White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA • Hacker News Board

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#31

Post by techman9 » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:02 AM UTC

65827 wrote: post #11

coss wrote: post #5

Just playing devil's advocate can someone articulate what kind of value we will lose as a society?

If you read the article you will see it involves cuts to measurement areas like satellites and temperature monitoring, which will make weather and climate science shittier for everyone.

Just to extend this. Climate science may seem like an abstract and alarmist thing now, but as the earth warms the human cost of all this will become much more pronounced, and without accurate science and monitoring, we're pretty much totally fucked.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#32

Post by mirimir » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:03 AM UTC

Hey, he's just following through on campaign promises. How can you fault him on that?

In a decade or two, this will probably be laughable. But if he cuts back on foreign intervention, I'm happy to cut him lots of slack.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#33

Post by krapp » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:04 AM UTC

Of course they are.

NOAA does nothing which panders to populist sentiment. NOAA can't put steel workers to work. NOAA is not the grit of honest American labor, or the power of military conquest, or the gold of a halcyon age.

NOAA cannot Make America Great Again, but a new fleet of aircraft carriers can.

So it goes. Tie a rock to a string and hang it outside your window to see which way the wind is blowing.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#34

Post by crftr » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:05 AM UTC

coss wrote: post #5

Just playing devil's advocate can someone articulate what kind of value we will lose as a society?

NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration[1] provides scientific support for oil spills, chemical accidents, and other emergencies in coastal areas.

Though if we want to talk numbers, here's one: $18.7 billion. NOAA legal assisted DoJ (and others) with BP's Deepwater Horizon civil settlement.[2]

[1] http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about [2] http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/agreement-p...

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#35

Post by mirimir » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:05 AM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #30

jon_richards wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend too long trying to convince someone there's a problem, then you are the problem.

This is one of those comments that sounds profound if you give it a cursory glance, but actually makes no sense whatsoever.

Oh come on, sure it makes sense.

It means that you failed to communicate effectively. Or that communicating to them was not an effective strategy.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#36

Post by brohoolio » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:05 AM UTC

The cuts are gonna kill a ton of jobs. Blue collar ones too. And some of the US competitive advantage.

Science has been driving our economy for years.

They are also proposing cutting funding for clean water in the Great Lakes region 97%. Largest source of fresh water in the world and we are gonna cut almost all of the funding?

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#37

Post by metaobject » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:08 AM UTC

wiggyslim wrote: post #25

Makes sense when the powers that be think climate change is made up, in fact maybe they think the climate is made up. Why fund an agency that spends money on something that does not exist?

Certainly they believe that weather exists? Cuts to NOAA won't just affect climate change research but will affect weather forecasts, hurricane forecasts, severe weather forecasts, etc.

Mr. Trump is a pathetic excuse for a president.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#38

Post by MichaelBurge » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:08 AM UTC

> according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.

So somebody in the NOAA is leaking internal memos to the press. Is it so bad to cut funding to rebellious agencies?

It could be a good way to catch leakers: Distribute to every agency head a memo mentioning upcoming budget cuts, and see which self-righteous agencies try to stir up trouble. Instruct the agency heads to make minor changes to the details, to see if they surface.

I don't have an opinion on the NOAA itself, although it doesn't look like they're being targeted:

> NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#39

Post by seanp2k2 » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:09 AM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #29

bronco21016 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single commercial airline flight in the US relies on NOAA forecasting. Without reliable forecasting I would suspect the airline industry would crumble under delays, wasted fuel, diversions, and overall customer dissatisfaction. This isn't to say a third party couldn't pick up the slack but then you have a very clear conflict of interest. If the airlines get to make their own forecast they can skimp on fuel and…

>airline flight in the US relies on NOAA forecasting Sure but is that what is actually going to be cut? You do realize that one common way that unelected bureaucrats defend their spending is to launder unpopular/dubious spending in very popular spending?

Is there any evidence at all that this happens with NOAA? If not, why suggest it?

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#40

Post by username223 » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:13 AM UTC

nether wrote: post #26

acomjean wrote: post #4

http://weather.gov (run by NOAA and the national weather service) is my go to weather site. No ads, no hyperbole. I found out about it when some senator wanted to stop them from posting weather online because it competed with "private sector" weather companies. A couple times I've seen that tv news weather leaves the site up on their monitors during newscasts.

I started using windytv.com after seeing it mentioned here. It uses the European ECMWF weather model, which is well known in the meteorological community to be more accurate than the NOAA GFS: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/06/us-numerical-weather-p... . With this budget cut, it looks like that will continue. In particular, as a non-hydrostatic model, the ECMWF gives much better forecasts in mountainous regions l…

Heh, I believe we may share some common interests.

Thanks for reminding me of windytv. A friend showed it to me, but I was put off by the garish animated UI, then forgot the URL. The UI still sucks, but I appreciate the ECMWF data, so maybe I'll give it another go.