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The End of Weather Forecasting
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoAnother absolutely horrific act of sabotage making the whole world worse for no particular reason.
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoTrump is Putin's agent, but Musk is just sabotaging everything, including himself, for no apparent reason at all.
- namaria 2y agoThey are both puppets of forces they don't fully understand.
- VectorLock 2y agoTo make Mars viable you first have to make Earth _really_ bad.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoIt is not possible to make Earth bad enough for Mars to be viable.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoNah, at this point I suspect the Martians actually felt threatened by the progress SpaceX made, and switched Musk for a lookalike, in order to stop the Mars mission and kick us around a bit for good measure, so humanity is looking inwards worried about geopolitical stability, instead of continuing to advance. I mean, given how he went 180 on everything almost instantly, that's one of the most plausible explanations.
- silverquiet 2y agoThe reason is his amusement, something that I assume gets harder when your hedonic treadmill has long ago accelerated beyond what seems humanly possible. As someone who has trollish tendencies myself, I cannot help but feel a bit of grudging respect for his recent accomplishments in that regard, though as one of the "NPCs" in the country he has chosen to troll, I can't say I'm terribly amused. And as someone with a Jewish girlfriend, I'm a bit worried about how far he intends to take the ironic Nazi-ism.
- ben_w 2y agoTrump and Musk both pattern-match to my understanding of clinical narcissism. With the usual caveats: 1. I'm not a qualified psychiatrist 2. You could tell that without me saying so, because qualified psychiatrists know better than to diagnose people from public behaviours alone 3. Even private interviews for diagnosis are not perfectly reliable 4. Gell-Mann amnesia effect on public reporting
- mentalgear 2y agowell the reason is greed
- squarefoot 2y agoA certain class becoming richer and ensure their dominance is a hell of a reason. They're psychopaths without any consideration for human life who aim at destroying the poor and replace them with AI and automation to keep their economy safe, and this has nothing to do with ideologies, left, right or whatever, those are thrown in just to gain support by the indoctrinated and less educated masses (MAGA & co), most of which will realize they're being screwed by the same guy they voted in only when it'll be too late. This platform is linked directly with one of the worst of them (Thiel) so I won't expect this post or my account to survive much long, but I don't care anyway.
- bambax 2y agoThe illustration in the article is extremely appropriate. It's quite strange why Americans tolerate that an unelected, and even unappointed foreigner would destroy their country piece by piece. Isn't that exactly what the much-touted second amendment was designed to prevent? Edit: YCombinator "AI Startup School" [0] used to present the list of speakers, and Musk was the first one on that list. Now there's no list anymore. It would be interesting to know if it means he's not coming, or if YC isn't comfortable with publishing their choices. [0] https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus Original text on that page was: YC is throwing our first-ever AI startup school in San Francisco on June 16 and 17th.\n\nAI Startup School will gather 2000 of the top CS seniors, masters, and PhD candidates in AI to hear from speakers including Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng and many more
- VectorLock 2y agoThe most strident proponents of the 2nd Amendment voted for this.
- willvarfar 2y agoRe elected: Musk's DOGE role was very public before the election. A major part of the Trump campaign promises was to do this. Re foreigner: Would it be ok if he pays $5M for the gilded citizenship or should the job be given to a citizen? Would that make it ok?
- bambax 2y agoIt would not make it ok if he was American-born, but the fact that he wasn't even born in the US adds insult to injury.
- einpoklum 2y ago> Isn't that exactly what the much-touted second amendment > was designed to prevent? IIANM, the second amendment is motivated by the interest of maintaining a militia, mostly against invasion attempts like the British one in the US war of independence.
- breput 2y agoIt literally was scripted already in the Project 2025[0]: They said exactly what was going to happen, all pre-planned, and anyone is surprised that it is happening? To be clear - FUCK Project 2025 and especially FUCK anyone messing with NOAA/NWS. And if you think I'm exaggerating: "Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather. Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS." [0] https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-21.pdf https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA... "Break Up NOAA"
- stanislavb 2y agoThey are messing with everyone and everything… all at once. Musk and Trump. And it’s too late to stop them without blood…
- breput 2y agoOoh, there's no bread, let them eat cake.
- squarefoot 2y agoThere will always be enough bread and circus. They're #1 and #2 necessary things to always give people to keep them silent on a couch rather than protesting or worse.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoThat's the thing though: it's not so easy to just feed a continent's worth of people. As a ruler, if you keep running around like the elephant in a china shop, breaking critical infrastructure left and right in the name of "efficiency", you may discover that, come next season, there just isn't any bread to give, and there's fuck all you can do at that point.
- 2y ago
- everybodyknows 2y agoWondering if the unacknowledged agenda Musk is acting on is to cut off all data that informs us of the trajectory of climate change?
- lmm 2y agoWhy would he do that? Even on a purely cynical level, isn't that something he relies on to sell Teslas?
- LadyCailin 2y agoNo. Electric cars as a class (when done correctly) are cheaper and better than petrol cars. It makes business sense, primarily. Also good for climate change, but that’s an irrelevant side effect.
- everybodyknows 2y agoFair question. In addition to the other reply, he'd be wary of at all challenging any point of Trump's committed direction.
- LadyCailin 2y agoOf course. The thing conservatives hate the most is facts. They almost always contradict their agenda.
- willvarfar 2y agoYes. Project 2025 linked in the current top comment here https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-21.pdf https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA... says "NOAA consists of six main offices: [list here] Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized."
- saulrh 2y agoI'll point out some higher order impacts of this, since the article doesn't: Losing these forecasts will be catastrophic for American farmers. Crops literally live and die on weather forecasts; forecasts tell farmers what to plant, when to plant it, how to plant it, how to water it, and when to harvest it. Without these forecasts we will see negative effects on the entire American agricultural industry and all of the people it feeds, US citizens or not. I'm not a farmer myself, so I can't tell you exactly how severe the impact will be, but there will be an impact, whether it's an immediate crop failure and outright famine this year or "only" shockwaves bouncing through our entire economy as farmers plant the wrong crops and go out of business over the next few years. This is one of the scenarios I've been most worried about when it comes to the stability of human civilization, up there alongside the looming specter of nuclear war and the randomisation of US foreign policy.
- VectorLock 2y agoBest case scenario a couple trillion more are printed to bail out the farmers.
- mentalgear 2y agoyou can't print out food though (never mind "food printing")
- watwut 2y agoFarmers will pay to some less precise but sufficient private weather service. It will make them poorer and consequently more resentful, so they will vote for conservatives again and more to punish perceived left.
- mentalgear 2y agothis - as it has always been with so many sectors previously in the US. People getting screwed by corporations lobbying republicans, and conservative media propaganda pins the outrage and consequences on the "woke" left.
- 2y ago
- agilob 2y ago>The Trump administration has informed NOAA that two pivotal centers for weather forecasting will soon have their leases canceled, sources told Axios. And the work will eventually be outsourced to IBM who are working on forecasting AI models.
- defrost 2y agoAt 10x cost to the taxpayer and < 10% of the current accuracy? Could be worse, I guess, it could end up farmed out to Oracle ...
- omnimus 2y agoIt can always be outsourced to Grok…
- sMarsIntruder 2y agoThere is no data indicating this. Based on your logic capitalism shouldn’t work since all private companies are making margins, which is the basic incentive.
- squarefoot 2y agoCapitalism does indeed work and I'm all for it although I lean left, but capitalism without safeguards (that is, allowing uncontrolled profit maximization) is a cancer. Having incentives to grow is a great thing, however one needs well defined limits to protect the poor. Corporations repeatedly find means to not pay or pay ridiculous amounts in taxes, which will invariably end up weighing on the shoulders of the middle and lower classes; that is something any sane government should address immediately, but it's hard to do that in a system where every campaign is run using mostly the money of the same entities it should tax.
- defrost 2y ago> There is no data indicating this. "examples of privatisation increasing costs to us taxpayers" .. * First up, the entire US health system compared per capita to other industrialised countries. * Any reasoned debate on whether privatization serves the public interest will include substantial links to wins and losses on either side, the classic preamble quote being something like: there are flaws endemic in both private and public ownership: private ownership is not free of its own set of problems. In short, public provision suffers when public managers pursue actions that are not in the interests of the citizenry—for example, the employment of unnecessary workers or the payment of exorbitant wages. Private provision suffers when private managers take action inconsistent with the public interest—for example, performing shoddy work in an effort to boost profits or denying service when costs are unexpectedly high. ( ~ https://hbr.org/1991/11/does-privatization-serve-the-public-interest https://hbr.org/1991/11/does-privatization-serve-the-public-... ) Your blanket denial is in error. > Based on your logic capitalism ... Not my logic, there are examples of PE companies rorting public sector funds post privatisation from around the globe .. that's public, global, empirical observation not random forum "logic". Then there's the hilarious question of "capitalism" .. do they have that still in the US? I commend you on your nom de guerre, using the pet name of Elon's dildo to reply here is pure genius. Chef's kiss.
- ggm 2y agoOut the other side of this will be diversified weather reporting with less reliance on the US. They lose influence. Fine, save short term costs. Fine, expand the private weather marketplace in America. Ok, so explain to non giant agribusiness US domestic farmers why they now pay for what was a free/low cost service. They vote more by numbers than the corporates do. So you've alienated your base for what? Tornado season may be interesting or another beast from the east, or reduced air flight reliability.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoNot to mention, it's not just the US itself that relies on those forecasts - the rest of the world too. All this turmoil and confusion creates an opportunity for the EU and China (and perhaps also Japan and others) to take the lead. (I'm not having high hopes for EU to move on this fast enough to achieve anything, but who knows.) Little by little, the US is relinquishing the economical and political power it holds over the world. Which is worrying, as it increases the risk of a nuclear war.
- ggm 2y agoYes I should have been explicit that diversity came with international consequences. I wonder if they intend turning off the sat ground stations and services or if the DoD has pointed out how silly that would be. The word climate probably caused the problem. They should have stuck to weather. Maybe they can call themselves "the weathermen" and move underground?
- wewxjfq 2y agoEurope has the ECMWF which is the leading meteorological research institute with the best forecasts in the world. Apart from that, all the large national weather services in Europe are top notch. In comparison, the US weather services are in a sorry state with outdated forecasting models.
- ggm 2y agoI have no direct knowledge. But I can tell you for the coming cyclone here in Brisbane the city council is using a web page view which federates data over BoM (Australia) USGS, NOAA, ESRI.. and other places. So the 'extraterritorial' nature of decisions to cut back on weather and climate services has reach beyond the borders. I continue to think this is a GSA accounting stuffup and the occupied offices will be restored, or relocated because the necessity of a NOAA seems hard to contest. No, the private sector does not replicate. it complements and augments.
- koshergweilo 2y ago> It was designed to integrate multiple forecasting centers in one building to improve operating efficiency Oh man, the irony of the "Department of Efficiency" closing down a branch that was made specifically to make the system more efficient
- almosthere 2y agoWell, they probably figured - DOGE has saved 60 billion in 4 weeks, this department has existed for a long time and hasn't saved shit.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jaybrendansmith 2y agoThey haven't saved any money at all. Please stop with the fake news, we try to stay accurate on HN.
- EasyMark 2y agoMultiple sources have pointed out how they fail at the their. Saving pennies while losing pounds (in the form of things like National Parks and NOAA) is bullshit.
- pogue 2y agoWhile it's important to point this issue out, I have to say that this "blog post" is nothing more than a link to a Bluesky post and a verbatim copy & paste of the Axios article on the subject. https://www.axios.com/2025/03/03/doge-noaa-weather-building-leases-trump https://www.axios.com/2025/03/03/doge-noaa-weather-building-...
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Blogspam Doge seeks to cancel lease on key NOAA computing facility https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43248492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43248492 Other discussions: The American Weather Forecast Is in Trouble https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224862
- tharmas 2y agoThe whole DoGE thing is about Ideology. It has nothing to do with efficiency. It should actually be called Department of Ideology. Its about privatization. Americans should read up on what happened with Thames Water in the UK.
- erelong 2y ago* "the end of weather forecasting by specific government institutions"
- sixstringninja 2y agoWhy is this flagged?