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Comment by Tempest1981 | Hacker News Reader

Tempest1981

I heard that Trump has given NOAA 100 days to justify their existence, or face heavy cuts. Does anyone know the details?

Here is the closest article I could find: http://www.salon.com/2016/11/23/politicizing-climate-change-...

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Why shouldn't government agencies have to justify their budgets and operations periodically?

They should, so why not send out a blanket order for all agencies to do this? Why target only a few specific departments for justification and gag orders?

How about when they submit a budget, rather than as a focused witch hunt?

Of course, its not like this political atmosphere would listen to any budget justifications. It's all theater now, it doesn't matter what actual justifications there are, what actual facts there are, or what things actually look like when you spend the time to dive into them. What matters these days is a small number of opinion-makers feel in their hearts, and what they tell their followers to feel with quick one-sentence justifications.

It's called a budget review. It's Congress's job to do this, not the Administration. And it seems like a total waste of time compared to all of the other more important issues the Administration should be covering, IMO.

How about that almost every weather service in the US depends on their existence?

Exactly. The thing that everyone is shitting their pants over is a nothingburger. NOAA once had a verifiable mission. The problem with government agencies is mission creep--they all got on the "climate change" bandwagon because that's where the bucks were. That is now over.

I don't think that sentence means what you think it means.

When we get rid of NOAA you can forget about Hurricane warnings... and since they are probably "alternative facts" you can let people die... or alternatively they "go to heaven". How about, you can't have good predictive models of future events, if you don't know how to model or you don't use the "big data" of past events.

Oh, but the "big bucks" are in climate change? That must be what they do in Silicon Valley and Manhattan? /snark>

Citation needed.

The NOAA's original mission:

> We face immediate and compelling needs for better protection of life and property from natural hazards, and for a better understanding of the total environment-an understanding which will enable us more effectively to monitor and predict its actions, and ultimately, perhaps to exercise some degree of control over them.

> [...]

> I expect it to maintain continuing and close liaison with the new Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality as part of an effort to ensure that environmental questions are dealt with in their totality and that they benefit from the full range of the government's technical and human resources.

- http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2575&

This clearly covers climate change, there's no mission creep.

>they all got on the "climate change" bandwagon because that's where the bucks were

How many "bucks" do you think that "climate change" gets vs. other possible science??

The NOAA budget (http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/nbo/fy16_bluebook/FY20...) is 6 billion, a pittance compared to any number of govt expenditures - say, $1.508 trillion for the lifetime cost of the F-35.

The "real money", is in the SSI, benefits, health and human services. If Trump attacks those programs with the same enthusiasm as the (foolishly) politicized environmental ones, that will be interesting.

This is true, but I don't love these arguments. When Trump tries to cut the National Endowment for the Arts, the argument should not be "$150 million is nothing", it should be that the NEA does important useful work and deserves to be funded. If it were a truly useless organization, it should be cut regardless of how tiny it is compared to the full budget.

Obviously it's annoying when Trump saves 500 jobs or shaves $100 million off the budget and celebrates like he's just saved the economy, but honestly I'd much rather have him do that than try to make a tremendous deal to privatize social security or something.

It seems like Trump has been doing similar to quite a few federal agencies. I'm concerned with some of the early moves, but it's going to be interesting, I do hope that some common sense prevails. For example, bowing out of TPP isn't so bad.

Bowing out of the TPP has been hilarious for me to watch. 6 months ago if Obama had done it he would have been praised on nerd sites. But he didn't and Trump did so now it's an awful idea. It's right up there with my fellow nerds demanding H1B visa reform, Net Neutrality, and subsidizing clean energy while also demanding free markets. I just hear Fezzik going "I don't think that means what you think it means..."

* note - i support bailing on TPP, H1B visa reform, and subsidizing clean energy

"Walker has hinted that what NASA loses in earth science research could be shifted over to NOAA."

This gets thrown around a lot, but has two major problems. First, it's unlikely that comparable funding will also be transferred from NASA to NOAA. E.g. NASA will be told to stop earth science research and have it's budget cut appropriately. NOAA will be told to start earth science research, but without the requisite budget increase. So effectively, it kills earth science under the guise of "moving" it.

Second, NOAA is not operationally or logistically equipped to handle the level of earth science that NASA is performing. NOAA manages a few weather satellites, but has nowhere near the infrastructure that NASA has, and requires, to manage the existing earth science research. Even if you gave NOAA the appropriate money, they don't have the infra or engineers to keep everything flying.

Planetary Radio did a great episode on this topic, but I'm struggling to find it right now.

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