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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

#171

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.

Honestly, if anything the library of congress should be operating a system similar to the way back machine. Isn't preserving historical information one of its objectives? And what libraries do in general? But I'm very in favor of maintaining "the record", as it were, for government websites. If we can have changelogs on bills then we should elsewhere. It informs the citizens of the actions of our government. What has…

Its called legal or mandatory deposit. In some countries their national library is required to crawl the open internet within their language, besides collecting regular published materials. In the US laws on legal deposit has not been extended to non printed materials.

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

#172
A similar thing happened back in Australia years back.

We had the Climate Commission, which did alot of great work. It was a government department and fully funded by the government.

Then a conservative, climate denying government came to power and shut it down.

Literally within 48 hours, they obtained alternative funding from private sources, then rebirthed the organization as the independent Climate Council.

Many of the fired workers were re hired and the new organization does similar work to the previous one. It's still in operation today.

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/

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

#173
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well your interpretation is both rude and wrong but I've learned to expect this level of hubris here.

What exactly was hubristic about the comment? A young account with "See you at the bottom of the thread where the cool people hang out." and "down weighted" as it's descriptor?

I could go with ad hom. I accept rude. It was rude.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that literally isn't happening.

A lot of the recommendations for NOAA cuts in Project 2025 have been happening, so it's probably more of a "hasn't happened yet " kind of thing. There's little reason to believe that isn't still the goal.

There have been no signs whatsoever that these types of changes would be happening. The only noticeable changes at NOAA - and anyone who works in the world of meteorology in the United States - have been a doubling down on existing, vetted programs for commercial data acquisition (all of which target supplemental capability, not backbone replacement) and a doubling down on existing modeling R&D (namely the re-up of EPIC and the commitment to the UFS).

NOAA is helmed by veterans of the weather enterprise. Do you see the American Meteorological Society issuing statements decrying the commercialization of the NWS or NOAA? Honestly, because NOAA is a Department of Commerce agency and the head of that cabinet department - Lutnick - has no interest whatsoever in weather or climate, there really isn't any ongoing concern that NOAA will be massively torn apart.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There has not.

Attempts have been made starting back in 2005 https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/786...

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a conspiracy theory.

How so? They've already implemented over half of the policies suggested in it. https://www.project2025.observer/en As mentioned they've already implemented many of the recommendations related to NOAA in the document. If anything they've gone even further in many of the cuts as they've cut the budgets so much a lot of balloon launches haven't happened vastly reducing the ground truth needed to keep models and forecast…

I don't know who runs that website, but it has flat out falsehoods on it. If you search for "NOAA", two items come up with notes [1]:

1. "Note: The administration is firing NOAA employees and closing NOAA offices; reconciliation bill rescinds some NOAA funds." Uh, no - there have not been any NOAA office closures. The President's FY26 budget eviscerated NOAA OAR, but those cuts were almost entirely rolled back by Congress. Yes, NOAA and NWS employees were caught up in the DOGE probationary purges back in early 2025, but in many cases (a) they were hired back, and (b) the NWS is aggressively hiring at all levels to replace churn.

2. "Note: Private companies are now gathering weather data for NOAA; administration is "readying plans" to transfer National Center for Atmospheric Research work to private companies." NOAA has purchased data from the private sector for 30 years. The explosion in commercial earth observation has dramatically increased the available data that can be directly used in numerical weather modeling, and NOAA has operated a Commercial Data Program for over a decade to supplement its own investments. This is an expected evolution of the weather enterprise that was predicted and urged as far back as the National Academies' "Fair Weather" report in 2003 [2]. Furthermore - NCAR is part of the NSF, not NOAA, which really calls into question WTF your website is talking about.

[1] https://www.project2025.observer/en?search=noaa [2] https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/10610

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has not.

Attempts have been made starting back in 2005 https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/786...

And I dare you to find another attempt in the intervening 20 years.

Santorum's bill was laughed out of Washington. It stands alone.

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

#178
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's difficult to make money if you have to spend all the money on defense lawyers.

Once Trump dies of natural causes I assume some intrepid journalists will go through the mountain of evidence and dig out some exciting snippets of what went on behind closed doors. Maybe a few more people will have to resign because of it.

I'd be interested to hear the contrast between what the Trump Presidential Library considers his greatest accomplishments and what, say, Bob Woodward writes.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? They've already implemented over half of the policies suggested in it. https://www.project2025.observer/en As mentioned they've already implemented many of the recommendations related to NOAA in the document. If anything they've gone even further in many of the cuts as they've cut the budgets so much a lot of balloon launches haven't happened vastly reducing the ground truth needed to keep models and forecast…

I don't know who runs that website, but it has flat out falsehoods on it. If you search for "NOAA", two items come up with notes [1]: 1. "Note: The administration is firing NOAA employees and closing NOAA offices; reconciliation bill rescinds some NOAA funds." Uh, no - there have not been any NOAA office closures. The President's FY26 budget eviscerated NOAA OAR, but those cuts were almost entirely rolled back by Con…

So you start off saying they aren't commercializing forecasting and that there's no evidence of them wanting to downsize. Meanwhile you fully acknowledge they attempted to radically downsize twice in less than two years and acknowledge they've massively expanded the existing forecast commercialization. "No signs whatsoever" while you point obvious signs.

NOAA's budgets may have been approved by Congress, but they still face massive staffing shortages. The Trump administration has made it clear they don't care about impoundments and choosing to not spend money allotted by Congress.

When the regional climate offices went offline, do you think it was just incompetence, or testing the waters about letting such programs just die?

Sounds like they just haven't been fully successful at implementing their obvious policy goals. If they didn't want to do it, why write the budget that way? Why authorize those DOGE cuts? Isn't the expansion of commercialization in the plans of increasing commercialization?

It's like you refuse to see the obvious reality immediately in your face and choose to believe a convicted fraudster.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attempts have been made starting back in 2005 https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/786...

And I dare you to find another attempt in the intervening 20 years. Santorum's bill was laughed out of Washington. It stands alone.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/noaa-pro...
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