Are there any real private competitors though? The work that NOAA does is only valuable because of the extreme scale it’s carried out by and replicating that would be quite expensive.
No, and there genuinely can’t be due to everything NOAA does. I used to work in the engineering group for NWS and there are so many parts to weather prediction and climate recording it’s not even funny. Sure there are satellites and radar, but there’s also over 200 weather balloons released each day across the US, there’s highly specialized software that fills the unique non-profit driven mission of the NWS, there’s advanced weather modeling run on super computers, there’s a whole network of thousands of volunteer observers that record temperature, dew point, soil temps, evaporation readings, and more to support agriculture, and then there’s the outreach both to places like schools but also to support things like amateur radio clubs and weather enthusiast clubs that all provide free observations and reports. Private industry consumes all of that data for free to repackage and sell as a product (they technically add value by tailoring it in many cases or use it to run proprietary models). All of that is just the NWS as well, NOAA does so much more that impacts everything from agriculture to fisheries and it’s so clear that the hard right pushing P2025 have no clue what they actually do. This single move would likely destroy the US position as a global breadbasket, and it’s just one tiny piece of P2025.
Oh it gets worse and still only in NWS area. All of the severe weather alerts from thunderstorms to hurricanes are also done by NWS. Not to mention the radio stations they broadcast all of that information on that are also used to help tune antennas and receivers.
This would kill thousands of people every year. And it’s mostly red states that would feel the biggest burden of being hurt. It does not make any sense except to acknowledge that the people writing P2025 really do not give 2 flying shits about anyone but themselves.
It amazes me that people do not seem to know this, so it bears repeating strenuously.
Without NWS there is effectively no weather data. Oh sure, you have Wunderground’s handful of private weather stations with their dodgy uncalibrated data. But anything high quality and worth using in forecasting models comes from the gubmint.
No weather data means agriculture is seriously fucked. Aviation is even more fucked. Shipping is fucked. The electricity grid is fucked. Construction, mining, sports… the list of industries that depend on accurate data and forecasting is massive.
Both are true. And they want the data privatized so only they can profit from it.
I was glossing over the details. To clarify - and I think you mean this - they want the free data from NWS but they don’t want that same data to be publicly available. Except that’s not generally how federal government data works - by law in most cases it has to be made public. But that’s kind of irrelevant in the context of “disband the NWS” at least in the sense that Accuweather very much wants the free ride to continue or failing that to get handed all the NWS resources, which isn’t gonna fly not least because other providers would strongly object. IOW, this is all kind of DOA.
Indeed. But; If you can eradicate the free market first, the private market can take over and use high running/development costs to justify high access fees.
Are there any real private competitors though? The work that NOAA does is only valuable because of the extreme scale it’s carried out by and replicating that would be quite expensive.
No, and there genuinely can’t be due to everything NOAA does. I used to work in the engineering group for NWS and there are so many parts to weather prediction and climate recording it’s not even funny. Sure there are satellites and radar, but there’s also over 200 weather balloons released each day across the US, there’s highly specialized software that fills the unique non-profit driven mission of the NWS, there’s advanced weather modeling run on super computers, there’s a whole network of thousands of volunteer observers that record temperature, dew point, soil temps, evaporation readings, and more to support agriculture, and then there’s the outreach both to places like schools but also to support things like amateur radio clubs and weather enthusiast clubs that all provide free observations and reports. Private industry consumes all of that data for free to repackage and sell as a product (they technically add value by tailoring it in many cases or use it to run proprietary models). All of that is just the NWS as well, NOAA does so much more that impacts everything from agriculture to fisheries and it’s so clear that the hard right pushing P2025 have no clue what they actually do. This single move would likely destroy the US position as a global breadbasket, and it’s just one tiny piece of P2025.
Holy shit
Oh it gets worse and still only in NWS area. All of the severe weather alerts from thunderstorms to hurricanes are also done by NWS. Not to mention the radio stations they broadcast all of that information on that are also used to help tune antennas and receivers.
This would kill thousands of people every year. And it’s mostly red states that would feel the biggest burden of being hurt. It does not make any sense except to acknowledge that the people writing P2025 really do not give 2 flying shits about anyone but themselves.
It would hurt red states, you say? That happens to be something red states LOVE voting for!
Shout-out to all my nexrad tech homies out there 📡
It amazes me that people do not seem to know this, so it bears repeating strenuously.
Without NWS there is effectively no weather data. Oh sure, you have Wunderground’s handful of private weather stations with their dodgy uncalibrated data. But anything high quality and worth using in forecasting models comes from the gubmint.
No weather data means agriculture is seriously fucked. Aviation is even more fucked. Shipping is fucked. The electricity grid is fucked. Construction, mining, sports… the list of industries that depend on accurate data and forecasting is massive.
AccuWeather has been lobbying for this; Joe Bastardi knows he can’t do as good a job so he wants to end the competition
Accuweather doesn’t compete with NWS, they rely on it’s data.
Both are true. And they want the data privatized so only they can profit from it.
I was glossing over the details. To clarify - and I think you mean this - they want the free data from NWS but they don’t want that same data to be publicly available. Except that’s not generally how federal government data works - by law in most cases it has to be made public. But that’s kind of irrelevant in the context of “disband the NWS” at least in the sense that Accuweather very much wants the free ride to continue or failing that to get handed all the NWS resources, which isn’t gonna fly not least because other providers would strongly object. IOW, this is all kind of DOA.
I’m sure the actual legislation would be a transition to privatisation. Suddenly musk and bezos et al a are demonstrating their weather satellites
Indeed. But; If you can eradicate the free market first, the private market can take over and use high running/development costs to justify high access fees.