Slashdot Log In
New Bill Would Ban Public NOAA Weather Data
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Apr 21, 2005 06:01 PM
from the privatization-overkill dept.
from the privatization-overkill dept.
ckokotay writes "Here we go again. Apparently for-pay weather companies (specifically Accuweather) have lobbied Senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill to ban the National Weather Service from 'competing.' The NOAA just made data available for free on the internet in XML format. Essentially, that means no more free data, and the possible elimination of the NOAA web presence all together. Nothing like being able to buy off a clueless Senator - lets hope the rest do not fall in line, as I for one, do not like to pay for my information twice." This debate picks up where the last one left off. According to the article, the bill's biggest critics are complaining of the bill's vague wording which makes it unclear what exactly is being banned.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
My own private army... (Score:5, Funny)
Once the bill motors through the Senate and House, and has the signature of the prez (Hey, the GOP loves private businesses, right?) I'll be able to direct when and where war actually takes place.
This should undoubtably improve my popularity gasp and maybe get me a gulp date with that cutie gosh I've had my eye on for a while!
Ok, Kim's check bounced, you can invade now.
Re:My own private army... (Score:5, Informative)
The good news is, it's cheap! Only $3550.00 [nictusa.com] for the favor.
(Thanks to BooBoo at Fark for the link)
Parent
let me just say.. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
My own private SENATE .... (Score:5, Insightful)
The next logical step is simply to privatize the Senate, and ban competing government organizations.
After all, private lobbyists ALREADY write legislation, conduct research and collect money.
What do we need a government-run Senate for?
Parent
Re:My own private army... (Score:5, Interesting)
The next step is for the Mafia to incorporate. They begin watching local businesses and... taxing them.... Then they sue claiming that the federal government has no authority to compete with them.
Other similar variations included private toll road operators, private security forces, and new start-ups whose sole purpose is to hire people to do things that aren't necessary. By doing so, we could ban state toll roads, the Department of Homeland Security, and about 95% of civil service jobs at the federal level, respectively.
Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a good start... but only if you -do- take it to the extreme. :-)
Parent
XML (Score:5, Funny)
My god... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:My god... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:XML (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm you're clearly not using enough XML
Parent
Sure! (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm not allowed to see the benefits of what my tax dollars are paying for, than neither should they. That means no more access to NOAA satellites and no more help paying for Kennedy Space Center and the heavy-lift rockets they need for their geosynchronus launches.
I'm feeling generous, I'll let taxpayer-funded NORAD tell them if and when Something Bad is about to happen to their satellites, but beyond that...
Without my money going to NOAA, these for-pay services would still be stuck with nothing but ground-based radar, to the point where I doubt they'd even spring to pay for off-shore buoys (where'd the profit be?). And that means things like not being able to see hurricanes until it's too late.
They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways, but I'm sure they'll get it anyway. Thanks, Congress!
Re:Sure! (Score:5, Insightful)
The notion that all the companies whose existence is indebted to NOAA would lobby for something like this just makes my head hurt.
Parent
Re:Sure! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Insightful)
Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, said the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector.
Ed Johnson, the weather service's director of strategic planning and policy, said:
"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time. You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."
And then this gem from Accuweather:
Myers argued that nearly all consumers get their weather information for free through commercial providers, including the news media, so there's little reason for the federal agency to duplicate their efforts.
"Do you really need that from the NOAA Web site?" he asked.
Um, gee, if everyone already doesn't get their weather information from the National Weather Service, then what the fuck are they so worried about? Incidentally, the stated mission [weather.gov] of the National Weather Service is:
The National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.
Clear, timely, comprehensive, accurate - and now open [weather.gov] - weather forecasts are critical for many, many sectors of public and private society. The new, open formats of weather data also make its integration into myriad other services and tools trivial. It's only good for the public. I don't think Sen. Santorum realizes how critical the NWS's weather, climate, and marine data is to so many sectors of US society.
The National Weather Service is funded for this mission, among others, by the taxpayers of the United States.
I hope Rick Santorum realizes that in a world where this bill passes, there should also be a corresponding reduction of funding to the NWS, in addition to a wholesale change of its mission. In fact, what would its mission be?
The best part of all of this is that in order for the NWS to effectively be able to gather the necessary data to still predict and warn against life- and property-threatening dangers, it still has to do almost all of the continuing data collection it does now. Removing the public access to this does absolutely nothing for anyone.
Except for-profit weather forecasting providers like Accuweather, of course.
For now, at least, Johnson of the NWS notes his agency is expanding its online offerings to serve the public.
Remember, too, that a "bill" is just that. Time to remind your elected [house.gov] officials [senate.gov] of what you think...
The Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly you're being rhetorical, but I'll fire off a response anyway:
Parent
Re:Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Interesting)
Where does it say that the government should do that??!
Oh - wait. Maybe someone should send Santorum a copy of the #%!#@!!? Constitution!!
Parent
Re:Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Funny)
No. More than half.
Parent
Re:Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Insightful)
Most polititions can be bought off, the only debate is just "how much" money does it take.
Parent
Re:Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, the NWS is one of the few examples of a sucessful government entity. I think this is one of those examples, like the military, that a public agency is far superior than a for-profit corporation.
Parent
Re:Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's the thing: companies like Accuweather would love to launch their own private commercial satellites and provide the data themselves, for a fee. The net result would be a focus on profitable ventures, an attentiveness to urban and densely populated areas (i.e., those who will pay), and complete ignorance of rural areas and major swaths of the country (except where profitable for, e.g., commercial food growers).
Sure weather providers may get some data from government-operated satellites now. They just want to legislatively cripple the agencies that administer them, and their data, so that they control it all themselves. A few hundred million dollars to launch some satellites is nothing if they're guaranteed a corner on the market for crucial information.
Parent
Re:Accuweather's crusade (Score:5, Interesting)
I can think of plenty of ways to offer better data to the consumer than what NOAA provides. Aggregating public and private information and providing that to subscribers is a great idea!
Personally, it's nice to check out the NOAA radar maps before I head out on a bike ride. However, because of the location of the regional radar (San Jose), I can't get a great idea of what obstacles I might face in riding from San Francisco to Marin. Overlaying the radar data from multiple sources might provide me with more useful information.
NOAA doesn't always provide the best information in terms of point-forecasts, and there is a market ($$) for someone to do a better job. The problem is that people like the Weather Channel and Weather Underground were the original obnoxious advertisers! Their weather forecasts were not worth the "cost" of the advertisements. On the other hand, some of of the "personal weather stations" were pretty useful.
This is bad legislation. If you want to "cripple" NOAA, cut their budget to make it easier for private competition to do a better job. I don't support it, but if you want to stick with Republican values, that is the only way to go.
Parent
Contact the senator (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Contact the senator (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard about your bill to limit access to weather data.
please research what this has done in Australia and look to how many people have been killed already because of this type of plan. A good place to research is the "sydney to hobart race 1998." That was a boat race but the organizers running the race relied on private weather information since the government had just started privatized the Bureau of Meteorology. The result was that 6 people died, several boats sank and the coast guard spent over 10 million dollars on rescue of the 115 boats. The total bill for "user pays weather" was $700 million dollars.
A second example of why this is wrong involves aviation weather and its resulting deaths. I don't want a small plane falling out of the sky because the pilot didn't get a good weather briefing. Australia also provides evidence that people will not properly check weather if it isn't free and therefor endangering other people.
Parent
Re:Contact the senator (Score:5, Insightful)
What you should do is write your local newspapers. Editors are always looking for well-written commentary. Anything that stirs up the shit a little bit is a bonus (and that isn't hard to do when writing about politics). Write something insightful and get it in front of thousands of readers. That is the only way you'll get the attention of these bought-and-paid-for congress critters. Turn the heat up a bit and they'll be less likely to try to slip something like this under the radar again.
Parent
Re:Contact the senator (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:While on the topic of "better yet..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, Will Smith should run in PA in 2006. He owns a large chunk of real estate in Philly(were he was originally from), so he can qualify as a resident. Outside of Will Smith, the Democrats in PA have nothing, so beating Santorum is going to be quite a challenge.
Parent
That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Write to your senator then! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
hypocrites (Score:5, Insightful)
Well (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/21/11132/9
He's dropping faster than a rock so if this bill is stalled or set aside Accuweather will have to find some other "go to" guy...
Not that would be too difficuly unfornataly...
Public Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill doesn't go far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
The Congressional part especially has a lot of merit, since I'm sure Congress would prefer that we not find out about stuff like this except as duly authorized sources see fit to pass it along.
Definition of Santorum according to Dan Savage (Score:5, Funny)
1. That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.
2. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
What an unbelievable coincidence! (Score:5, Funny)
Bill text (Score:5, Informative)
Ban Libraries (Score:5, Funny)
The last time around (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to that that other government agencies (both Federal and State) would have to staff up, duplicating the no-doubt-now-classified military work. Bottom line is that shutting down the NOAA forecast role will be a sizable net cost to the US, along with some unknown harm to both the economy and national security.
Great move, Senator.
Don't Worry (Score:5, Insightful)
What can you say to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps we can we expect Senator Santorum to next intervene on behalf of the unjustifiably repressed legions of private firefighters, police, water safety testers, and maintainers of roads?
After all, it's hard to compete in the market when the government does it for free!
This is also a good time to mention Spreading Santorum, a personal crusade by the advice columnist Dan Savage to popularize the use of the word 'santorum' to describe a (mostly) gay sex act, with the intention of embarrassing the anti-gay senator: spreadingsantorum.com [spreadingsantorum.com]
spin (Score:5, Funny)
Santorum Proposes to Modernize National Weather Service to Better Serve Public [senate.gov]
NOAA != NWS (Score:5, Interesting)
International agreements. say it must be free (Score:5, Informative)
My understanding is that by agreement national weather services share data with each other without charge - other than data distribution charges.
If the US started to charge for this, they might run into problems with (say) the UKMO.
It is standard practice for met organisations to make their model data freely available, Environment Canada does this:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/grib/index_e.html
The WMO lays it out pretty clearly:
http://www.wmo.ch/web/pla/Res40Cg-XII.d
If the US govt decides not to offer XML anymore, that's fine, they'll probably have to provide the grib... Grib is a lot bigger than the XML...
Google for "free grib data". GRIB is the file format used by the computer models.
So, if we really wanted to, we could parse the GRIB data and relay it as XML for everyone else.
Jason Pollock
Santorum is an Economic Traitor (Score:5, Interesting)
So looking at S. 786 (Score:5, Interesting)
XXX
(b) COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE SECTOR- The National Weather Service shall not provide, or assist other entities in providing, a service or product (other than a service or product described in subsection (a)(1)(A)) that is or could be provided by the private sector unless--
(1) the Secretary determines that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide such service or product; or
(2) the United States Government is obligated to provide such service or product under international aviation agreements to provide meteorological services and exchange meteorological information.
(c) ISSUANCE OF DATA, FORECASTS, AND WARNINGS- All data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings received, collected, created, or prepared by the National Weather Service shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be issued in real time, and without delay, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings.
XXX
Don't compete, but you have to inform the public, "without delay" in a way that the public "have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings."
Hmmmm.
It isnt free (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate control of this country is sickening.
The Air Force won't let this happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
While NOAA does make its data available over a satellite uplink (called a NOAAPort), this data is typically only used for detailed local modeling and display on AWIPS terminals. I've personally witnessed Air Force Forecasters using the NOAA website and its XML data to do their reports, and that is part of The Procedure.
Which means, it costs a huge boat of money to change, which means it costs concrete tax dollars which must be allocated to cover the costs to change. You and I might find such a change trivial, but I assure you the sheer volume of paperwork that needs to be revised, analyized, reported on and certified means that the process would easily take millions, and take years.
No. As much as Accuweather would like to stifle NOAA to turn a profit, they're too late on the scene.
They could, but that's not the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that many places aren't doing that. The procedure says, "Check the NOAA website for..." That's where the cost is represented. And it's not an insignificant cost and it's easy to show how expensive it is.
Combine that with the general argument that the government-gathered weather data is government property and thusly subject to standard information disclosure rules, and you're going to have a hard time getting this bill to go anywhere.
Parent
Weather spotter necessity (Score:5, Informative)
I just returned from spotting in extreme southwest Iowa (and am actually headed back out, as we have flash flooding to assess). I'm a trained weather spotter (not a chaser, mind you) and am an amateur radio operator. I'm one of two active spotters covering the far southwest-most county. Unlike spotting in a major metro (where I was first active), rural spotting often requires you work without a lot of coordination from net control at the NWS offices. We have to move to cover the storm, and this requires we watch NWS radar data very closely - both to allow us to be positioned to get a good view of activity (e.g. the north of most typical Midwestern supercells is a great place for hail but not for visibility - get southeast of it!), and to cover our backsides when things suddenly change and we're too close to the action.
I've used Intellicast, Accuweather and other sites. Their free data is delayed, poor, lacking sufficient detail, and simply not usable. As I donate annual training, several thousand dollars of equipment, radios, mobile broadband Internet, and my time, I'm not about to also purchase a subscription to Accuweather just so I can assist NWS and save lives. (A note about the NWS XML example: I've actually prototyped an XML to APRS relay of NWS data that uses their XML feeds - it's not just webpages we require!)
The people that will suffer will be those of you who are not weather aware and count on the quiet volunteers out there watching your back. Santorum's bill might prohibit our access to open source information and provide a handful of investors with financial gain, but it'll be someone's grandma in a rural community who will pay for that gain.
Please email your Senators on this bill and let them know that open source information is our property. Your weather spotters and ultimately our communities depend on this access.
Re:Doesn't make sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent