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

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151–160 of 227 posts

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

#151
post #57
post #54

They may have, unfortunately, proved DOGE's point. The new climate.gov probably costs a fraction of the old one.

That's easy to do. No one has expectations of this one. As soon as a government website is down, it's an outrage. I'm sure money could've been saved. But the cost of this site really isn't the hosting, it's the data being gatherd with all the research

I would like to see climate research funded, but it needs to be de-politicized and stop being used to push fear propaganda and sinister policies.

They used it to flat out destroy the economies in much of Europe, while somehow China and India were ignored despite being orders of magnitude bigger problems, according to their own narrative.

If any of the above were honest, there would have been blanket trade restrictions and sanctions on China and India so quickly it would make your head spin.

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

#152
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The media in the US is utterly feckless and broken.

It is owned by capital and doing what they bought it to do. Working as designed.

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

#153

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.

The site wasn't (isn't) about the data. It's about articles that contextualize the data. The money raised has allowed them to stand up a new site with all the old articles (which truth be told were all still nominally accessible via the internet archive) and will help fund them to create new ones. So it will stay relevant by paying the people who in the past worked for NOAA to creation the content, to now create the content paid for by donation.

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

#154
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t follow. I would rather the government manage the API, like what NOAA does/did.

So then we are subsidizing Google’s outsized usage of that API?

As long as it’s properly addressed to avoid abuse, I don’t have a problem with private companies and individual citizens both benefiting. You could easily put rate limits if you think it’s a major issue while still maintaining the free service for smaller users. I personally don’t like the privatization of profits while also maintaining the narrative that companies don’t benefit from public works.

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

#155
post #54

They may have, unfortunately, proved DOGE's point. The new climate.gov probably costs a fraction of the old one.

Nope. The main cost of the old climate.gov was the salaries of the folks writing the articles and pulling together the resources. They were not getting paid exorbitantly and are quite interested in still getting paid. Source: I am one of those people.

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

#156

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.

You can make even more money if you make sure you have accurate data while your competitors do not.

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

#157
post #24

> The whole thing relies on donations to keep it afloat, which is really what tax dollars are for. Hmm. I don’t believe that’s accurate.

Which part? I interpret it as: 1. The temporary situation (private copy with donations) is not sustainable. 2. The activity is within the proper role of the US federal government. 3. It gives diffuse public-benefits, which should be funded normally, rather than rely on concentrated private donations. Disseminating the collected data publicly is not only a moral imperative--we already paid for it!--it's also how one m…

I suspect the intent is to minimize return on investment. The returns from climate data are returns that the current administration does not want.

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

#158

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.

Your argument assumes the Trump admin wants to actually help the citizens it is supposed to represent. They do not care about most citizens, their words and actions have proven this over and over again.

This admin absolutely will never take any steps towards transparency, education, sharing, or even simple kindness. Any hope of implementing something like this will have to come later.

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

66% of Federal spending is on entitlements.

Social Security and Medicare have a separate, capped tax though. They're funded through that tax. Federal tax is effectively uncapped. Where does it go?

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

#160

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". 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...

And that literally isn't happening.
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