The first six months of the year in the U.S. featured the costliest weather and climate-related disasters on record. The “good news”, however, as we discuss on today’s BradCast, is that we know about it. Had it been up to the Trump Administration, we would not have. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
We’ve also got some other good news today, including some rather stunning, surprising news in the Gerrymander Wars. But we begin today with climate, scientists pushing back against the Trump Administration to save the world, and a fantastic guest to discuss it all.
Since 1980, the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Database at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has tracked disasters that caused at least one billion dollars in damage each. Amid our quickly worsening climate crisis, the number of such disasters each year — and the cost of them — has been skyrocketing.
According to the latest update to that database unveiled this week, as of June 2025 there were a total of 14 weather events that exceeded $1 billion in damages this year, totaling more than $100 billion, including the Los Angeles wildfires which caused more than $60 billion in damage alone, clocking in as the costliest wildfire in U.S. history.
Between 1980 and 2024, there were an average of nine such disasters each year. But over the past five years, the average is now 24 per year and climbing. If it weren’t for the folks at the non-profit Climate Central, we wouldn’t have any of these numbers, since the Trump Administration shut down that database as of this year, on behalf of their deadly, dirty fossil fuel-industry friends. Thankfully, Climate Central has picked up the ball, the records going back to 1980 and the scientists who tracked this critical data — who were pushed out of NOAA earlier this year — to continue upkeep of the critical dataset that has long been relied upon by states, cities, farmers, insurance companies and many others.
We’re joined today to discuss this and much more by meteorologist, climate scientist and award-winning science communicator TOM DI LIBERTO, who is now Media Director at Climate Central. He formerly served in NOAA’s Office of Communication and served as Senior Climate Scientist at NOAA’s critical Climate.gov site. That site has since been shutdown by the Administration (though it is being resurrected at Climate.us) and Di Liberto was fired by earlier this year, by form letter, after 15 years at the agency, along with more than 1,000 others who have been laid off as Trump continues to gut climate science and research at the nation’s (formerly) most prestigious climate organization. NOAA also houses the National Weather Service.
“The amount of information that goes into creating this billion-dollar disaster analysis is a lot,” Di Liberto explains. “For a long time, the one place that could manage to do all that was a government agency like NOAA. It was much too difficult for an individual company to be able to do this.” He tells me that while some groups, like insurance companies, collect similar data “that data ends up being proprietary, unlike the billion-dollar disaster dataset, which was freely available when it came out of NOAA.”
He describes the database — now reborn at Climate Central, along with a lot of other critical data that might otherwise have been lost or destroyed — as “a jewel” in both the U.S. and across the globe, because “other countries looked to it as a model for what they wished they could do.”
My conversation with Di Liberto today is broad ranging, on that, on what the latest updates to the database warn us regarding the climate crisis; why it was shut down by Trump; why Republicans dismiss the database as “deceptive” (“I think when they said ‘deceptive’ they meant ‘powerful’.”); how and why he was fired by the Administration; why they want to make climate data disappear (“If you can’t see it, you can’t deal with it” even though “billion-dollar disasters will continue to happen whether we call them billion-dollar disasters or not.”); what morale is now like at NOAA; and whether the agency can possibly be rebuilt after — and if — this man-made Trump nightmare finally ends.
Di Liberto is an excellent communicator on all of this. Please tune in for our very lively and informative conversation! You’ll be glad you did.
ALSO TODAY… In, frankly, stunning news, Democratic state lawmakers in Virginia unveiled a seemingly ingenious plan today to rewrite their map for Congressional Districts before next year’s midterms that could result in flipping as many as three currently “red” U.S. House seats to “blue” in the critical 2026 midterms. The unexpected scheme comes in direct response to unprecedented Trump/Republican mid-decade gerrymandering schemes in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina (so far). It is not an easy path. It will require two different successful votes both this year and next by both chambers of the state Legislature, and adoption of a state Constitutional amendment in a statewide special election early next year. But it actually appears doable, despite a Republican Governor (at the moment), an election for a new Governor and for every seat in the House of Delegates in just twelve days, and a wickedly clever technical administrative procedure by Dems in both the state House and Senate. Tune in for the full details. But it’s great to see Dems even trying to pull off something that usually only Republicans would do!
FINALLY… Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report! But even that ends on a high-ish note today! At least for the whales!…
This is good news because the authoritarian regime is turning out as many of the lights of science as they can (Paper Tiger Phenomenon – 4)
It’s a start, but JUST California and Virginia will not be enough.
I’ll feel better when I see at least 5 or 6 Dem states take action like CA/VA.
We can’t afford to lose this one, IMO.