<a href="http://weather.gov" rel="nofollow">http://weather.gov</a> (run by NOAA and the national weather service) is my go to weather site.<p>No ads, no hyperbole.<p>I found out about it when some senator wanted to stop them from posting weather online because it competed with "private sector" weather companies.<p>A couple times I've seen that tv news weather leaves the site up on their monitors during newscasts.
Of course they are.<p>NOAA does nothing which panders to populist sentiment. NOAA can't put steel workers to work. NOAA is not the grit of honest American labor, or the power of military conquest, or the gold of a halcyon age.<p>NOAA cannot Make America Great Again, but a new fleet of aircraft carriers can.<p>So it goes. Tie a rock to a string and hang it outside your window to see which way the wind is blowing.
> The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, .... Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress.<p>Yes, let's shoot the messenger.
Yikes. But unfortunately not unsurprising.<p>I live in Boulder and drive past the NOAA (and NIST, and I think parts of CIRES) offices every day. I've had family and countless professors that have done joint research with them, and very, very good friends and colleagues that have started their careers there. Part of how I wound up here (in the tech sector, posting to HN) was on an eighth grade field trip there asking how they drove 'Science on a Sphere' (7 RHEL machines).<p>It'd obviously be terrible globally if this were to go through, but it'd be pretty awful locally too. Every year around budget approval season, most NOAA folks I know would be insanely worried...Guess that comes a little early this year.<p>EDIT:
I guess as a follow up, I anticipate pretty substantial(proposed, at least) cuts to UCAR/NCAR and NREL as well. "We don't need no stinkin' climate research!"
Cutting their satellite programs would be a loss for the whole world: some years ago we[1] used it to find gas flares in Nigeria and estimate their environmental damage and the amount of energy wasted by flaring it instead of power generation for the population of the Niger Delta:<p><a href="http://gasflaretracker.ng/" rel="nofollow">http://gasflaretracker.ng/</a><p>[1] I built the application working as freelancer for <a href="http://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/</a><p>While processing their raw data I got a small discrepancy and they very kindly replied my questions with the exact formulas and constants they used: the cause was that they used the density of methane at 20°C instead of 25°C as I had done.<p>Getting that kind of data from similar agencies in other countries, even Western European ones, is immensely more difficult even when it exists.
The cuts are gonna kill a ton of jobs. Blue collar ones too. And some of the US competitive advantage.<p>Science has been driving our economy for years.<p>They are also proposing cutting funding for clean water in the Great Lakes region 97%. Largest source of fresh water in the world and we are gonna cut almost all of the funding?
Those of use who care about these things are a bit screwed, in that the mid-terms put so many more Democratic seats in play than Republican.<p>And the Republican majority knows it owes a significant part of its current position to Trump -- and his acive base.<p>Nonetheless, if you don't want science and reason and at least a best-effort at environmental and resource management to go out the window, NOW is the time to communicate this to your representatives. Whatever your political affiliation as well as that of your representatives.<p>There are reasonable differences on how to manage as well as measure and report resources and the environment. Most rational people, regardless of their position, don't want to throw the science and scientific endeavors out the window.<p>And as for "conservative" and "business" value in this: I believe agri-business -- at whatever scale -- derives significant value from the likes of NOAA surveying, evaluating, and reporting on weather and climate.<p>Something I find annoying about these... "government-science-divestment" attitudes and agendas. These programs don't nor even primarily support "tree huggers". They've grown up, exist, and maintain support because the provide significant value to <i>business and commerce.</i>
I had heard that Trump/Republican the plan to kill NASA's climate research, was actually going to be to shunt it over to NOAA. This might be the other shoe dropping - defund NOAA (especially the satellite division) so that they can't keep the climate research going.
Makes sense when the powers that be think climate change is made up, in fact maybe they think the climate is made up. Why fund an agency that spends money on something that does not exist?
Everyone knows about weather and climate, but NOAA also does a lot of ocean exploration:<p><a href="http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/explorations.html" rel="nofollow">http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/explorations.html</a>
This is really bad. NOAA also covers oceans. This talk mentions how it was underfunded already 9 years ago.<p><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oceans" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oc...</a>
Someday perhaps we can return to those wonderful bygone era when we had no weather satellites and no one knew the hurricane was coming and thousands of people die and billions of dollars is lost. But the important thing is we bought more carriers.
"according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post."<p>Why not share that memo with the public since they have it? How is the public interest served by not sharing it?
Imagine the free market purists get their way -- all funds are cut for NOAA and weather prediction is now left to private industry to provide as a service.<p>It is an article of faith among many that the free market always produces a better, even optimal, solution. That may be true, but what it is optimizing is profit, which is not a direct measure of the accuracy of the service.<p>For certain market segments, such as farming, there is probably a pretty strong alignment. But what about for, say, answering questions about whether climate change is real? Will we see a market for conservative-aligned weather information providers which delivers the product which the right wants to see? Likewise, will there be markets to provide what the left wants to see? I have a hard time seeing how that is an improvement over what we currently have.
Hey, he's just following through on campaign promises. How can you fault him on that?<p>In a decade or two, this will probably be laughable. But if he cuts back on foreign intervention, I'm happy to cut him lots of slack.
Sorry to hear about anyone losing jobs.<p>The NOAA has been suspected of doctoring the record[1], of all varieties including the satellites once they got control of them[2]. there will be more insider stories of how some conspired to fake AGW data [3]<p>so I think it likely that the revisions and corrections will be challenged soon and we will see that the revisions had no factual basis. Many will resign, probably jumping before pushed. The cuts are unfortunately prejudging the outcome.<p>[1] <a href="https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/noaas-fabricated-record-temperatures/" rel="nofollow">https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/noa...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/rss-satellite-temperature-update-consolidates-with-uah/" rel="nofollow">https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/rss-satellite-tem...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/booker-on-the-noaa-scandal/" rel="nofollow">https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/boo...</a>
> according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.<p>So somebody in the NOAA is leaking internal memos to the press. Is it so bad to cut funding to rebellious agencies?<p>It could be a good way to catch leakers: Distribute to every agency head a memo mentioning upcoming budget cuts, and see which self-righteous agencies try to stir up trouble. Instruct the agency heads to make minor changes to the details, to see if they surface.<p>I don't have an opinion on the NOAA itself, although it doesn't look like they're being targeted:<p>> NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.