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Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

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Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#111

Post by Loughla »

estearum wrote: post #106
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree, my rep is an idiot

Data be damned then! Good point.

I bet you'll find that more people don't approve of what their representative is doing than do approve.

Low voter turnout allows for bullshit to slip through the cracks by targeting very small blocs of voters.

I genuinely believe that most problems in government would be fixed if voluntary voter turnout was around 99%, and that low rates, especially during midterms, is the largest threat to democracy in the United States as we know it to date.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#112

Post by imoverclocked »

strictnein wrote: post #94
imoverclocked wrote: post #72

I'm glad someone managed to save the data that we all payed for. My question is, how will this site stay relevant? The collection/analysis/monitoring of the current situation is as important as historic data. Turning current data into historical data takes significant resources.

Climate.gov was not the centralized and only storage spot for climate data. There's petabytes of it all over the place. You want data? https://www.noaa.gov/data or https://api.weather.gov/ or https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data are a good place to start.

That only makes my question even more applicable... just with a wider scope.

As for your question: I personally don't want data, I want a service backed by sound data and expert validation+analysis.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#113

Post by Loughla »

strictnein wrote: post #98
atahanacar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding of USA as a foreigner, tax dollars are for corporate bailouts and military.

That is the understanding that you've been presented with, likely by people looking to mislead you, but that's not at all what our actual budget reflects. The social safety nets that we supposedly don't have take up around 2/3rds of our federal budget.

It's like 50% if you also count the stuff I pay for that is a direct benefit to me at retirement (as does anyone who pays into social security).

So it might be a little nitpicky, and your point still stands. A lot of money is spent on defense and business, but not as much as the before portrays.

Where businesses benefit is in not paying the tax, instead of receiving payments. That's definitely a problem, but it's a different thing.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#114

Post by naturalmovement »

mycall wrote: post #97
imoverclocked wrote: post #72

I'm glad someone managed to save the data that we all payed for. My question is, how will this site stay relevant? The collection/analysis/monitoring of the current situation is as important as historic data. Turning current data into historical data takes significant resources.

YCombinator has enough smarts to figure this out.

How can we use a bucket of mostly useless data to enrich ourselves by building more VC-funded apps? I'm asking the important questions.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#115

Post by wat10000 »

estearum wrote: post #41
cheschire wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re using the broadest definition possible, where tax dollars are generally meant to provide public service. But at that point you’re just in an argument over which public services are most important to whom. So then implying that tax dollars should be used instead of donations is wrong.

> But at that point you’re just in an argument over which public services are most important to whom. Would be an interesting exercise to poll the public. We could probably break the country up into a bunch of districts, then have them vote to elect representatives to get together in some special location and negotiate how taxpayer dollars are spent. They could put something together like "a budget" and then that mon…

This snide response would be a lot better if climate.gov had actually been taken down by those representatives you mention, rather than illegally destroyed by one man.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#116

Post by ordersofmag »

strictnein wrote: post #102
bumby wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter example, the government manages and collects all kinds of weather station data. But the trend is for private companies to get contracts to privatize the dissemination of that data through fee-based APIs etc. I would rather the government provide it instead of taxpayers having to pay twice to enrich some rent seeker.

The government already does that. https://api.weather.gov/ https://www.noaa.gov/nodd/datasets https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/ etc etc etc

I think the point is that there has been a push to move away from this data continuing to be available from these sources.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#117

Post by wat10000 »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #13
nickff wrote: post #4

This may be a controversial view, but I don't think we should trust the actor in charge of regulating and limiting emissions with its own supervision. The Federal Government has a plethora of agencies which regulate pollution and energy usage; how can we trust either its legislative or executive branch to ensure that their creations are effective or efficient? To that end, I hope the Trump administration's actions ca…

All agencies are ultimately accountable to the public via democratically elected leaders as the Supreme Court recently upheld. No part of the government is independent body, it’s in one of the 3 branches.

Except the Federal Reserve for some reason.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#118

Post by yalogin »

nickff wrote: post #4

This may be a controversial view, but I don't think we should trust the actor in charge of regulating and limiting emissions with its own supervision. The Federal Government has a plethora of agencies which regulate pollution and energy usage; how can we trust either its legislative or executive branch to ensure that their creations are effective or efficient? To that end, I hope the Trump administration's actions ca…

I respect cynicism and questioning stuff but this is misplaced. You have to trust the government since they are potentially the least partisan source here. Yes the data can be misconstrued by legislators but the truth of the data cannot be in question. It’s healthy to question it but the solution is to require proof of non-sabotage. It takes a lot of money and resources to pull this data together. It’s compiled by organizations across the world and being the trustworthy anchor is the most efficient way to achieve this. With that the government agency has every incentive to be non partisan and operate with integrity.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#119

Post by Gigachad »

Self-Perfection wrote: post #99

What if government websites were distributed & archived as a default, from the beginning? Think IPFS as a first target for publication, "normal web" only as a mirror. Is it feasible? Should we push for this default? First obvious objection is that lots of government services need backend and dynamic content, but let's say this requirement only goes for static content.

What if pedophiles were sent to jail instead of elected.

Technical tricks like IPFS can’t prevent even 1% of the damage caused by giving criminals this much power over society.

Re: Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources

#120

Post by counters »

bumby wrote: post #23
mchusma wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with parent, the full quote is: "The whole thing relies on donations to keep it afloat, which is really what tax dollars are for." I think this is a great site, love what they are doing, and support them (including a literal donation). But a government maintained website for this data is low on my list of things of what tax dollars are for. In fact, I think this is better done privately. To be clear, many of…

As a counter example, the government manages and collects all kinds of weather station data. But the trend is for private companies to get contracts to privatize the dissemination of that data through fee-based APIs etc. I would rather the government provide it instead of taxpayers having to pay twice to enrich some rent seeker.

I'm not aware of any private company that has a contract with NOAA or the NWS to privately disseminate the agency's weather data (either acquired itself or purchased commercially).
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