So hold up, how are all the private companies going to get their weather data for free now?
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.
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
. . . 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.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want the weather report to contradict the president with a map and a sharpie.
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.
Make America Grift Again
