Santorum vs. the National Weather Service

The BBQ Pit
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And by Santorum I don’t mean a frothy mix of fecal matter and lubricant but the US Senator (though it is hard to tell the difference sometimes).

From the article in the Palm Beach Post it seems Santorum is out to close down the weather service’s web site in favor of commercial online sites like AccuWeather.

Santorum’s website is purposefully vague about the whole thing so I’m inclined to believe the press interpretation of the issue.

In that case, bite me Santorum. Bite me for your pompus, gay-bashing, Schiavo-necrophiliac ways. But most of all, bite me for trying to keep a federal agency from providing me easy and understandable access to data that my tax dollars have paid for.

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If accurate, and it sounds like it is, the Palm Beach story would be another example of Santorum’s complete misunderstanding (in my opinion) of the role of public agencies in American life. But the Santorum website press release suggests that NOAA went back on a NWS pledge not to engage in activities that competed with private weather services. I would very much like to know more about this story. Perhaps Mr Moto, who noted in another thread that he used to work for our favorite Pennsylvania Senator, might tap one of his surviving contacts and get some more background for us. And I believe we have at least one member who works for NOAA and might be able to find out something of what that agency’s past and present stance is.

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He’s not after the NWS, just their website, right?

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And their little dog too.

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This topic is a huge firestorm on one of the meteorology lists I subscribe to. Basically, even we aren’t quite sure exactly what will happen, thanks to the vague wording mentioned in the above article. I can see both sides of the issue. The pro-NWS people argue that all these free forecasts will no longer be available, and people shouldn’t have to pay for forecasts that are already funded by their tax dollars. The pro-privates argue that this is good for everyone, because the NWS can then focus on it’s core mission (data collection, public warnings, etc.) and re-focus it’s resources (i.e. cut costs) because it doesn’t have to do a little of everything, which is stretching manpower/resources/etc. Data would be accessible to everyone at the same time (some of the current products are delayed by the NWS to make sure they aren’t misinterpreted…example, some of the experimental hurricane model forecasts and reconnaisance data are delayed up to an hour so NHC can decipher it all for their warning forecasts).

Of course, the devil is in the details, so I think it’s safe to say right now that it’s too early to tell.

From this, there are some people thinking this is all very fishy, as AccuWeather (one of the biggest companies that would seem to benefit from this bill passage), donated realtively substantial sums of money to Santorum, the bill’s sponsor.

Vis

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It’s a little bit premature, but this should give you hope:

Bob Casey Jr. is up 14 points on Santorum for the '06 election.

It’s looking like the people here may be getting fed up with Santorum, because that poll result comes with Casey doing absolutely nothing.

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The core thing about this that made me angry, and I was too sleepy to articulate last night, was that, having once worked for a public agency trying to post soil surveys online, I can only admire the NWS for having actually succeeded in getting their data out and in an accessible format.

As for distracting the NWS from its “core mission”, I’m not really buying that. After the initial cost of building the web interface to read the databases which the NWS would undoubtedly maintain, website or no, I can’t imagine the cost in money and personnel to be all that great. It is a very slight add-on to the NWS’ work with a large payout.

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I work on the same campus as NOAA’s National Hurricane Service. Last fall, when Florida kept getting walloped, my lab practically had the NWS set as our default homepage. We could get our scientific jollies off by watching the satellite footage and model simulations. But it was also comforting knowing that we had some idea of what was happening out there.

It might as well not exist if you take away the website, IMHO. I’m sure others feel the same way.

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It’s hard to read this as anything but Santorum representing a desire by Accu-Weather that we be forced to buy stuff from Accu-Weather that the NWS is already producing with our tax dollars and distributing free of charge.

Forecast for Santorum’s brain: permanently foggy.

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Frankly, although my personal opinion of Rick Santorum is that he is Pennsylvania’s solution to the toxic waste disposal problem, I would really like to know the facts behind this. I suspect strongly he’s paying his campaign debt to AccuWeather at the cost of taxpayers’ access to information they’ve paid to have collected. But can anyone research out what the supposed NWS agreement that he alludes to was?

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He’s afraid that the Supreme Court will use it!!

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I read that as “permanently soggy” at first. The sad thing is that I didn’t think it was particularly untrue.

CASEY IN '06!!!

Okay, actually, ANYBODY BUT SANTORUM IN '06!!!

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National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005 (Introduced in Senate) S 786 IS1S

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Oh, dear me. What a crock.

They want to use my tax dollars to collect the information and only provide it to commercial organizations? No, that’s just bullshit.

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“You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.” - - Bob Dylan

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Man. The NWS web site’s weather forcasting (www.noaa.gov – just punch in a zip code) is fucking awesome. Far and away the best weather web site on the internet. No adds, LOTS of information, clean presentation, links to forecast discussions straight from the metereologists mouth, etc. I have a button for the local forecast in the toolbar of all my browsers.

This would really fucking piss me off.

Someone should make a private non-profit rip-off of the web site–or would that even be possible under this bill? Does “commercial” mean “private-sector” or “for-profit”? Is the bill saying that the weather data exists for other companies to make money off of? :mad:

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So, how does etiquette dictate writing a letter to a senator? Would “To the Honorable Senator Frothy-Mixture-of-Fecal-Matter-and-Lube” pass muster with Emily Post? How about Miss Manners?

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I’m fine with protecting AccuWeather from competition with NOAA/NWS.

That said, I’m not fine with AW using any government resources for their private profit. If they want to make money, they can launch thier own goddamn satellites and put up their own chain of radar stations.

The NOAA/NWS data is mine – I paid for it with my taxes. AW doesn’t have license to make me pay for it twice while marking it up.

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Next from the National Weather Service: Shiit storm or tempest in a teapot?

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  • Polycarp said that.

You don’t need a weatherman to know the way the wind blows - Dylan said that.

[/nitpick]

My daughter got brownie points in college from knowing that song so well from hearing me play it so much. :slight_smile: