4 ms·

This is really interesting, and it should also be noted that NOAA's mission and ability to provide weather data directly to US citizens is in jeopardy. Rather t

by rz2k 8y ago

This is really interesting, and it should also be noted that NOAA's mission and ability to provide weather data directly to US citizens is in jeopardy. Rather than paying for it just once through their taxes, there is an effort to charge fees for public access so that companies which repackage weather data can serve forecasts with ads and gather users' data. https://blog.ucsusa.org/andrew-rosenberg/conflicts-of-interest-noaas-nominees-accuweather-ceo-barry-myers-and-dr-neil-jacobs-of-panasonic https://blog.ucsusa.org/andrew-rosenberg/conflicts-of-intere... edit: If the Union of Concerned Scientists is too ideological (?): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-pick-to-lead-weather-agency-spent-30-years-fighting-it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-p...

casefields 8y ago
The word "fee" is nowhere to be found in your linked source. Way to dump a link and pretend your complaint is backed up by a political piece attacking a nominated federal official. That's a republished article by Common Dreams, which is a left-wing version of Breitbart. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/12/conflicts-interest-noaas-nominees-accuweather-ceo-barry-myers-and-dr-neil-jacobs https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/12/conflicts-inte...
- dgacmu 8y ago
  You seem to have it backwards: common dreams republished the UCS article. I just read it, and it appears entirely relevant to what the poster was talking about -- efforts to prevent NOAA from providing high-quality data products directly to the public.
metaphor 8y ago
Thanks for bringing this to light. I don't have a weather app installed on my phone specifically because NOAA doesn't publish one...now I know why. When I'm driving to the office or on travel and want a snapshot of the current weather, I call ASOS for the relevant area and a bot on repeat tells me what conditions look like, e.g. try (650)827-8593 for San Francisco, or (404)762-1121 for Atlanta. It's a resource that really isn't known outside of the aviation industry, but it's there and publicly available. EDIT: Fat-fingered the number for SFO ASOS...corrected. EDIT^2: In the spirit of following cookie crumb trails, I did a quick search on congress.gov for "national weather service" and found this particularly damning piece of legislation introduced in the Senate[1]. Unlike the 2005 legislation cited in the article which fell flat on its face[2], this one looks to more systematically nerf the National Weather Service at taxpayer expense to the benefit of commercial interests. It definitely wasn't a political exaggeration that the NWS is under attack. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/570/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/570... [2] https://www.congress.gov/109/bills/s786/BILLS-109s786is.pdf https://www.congress.gov/109/bills/s786/BILLS-109s786is.pdf

by rz2k 8y ago

casefields 8y ago

The word "fee" is nowhere to be found in your linked source. Way to dump a link and pretend your complaint is backed up by a political piece attacking a nominated federal official. That's a republished article by Common Dreams, which is a left-wing version of Breitbart. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/12/conflicts-interest-noaas-nominees-accuweather-ceo-barry-myers-and-dr-neil-jacobs https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/12/conflicts-inte...

dgacmu 8y ago
You seem to have it backwards: common dreams republished the UCS article. I just read it, and it appears entirely relevant to what the poster was talking about -- efforts to prevent NOAA from providing high-quality data products directly to the public.

metaphor 8y ago

Thanks for bringing this to light. I don't have a weather app installed on my phone specifically because NOAA doesn't publish one...now I know why. When I'm driving to the office or on travel and want a snapshot of the current weather, I call ASOS for the relevant area and a bot on repeat tells me what conditions look like, e.g. try (650)827-8593 for San Francisco, or (404)762-1121 for Atlanta. It's a resource that really isn't known outside of the aviation industry, but it's there and publicly available. EDIT: Fat-fingered the number for SFO ASOS...corrected. EDIT^2: In the spirit of following cookie crumb trails, I did a quick search on congress.gov for "national weather service" and found this particularly damning piece of legislation introduced in the Senate[1]. Unlike the 2005 legislation cited in the article which fell flat on its face[2], this one looks to more systematically nerf the National Weather Service at taxpayer expense to the benefit of commercial interests. It definitely wasn't a political exaggeration that the NWS is under attack. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/570/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/570... [2] https://www.congress.gov/109/bills/s786/BILLS-109s786is.pdf https://www.congress.gov/109/bills/s786/BILLS-109s786is.pdf