By Julius Sanks
Back in 2005, AccuWeather, possibly along with other commercial weather companies, convinced former senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill, S.786, 109th Congress, to prevent NOAA and the NWS from sharing data that was available from commercial vendors. The only support came from the weather companies. Most thought it would mean paying for weather data the taxpayers already funded — if they could even buy it from the vendors. The bill did not get a single co-sponsor; nor did a companion bill appear in the House. It died in committee.
Is AccuWeather using Project 2025 to try again?
The Heritage Foundation recently published Project 2025. It is a massive document that addresses, among other things, the administrative state. It steps through the entire federal government, with specific recommendations regarding each organization. One of the organizations it discusses is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is responsible for weather forecasting. NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) acquires and operates environmental satellites, among other things. Full disclosure: I spent about a third of my engineering and management career working as a contractor for NOAA. I worked weather forecasting and weather satellite development projects. This analysis focuses only on the National Weather Service and the satellite portion of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS).
Project 2025 proposes sweeping changes to NOAA. To a large degree, it recommends replacing NOAA’s operations with private-sector commercial efforts. It claims this will result in lower cost and higher quality. But will it? Project 2025 provides virtually no evidence of that. Nor does Project 2025 give a complete view of how the NWS works.
A key flaw in Project 2025 is its emphasis on existing commercial forecasting. It says the NWS provides data to private companies, and complains the NWS does not use “commercial partnerships as some other agencies do.” This is supposed to improve weather technology and cost-effectiveness by investing in “different sizes of commercial partners.” The document provides no evidence this is true. Nor does it show how this would improve forecasting accuracy.
Project 2025 greatly oversimplifies what the NWS does, how the NWS operates, and who its customers are. For example, it fails to mention the largest beneficiary of NWS forecasting: the public. A key part of local forecasting Project 2025 misses is watches and warnings. Local offices and national centers issue them. For obvious liability reasons, the commercial companies simply parrot NWS watches and warnings. Would a company such as AccuWeather accept that liability? It seems unlikely. Local offices also interact directly with local government officials, such as county disaster managers, when the situation warrants. Will a commercial company do that?
The NWS is mostly a local organization. Its “front line” is the 122 weather forecasting offices (WFO) and 13 river forecast centers (RFC). Operating 24/7/365, the WFOs are scattered throughout the 50 states, Guam, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico. RFCs, chartered with flood forecasting, normally operate 16 hours a day, 7 days per week, but will extend to 24 hour operation when necessary. Do any commercial companies forecast floods? Would they accept the liability? The WFOs and RFCs have specific areas of responsibility around the country. Their meteorologists and hydrologists are familiar with the local conditions and use that knowledge to supplement information from space and terrestrial sensors, and models, as they build their daily forecasts. About 90% of all weather data comes from satellites; NWS’s supercomputer models depend on satellite data.
This map, found on the NWS home page, frequently updates as forecasters issue and cancel watches and warnings.
In all, the NWS has over 4,000 employees, over 2,000 of which are meteorologists. AccuWeather has 4 – 500, with about 100 meteorologists. It is difficult to believe they can match the NWS’s local knowledge.
At the national level, NWS’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has nine national centers (NC). Each is responsible for a particular type of forecasting. The centers often trade information to improve forecasting.
• NCEP Central Operations — The NWS information technology center
• Aviation Weather Center (AWC) — Aviation forecasts.
• Climate Prediction Center (CPC) — Issues probabilistic climate forecasts from a week to three months in the future; up to a year for some conditions.
• Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) — Develop and operate the NWS supercomputer numerical prediction models used for daily forecasts.
• National Hurricane Center (NHC) — Hurricane forecasts.
• Ocean Prediction Center OPC) — Provides marine weather and warning forecasts for the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.
• Storm Prediction Center (SPC) — Works with tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, lightning, wildfires, and winter weather.
• Space Weather Prediction Center(SWPC) — Observes solar activity.
• Weather Prediction Center (WPC) — Generates nationwide forecasts, such as winter storms and precipitation
After very severe weather events, the NWS puts teams on the ground to assess damage. That is how they determine tornado strength. Sometimes, following a severe event such as a disastrous hurricane or major tornado outbreak, NWS performs service assessments to assess how well they performed. These are available to the public. Are the commercial companies willing to do that?
Another problem with Project 2025’s argument is how the NWS interacts with other government organizations, particularly the military. The NWS shares data with Air Force Global Weather Central, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, and other organizations. It is hard to see how a commercial entity in this interaction would contribute value.
Finally, the NWS interacts with other countries’ forecasting activities.
Weirdly, Project 2025 combines the National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), complaining that data should be presented neutrally, while ignoring all other national centers. The NHC focuses on forecasting individual hurricanes. Its web site provides statistical information regarding what the USA can expect during hurricane season. Each year, it publishes provides a hurricane season outlook and a mid-season update. While this addresses climatic conditions, the discussion is strictly in terms of how climatic conditions affect hurricane development. It does not address the political climate debate. The CPC, with NHC collaboration, issues NOAA’s seasonal hurricane outlooks. These outlooks use climatic conditions, such as ocean temperature, to establish probable hurricane numbers and strengths. It is important to note as in all NOAA’s climatic forecasts, the hurricane outlook is strictly probabilistic. I.e, the 2024 Atlantic forecast predicted an 85% chance of above normal activity, with 17-25 named storms. NHC’s final 2024 monthly summary lists 18 named storms so far, and says the year’s activity was “above normal.”
NESDIS is not part of the NWS. It is a separate NOAA branch. It is puzzling why Project 2025 thinks of them as a single organization. NESDIS acquires and operates weather satellites and serves as NOAA’s data depository. On the satellite side, it figures out how to turn weather satellite data into information useful to the public. It also works with EMC to use satellite data to properly initialize EMC’s forecasting models. Like the NWS forecasters, NESDIS satellite offices work hard to provide the most accurate information they can achieve for public consumption. NESDIS’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) provide the depository for all NOAA scientific data. Project 2025 is probably referring to NCEI. NCEI has been criticized for adjusting some archival data.
Project 2025 cites a 2020 AccuWeather report to claim studies “have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.” This is misleading. The study does not even mention the NWS. It compares AccuWeather to five other commercial companies. The claim commercial companies are better than the NWS is therefore, completely unfounded.
I have seen several claims on line that in 2019, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) published a study stating for every dollar spent on the NWS, the country receives $73 in value. This claim is actually in the Congressional Record. I have searched exhaustively and doubt it exists. Failing to find it on line, I contacted AMS to request a copy. AMS drew a blank but kindly sent me a different, comprehensive, study, published last year. It does not reach the same “value added” result, but concludes the public is quite satisfied with NWS forecasts. It uses a modified contingent valuation method to statistically estimate the public’s “willingness to pay” for NWS forecasts. The basis was a 2022 survey. The basic finding is people who use NWS forecasts are willing to pay about 900 tax dollars per year, with lower bound of about $700/year and upper bound of $1300/year. Multiplying these by the number of people who use NWS forecasts — about 114 million — the result is a total annual value ranging $795 million to $1.48 billion. The NWS FY22 budget request was $1.33 billion. It looks like the public is getting the value it expects from the National Weather Service. How many other federal organizations can say that?
Project 2025’s argument to restructure the NWS is not convincing. If DOGE used Project 2025 as its guidance for analyzing NOAA, it needs to rethink its approach.
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I can’t speak to the author’s concerns about privatizing NWS, but I do know that AccuWeather has been blatantly in the tank for ‘climate change’, at least during any of the few times I’ve tuned-in to get information on upcoming storms.
Yes , and they “recorded” last years really hot days high temps 5 or 6 deg F higher than they actually were. (east Ks )
Full on CAGW scammers.
AccuWeather has been blatantly in the tank for ‘climate change’
Is there any worthwhile consumer service that isn’t?
If you’re in that business you’re going to tend towards amplification of your value to humanity whenever you can….and yelling ‘wolf’ about Climageddon is one way to do it.
Am I wrong here? I seem to recall that The Weather Channel bought AccuWeather years ago.
Corrections welcome!
Maybe I’m thinking of Weather Underground and not AccuWeather?
Where weather companies are concerned…
“How Climate Change Affects Business Strategy – Harvard Business School”
Over to Mike Seidel of Weather Channel…
Bet you don’t get reporting like that on the Beeb!
/s
Ya fink?!
That one’s a classic! . . . as I understand it, Weather Channel reporter Mike Seidel positioned himself near the corner of a multistory building that was out of the field-of-view of the television camera in order to show the “high force winds” (actually being created by wind being forced to flow around the building, not so much by the residual winds of Hurricane Florence itself). The clothes on the two individuals strolling merrily along in the background, maybe 50 feet away, don’t show evidence of there being much free-flowing wind at all.
And here’s my favorite: NBS news reporter Michelle Kosinski reporting on “deep flooding” requiring a canoe for transiting a street near the Passic River in Wayne, NJ, as the result of “heavy rainfall” from a storm . . . when suddenly two people walk by revealing the water is only 2-3 inches deep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm2PQFSjAJo
Insert something here about what’s needed to “sell” things these days.
OT.
When I clicked on strativarius’s YouTube of Mike Seidel above, I got a message saying I needed to “sign in” to prove I’m not a bot. (It showed a still image of the beginning of the clip.)
When I clicked on the YouTube hyperlink in ToldYouSo’s comment, all I had to was click on a box to prove I wasn’t a bot.
Any ideas why or how to get around those presented as strativarius’s?
(I don’t have a YouTube account so can’t sign in.)
Thanks.
Seidel has been caught faking weather impacts, multiple times.
Despite Sanks’s spirited and detailed defense of NOAA, NWS, I am not convinced this service provided by our Federal government is necessary or economic. There is no evidence that there is a “market failure” in weather information and so government should avoid involvement in activities and needs that free economic exchange is likely to fulfill. Citizens and businesses want and need weather information. Providers of such information are able to monetize that provision through advertising and direct payment. Therefore, NWS and NOAA should be shut down, with the only possible exception as follows.
The cost of providing weather detection mechanisms (primarily satellites) is expensive and, like any utility, there may be economic value to allowing or to providing a monopoly on such technology. I would be willing to consider a case for the Federal government providing such a system and its data to whomever wants it at a price that ensures wide distribution, even if at a net loss to the government (the net loss representing the extent of the market failure to provide such a system on a purely commercial basis). Let commercial organizations analyze the data and issue forecasts, warnings, etc,, with State and local governments participating on a commercial basis.
Using Project 2025 as the basis for a case against privatizing this service is a straw man argument.
The point that no commercial entity will take on the risk of making forecasts is a red herring. Providers of information to the public are shielded from liability unless they fail to take reasonable care to not provide fraudulent information and make appropriate disclaimers as to accuracy.
Sadly, the “only the government should be allowed to provide this information” echoes the currently trendy “misinformation/ disinformation” argument that has as its underlying belief that citizens in general are incapable of sorting our truth from fiction in a Pareto-optimal way and that “government” must control information to ensure the citizenry is well-served. Those who think that way are usually those who think they are smarter than most others and that most others, because of their lack of smarts, are easily fooled and must be protected from their own lack of intelligence or foolishness by those who, to do so, must have the authority/ force of government. It’s a world-view the Founders of our country soundly rejected — and is, in fact, a core bedrock reason why our country has been so successful. We let people make their own decisions and their own mistakes, gaining whatever benefit and suffering whatever losses that their sovereignty allows.
Bottom line, shut all of NOAA/ NWS down except for the weather detection systems. Even those might be able to be sold in the future as economics allow competing detection systems to be deployed.
Good counterargument, especially the “misinformation” aspect. The government assisting in the infrastructure and larger-scale coordination efforts such as international cooperation seems appropriate but competition in the end-user aspects would perhaps keep it more free of agenda.
As for liability, if Pfizer can be indemnified for a debacle such as the Covaxx, describing the weather should not be an obstacle.
No matter what, waste and redundancy should be addressed.
There is no proof that commercial services will go anywhere near all the forecasting domains that the NWS and NOAA currently occupy. Any such privatization should be accompanied by strict product standards to ensure that the public is getting the same or improved services for the same or lower costs. Speaking of which, what’s your proposal for monetizing the forecast process? Everyone has to subscribe to a service where the economic drivers try to deliver the minimum (or less) while paring support? I’m not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about this. And your “red herring” comment regarding liability is less than a handwavium solution.
You need “proof” that markets work to give people what they want or need at a price they’re willing to pay? If so, you’re ignorant beyond words. History and human experience are the proof and it is manifest.
As for “not going anywhere near all the forecasting domains…”? If so, those domains are not needed by anyone at a price they’re willing to pay. Done.
”Accompanied by strict standards”? What world do you live in? If a service provides crappy forecasts consumers will go to others and the bad actors will go bankrupt. That’s how economies work in a way that maximizes individual freedom and choice. Kinda what most of us want. Or you can deliver what people want and need Soviet-style in which government guarantees everything people want and need. You know, “from each according to his/ her ability, to each according to…”. I’m sure you know the rest.
As for monetizing forecasts? Easy peasy…every TV station would sell advertising to pay for the weather reports/ forecast they use. Oh, wait, they do that already.
Trump says he never read Project 2025.
I don’t think he is using it as a directive. Trump has his own internal directive.
Is “Project 2025″ any better than PNAC – The Project for the New American Century?
I don’t know, I’ve never read Project 2025, either. 🙂
The Democrats want to pretend Project 2025 is the conservative Bible, but I don’t see anyone talking about it other than Democrats.
Project 2025 is a document of one conservative thinktank. It’s not the final word on anything.
He is not much of a reader. I doubt he ever read “The Art of the Deal”.
. . . and likely has never read the US Constitution.
Watch out! Trump might send you to El Salvador!
You would get a nice free haircut and shave, and a nice new pair of pajamas and tennis shoes to wear.
I bet the criminal aliens that are still residing in the United States are freaking out watching these scenes from El Salvador. That could be them next week! Hopefully, it will be!
How sweet it is! Just what these illegal alien animals deserve: Time in an El Salvador prison!
I wonder if there is a TDS section down there?
The argument seems to go something like this:
Trump and Heritage Foundation agree on some things. Therefore, Heritage Foundation controls Trump.
I haven’t read Project 2025 either, though from what I’ve heard, it has a lot of good ideas, though in some areas it goes too far.
Same assessment I made.
Me, too.
I think the new administration needs to tread very carefully here. I’m all for making government functions operate effectively and efficiently, with high integrity and reliability. The hijacking of parts of NOAA to push the “climate” agenda must be reversed. But let’s not dismantle what is working well, and let’s not degrade the core scientific and technical work.
Examples of what works well, in my experience:
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16
And
https://aviationweather.gov/
To quote Dragnet, “Just the facts.”
Leave the bias to “The Storm Channel”.
Government should not be in the business of providing that which can be provided by the private sector.
I strongly disagree with respect to weather forecasting. The preamble to the US Constitution declares that one duty of government is to “promote the general welfare” and weather forecasting does promote the general welfare. If a person or company wants a custom forecast, then they can pay an outfit such as Accuweather.
Welfare in context means well being and to that point I agree.
Some areas need a national organization and often the efficient means is a non-commercial approach.
Prior to the Civil War, States formed regiments as needed. It was learned the hard way that standardization on that scale was critical. Training, commissary, quartermaster, medical all benefitted by national standardization. The days of the Minute Man ended.
There are, however, elements in NOAA that I agree need to be purged, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Just about anything can be argued to “promote the general welfare” if one truncates one’s understanding of our Constitution and our founding to that phrase without qualification. That expectation of government must be balanced, as it certainly was by our Founders, with a strong belief that “less government is better than more government except where no other option exists for promoting the general welfare”; e.g., legal system, military. If private enterprise can do something as well as government (which it can do in all but the most limited arenas), then government should stay away.
““less government is better than more government except where no other option exists for …”
Yes++
I would be more amenable to the private enterprise argument if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the stocks are held by institutional investors who are driven by short term gains. This is NOT an environment for financing a service that requires long term commitments for assets and skill sets. Having government doing the bulk of forecasting also saves money by not duplicating resources.
Both Franklin and Jefferson were very interested in weather and had rapid communications such as telegraphs been available in the 1780’s they would very likely have had weather forecasting as a duty of government.
There are companies that are making money providing customized weather forecasts, and most aren’t bothered by NWS been funded in part from the taxes that they pay. Accuweather comes across as not wanting the competition.
What has been a waste is the amount of funding that NOAA has been using for climate modeling instead of improving short term forecasts.
You really to study more capitalism and less socialism. The fact is that institutional investors are amongst very much advocates of long term. With the amount of money they have invested in companies, it is very difficult to sell in a hurry. So they have to care about the stability of the companies they are investing in.
FWIW, I despise socialists.
I should have put more emphasis on activist investors as opposed to the likes of Warren Buffet. I’ve heard of too many cases where a company was taken private, then turned back into a public company carrying the debt from the LBO.
Buying everyone a hockey helmet would also “promote the general welfare”.
Grocery stores improve the general welfare, therefore government should own grocery stores.
The constitution says “promote the general welfare”, not “provide the general welfare”. The way that government promotes the general welfare is by providing a stems of laws and regulations that promote economic activity, rather than hindering it.
Bad analogy! A grocery store can be brought up in a matter of months, whereas a weather forecasting service will take years to decades.
Grocery stores also depend on roads which are almost always provided by the government to promote the general welfare. We could privatize the roads where you may be paying several different entities just to get from your house to the grocery store.
a weather forecasting service will take years to decades.
Curious: why would it take so long?
If you are starting from scratch, there is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built and a lot of institutional knowledge that needs to be learned.
Ah yes . . . that oft-heard sentiment that fails a reality check due to lack of (a) lead-in feasibility analysis, (b) lead-in funding analysis, and (c) lead-in risk vs. reward analysis. In particular, I note that the “private sector”—that is, commercial for-profit businesses—are much more sensitive to risk vs. reward than are governmental agencies so that carries its own price escalation.
Let’s examine a current, prime example that falsifies your statement: the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program currently being supervised by NASA. The CLPS program was established in 2018 to procure lunar payload delivery services from American commercial companies. The first orders for scientific payload delivery were awarded to Astrobotic and to Intuitive Machines in May 2019.
Nearly five years later, in January 2024, Astrobotic’s Peregrine first mission for a Moon landing failed, not even hitting the Moon and burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Subsequently, also nearly five years later, in February 2024, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus first mission (aka IM-1; aka Nova-C lander) for a Moon landing was publicly claimed to have made a “successful soft-landing” on the Moon, although that resulted in a tipped-over lander and little scientific data being returned from its six NASA-developed payloads that operated less than a week on the lunar surface as a result of the tip-over.
In contrast, the NASA Surveyor program, initiated in 1960, was the first American program to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. Six years later, Surveyor 1, launched in May 1966, successfully landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966, becoming the first American spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on an extraterrestrial body. The Surveyor program included seven robotic spacecraft, with five successfully landing on the Moon, a lander success rate of 71% without any previous experience.
“We do expect roughly a 50% success rate,” Sandra Connelly, NASA deputy associate administrator for science, said of CLPS missions.
(ref: https://spacenews.com/success-failure-and-something-in-between-for-lunar-landers/ )
IMHO, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program currently evidences one giant leap backwards in the history of US space exploration.
Have you worked with NASA, and do you believe their mindset has kept pace with technology after 1990?
The trouble with the public lifetime-jobs model is its tendency to collect intellectual superstars who get really good at golf.
Yes, I have worked with NASA in my professional career.
And, no, I do NOT believe that NASA’s mindset has “kept pace with technology after 1990”. Sadly, NASA has lost the recipe for engineering prowess and excellence that it had during the era of Apollo missions to the Moon.
NASA is a perfect example of an agency of government providing a service that nobody yet, has the ability to provide economically.
Elon Musk and his SpaceX company will be disappointed to hear that.
36 trillion dollars in debt and some people argue the government needs to continue acquiring more debt because DOGE is run by Elon Musk and Heritage Foundation wrote a paper.
OK, Sure. Gene Hackman is not going to pay the debt and in a few years neither am I.
The beneficiaries of Gene Hackman’s lifetime-accumulated wealth are certainly going to help pay interest on the national debt via estate taxes. If you pay any Federal taxes on your income, you are paying on that interest debt too.
We are paying interest which keeps growing and not paying anything on the principal which is growing too.
Musk is right. At the current deficit growth rate the U.S. #1 problem is not climate change, it is the fact that we spend more than we take in. Sooner than later, NWS will disappear because we will be FORCED to cut everything but absolutely undeniable basic services. Roads, post office, and military. Basically, back to the beginning.
I will be attending a Storm Spotter class this evening, conducted by the NWS area office. Much like Fire, Police, EMS, Courts, Military, the NWS is critical to providing information to the general public without a subscription. For many years this has worked well. The implementation of the WSR88D radars revolutionized the ability of providing a food accuracy of Tornado warnings, as well as other products. Unfortunately, these radars are old and have not been updated from a significant hardware standpoint since 1988.Parts and maintenance for these systems are significant, and insufficient funds have been allocated, or concrete plans for replacement put forward. NOAA has not really fully funded, nor supported the NWS for a long time. Also being under the department of Commerce is a limiting factor as well. The weather service offices are under staffed, and the are still significant gaps in coverage to the radar systems, and radiosonde launching sites. Barely a month goes by without another observation being dropped. Each observation lost of the upper atmosphere results in a poorer picture of that critical part of our weather. It does not appear the NOAA cares that this is happening.
There is no private organization capable of placing the WSR88D or equivalent radars to provide the general public warnings. The data gathering for all of the stations, aggregation of it into useable formats, and the ability to disseminate it should rest within a dedicated government agency. People should not be at risk because they do not subscribe to AccuWeather, or other service. Regional forecasts are critical, and this is a function well served by the NWS. I agree with Mike Smith that other entities should be working on the Computer Forecast Models, for NOAA and the NWS are far behind other available tools. The NWS needs to be part of a weather only department, for having a lawyer in charge of how to provide forecasts, and warning is essentially useless.
I’m enjoying the spirited conversation. Those who favor dumping the NWS might want to consider how important weather is to national defense. Halsey learned that the hard way when he twice sent his task force into typhoons. Lost ships and lives. And, of course, how stressed Ike and other leaders were about weather leading up do D-Day. Earlier, Hitler and Napoleon got some hard lessons in the Russian winter. Perhaps I should have put a paragraph in about that, but oh well.
Don’t forget the Mongols invading Japan. Divine Wind.
If I remember correctly, the first weather service (in France under Napoleon?) was a part of the military.
Has NOAA and the NWS been “Climatized”? Yes. Can it be cleaned up? Yes.
Could government “Declimatize” a private company like, say, The Storm Channel without stepping all over the 1st Amendment? No.
Always work on the principle that less government is better. It is rare that someone sitting in DC will be able to spend your money more wisely than you can.
I think Julius has done a pretty fair job of pointing out the positives of NOAA and NWS and I appreciate that.
If NOAA stuck to doing the things Julius has talked about here I don’t think anyone would have a problem with NOAA. Unfortunately that is not the case, NOAA has allowed politics to soil its reputation by promoting discredited notions like CAGW which encourage harmful and unwarranted political policies whether intended or not. I believe NOAA approves of these unwarranted and unneeded policies and until that changes NOAA deserves all the criticism it is currently receiving.
As much as I distrust government agencies I think there is a place for NOAA especially after reading Julius’ article. There is absolutely no room for politics in NOAA or any agency like NOAA that includes environmental issues. If it can be shown that political issues or matters are appearing in NOAA’s work those committing the violations must be fired. If they aren’t then the administrators of NOAA will be fired along with those who broke the rules. This is a science and meteorological outfit not a political outfit.
There may be a place for NWS if we have excess income. In terms of welfare, social security, national defense, post office, etc., where does NWS rank?
You have put me in a tough spot, you are asking me to defend a government agency and I don’t like government agencies. There is plenty to not like about NOAA, their miserable performance concerning endangerment findings in relation to off shore windmill construction and operation comes to mind. I think that is evidence of political shenanigans, there should be no room for politics while performing NOAA work. Whoever brings politics into the mix should be fired.
What we need is information about atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Is it safe to travel, recreate, ship, fly, camp and so on. Are conditions so dry we should limit activities, is there avalanche danger, mud slide danger, rough water danger and on and on. Communications with defense department, ocean conditions or other large bodies of water, atmospheric conditions for business, travel, shipping and recreation.
Yes I think this is important and even though I am not a fan of government this is something the government should have a hand in with restrictions. Every citizen should have free access to this information 24/7 by radio, phone, TV, computer whatever. The information we are talking about from NOAA/NWS is every bit as important as what happens in the departments you mentioned. If we didn’t have NOAA/NWS we would have to create it.
I stand by what I said.
Then split NWS from the NOAA.
I think your criticism of the NOAA is warranted.
We need to divorce politics from these agencies. They have an important mission to perform. Environmentalism, social justice, equality, gender issues all of it and more this is not a social science experiment.
Who is we? As I recall, it wasn’t until Obama’s policies to weaponize the Treasury as a bank account for all his friends that our National Debt exceeded 1 trillion dollars.
Today it’s 36 times that amount in just 16 years. Way beyond inflation rates. Talk about mission creep.
It’s the same spurious argument we’re hearing from everyone bleating about their precious government organization being reformed and trimmed. It boils down to “We’ve always done it this way. It works. Why fix something that ain’t broke?”
It’s a circular argument. You don’t know that it ain’t broke because you’ve never seen any other way to do it. Private companies have already been doing weather forecasting, and they can do it better than government. Recent experiments by private companies to forecast weather using AI to analyze publicly available data has already proven to be more accurate than the predictions from NWS and NOAA.
Government is always worse at doing what private companies can do because it never has to compete for customers; the incentive that drives all companies to provide better service more efficiently.
It’s time to cut all analysis from NOAA and drastically reduce its budget. Change its focus to data collection only, where it can’t waste time and money on “proving” climate change is a big deal or other pet political projects, funded by taxpayers. Private companies can do analysis better, more efficiently, and with far less waste, fraud, and political manipulation. Government can collect the data and make it available. Private companies can generate the analysis and forecasts.
It would have been helpful if the author of this piece had quoted actual portions of Project 2025 or provided links instead of just vaguely claiming that it says this or that. I get that launching and maintaining satellites is expensive, so it makes sense for the government to do that and gather the data, making it available to those who need access to it. At that point, it seems likely that private meteorologist could do their own evaluations and forecasts more efficiently and effectively than a government agency. Speaking of that, why do both NOAA and NASA GISS have their own temperature records? Can we at least agree that removing duplication is a good idea?
Trump’s Administration has repeatedly refused Project 2025.
This appears to be democrat talking points, not this Administrations actions!
Yes, Democrat talking points.
They are always looking to demonize Republicans. It’s what they do. It’s their reason for existence.