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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

#141
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, tax dollars are for re-paving the parking lot at our middle school, establishing a water district for our town, buying another school bus, and funding our municipal fire department and ambulance corp. Any money collected by the feds is whatever. Hopefully it goes toward NASA putting another robot on Mars.

This is kind of a strange take. Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff because the sovereignty of your locality is heavily circumscribed by state and national authorities. That means the real budgetary decisions made about the future of the nation, anything interesting, anything made with some level of self-determination, is made at the national level. Unfortunately, in the USA, budgetary discretion is used for w…

This is kind of a strange take.

> Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff

My state has completely state-funded healthcare, and a renowned state-funded university system.

USA is a nation of states and those states (mostly) make their own way. I live in one of the good ones.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies don’t care about having accurate data? Does the government have private access to forming unbiased information?

Private companies care way more about making money.

Private companies care ONLY about making money.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies care way more about making money.

Making money requires accurate information about the world. For example I was just learning about how farmers hire scientists to grade chicken feed. They are incentived by their own profit to get good information about grain quality they wish to purchase.

> Making money requires accurate information about the world.

A company may have accurate information that their product causes cancer, but they aren't going to tell you that. They'll outright lie and say it doesn't, hire scientists to create fake research to "prove" that it's safe, and harass, threaten, and discredit anyone who tries to tell the public the truth.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No no, the snide response works because this shutdown was a violation of aforementioned system. Downstream discussions on “oh hurrr ummm how do we decide what’s worth spending money on?!” are irrelevant. We already have a system to do that, and that system has decided to fund climate.gov

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Perhaps you mean to say: I don't see it eliminating their misconduct and behavior.

No I meant limit.

Well then unfortunately you just have no clue what you’re talking about.

The notion that the CIA is “not limited” by checks and balances is beyond laughable.

How many people have you met who work there? Ever talked with someone about the limitations (or lack thereof) on their work?

I will bet the answers are zero and no. Am I wrong?

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds grand, but it is not in scope.

Instead, each citizen has a volition and a voice and a vote—with exceptions, and at personal expense.

And as a humanitarian with reservations, I say tax the bots for UBI.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Don't expect to find it in the US.

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

#149
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that those very same private companies are trying really hard to ban the government from providing the same data for free to the general public, because it would be "unfair competition". They get it for free from the government. They offer it as a paid service to the general public. Then they try to ban the government from giving it away for free to any potential competition.

> The problem is that those very same private companies are trying really hard to ban the government from providing the same data for free to the general public, because it would be "unfair competition". In general, they aren't. The sole example I can think of that even skirts with this was specifically an attempt by AccuWeather in the 2000's, coordinating with then-Senator Rick Santorum's office. And that was univer…

Project 2025 called for downsizing the weather service and have them focus on just data gathering and it should "fully commercialize its forecasting operations".

https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...

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

#150
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be amazing if the reps actually did what we wanted instead of what they are paid by outside entities to do. We should try that!

Agreed that money should be virtually eliminated from the system. That said, people actually tend to be pretty satisfied with their representatives. It's the other Congresspeople who suck.

Certainly could be more transparent and more equitably shared. Life is tough for people, corporate entities have interests but never actual pain.
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