Attention-magnets keep hiding important stories
It’s so easy to be distracted by attention-magnets while ignoring under-covered stories.
Spectacle politics hides changes in structural governance; immigration drama shrouds realities of labor economics; war stories divert attention from long-range shifts in global alliances.
Consider 2026 diversions: Iran war, Strait of Hormuz and gas prices; immigration raids and ICE confrontations; presidential clashes with universities, media, judges and Pope Leo XIV; political and celebrity corruptions; disruption of all federal DEI-related policies; and the latest assassination attempt.
Behind every attention-magnet, there are undercovered stories. Perhaps the greatest irony is a huge increase in disasters from extreme weather events while the federal government continues to deprioritize and dissolve areas of climate science.
Last week, the Trump administration fired all 22 members of an independent board that oversees the National Science Foundation. The story was covered, but briefly; public attention, mostly diverted elsewhere, didn’t focus on how the action fits into widespread replacement of independent scientific oversight with ideologically driven priorities.
NSF has supported systems underlying climate science through funding of basic research, exploratory and interdisciplinary science, university science infrastructure and long-term scientific observations. But politics ruling America today has deprioritized reduction of emissions, environmental regulation, basic research and independent science advisory structures.
Climate change is one of many NSF focus areas moving more deeply into ideological politics. In that area of climate change, we should all be aware of the major increase in extreme weather events.
The World Meteorological Organization defines an extreme weather event as “rare at a particular place and time of year, with unusual characteristics in terms of magnitude, location, timing, or extent.”
In the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) keeps a database of “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (inflation adjusted).”
This week, I found reports that NOAA’s database reveals 403 billion-dollar weather/climate disasters between 1980-2024, an average of nine annually. But that average, reports said, was 23 per year from 2020-2024, with 27 in 2024 followed by 23 in 2025 and five through March in 2026.
Naturally, wanting to confirm those reports, I went to the NOAA website. It was shut down Thursday for “scheduled maintenance,” but I found this announcement about the billion-dollar database:
“The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information ceased providing support for this product in May 2025 in response to an initiative to implement reductions within the U.S. federal government. This dataset contains U.S. disaster cost assessments of the total, direct losses ($) inflicted by: tropical cyclones, inland floods, drought & heat waves, severe local storms (i.e., tornado, hail, straight-line wind damage), wildfires, crop freeze events and winter storms.”
Database updates were eliminated, the report said, “In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.”
I was directed to a list of changes in environmental information products and services from the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. One change, dated March 24: The NOAA website “will be discontinued, effective June 23, 2026.”
Yes, it was just another day in the world of attention-magnets versus undercovered stories.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
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