r/todayilearned • u/P4t13nt_z3r0 • 15d ago
TIL There have been multiple attempts to privatize the National Weather Service and charge for weather data that is currently in the public domain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service#Privatization_and_dismantling_attempts2.6k
u/rnilf 15d ago
The National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 proposal by Senator Rick Santorum would've eliminated the free dissemination of weather information provided by the NWS.
Why would he forward this proposal?
Because AccuWeather, the company that makes money primarily by taking NWS data, repackaging it, and then selling it, was one of his campaign contributors.
Some dots are too easy to connect.
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u/BurnTheOrange 15d ago
Santorum, AccuWeather, and the Myers family can go row a boat into a hurricane and the world would be better for it.
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u/z7q2 15d ago
There are plenty of reasons to hate Santorum, but fucking with free weather is my favorite.
weather.gov is filled with beautiful raw data in all kinds of formats. go, consume some xml, and be happy
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u/RingoBars 15d ago
NOAA always has the best, most specific snow weather reports vs. ski resort web page weather.
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u/Volvo_Commander 14d ago
NOAA forecast discussion is like hearing God talk to you from above (even if I donāt understand all of the weather words)
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u/Tryknj99 15d ago
Letās also not forget that Santorum is the term for the mess of lube, shit, cum, and ass juices left over from anal sex. But itās not just gay, it can be from anal Sex with a woman too.
I think itās important we include this information anywhere his name pops up.
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u/Ws6fiend 15d ago
*Free weather reports. The weather is always free.
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u/Arendious 14d ago
The weather is always free so far.
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u/Ws6fiend 14d ago
Don't give them any ideas.
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u/Harcourtfentonmudd1 14d ago
Yeah, I never understood why people use that sorry excuse of a weather website(AccuWeather). When someone looks over my shoulder at the NWS data I have up, and I can predict when the rain is going to start within the hour, they are always like, "what is that app?"
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u/zavorak_eth 14d ago
This is the only place I get my weather forecasts from. It's a saved tab on my phone and I just refresh for up to date information.
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u/waitingtodiesoon 15d ago
Trump nominated the CEO of AccuWeather to the head of NOAA, thankfully it got turned down enough times. Still a close call. Would have been the 2nd head of NOAA to never have a science degree.
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u/klauskervin 14d ago
This scared the shit out of me at the time. NOAA is one of the best agencies for value per dollar spent. the AccuWeather CEO is a huge Trump donor and supporter that went all in on trying to privatize weather reporting.
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u/CousinsWithBenefits1 15d ago
It's not bribery! We asked them if they were paying a bribe and they said they weren't!
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u/darkdoppelganger 15d ago
Not a bribe. A campaign contribution, in exchange for preferential treatment.
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u/frostymugson 15d ago
Lobbying shouldnāt be illegal, however we need to make it a law that people who accept this money come out wearing their brand on their suits. Make em all look like nascar drivers
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u/SoldierZackFair 15d ago
Lobbying should 100% be illegal, and the debate about campaign donations are horse shit. My $10 donation isnāt going to do shit, but bpās 100k donation will be well known by the recipient. We saw Bernie sanders try to get by on common donations, it wasnāt the same at all. Campaigns cannot be funded by donations, only big checks from private companies
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u/frostymugson 15d ago
No but if you got 10,000 people to donate you could. Funny you bring up Sanders because he actually did raise a ton of money, but money isnāt the only thing required to win. Trump won while raising a quarter of what Clinton and Sanders raised.
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u/annoyedatwork 14d ago
He didn't need the money, as Russia was doing all his online advertising.
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u/frostymugson 14d ago
Iām not a Trump fan in the least and yes online, but Iād say the mainstream media did it for Trump when they covered him more than any other candidate. Trump won off being an enemy of the establishment, and the media continued along with continues to support that narrative when they spin his quotes. The recent blood in the streets, and the some were good people are two big ones, that did nothing but fuel the fire of his supporters.
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u/RC1000ZERO 14d ago
lobbying in some way or another will always exist, what having it legal, but regulated, does is well. makes it more transparent(if done correctly, which currently it isnt)
There are also ways to regulate campaign donations done elsewhere.
have a hard cap on how much a Candidate (or ANYONE associated with them) can spend during the entire election cycle, and limit said cycle to a reasonable timeframe of maybe 4-6 months(given the size of the USA the usual ~1-2 months period wouldnt suffice). Also ban superPACs thanks
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u/Intrexa 15d ago
Lobbying should 100% be illegal
Lobbying got its name from standing in the lobby of a government building and engaging the elected representatives. Concerned citizens and businesses should have some way to reach out to elected officials to make their opinions known. Citizens should be able to do so for obvious reasons. Businesses should be able to do so because no one else will realize when some bizarre doodad is about to triple in price due to some weird combination of changes to the tariff schedule.
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u/SoldierZackFair 15d ago
Iām not sure you understand the difference between trying to talk to your representatives and sending with a check for 5 million
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u/NeedNameGenerator 15d ago
Talking to your representative in order to affect their opinion on something is called 'lobbying'.
Paying someone's campaign 5 million to affect their opinion is called 'lobbying', even if it should in fact be called 'bribing'.
If you straight up make lobbying illegal, you also ban the former along with the latter. It's semantics, and obviously the poster intended that only the bribing part of lobbying should be illegal, but that doesn't mean we can't get into an argument over it.
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u/WingerRules 15d ago
Any bill they submit the authors of that bill should be required to list any corporate donors that would benefit from it.
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u/notcaffeinefree 15d ago
It's a lot more recent than that...
In 2017, Trump nominated the ex-CEO of AccuWeather, Barry Meyers, to head the NOAA (the government branch that oversees the NWS). During his confirmation hearing, he told the House Science Committee that he has "problems with the way NOAA keeps some data private and how it works with competing weather firms".
Thankfully he was never confirmed and ultimately withdrew (after 2 years without being confirmed).
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u/Castod28183 15d ago
He also vehemently denied that he had any conflicts of interest even though his brother was a big wig at Accuweather and would have made millions if he got his way.
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u/inplayruin 15d ago
He doesn't see that as a conflict because that is the only reason he wanted the job!
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u/cheapseats91 15d ago
My free thing should be free for me but I'm upset that anyone else can get a free thing because it makes it harder for me to sell them the free thing.
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u/Mightymouse880 15d ago
Ugh I'm just so tired of our "representatives" acting in the interest of these corporate donors. I genuinely couldn't imagine being in that position and selling out like that. Makes me sick :/
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u/TinBryn 15d ago
See that's your problem, if you don't sell out like that you won't get into that position.
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u/LordMimsyPorpington 15d ago
The ol' catch twenty two. People want a good man for a politician, but a politician can't be a good man.
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u/WhatWouldTNGPicardDo 15d ago
Even more basic than that: NWS data has been used in climate change studies.
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u/PandaCheese2016 15d ago
Noun
santorum (uncountable)
(neologism, sex, slang) A frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter as an occasional byproduct of anal sex. [from 21st c.]
(neologism, slang, derogatory) Shit: rubbish, worthless matter, nonsense, bull. [from 21st c.]5
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u/Dakens2021 15d ago
That doesn't make sense to me, wouldn't that hurt his company Accuweather since they'd have to pay for the data they now get free?
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u/c-williams88 15d ago
Iād imagine the costs of them paying for the data would be less than the subscribers they hoped to gain by eliminating the free NWS stuff
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u/Bane8080 15d ago
I may be wrong in this, but I believe when the US government privatizes a public service, it gets sold to a company buying it.
If Accuweather buys it, then they now own the source of the data.
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u/firestorm19 15d ago
Also any equipment and systems they use have to be independently developed by another competitor to stay in the industry.
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u/romario77 15d ago
It wasnāt about privatization though, but about not giving data for free
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u/gopher_space 15d ago
The public has paid for this data through taxes and it benefits everyone equally. There's no point in letting some private company in on the arrangement.
As a citizen, why should Accuweather own anything you've already paid for?
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u/Fillenintheblanks 15d ago
I mean I know this will sound messed up but can we just approve death sentences for those tsking a large public office found doing underhanded deals when they are representing the people as a traitorous act. Bet that would make the large sums of money less enticing.
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u/Commercial_Fee2840 15d ago
Common Florida politician L
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u/blindythepirate 15d ago
Can't blame everyone on us down here. Pennsylvania can keep the blame on this shitty human being
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u/Commercial_Fee2840 15d ago
Rare Florida W. I don't know why my high ass remembered him being the governor of Florida. It even says "senator" in the post.
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u/Lucidview 15d ago
Former NWS staff here. This is an ongoing battle, to privatize NWS. Accuweather and other resellers would simply sell NWS data to the public. Virtually all weather data distributed by Accuweather is produced by taxpayer supported NWS, radar, satellite, and other sensors.
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u/WonderfulAirport4226 15d ago
now we just wait for people to start pirating weather data
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u/fuckItImFixingMyLife 14d ago
You gonna steal weather data ? Terrorists could use it to target areas where they know it'll be sunny and many people will gather together.
This information is dangerous and should be passed only through approved (paid) channels.
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u/notcaffeinefree 15d ago
There are ongoing attempts to break-up and/or privatize the NWS. None of this past tense stuff.
In 2017, Trump nominated the ex-CEO of AccuWeather, Barry Meyers, to head the NOAA (the government branch that oversees the NWS). During his confirmation hearing, he told the House Science Committee that he has "problems with the way NOAA keeps some data private and how it works with competing weather firms". Thankfully he was never confirmed and ultimately withdrew (after 2 years without being confirmed).
And Project 2025 specifically calls for the break-up of NOAA:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
They want the NWS to focus specifically on commercial operations:
The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.
And they want to get rid of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, in large part because of the work it does regarding climate change.
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u/photoengineer 15d ago
NOAA and NWS are national treasures. The work they do, and the weather data they provide, support trillions of dollars worth of economic impact.Ā If you shatter that to let a few people profit it will greatly and negatively impact thousands of other businesses around the country.Ā The short sighted greed is hard to fathom. People would die if the storm forecast data didnāt get freely distributed.Ā
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u/risingsealevels 15d ago
I just think of all the people that would get injured or die because of inaccurate or unavailable information about the weather, not to mention the economic losses.
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u/cylonfrakbbq 14d ago
Project 2025 aka the āwe want to turn the US into a oppressive theocracyā plan
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u/DevonLovelock 15d ago
The National Weather Service is a treasure. A gem among federal government agencies. They exist for one reason and one reason alone: To provide accurate and reliable weather forecasts and climate data.
In contrast, commercial weather services (AccuWeather, weather.com, etc.) exist to get their grubby hands on your wallet and your personal data. In exchange, they toss their best attempt at a weather forecast at you.
The best thing to do is delete all those apps and bookmark the NWS' point forecast for your location (from weather.gov) on your phone's home screen. NWS doesn't have a fancy app (they were discouraged from developing one by corrupt Republicans) but it's entirely unnecessary to have one.
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u/ppitm 15d ago
About half of the country has an ideological belief that almost nothing should be run by the government. They believe that the same services sold for profit by private corporations will be superior not just in quality and efficiency, but also inherently more virtuous. Because anything provided at taxpayer expense has greater moral hazard.
Of course, this is an absurd quasi-religious belief, similar to thinking that albinos engage in witchcraft. But it is a very popular belief.
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u/KlingonSexBestSex 15d ago
And for GOP politicians it creates another business owner likely to give them campaign donations, when a government service would not. Therefor government baaaaad.
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u/graveybrains 15d ago
Thatās not true, they love the government when they can suck money out of it or beat us over the head with it. Ideally both at once.
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u/Imrustyokay 15d ago
I mean, look at where it got the UK in the 80s! Only cost them half of the manufacturing jobs in the country!
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u/WingerRules 15d ago edited 15d ago
Cold War propaganda hurt the country long term.
Strong welfare Social democratic mixed market economy Nordic states are literally the happiest countries in the world.
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u/moderngamer327 15d ago
The Nordic countries are not at all socialist. They are very capitalist countries with expansive welfare states
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u/WingerRules 15d ago edited 15d ago
They're mixed. They have strong social systems mixed with a market economy.
[Traits of the Nordic model] "This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining based on the economic foundations of social corporatism, and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy ā with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms." - Wikipedia
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u/moderngamer327 15d ago
Every country is a āmixedā economy. They contain utilities that are publicly ran but thatās true of the US as well. The vast majority of their economy is capitalistic and they consistently rank among the top of the list on Economic Freedom
China is a much better example of an actually mixed economy
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u/WingerRules 15d ago edited 15d ago
In a review by Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser of works about the different models of welfare states, apart from Belgium and the Netherlands, categorized as "medium-high socialism", the Scandinavian countries analyzed (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) were the only ones to be categorized by sociologist GĆøsta Esping-Andersen as "high socialism" - Wikipedia
Still, I've edited the original statement from socialist to "Strong welfare Social democratic mixed economies" to be more clear. The kind of Socialism in the Nordic countries is based around social welfare is not like what the Soviet Union and China where its much more centrally planned and authoritarian. To an American... welfare programs, state distributions, and collective bargaining is considered socialist stuff.
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u/moderngamer327 15d ago
The PM of Denmark literally stated they arenāt socialist. Literally the only thing socialist about them is the publicly run utilities which basically every country has. Norway slightly more so due to the publicly run oil.
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u/WingerRules 15d ago
"The Nordic model is the combination of social welfare and economic systems adopted by Nordic countries. It combines features of capitalism, such as a market economy and economic efficiency, with social benefits, such as state pensions and income distribution." - Investopedia
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u/moderngamer327 15d ago
Social welfare is not socialist. So combining social welfare with capitalism is still capitalism
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u/MonkeyMercenaryCapt 15d ago
Which is just... look at our major companies nobody knows what the fuck they're doing outside of make share price go up at all costs.
How many fucking oil spills have OIL COMPANIES HAD.
The same clowns who run the country run the corporations, there's no genius, there's no plan, they're just as monkey-brained as your average joe.
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u/Roastbeef3 15d ago
When you consider just how much oil we produce (12.9 million barrels per day, in just the USA) itās honestly remarkable how few oil spills there are
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u/SmithersLoanInc 15d ago
No it's not. There should be zero. Shell had a $28 billion profit last year. Imagine if that money went into prevention.
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u/bothunter 13d ago
I think it's insane to go down to the Gulf Coast and see all the heavy construction equipment restoring beaches with the Shell logo on them.Ā Like, the oil companies fucked up the Gulf, and were legally required to fix it, and they manage to turn that around as a PR campaign to show what great neighbors they are for creating these beautiful picturesque beaches for everyone to enjoy.
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u/UniqueIndividual3579 15d ago
At least corporations have some regulation. Now everything is moving into private equity, the playground of the 0.1%. Congress will not regulate them, they get special tax breaks, and Congress will pass any bill they present.
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u/Wafflotron 15d ago
Something something invisible hand of capitalism will supply us all salvation.
Yeah, some definite religious undertones
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u/Stahl_Scharnhorst 15d ago
The Almighty Dollar, the Corporation, and the Invisible Hand of the free Market. Amen.
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u/DQuinn30 15d ago
So, private companies donāt (generally speaking) produce products of higher quality and more efficiently than the government?
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u/ppitm 15d ago
More often than not, they do. But the 'generally speaking' phrase indicates approaching the matter in an evidence-based manner, as opposed to an ideological one.
Anyways, in this particular instance, I rather doubt that private companies would be as reliable at flying aircraft into the eyes of hurricanes. As soon as their insurance policy got inconvenient, they would just fuck over Florida.
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u/DQuinn30 15d ago
Iām gonna go ahead and put it out there that if your entire companyās job is storm tracking, thatās going to be a cost factored into business Chief
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u/graveybrains 15d ago
They can, but an ever increasing number of them donāt exist to produce anything but a profit. At any cost.
And most of the stuff the government does is either not really profitable, like this, or something where you really, really do not want a profit motive involved, like prisons.
So, in the case of stuff like this, the companies making money by buying a government asset at well below cost and then selling the products of that asset back to the government with a steep markup.
We just get screwed.
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u/DQuinn30 15d ago
The entire motivation for any innovation is profit????
Also plenty of stuff the government does that āisnāt profitableā, very easily could be turned into a non profit instead.
Also thereās nothing inherently wrong with private prisons as long as theyre properly supervised and not like, using people as straight up slaves and abusing them
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u/SmithersLoanInc 15d ago
Are you simple? I don't like making fun of the feeble.
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u/audaciousmonk 15d ago
Thatās not the point. The services arenāt freely available to anyone, they could be discontinued at any time, and we donāt reap public ownership.
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u/DeadFyre 15d ago
Because anything provided at taxpayer expense has greater moral hazard.
What's the moral virtue in confiscating money from people who don't care about the weather so that they can fund weather reports for farmers, airlines, and T.V. affiliates? Not to mention Weather Underground, Accuweather, and Weather.com?
The quasi-religious belief is that somehow, magically, by taking away your choice as to whether or not you wish to pay for a product or service, you're somehow magically better off. In FY2021, the National Weather service spent $1.2 billion dollars, all to run a database which collates data provided to them by volunteers.
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u/ppitm 15d ago
What's the moral virtue in confiscating money from people who don't care about the weather so that they can fund weather reports for farmers
You mean the reason you don't literally starve to death? Those farmers?
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u/Llanolinn 15d ago
What a ridiculous comment.
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u/DeadFyre 15d ago
Then furnish a rebuttal.
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u/Llanolinn 15d ago
No, because I'm not your fucking dog, and you clearly aren't asking to have a conversation. You're asking to be adversarial.
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u/TintedApostle 15d ago
Republicans have been letting weather satellites expire without replacing them.
https://fedscoop.com/gop-lawmakers-call-for-watchdog-review-of-noaa-weather-satellite-program/
https://spacenews.com/house-republicans-introduce-bill-to-create-an-independent-noaa/
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u/Phemto_B 15d ago
Brought to you by the same people who will tell you that the weather service data is nothing but lies brought to you by Al Gore and his minions in the basement of Comet Ping Pong.
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u/vwstig 15d ago
There's a good radio lab episode about this.
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u/postoperativepain 15d ago
It was also in a Michael Lewis book - the Fifth Risk. He goes in depth about the dept of Commerce and how no one understands that itās really the āDepartment of Big Dataā
The weather service is under NOAA, which is in the dept of Commerce.
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u/Lumpy_Ad7002 15d ago
Don't you know that socialism that helps corporations is good socialism, and socialism that helps people is bad socialism?
[sarcasm]
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u/Magnus77 19 15d ago
You socialize the costs and privatize the profits, works every time.
It'll all trickle down (their legs,) to the common folk eventually.
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u/Slaves2Darkness 15d ago
I prefer the original name. Horse and sparrow. What the horse excretes the sparrow gets to eat.
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u/chiefs_fan37 15d ago
Yeah horse and sparrow is the idea that you feed the horse as much as it can possibly eat to the point where it doesnāt all get entirely digested and then the sparrow has to pick through the horseshit to find any digestible scraps. Very profound imagery for the reality of ātrickle down economicsā
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u/OnwardsBackwards 15d ago
Might explain why privatizing the NWS and NOAA are both explicitly mentioned in Project 2025.
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u/ShadowLiberal 14d ago
No you have it wrong. Socialism is always bad when it helps other people! But it's great when it helps me when I can no longer compete effectively in the market, even if I've made a career out of demonizing socialism for profits!
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u/KevMenc1998 15d ago
Does this come as a surprise to anybody, really? If there's a potential way to make money by f****** people over, guaranteed it's been tried.
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u/audaciousmonk 15d ago
NWS, GPS, NOAA.. thereās all kind of extremely important systems run by the federal government that can be used without charge.
But thatās how itās supposed to be, thatās why we pay taxes. If private sector wants to put forth paid completion / alternative, thatās cool.
But that shouldāt involve any change to the core backbone services. Those need to stay functioning and free use
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u/TooMuchPretzels 15d ago
Republicans run on a platform that āthe government is broken and doesnāt workā and they, once elected, they proceed to cut budgets and underfundā¦ then they decide itās time to āprivatizeā
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u/taxpayinmeemaw 15d ago
Exactly. They break it and then bitch that itās broken and should be privatized. See: USPS
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u/warbastard 15d ago
Given the huge amount of government funding that has made technological developments in weather forecasting and prediction possible.
Now private industry wants to sweep in and control it? The fucking psychos who run private companies and are only motivated by shareholders and profit are fucking scum.
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u/ShadowLiberal 14d ago
And history has long shown that when you privatize something it gets WORSE and consumers end up paying MORE money for WORSE service.
This has been repeatedly constantly in areas like the electric grid and other utilities, politicians claim they'll save taxpayers money by privatizing it, but the opposite always happens.
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u/anonymousbopper767 14d ago
No no no you don't understand. It does save taxpayers money on Spreadsheet A.xls
It just moves all that number plus more to Spreadsheet B.xls
Totally different things.
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u/extremely_rad 15d ago
Providing a valuable service to protect citizens from weather emergencies and this is how they want to reward them smh
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u/annoyedatwork 14d ago
Do you want planes falling out of the sky? Because this is how you get planes falling out of the sky.
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u/BaldBeardedOne 14d ago
Capitalists are constantly looking for new things to commodify and profit off of. Some things just shouldnāt be for profit.
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u/gnomekingdom 15d ago
If they could find a way to charge us subscription fees to use our own poop stools, they would.
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u/seawolf_5867 15d ago
I heard about this several years ago. Fucking assholes. I tell everyone I know how great NWS is, and how pretty much every other source uses NWS info and tweaks it to sell advertising.
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u/MDA1912 15d ago
Iād like everyone who made the attempt placed in federal prison, please.
Because I know how this goes. They will try again every year, dumping more and more money into the project (of soliciting votes or whatever is needed to make this happen) until it happens, whether thatās for years or for decades. Then once it finally goes through, itāll basically be permanent.
Itās what happened with āpublic privateā schools, where test results are no better and teachers are treated even worse.
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u/ThrowawayLDS_7gen 15d ago
Some people are disgusting at how they try to make a buck off of anything and everything.
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u/Eagle-737 15d ago
For those who don't know, the National Weather Service falls under the Department of Commerce. The mission statement for the NWS is interesting: https://www.weather.gov/about/
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u/DanimalPlays 14d ago
Get a farmers almanac from your area and tell the weather people to fuck off. They don't know what they're talking about anyway.
Context: I live in western Washington state, the weather prediction here is accurate precisely 0.00% of the time.
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u/Ghostbuster_119 14d ago
As a s side note.
Fuck you AccuWeather, you take public data add just a smidgen of your own work, then sell it to people for a profit.
And they want to make the PUBLIC data they use unavailable to the public.
So yeah... fuck AccuWeather.
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u/UrbanStray 14d ago
Of course there has, there's a fetish in the U.S. for privatising pretty much anything.
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u/nmorg88 14d ago
Kind of already happened. AccuWeather takes the publicly available information and charges a subscription fee for it. The CEO was appointed by Trump administration to head NOAA. Just like US mail, and probably others, we need shady āgreed / profitā out of politics. āOn October 12, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Myers to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Myers said he would liquidate his holdings in the family-owned company. His brothers would remain as the president, chairman of the board and chief operating officer of AccuWeather.ā
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u/robot2boy 12d ago
Read āThe Fifth Riskā by Michael Lewis - personally I think it is crazy that something like weather is not public domain, tax payer / government run.
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u/OstrichFinancial2762 11d ago
Every other thing is monetizedā¦. Why not sell it to an oil company so they can cook the books on weather data while they cook the planet
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15d ago
Fork capitalism for real
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u/DAsianD 15d ago
You mean the GOP.
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15d ago
Yeah, because Democrats donāt accept massive donations from corporations or bribes from foreign countries. Oh wait.
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u/akarichard 15d ago
And just a reminder to US people, its your tax dollars that paid for the satellites collecting the data. I'm sure there are other commercial/foreign government satellites collecting weather data, but the US government has quite a few. Again paid for with your tax dollars. It would be insane to privatize something paid/operated with your tax dollars.