a lot of federal agencies that could say the same thing, but the urgency of being able to deliver that, that mission set of components that NOAA has climate forecasts, weather forecasts, fishery forecasts, ocean forecasts, all of that together, nautical charting, managing marine areas for future generations. All of that. There’s no way we could do that on the money that’s currently allocated.

It’s at least double, if not more, in terms of what the what the NOAA budget needs to be.

David Martin: So I saw this, the NOAA as part of the Department of Commerce, looking at the overall budget for the Department of Commerce. We’re looking at $16 billion. NOAA is 6.7 billion. But that’s a very small percentage of the federal budget. How do you justify being close to half the budget?

Craig McLean: There’s not much else to commerce other than NOAA. So that number sounds very high. But NOAA is better than half of the commerce budget, better than half of the Commerce people. Yet secretaries of Commerce, perhaps, except Gina Raimondo, the former governor of, Rhode Island, coming from the Ocean State.

David Martin: Right.

Craig McLean: Just about every secretary comes into that role for finance, banking, trade and the like, not for the portfolio that NOAA carries. So I’ll just take this opportunity to offer that. I have found over my 40 years that the Department of Commerce, institutionally, both parties, Democrats, Republicans, have been remarkably inept stewards to look out for the mission, welfare of NOAA and the agency that was created to be doing the work that that we rely on.

Justifying that budget is to look at the product that’s rendered from it. Programs like sea Grant have an 800 to 1 return on investment that’s independently derived. Some of the ocean measurement programs that that we have in this agency have returned far more money in commercial investment and futures markets by understanding what the seasonal weather is going to be like 2 or 3 seasons from now.

So justifying that budget, we could do economically, but we could also do in number of lives, saves number of livelihoods saved and further developed. The agency’s mission has been carefully scrutinized by Congress and has resulted in economic opportunities, even though most people might look at NOAA as being an ocean and weather agency, it’s much more than that. And the secondary and third order application of the products that the agency generates is the backbone of insurance rates.

It’s the backbone of what your mortgage would be, what mortgage rate you would be paying because of what the economic future evolves to based on what we realize the future is going to look like. So there’s so much more to it. NOAA, being half of the department’s budget is is an opportunity to consider whether NOAA really belongs there.

But I think right now in, in this political timing, just keeping the agency alive when project 2025 talks about taking the agency apart, that’s the first order. But then the second order would be what’s the best place in government for NOAA to be? And I think increasingly there are views in Congress and in the community that NOAA should be an independent agency rather than under the Department of Commerce.

David Martin: I want to talk about a couple of things that I uncovered as I was looking up NOAA. That was in 19, I’m sorry, in 2020, that mold in 2023, the ocean, Coastal and Great Lakes Research got $251 million from NOAA. Do you do you are you familiar with that project? And do you know that was for.

Craig McLean: That exact one? No, but that sounds like, a one of many in terms of working in these areas. If you have a few more details, you could you could help me out.

David Martin: I don’t I just saw some highlights, you know, Ocean Laboratories and cooperative institutes, $39.5 million. That was a 23 grant. National sea college programs, $80 million. That’s another grant. There’s a lot of money. There’s a lot of money here. I mean, it was going in the right place.

Craig McLean: Yeah, yeah, it’s gone to the right place. Let’s take the Cooperative Institute’s budget line item that you’re looking at. Sure, 50% of the science that NOAA performs is performed by universities and university employed scientists, and it’s a force multiplier. It’s also a recruitment stream for us to look at, who know where might want to hire long term, but to get the talent coming out of universities.

So those dollars being applied to cooperative institutes, those are five year renewable agreements with universities that compete for the status to perform this work for NOAA. So that is an enabling factor that helps us produce our mission. And it also puts strength in the hands of the universities to continue to develop scientists and students who are going to be performing in that.

David Martin: Why can’t the schools just pay for it themselves that.

Craig McLean: Schools don’t have the money to pay for it? I think that’s one of the current debates right now. I saw the president offering a remark about major universities having such endowments, and why they don’t use the endowment money in order to pay for what the government is otherwise fulfilling, in other words, reducing the overhead. I don’t know how the universities are going to be able to function by taking the current overhead rates and bringing them down to the likes of 15%, because universities are complex places that need to be funded and the overheads just like just like Mr. Musk has overhead in space for his salary, his car, his his enterprise that supports the operation of the function. So to the universities, those universities have to pay for the infrastructure. The fiscal plan, the heating of the dorms. I think tuition doesn’t cover all of that. So you need you need the government to be providing the money to the universities to run the labs and keep the equipment running to procure the equipment and the like.

Sea Grant, I’ll give you another example. Sea grant. Sea grant is in 34 coastal states and territories. It’s a partnership between the states and the federal government. Two federal dollars to every one state dollar comprises the opportunities for coastal residents, coastal communities, coastal businesses to get expert science advice on how they can prosper. And sea Grant has, by their independent calculation of economists, about an 800 to 1 return on investment for that money.

In terms of the benefit to the economy, marinas have avoided closing seafood manufacturers have avoided losses, they have increased their productivity. Shellfish beds have been enhanced by the sea grant advisory services so that they don’t have to close, given in places like Oregon and Washington, where the ocean is is too aggressive to allow shellfish to start to get rooted and established.

So the return on investment is high on these these examples that you’re citing? Yes, it’s a lot of money, but it begets a whole lot more money to the economy and to the stability of, at least in sea Grant and in some of the cooperative Institute notions, the places where these are established in the science they’re generating. Cooperative institutes support all of NOAA’s science, from satellites to deep sea.

The sea grant program is coastal.

David Martin: I live in New York City, and they are doing some work in restoring oyster beds in New York Harbor is now a part of that.

Craig McLean: NOAA science is part of that. Now, the money to actually restore the science beds NOAA money is is hands, hands on oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. In terms of the the work that’s going on in New York and the restoration, NOAA science is part of that. The no assessments have given the the direction and the opportunity to see the advantages that I don’t know whether no one dollars are directly going to the planting of those.

David Martin: Those choices really make a difference in places like New York Harbor where they can.

Craig McLean: Yeah, they can, and they do they they are an amazing, once healthy, once healthy and established. They’re an amazing filter feeding mechanism. I don’t recall the numbers, but it’s staggering to think that the aggregate of these small mollusks that are often quite tasty at the end of the day, but at the at the.

David Martin: Former oyster shocker.

Craig McLean: There you go. Yeah. So, so mussels and oysters are remarkable filter feeders and really enhance the the water quality and the clarity of the water. Raritan Bay not not too far from where you are, David, and where I know you have. You have enjoyed.

David Martin: Sailing and boating?

Craig McLean: Yes. Raritan Bay was a remarkably productive shellfish bed up until about a hundred years ago, and then water pollution had basically shut down the beds because of public health concerns. But then eventually the pollution was such that they no longer were growing.

David Martin: I forgot, I’m talking to a Jersey boy.

Craig McLean: Yes, sir. Yeah. Rutherford, new Jersey.

David Martin: Rutherford or Jersey. And I think, I think the first like paved streets in New York were page with oyster shells. Correct. That’s that’s what I saw somewhere. Yes. Yes.

Craig McLean: And landfill that the whole lower below the battery. Yeah. Filled in with the likes of shells and other naturally occurring detritus I guess waste that that could be recycled.

David Martin: I want to ask about this I saw something, it’s the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in partnership with NOAA. In 2022 announced a $25.2 million grant to help coastal communities. What happened? We’re how do we spend that money?

Craig McLean: Coastal communities don’t have the ability to hire, for example, climate experts to give a custom forecast on what’s going to happen to pick a city other than New York, Baltimore or Philadelphia. Pick some small towns, Cape May, new Jersey, or maybe, West Islip, New York. And you look at small towns and you realize they have compelling problems that they need to manage, but they don’t have the means to be looking at a custom forecast for for what they’re shoreline will look like, or what the environmental consequences that they’ll have to manage might be in the future.

And money’s like that with the Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Go to try and either restore or shore up, if you will, the coastal ecosystem for the stability of those communities. So doing this work is expensive. You could look at almost any other arm of the federal budget and see what appear to be high numbers, but by the time you look at the allocation of those numbers and realize what these projects are, it’s it’s to me, as a, of course, in my career as a steward for public resources, I thought these were very appropriate and wise bargains and were the federal money not available, the state and local folks could not afford to employ the levels

of stability that they’re now able to employ because of moneys like that.

David Martin: Talk to me a little bit about coral reefs. I’m a fisherman and a diver. So I have I have fished the reefs, down in the Florida Keys. I have gone diving in the reefs off the Florida Keys and in Belize. How does knowing get involved in, in the fishing industry, especially the sport fishing industry near and dear to my heart.

David Martin: And, you know, diving.

Craig McLean: A number of different layers there to peel back. So first, the responsibility of NOAA to manage the fisheries of the United States. That includes commercial harvest, also recreational harvest. David. So the sea grant folks, which I mentioned earlier, they’re out on the wharfs, on the piers, they’re interviewing recreational fishermen to find out. What did you happen to catch today?

They’re not enforcement at all. They’re just getting information and data. And from that, the fishery service can compile the amount of recreational harvests. The commercial harvest ranges from having dock checkers where when the commercial boat comes in and offloads, its fish can determine how much fish have been caught. And at the same time, NOAA sends ships to sea.

And I spent a good portion of my career doing just this. Those ships are scientific research vessels that catch fish and figure out, per unit volume of water, how many fish of what species are available, and then determine what the stock health is to allow a quota. So NOAA actively manages, actively collects and measures the fish, and then also with shoreside checking figures out what’s being landed.

Also what’s out in the natural environment. How healthy is the natural environment? So the management of fisheries is quite complex. It’s a public process too, that you may recall there are fishery management councils established around the country. The voice of the citizens is heard first. And the citizens, whether they be conservation people, fishers themselves, fishing industry voices, they help to construct the regulations that the agency will use in order to control the level of harvest, to make sure that there’s a another fish stock for the next year to be, or ten years from now to be harvested.

Okay. So that’s, that’s a, a shallow level on on fishing. But then to go to coral, the problem we have with coral and I’ll ask you as a diver and a fisherman, have you been to the Florida Keys recently David. Yes. Okay. And you have been to the Florida Keys maybe 30 years ago as well? Yes. And you noticed a difference?

I’m going to guess.

David Martin: A little bit. Yeah.

Craig McLean: Staghorn and elkhorn coral, those, those beautiful branching corals that really were the signature of the Florida Keys. They are roughly 98% dead compared to where they were 30, 40 years ago.

David Martin: 90%.

Craig McLean: Yes. And when we look at.

David Martin: There’s not a lot of those at Pennekamp State Park, but I get it.

Craig McLean: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s devastating. And it’s the water temperature that’s principally responsible for that. The warming of the ocean water. And as you know, coral is a cooperative organism there. There are photosynthetic algae that then the coral animal has an exchange of energy with. So when the coral polyp that that little microscopic animal that takes calcium from the sea and deposits it and makes the next layer and the next layer of coral has algae living with it, that that enables an information exchange from the algae and the animal when it gets too hot for the coral polyp to survive, its natural reaction is to expel the algae.

It expels its energy receiving component, and that’s generally how coral bleaching begins. So the bleaching in the Florida Keys, because of the warming water temperature, has caused the coral to expel the algae. And if that happens over a prolonged period of time, the coral dies. That’s what’s happening in the Florida Keys. That’s what’s happening in the Caribbean. And when you see the coral reefs decline in their physical structure, you also then see soon to follow a decline in the abundance of fish on the reef.

So our increasing the temperature of the water has resulted in the demise of the coral and the reduction in the abundance of reef fish, which in turn threatens the health of the reef if not defines the the lack of health in the reef.

David Martin: Which means less people are going to come, less people are going to go dive in the keys less we’re going to go fish in the keys less hotels are going to get filled up. Less restaurants are going to have customers. The it just trickles down everywhere.

Craig McLean: Right. Exactly, exactly.

David Martin: Especially in a place like that. How are we doing with sea lobster and the cod in the North Atlantic?

Craig McLean: The management of those species, the management of those fisheries is is, I think, very proud and very appropriate. The fishermen are cooperating. The regulators are mindful of what the fishers have to deal with. But the biggest problem I see coming right now is the migration of all ecosystem in a pole word direction. In other words, as we get warmer, those those creatures, those populations of fish that like colder water are having to go farther north.

So what you’re finding is that the Connecticut lobsterman who used to have an easy run, just write out race point and get out on Into the ocean. Yeah, off of Rhode Island or off of Connecticut. They’re having to go farther north. The Rhode Island fishermen are having to go farther north. Eventually, those beautiful Maine lobster are going to be Canada’s lobster.

The migration of the ecosystem is happening fast. We don’t see it because we’re we are land based, but the fishers see it. They’re there every day. There are people at the ocean. They’re watching what they catch, where they catch it, and the ecosystems are migrating northward.

David Martin: So just just to say, see, my lobster roll is going to cost more next time I get one.

Craig McLean: Your lobster roll probably already crossed.

David Martin: Oh it does.

Craig McLean: Yeah yeah yeah. That’s that’s the shape of things to come.

David Martin: All right. Well listen, I could talk to you about this for hours, and, we probably need some beers for this. Or at least to sit at a boat and have this conversation on the water. But coming up, I want to get you. I’m going to get your philosophy on government. We’ll be right back.

Once you wrap up this episode of The Good Government Show, give a listen to our friends over at Good News for lefties. This daily podcast highlights news stories that show there’s more good news out there. Other people in government are really trying to do the right thing. That’s good news for lefties. Listen where you’re listening now.

Welcome back. I’m here with Craig McLean, former, NOAA official, multiple roles, assistant chief scientist among them, and assistant administrator. All right. You’ve been with NOAA for 41 years. You’ve been in government for 41 years. What makes government truly effective? Define good government.

Craig McLean: Good government is being responsive to the citizens, loyal to the laws that are created to describe and define the direction that government needs to perform. And and being wise stewards of public resources. People work very hard. They believe they pay too much in taxes. I think every citizen might agree that that’s the case. So I have always found that the people who work in government are mindful of what service we’re providing.

Are we doing the best we can? Are we giving the right service, the bargain, the dedicated loyalty to the mission, to the public? And I found that richly in NOAA. Now, as you said, I’ve worked in NOAA for my career. I’ve not worked in other agencies, but I’ve worked with other agencies. I’ve worked with the Navy, worked with the Secret Service, worked with, Department of Interior folks.

The loyalty of the government servant is very high, and it was characterized for me. And it’s something that I think was very accurate. A friend of mine who was a career Air Force officer, who then came to NOAA as a civilian, told me that it puts an extra pep in his step to realize what mission he is working on.

And this chap was working in the weather area, but it’s the same for the ocean people, same for the coastal people, satellite people. There’s a pride in knowing that you work for something larger than yourself and your own family. You want to put food on the table, and you want to make sure your family is economically secure and comfortable.

But there’s something very proud and gratifying that federal servants have state servants. Anyone who works for the government being able to work for the people is a piece of the compensation that people get, because everyone I know who works in government could be making more money in the private sector, but they choose to work in government because of that.

David Martin: Okay, that is very, very good to hear. When people don’t like what they’re seeing from government, especially from an agency like yours, what should they do?

Craig McLean: Write to your Congressman. Write to your representative. If there’s a program in existence that a citizen feels is not performing the way they would like it to perform, perhaps a commercial fisherman could be a good example. For years, if the commercial fishermen thought that the direction of fisheries management was harming their economy too greatly, or their their catch too greatly, they write to the agency.

They communicate to the agency. The agency often has public town hall meetings. The fishing community does that through the fishery management councils, the Sanctuary program, the Marine Sanctuary Program, Florida Keys being the largest marine sanctuary that that NOAA is responsible to manage, have town hall meetings and gatherings in order to discuss the potential of regulatory controls or the easing of regulatory controls, depending upon how how the protection of the resources is going.

Communicate with your government. That’s the executive branch. Write to the agency. Communicate with your elected representatives. Those are your congressman and your senators, and also at the state level. If state government is similarly not performing in a way that the citizen feels is appropriate, use the power of your voice. And I’ve had to remind, particularly now, where there are a lot of fears within the federal employment community as to whether or not a person could say something or not.

But a federal employee never loses their right to petition Congress. That’s, that’s that’s a right that we all have. Now, when you do work for the federal government, you don’t have the full suite of rights that the citizen has, okay? And you can’t, in your official capacity critique the government or argue for something that’s not part of the president’s federal budget request.

But if, by and large, write to your Congressman.

David Martin: So you just said a minute ago, you could have made more money in the private sector. So what drew you to public service and what kept you in public service?

Craig McLean: The first appeal for me was the uniqueness of the mission. I was just a young graduate from Rutgers. I was working in.

David Martin: Factories, workers back.

Craig McLean: To Jersey got to go to the Jersey roots. I knew I wanted to get engaged in ocean matters, ocean operations, the adventure of going to sea. And I could have done it with universities. I could have done it as a commercial mariner. I chose to do it as a uniformed officer in NOAA and to be able to learn how to operate ships.

It was a great adventure. So the beginning of it was, this is really neat. The young aviator who might go to Air Force or Navy or Marines and even Army and fly an amazing piece of machinery. There aren’t too many places that you could get the training to be able to go and do that, and that draws people in.

But once in, there’s this this very richly established, communal sense of pride in being able to serve the public, whether you’re a uniformed officer in, in the armed forces or uniformed services or whether you’re a civilian that’s forecasting the weather, making sure that people’s lives are protected based on the quality of your work. There’s a pride in that.

That keeps people in the mission.

David Martin: Is there someone in government that inspired you to get involved in the in the beginning and you know, who were the people who sort of mentored you or inspired you as you did it? I mean, do you go back to Teddy Roosevelt? I mean, how far, how far?

Craig McLean: I’ll tell you. One person who I continue to think of, particularly as the confusion of politics, is overwhelming the public’s sense and understanding of government. I’ll go back to John McCain, who as an American hero, imprisoned but denigrated by the current president, who never served, when when John McCain reached over to a well intentioned person at a town hall meeting who was basically pursuing the birther issue of Barack Obama, and then Senator McCain grabbed the microphone politely and said, ma’am, he’s a good man.

We just have different views on policy. That kind of dignity, where I have seen that routinely across the federal service sector of employees, of government and also elected representatives, unfortunately, fewer and fewer elected representatives are showing that that level of dignity and I hold McCain in high regard because of the way that he did that in a way and inducted himself.

But that inspires me that there is a proper orderly. And since I’m male, I’ll say gentlemanly, but but a level of demeanor that should be appropriate in the conduct of government. And I worry that that’s missing the people who inspire me were some of my earlier bosses and earlier supervisors. One felt, I want to go and give a shout out to his, a gentleman named Roland Schmidt Riley Schmidt, and was the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and I worked as a staff assistant to him through my couple of times in my career, and he just taught me humility, honesty and the desire to be as as reasonable in the direction that that we

take the mission to serve the public more broadly. I had, I had another chap who was was very influential in, in my early formulation, the man’s name was Jim Douglas. And, he also was in fishers. I spent a lot of my early career in the fishery world. And Jim said, you don’t manage this way, but you got to put your up to the wall.

If the one side is shouting as loudly as the other side, and there’s always two sides to most of the issues that that a regulatory matter might involve, if the noise is equal on both sides, take that as an early inclination that maybe you’re going down the right direction. Maybe. But then you have to work deeper in order to get it, get it panned out.

But it’s those people that showed me the dignity, the responsibility and the careful use of the authority that government has to be to be dealing with people in a fair, reasonable and rational way.

David Martin: So 41 years at NOAA, 41 years in the federal government. What would you like people to know as a government insider? What would you like people to know about the government and how it works?

Craig McLean: Government service is very honorable. The people that one can work with inside of government are similarly honorable people. They’ve been attracted for the same reasons. One is service to the public and the other is uniqueness of mission. That’s one of the reasons why we pay our taxes, to have those budgets to be performing these services, because they’re generally not commercially feasible.

They are they are provided for the citizen because of government. It’s a high honor to work for the American people. And it has been my honor for those 40, 41 years to have worked for the American people.

David Martin: Two part question what was the best part of your job and what was the most challenging?

Craig McLean: Best part of my job were the people working in such a team and such a collegial, cooperative mindset that extended to citizens, that extended to state employees, university employees. But the the team approach to work on very challenging issues, like the questions I offered, how many fish in the sea? What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow? The people are amazingly dedicated.

I have said in other places, David, that I saw this during the government shutdowns, that that people were told, no, you have to stay home because we don’t have the legal ability to to populate our laboratories or our spaces. These people will walk on broken glass atop hot coals just to come to work. And I’ve seen that and their loyalty and their dedication is exceptional to the mission and also to the purpose of serving the public.

David Martin: And what was the hardest part?

Craig McLean: The hardest part was the political environment where irrational conduct and activities of elected representatives wind up for other purposes than than addressing the mission itself, wind up disrupting the mission or making it more difficult. And I think we’re in a season of that right now. If I were to look at the likes of of Elon Musk redesigning the federal government, that’s about as smart as asking me to design one of his rockets.

Neither of us know what the hell we’re doing in those subjects.

David Martin: Okay, did you always envision, I mean, you, you know, a young Jersey boy at Rutgers University? Did you always envision a career in public service, or did you just want to go diving every day? I, you.

Craig McLean: Know, it started by wanting to go diving every day. And it was it was a step function. So if there are any young people listening, message number one, think of government service. It is rewarding and very gratifying and valuable to the public. But lesson number two is careers can be rather meandering. So my first appeal was anything in the ocean space okay, maybe not a lifeguard because I’m not that strong.

But but but anything oceans. And I actually started doing a little bit of industrial diving dirty water diving in around all of the the dark water that surrounds Manhattan Island and other places. Wow. And then I found a way to get on scientific research ships and from there I got recruited to be one of the operators of the scientific research ship.

So taking those steps to to break whatever mold you’re in or to break whatever habits you’re in and try something new, is the encouragement that I would give to young people. And and you will then find your opportunities and avenues of opportunity in a career. But I did not set out to work for the public. My father was a World War Two sailor, United States Navy, and I knew something of of his sense of that experience.

Positive. So he was in World War Two. So not everything was positive, of course. Right. But I, I saw I saw a pride that I had when I was in high school, football being part of that team. I saw then very quickly the pride of being part of a ship’s crew, but even a further pride of realizing we’re doing this for the people.

We’re not just doing this because we like the oceans, we’re doing this for the people. So it it was not my original design, but once I found it, David I I’m home I yeah, I love this I’m.

David Martin: Home and you stayed and I stayed and I’m sure you had opportunities to leave. And what makes you stay?

Craig McLean: When I looked at those several opportunities that were presented to me to depart government, take my government experience or such, and then apply it in a different direction and.

David Martin: Double your salary.

Craig McLean: Probably what? The way I characterize it, I remember going to one particular dinner interview with a board of people and a principal, and, and I walked away from there thinking, I’m never going to do this because I’ll have to I’ll have to compromise my ethics. I’ll have to compromise what I believe in in order to do this.

And I remember coming home to tell my wife, I said, you know, I think I just I just missed an opportunity for us to have a much nicer car. But I can’t do that. I can’t do that.

David Martin: So what do you do for fun? You, you said you, when you were a kid, you wanted to go diving every day. You. I think we talked before. And you mentioned that you turned a lobster boat into a dive boat. So do you fish? Do you fish for fun? To.

Craig McLean: Well, the the fun part of my fishing is when people ask me, do I fish? Yes. I fished a whole lot when I was running those research vessels, towing a large trawl net behind the ship in order to capture the component of that fish population we were studying. Those are my best fishing days. We landed. We landed the fish.

We were good.

David Martin: Have you ever caught out for Bartlett or anything like that? That’s the sport fishing.

Craig McLean: I’ve gone tuna fishing and enjoyed that immensely, but I’m. I’m more of a slow boat, just idle on the long fact during my diving days with that lobster boat I was describing for you, my friends and I would load the boat up with a couple of friends and I shouldn’t say load. There are only a couple of us that went out.

We liked having room and space because we had a lot of tanks and did a lot of bottom time, but we’d head on out and and conduct our dive and then coming in just at trolling, trolling speed, three knots. Just put a line in the water, come on in. We catch a bluefish, put it on the barbecue. And that was our.

David Martin: Supper, all.

Craig McLean: Right. But it was it was very enjoyable.

David Martin: And I know it’s a Long Island sound. I’ll take you, Sally. How’s that for a deal?

Craig McLean: I’ll be ready for that day. I’m ready for that.

David Martin: So you’re you’re touted, Ocean City and Maryland. Chesapeake crabs. Big favor.

Craig McLean: Okay. Crabs are a social engagement.

David Martin: Okay, but.

Craig McLean: But lobster, and in particular, New England scallops. I think New England sculpture. Most delicious seafood for me. The most delicious thing in the ocean. They’re amazing.

David Martin: All right. Doing those scallops. So, let’s just talk about, you know what? You, you know, you over 41 years, what do you think you did? Right? What do you think? You know what? When you look back, what are your what are your accomplishments? What are you proudest of that you’ve been able to pull off? Is that NOAA being honest.

Craig McLean: Being a good leader? People have offered me. I’m trying to be humble here, but people have offered me, various levels of recognition for the leadership that I brought to organizations. I was part of. But one of the hardest times that I had was to do it wasn’t hard to do, it was hard to accept, but to draft legislation that would have eliminated the part of the government that I was working in.

I’m also a lawyer, and I was asked to provide the draft of a bill, and we did. And to the best of my ability, I did it, although it was something that I never would have wanted to see happen because I believe strongly in that service. But people who reviewed our work product myself into other jobs, they said it was pretty well done, and it’s hard for us to believe that you guys wrote this because it would be a very, a very Kevorkian like experience if it were ultimately passed.

And so it’s so, so that’s part of government responsibility that that a person will be charged to do things that are loyal to the direction that’s described in law or by the president in implementing those laws. And as long as it is legal, we will do it. Federal servants will do it. But I, I think for the challenges, the challenges were were many mostly political, but the opportunities and the great things that that I think people might remember me for was I was the first director of an ocean exploration program.

And much like NASA explorer space, this program was created so that NOAA could lead exploration of the oceans. I think, wonderfully, philanthropy has filled in and complemented that effort now even exceeded that effort. In the United States, we have the Schmidt Ocean Institute by Eric and Wendy Schmidt. We we have, in Norway, a organization called Rev Rev Rev Ocean.

We’ve got Mr. Ray Dalio and the ocean X enterprise, each with their own ships, amazing ships, better than anything we have in the United States government. And they’re exploring the ocean I think it helped to kickstart things. Paul Allen prior to his demise, Paul Allen was very active in ocean discovery and ocean exploration. Victor Vescovo, another chap, privately funded his own exploration to the deepest part of the ocean, and Victor is embarking upon a magnificent project now to help governments map the world ocean.

And he’s putting his own private funds into this. So we started something and it’s blossomed. Maybe my most charming moment of one of those bucket list things would be diving on the Titanic. Oh, wow. Let’s see the Titanic. And that was that was absolutely breathtaking. And we were there because Congress had declared the Titanic as an international maritime memorial.

And in order to have the Congress see the way to have the United States join a treaty that was developed under that legislation, was to bring experts to the site to characterize the site, and then provide some information to the parties that would be responsible for for the treaty. So that was absolutely exciting. All right.

David Martin: I could spend an hour asking you questions about the Titanic. I’m going to move on. So this is called the Good Government Show. And we like to end it with, a good government project. Give me one example of, of maybe just a small project where, you know, you it was good government in action.

Craig McLean: I’m going to go to Tidewater Virginia and there’s a there’s a notion in the expenditure of federal resources that if we’re going to spend a dollar, where’s the greatest economic return for that dollar? And what that equates to generally is that the most affluent neighborhoods get the quickest attention, because the home values would speak to the return on investment.

But I’ll go back to the sea grant program that we were talking about earlier. Sea Grant took $75,000 and provided it to two universities in the Virginia Tidewater area, and they conducted an assessment of what the cost would be to fortify lesser income neighborhoods that bordered on an industrial area of of the river system in the Norfolk area.

Those studies then allowed that community to apply for a FEMA grant, which they were awarded, which then just steamrolled into much more and more and more money were it not for that original investment of $75,000 to academics to study the problem, that neighborhood would have been repeatedly inundated and never had the attention that more affluent neighborhoods would have been afforded or accorded.

And in terms of the outcome, people’s lives and stability was not disrupted because of the nature of that early investment that really just rolled on up to something very, very positive. So I think the opportunity to find good in service, to keep fisheries open because the information is is good and solid and people can rely on it to save the lives of people.

In early evacuation, with the onset of severe weather, hurricanes, tornadoes and the like, the gratification opportunities were daily. As far as I was concerned and working for working with wonderful people.

David Martin: I could talk to you for quite some time. As I said, we’ll need a boat and some beer to do it. Hopefully at our next conversation. Craig McLain, it was an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for coming. The former assistant administrator for research and the acting chief scientist of NOAA, thanks for joining us on the good Government Show.

Craig McLean: Thank you for having me, David. Thanks for putting the show forward. It’s very important.

David Martin: Thanks. Thank you.

After you get done with this episode, hear more good government stories with our friends at How to Really Run a City for mayors. Kasim Reed of Atlanta and Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, and their co-host, journalist and author Larry Platt talk with guests and other mayors about how to really get stuff done in cities around the nation. Check them out where you’re listening now or through their nonprofit news site, The Philadelphia Citizen.

Dot org slash podcasts.

It’s a $12 billion agency on a $6 billion budget. That’s the work that NOAA does. And you have to appreciate the pride that Craig takes in the work. He does. And all the dedicated people at NOAA do all to make sure we get the best information we can about the wind, the air and the water to make sure the oceans are clean and there are fish ready to jump on your line.

An incredible career of public service and a fascinating conversation about the many ways the government known as NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, looks out for all of us thanks to Craig McLean, former assistant Administrator and acting Chief Scientist, for joining us. Thanks for listening to another example of how government works for all of us. Please like us and share with your friends and review us right here where you’re listening, and check out our website, the Good Government Show for extras.

Help us keep telling stories of good government in action everywhere. Join us again for another episode right here. I’m Dave Martin and this is the Good Government show.

The Good Government show is a Valley Park production. Jim Ludlow, Dave Martin, that’s me and David Snyder are the executive producers. Our show is edited and produced by Jason Stershic. Please subscribe, then share and like us and review us. That’s the best way to make sure we’re able to keep telling these stories of our government working for all of us.

Then listen to the next episode of The Good Government Show.

**This transcription was created using digital tools and has not been edited by a live person. We apologize for any discrepancies or errors.