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White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA
- brohoolio 10y agoThe cuts are gonna kill a ton of jobs. Blue collar ones too. And some of the US competitive advantage. Science has been driving our economy for years. 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?
- mikeyouse 10y agoThey've also announced eliminating the budget to control Asian carp... billions and billions in economic activity are going to be lost, not to mention so much biological diversity in the Great Lakes. Just an absolute catastrophe.
- maxerickson 10y agoIs that also a budget action? This describes it as an administrative action to preserve certain business activities in Illinois: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/03/trump_administration_delays_re.html http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/03/trump_admin... To be clear, I prefer the plan that protects the lakes.
- mikeyouse 10y agoYep, the overall program cut by 95%+ in the Trump budget. http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/trump_great_lakes_epa_cuts.html http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/trump_great_lake...
- mirimir 10y agoHey, he's just following through on campaign promises. How can you fault him on that? 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.
- nkozyra 10y agoIf he cuts back on foreign intervention, this extraordinary emphasis on "rebuilding" our military (whatever that means given the relative size of our military) makes even less sense. If you're hanging your hat on the idea that he'll be less interventionist, I'd ask you to consider the evidence mounting to the contrary.
- mirimir 10y agoDamn, if he doesn't trigger WWIII, I'll be happy.
- jankotek 10y agoThis is really bad. NOAA also covers oceans. This talk mentions how it was underfunded already 9 years ago. https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oceans https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oc...
- krapp 10y agoOf course they are. 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. NOAA cannot Make America Great Again, but a new fleet of aircraft carriers can. So it goes. Tie a rock to a string and hang it outside your window to see which way the wind is blowing.
- bobmno 10y ago17 trillion in debt, time to cut back
- Analemma_ 10y agoHave you actually read the White House's plan? They themselves (I'm not strawmanning here) have said that overall spending and the debt is going to increase, most of that going to the military. No "cutting back" is happening.
- krapp 10y agoYes, we need to make room for the the trillions of dollars in new spending Trump has already proposed. And statues. Many, many statues, wrought from American steel.
- dashundchen 10y agoNot sure if you're sarcastic or trolling . Cut back on by far the largest and most expensive military in the world then. NOAA budget 2016: $5.8 billion US military budget: $600 billion And they're proposing a $54 billion increase. You could probably trim 10 NOAAs from the military industrial complex and nothing would be lost.
- derefr 10y agoWith the proviso that US military support and materiel has been used as trade goods for alliance-making with other countries for most of the last century. A large portion of the US military budget is "being the substitute military for US allies." The key question of decreasing US government spending is how to get other countries to pony up for the "renting" of the US military forces that they're already doing (because the alternative is that the US withdraws military support from those countries—and then those countries build back up their own militaries. Which, undoubtedly, would put us in a very different world than the one we're in right now...)
- intrasight 10y agoCuts to any good science will be sad.
- deelowe 10y agosigh...
- acomjean 10y agohttp://weather.gov http://weather.gov (run by NOAA and the national weather service) is my go to weather site. No ads, no hyperbole. I found out about it when some senator wanted to stop them from posting weather online because it competed with "private sector" weather companies. A couple times I've seen that tv news weather leaves the site up on their monitors during newscasts.
- icehawk219 10y agoI've used weather.gov for years and love the service. Every person I've talked to who complains about the crap coverage by the weather companies in the US that I've shown it to uses it exclusively as well. It's a perfect example of the governments lack of profit motive producing a genuinely better product than the competition. I know this isn't always the case but it certainly is here. I don't agree with lots of things our government spends money on but stuff like this I absolutely support.
- nojvek 10y agoIs the logic here that by slashing NOAA funding, no real claims of climate change will be made and Trump will prevail?
- veidr 10y agoI'm afraid this might be the wrong place to look for logic. However, at least it looks like they were able to finish modernizing their website before the budget got the ax: https://forecast-v3.weather.gov/documentation?redirect=legacy https://forecast-v3.weather.gov/documentation?redirect=legac...
- dragonwriter 10y agoThat's probably a part of it, but the budget cuts across the government (outside of defense and law enforcement) are also a realization of goal of at least the Bannon faction of the Trump White House to basically burn the whole system of government to the ground.
- coss 10y agoJust playing devil's advocate can someone articulate what kind of value we will lose as a society?
- crftr 10y agoNOAA's Office of Response and Restoration[1] provides scientific support for oil spills, chemical accidents, and other emergencies in coastal areas. Though if we want to talk numbers, here's one: $18.7 billion. NOAA legal assisted DoJ (and others) with BP's Deepwater Horizon civil settlement.[2] [1] http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about [2] http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/agreement-principle-bp-settle-civil-claims-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill.html http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/agreement-p...
- deelowe 10y agoNOAA plays a critical role in monitoring and predicting weather and sea patterns.
- aerovistae 10y agoLol....hurricane prediction?
- Analemma_ 10y agoMultiple sectors of the economy, especially agriculture, rely critically on accurate weather forecasting, which is provided by NOAA.
- 65827 10y agoIf you read the article you will see it involves cuts to measurement areas like satellites and temperature monitoring, which will make weather and climate science shittier for everyone.
- techman9 10y agoJust to extend this. Climate science may seem like an abstract and alarmist thing now, but as the earth warms the human cost of all this will become much more pronounced, and without accurate science and monitoring, we're pretty much totally fucked.
- coss 10y agoJust playing devil's advocate can someone articulate what kind of value we will lose as a society?
- ivanstegic 10y agoWTF is wrong with this administration and data? Honestly.
- pauloday 10y agoWell, it's easier to lie about things when there's not any hard data available, and they do seem to lie a lot.
- akhilcacharya 10y agoThey do it even when there's data available, they don't care either way I think.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoWithout data, folks can't prove they are lying, though.
- mhneu 10y agoIt's easy. This administration and the current GOP are beholden to the very rich and to corporations. Energy companies have made a business decision to use marketing and PR to deny climate change. Denying climate change protects energy companies' profits. This is all very expected once you realize who funds the GOP. I don't really get why most media stories on climate change don't explain the motivations behind climate change denial.
- hyperdunc 10y agoThis administration and the current GOP? This isn't a partisan problem, it's a systemic one. Every recent administration and both major parties are beholden to powerful special interests.
- zouhair 10y agoThe normal course of things the US went through since the seventies. The US is all in all an insane country with tons of nukes. Let's hope he stops at just destroying the US alone and not start a World War.
- tsomctl 10y ago> 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. Yes, let's shoot the messenger.
- mikeash 10y agoWhen you "know" the message is wrong but the messenger won't shut up about it, these things start to sound like a good idea.
- jon_richards 10y agoIf you spend too long trying to convince someone there's a problem, then you are the problem.
- Analemma_ 10y agoThis is one of those comments that sounds profound if you give it a cursory glance, but actually makes no sense whatsoever.
- mirimir 10y agoOh come on, sure it makes sense. It means that you failed to communicate effectively. Or that communicating to them was not an effective strategy.
- BrailleHunting 10y agoNext up: disbanding firefighters, parametics and police. Not to be outdone by shutting down the electric grid.
- icehawk219 10y agoYou joke but I know plenty of self professed libertarians who want nothing more than to see those very services privatized. I know someone who genuinely believes a privatized police force would be the end of police violence because "then we'd at least be able to fight back." Sadly this is actually how a lot of people think.
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- exclusiv 10y agoYeah that's overboard and I don't think common services should be profitable enterprises, but the notion that you'd have an entity with serious repercussions for doing wrong to the people they swore to protect is not unfound. As it stands now, they are self-preserving entities and collect pensions when they screw up. So while that suggestion you shared is not sensible, we do need a better checks and balance on the police. Something outside of internal affairs, like a BBB at the top of the state department.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> You joke but I know plenty of self professed libertarians who want nothing more than to see those very services privatized. Perhaps, but the Trump Administration doesn't even pretend to be libertarian (pro-business, especially big business, yes, but not libertarian.)
- dragonwriter 10y agoOnly the first two; defense and law enforcement are the things this administration wants government to do more of.
- danh1979 10y agoEveryone knows about weather and climate, but NOAA also does a lot of ocean exploration: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/explorations.html http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/explorations.html
- ocschwar 10y agoSteve Bannon has a thing for shipyards. Someone should tell him what the NOAA does for merchant shipping.
- mikeash 10y agoWorse forecasts -> more dangerous shipping -> more ships lost at sea -> more business for shipyards.
- hugodahl 10y agoAnd then more ships built quicker to lesser safety standards (we don't need no stinkin' regulations) which will in turn busy tbe shipyards even more, until we end up with a maritime version of the "Spruce Goose"! Or maybe it's just late and I've turned hyperbole up a smidgen.
- wiggyslim 10y agoMakes 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?
- metaobject 10y agoCertainly they believe that weather exists? Cuts to NOAA won't just affect climate change research but will affect weather forecasts, hurricane forecasts, severe weather forecasts, etc. Mr. Trump is a pathetic excuse for a president.
- DanTheManPR 10y ago"They can't predict the weather worth a damn, so what use are they!" (Nevermind that forecasting has improved tremendously in the last 20 years, thanks in large part to NOAA research)
- johnjhayes 10y ago>Certainly they believe that weather exists? Exists? Sure. What it actually is? Not really. "Trump also misrepresented what happened to the weather during his swearing in. He said he felt a few drops of rain as he started delivering his address, but then, “God looked down and, and he said we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.. . .The truth is it stopped immediately.” Light rain continued to fall through the first few minutes of the speech — and VIP’s at the dais took out ponchos, including former president George W. Bush — and then quit. Trump said there was a downpour right after he finished, which did not occur." - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-in-cia-visit-attacks-media-for-coverage-of-his-inaugural-crowds/2017/01/21/f4574dca-e019-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.bcad097e7712 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-in-cia-visit-a...
- peteretep 10y ago> Certainly they believe that > weather exists This administration does not appear to reward such assumptions.
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- MichaelBurge 10y ago> according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post. So somebody in the NOAA is leaking internal memos to the press. Is it so bad to cut funding to rebellious agencies? 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. I don't have an opinion on the NOAA itself, although it doesn't look like they're being targeted: > NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.
- metaobject 10y ago"Is it so bad to cut funding to rebellious agencies?" If the agency provides a vital service to the country, I'd say it is bad to punish the country by cutting their funding just because an employee in that agency leaked a document.
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- MichaelBurge 10y agoThe budget cut memo by itself is not that important. The memo was probably forwarded to every manager in the department, and all it takes is one disgruntled underling expecting his job to be cut. But if it's a consistent pattern, there's risk in having the government be staffed with people who feel justified in breaking the law to preserve their jobs, even if they feel their jobs are important.
- sporkologist 10y ago> It could be a good way to catch leakers, too That's what we need, to catch those darn leakers, no matter the cost to our society's future.
- dflock 10y agoI 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.
- Gargoyle 10y ago"according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post." Why not share that memo with the public since they have it? How is the public interest served by not sharing it?
- Analemma_ 10y agoThe White House is desperately trying to crack down on leaks: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/03/03/us/politics/03reuters-usa-trump-secrecy-exclusive.html https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/03/03/us/politics/03reu..., to the point of demanding aides hand over their phone to check that Signal is not installed. It's entirely possible the Post and/or whoever leaked the memo is suspicious of custom "fingerprinted" versions that could be traced back to the source.
- memmcgee 10y agoBecause it could endanger their source. Sometimes different versions of a document are given to different people to try to figure out who's leaking. And having people in the White House who are willing to leak important information to the public is in the public interest.
- rabidrat 10y agoNature now requires public data for articles, maybe The Washington Post should do the same with its sources. http://www.nature.com/news/announcement-where-are-the-data-1.20541 http://www.nature.com/news/announcement-where-are-the-data-1...
- blackaspen 10y agoYikes. But unfortunately not unsurprising. 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). 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. 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!"
- davesque 10y agoYep. I'm in Boulder too. NOAA, NCAR, and NIST have always been fixtures (almost cultural, not just scientific institutions) of this town. It's sad to hear this news and just serves to reinforce the sense of helplessness I feel when faced with climate science doubters. There really couldn't be a more important issue facing the planet right now. But, alas, humans mostly don't care.
- jacquesm 10y ago> But, alas, humans mostly don't care. Humans mostly do. But not all humans get to vote in the US elections.
- owly 10y agoI am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
- pasbesoin 10y agoThose 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. And the Republican majority knows it owes a significant part of its current position to Trump -- and his acive base. 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. 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. 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. 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 business and commerce.
- chasing 10y ago> 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. Maybe in the Senate, but not in the House! Get out there and find some Democrats in tight districts to support!
- cool_look 10y agoSorry to hear about anyone losing jobs. 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] 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. [1] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/noaas-fabricated-record-temperatures/ https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/noa... [2] https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/rss-satellite-temperature-update-consolidates-with-uah/ https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/rss-satellite-tem... [3] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/booker-on-the-noaa-scandal/ https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/boo...
- mistermann 10y agoFrom the first link: "Note how a huge swathe of South America has been labelled as “record warmest”. And what is this based on? In fact, there is virtually no temperature data available at all for that particular area, including nearly all of Brazil. The so-called record temperatures in Brazil and neighbouring countries are pure fabrication." That seems like a pretty bold charge, how does someone who knows nothing about this tell who's telling the truth? Anyone care to weigh in? EDIT: Seems you're downvoted to grey already, hopefully someone can still add some commentary.
- cool_look 10y agothat was just one of many many charges of tampering[1]. honestly this cristicism of the NOAA, NASA is pretty unwelcome by most HN people, so im not proposing everyone accept this immediately. but the facts are out there and slowly if what i am saying is correct ( time will tell ) the the tampering will start being rolled back. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11367272/Climategate-the-sequel-How-we-are-STILL-being-tricked-with-flawed-data-on-global-warming.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11367272/Climategate-the-...
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- mordae 10y agoWhen they fire you, come to EU for a bit. It will blow over.
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- AlbertoGP 10y agoCutting 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: http://gasflaretracker.ng/ http://gasflaretracker.ng/ [1] I built the application working as freelancer for http://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/ http://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/ 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. Getting that kind of data from similar agencies in other countries, even Western European ones, is immensely more difficult even when it exists.
- coldcode 10y agoSomeday 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.
- tasty_freeze 10y agoImagine 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. 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. 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.