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White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

washingtonpost.com

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Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#191

Post by ra1n85 »

yestoallthat wrote: post #190
ra1n85 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not seeing what you're trying to argue. Lots of appeal to emotion here. I'll make it simple for you: 1. Me: High levels of defense spending has easily identifiable consequences. But we need to be careful that we also take time to identify the positives and consider them. 2. You: The US has done bad things in the past and war is bad. I don't disagree with you, but you're not rebutting my point.

And why would any positives matter, if there weren't actual people and their lives, and suffering inflicted or avoided, involved down the line? Lots of appeal to robots here. I'm not a robot. > But we need to be careful that we also take time to identify the positives and consider them. Yes, and then you need to circle back and consider both, in context, including opportunity costs. > The US has done bad things in th…

>And why would any positives matter, if there weren't actual people and their lives, and suffering inflicted or avoided

That's implied. You're either missing the point or not arguing in good faith. Have a good day.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#192

Post by peckrob »

rabidrat wrote: post #163
exclusiv wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest. I was pretty clear that I think it's a state issue but was interested in hearing whether it's feasible for the states to handle. If it isn't, then I could see that being a valid justification as a federal investment which is undergoing cuts that may affect the service.

Every state has weather that can be devastating; also weather does not usually confine itself to state boundaries.

> also weather does not usually confine itself to state boundaries.

This is a very good point. During the height of the 2011 Super Outbreak [0], April 27th, many of the strongest tornadoes crossed state lines. Taken as a whole, the event lasted four days and spawned tornadoes as far north as New York, south to Florida, east to Arkansas and west to the Carolinas.

Here's the thing: thanks to NWS forecasting and climate modeling, we had DAYS of warning that this was probably going to be a very bad storm. Obviously, they can't tell you X tornado is going to hit Y neighborhood, but from a standpoint of getting pre-warning out, we had lots of notice that things were going to be tough.

Historically, the deadliest tornado in American history was the Tri-State tornado [1], that started in Missouri and ended in Indiana.

None of these could be taken individually as they were all part of the same large mesoscale system. Lots of ingredients go into a good climate model, from which good predictions can be made.

On an "average" severe weather event, from where I live (Huntsville, northern part of Alabama just south of the Tennessee border), storms usually fire up across central Mississippi, move rapidly northeast across Alabama and dissipate or weaken as they move into eastern Tennessee.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Tornado

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#193

Post by rohamg »

the8472 wrote: post #126
mikeash wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective action problems are not that easy to solve, no matter how dire the consequences of failure.

Did collective action not work for solving the hitler problem?

Not until it was almost too late.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#194

Post by Spooky23 »

metaobject wrote: post #183
Spooky23 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was Rick Santorum pandering to his pals at Accuweather. My guess is that vendors with bigger pockets and a better track record of buying influence (IBM, Monsanto) wants to leverage its own weather property)

But doesn't even Accuweather, at least on some level, get their source data from government sources? If they generate their own forecasts using NWP models they still need initial conditions which usually come from from coarse-grid weather forecasts provided by the governments. If the quality of these coarse-grid forecasts is degraded it's going to have an effect on all downstream processing/forecasts.

They wanted to consume the data for free, but prohibit you from doing so.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#195

Post by [deleted] »

makomk wrote: post #186
rgbrenner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should take a look at world military budgets... actually look at the countries that are spending the money. $1.7T/year in total military spending worldwide. China at 200B, Russia at 70B. Iran? 22nd largest military budget at $10B. The rest of the big spenders are our friends and allies. I'm not going to count up every country, but roughly 1.3T to 1.4T is spent by the US + allies + friendly countries. Who are we p…

One of the scenarios that concern the EU is Russia invading and occupying EU states before Nato or the US can respond, present them with a kind of fait accompi and hoping the political will to respond won't be there. So the US needs the ability to convincingly be able to take on entrenched Russian occupation of multiple other countries and take them back.

[deleted]

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#196

Post by gech »

dingaling wrote: post #178
icehawk219 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used weather.gov for years and love the service. Every person I've talked to who complains about the crap coverage by the weather companies in the US that I've shown it to uses it exclusively as well. It's a perfect example of the governments lack of profit motive producing a genuinely better product than the competition. I know this isn't always the case but it certainly is here. I don't agree with lots of thin…

> It's a perfect example of the governments lack of profit motive producing a genuinely better product than the competition There is no better product because it's not commercially viable to compete against the free money that NOAA receives. If NOAA didn't exist, others would try to compete commercially in that space. In the UK the Met Office is notionally a part of the Ministry of Defence[0] but is required to be pr…

> the free money

It's not free. It's what patriots pay their taxes for.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#197

Post by JustSomeNobody »

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.

Ah, yes, the Accuweather Protection Act. I remember.

I have boycotted Accuweather since then.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#198

Post by exclusiv »

scriptkiddy wrote: post #187
exclusiv wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that since every state benefits from NOAA data it's a sensible investment federally? What if a state requires 5x as many resources as another state? We already have a scenario where southern states draw a lot more than they contribute. We enable states to avoid managing their own citizen's welfare. A lot of people don't want to pay for other people to live in known tornado alley…

Let me put it to you this way: There is no place to live that is totally safe from bad weather. It is in the best interest of every citizen of the United States to pay for climate and weather modeling as disastrous weather can have massive impact on the economy. Also, from a moral standpoint, I personally don't mind shelling out some money to try and keep people safe. As to your point about people living in areas whe…

Is the NOAA the only entity that could provide this data?

Nobody is suggesting forcing people to leave, but there are people that knowingly live in places that are drastically more dangerous just like there are a ton of people that decide to not take responsibility for their own health which creates a burden on everyone. I'm just suggesting that those local governments should take more responsibility. Or people pay extra for insurance. Some areas are so risky you can't even buy insurance to protect your home. So maybe those states should come up with a strategy rather than let the whole country pay.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#199

Post by mikeash »

jon_richards wrote: post #123
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.

I see this was taken quite negatively. The point isn't that you _actually are_ the problem, the point is that you need to realize that they start to _see_ you as a problem. It means you have to consider what the other person is thinking and not just think "If I just keep telling them and showing them the facts, they'll see the light and come around to my side." Studies have shown that when you show scientific evidenc…

I understood the comment as saying that if you can't get your point across after a certain amount of time, it's your own fault. Thanks for clarifying, it makes much more sense now.

Re: White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA

#200

Post by nkozyra »

DaUR wrote: post #151
nkozyra wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad hominem, strawman and passive aggressiveness in a single sentence. Impressive. We have - by any objective measure but ground troops and total warheads - the largest on the planet. "Peace through Strength" is nothing but a platitude. If it means anything, it's "Biggest Military." We didn't need Donald Trump for that. The notion that we must "rebuild" what is already a gigantic military is perplexing. Our military c…

Where did I argue we have to rebuild the military? Are you even replying to the right comment? Is your first sentence projection?

I think you perhaps should read my post again, I made no claim about you making that argument.
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