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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Out the other side of this will be diversified weather reporting with less reliance on the US. They lose influence.

Fine, save short term costs. Fine, expand the private weather marketplace in America. Ok, so explain to non giant agribusiness US domestic farmers why they now pay for what was a free/low cost service. They vote more by numbers than the corporates do. So you've alienated your base for what?

Tornado season may be interesting or another beast from the east, or reduced air flight reliability.

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Not to mention, it's not just the US itself that relies on those forecasts - the rest of the world too. All this turmoil and confusion creates an opportunity for the EU and China (and perhaps also Japan and others) to take the lead.

(I'm not having high hopes for EU to move on this fast enough to achieve anything, but who knows.)

Little by little, the US is relinquishing the economical and political power it holds over the world. Which is worrying, as it increases the risk of a nuclear war.

Yes I should have been explicit that diversity came with international consequences. I wonder if they intend turning off the sat ground stations and services or if the DoD has pointed out how silly that would be.

The word climate probably caused the problem. They should have stuck to weather. Maybe they can call themselves "the weathermen" and move underground?

Europe has the ECMWF which is the leading meteorological research institute with the best forecasts in the world. Apart from that, all the large national weather services in Europe are top notch. In comparison, the US weather services are in a sorry state with outdated forecasting models.

I have no direct knowledge. But I can tell you for the coming cyclone here in Brisbane the city council is using a web page view which federates data over BoM (Australia) USGS, NOAA, ESRI.. and other places.

So the 'extraterritorial' nature of decisions to cut back on weather and climate services has reach beyond the borders.

I continue to think this is a GSA accounting stuffup and the occupied offices will be restored, or relocated because the necessity of a NOAA seems hard to contest. No, the private sector does not replicate. it complements and augments.

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