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- cross-posted to:
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Is this bc weather reports affirm climate change, and having the weather report doctored will help oil and coal companies pollute as much as they want without public backlash?
It’s because the person that owns AccuWeather has been lobbying since Trump’s first term to close NOAA and give his company a monopoly on it. Selling forecasts, data and access back to everyone while using resources paid for by taxpayers.
AccuWeather has been trying since 2005:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Duties_Act_of_2005
Thank you for that link. NWS and NOAA deserve all the support we can give them.
It’s because they would charge you for air if they could.
The party of working Americans. /s
que no los dos?
Sharpies are cheaper
The goodwill and excellent PR that an accurate weather service generates is worth a huge ammount of money which is why private companies want it.
I remember the Cold War documentary series called “Cold War” (utterly amazing documentary series by the way: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3H6z037pboGWTxs3xGP7HRGrQ5dOQdGc ), in one episode they interviewed the guy running Radio Free Europe who was very clear with how they got listeners from the east was with good solid news and accurate weather forcasts.
Weather forcasts is probably one of the best sources of content to legitimize propaganda, it is very easy to check, and quickly develop a reputation. There is also zero incentive to embellish the weather report as it will quickly make you look incompetent.
It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.
do we want flood-risk predictions sponsored by a flood-insurance company, or heat advisories from an air-conditioning conglomerate?
The agency is home to one of the most significant repositories of climate data on Earth, which includes information on shifting atmospheric conditions and the health of coastal fisheries, plus hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of ice-core and tree-ring data.
Eliminating or privatizing climate information won’t eliminate the effects of climate change. It will only make them more deadly.
Tell people 2025 would do this. No federal weather means local counties would have to pay Big Business for tornado/hurricane warnings. We’d pay more for fish because fishermen can’t get data unless they pay. Plane schedules become even less reliable AND cost more because the government stops tracking upper level wind speeds.
Look: we want people who get a salary for doing accurate work rather than people who get paid to say whatever the bossman want to hear. Ask people to imagine how it would work if Google, NBC, Amazon, and Fox each sunk the money for trying to replicate the existing infrastructure and then sold pieces of it to paying customers – such as Allstate, CBS, and Delta Airlines. Everyone else would have to HOPE they were getting complete data and have to wonder what was missing. Noticing record highs and lows would become proprietary and forbidden from broadcast in a way akin to being disallowed from referencing “The Superbowl” unless you pay for a license. How’s any of that going to make things better?
P.S. This article is posted to several communities, so I’m reiterating this post repeatedly.
. . . so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.
This is what ultimately kills fascism when everything else fails. People in high positions are chosen for loyalty first and competence a distant second. Combine that with eating each other in purity contests, and you have a political philosophy that’s doomed from the start.
Only question is how much damage it does to everything else before it completes the cycle.
– but doing it in the first place is a symptom of fascism and other repressive systems. It’s the sort of crap that ruins anything where data is important… tho musicians screening who’s gonna join their band might be alright.
Yep, at the end of the day government is a combination of the exciting and political with the boring, necessary, and apolitical. The former gets you in, but you better not fuck up the latter or you’re lucky if you just lose power.
In fairness, I would was flood risk warnings from flood insurance companies. The more you lose, the more they have to pay out. It’s in their interests to give up to date flood warnings
Point taken, but would they warn non-customers? Would they bother making forecasts for rural areas or other places where it wasn’t cost-effective for the number of properties they insure?
Yeah, you wouldn’t want the weather report to contradict the president with a map and a sharpie.
Make America Grift Again
The irony of a news article about hiding a public necessity behind a paywall being hidden behind a paywall 🤦
So hold up, how are all the private companies going to get their weather data for free now?
