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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

Yeah it'll be interesting if they privatize weather forecasting in the US. I'll be looking for European forecasts of US weather...

It's handy info, but I'm not gonna subscribe to see if I need a coat or umbrella.

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That has been touted around before, but what does the military do? I assume they are extremely aware of their supply chain and would not want to source weather from a commercial entity.

Will NORAD start doing clandestine weather modelling to be able to plan troop/ship movements?

They’re briefing Elon Musk on China war plans, I don’t think the current leadership will care much where they source weather data as long as it aligns with the current ideological purity purge.

There's no proof he was part of any briefing, and pretty much everyone has denied this has happened. You need to diversify your news sources beyond the ones that confirm your beliefs, truthful or not.

There's no proof he was part of any briefing

I guess you missed the video of him going into the Pentagon, and then coming out saying he had a great meeting.

It was all over the "legacy" media that the current legacy president doesn't watch or obsess over.

Right, there's only one meeting room at the Pentagon.

Should he be in _any_ pentagon meetings? I mean, the admin is trying to deny he has any official role beyond advisor, and he’s not US born.

So someone that was, say, hired to make a website for the Pentagon can’t go and have a meeting there? Especially if they’re foreign born?

Given how game changing Starlink has proven to be for military operations, he probably should.

If you genuinely believe the real problem here is reporting, not that it's unclear (and had to be denied by the President himself) whether a private citizen with massive and well documented conflicts of interest and who doesn't hold a TS clearance was briefed on some of the nations most sensitive military planning I'd suggest I'm not the one with an information consumption and evaluation issue.

The Navy already does forecasting for the DoD. They have their own computing facility (called Fleet Numerical) in California and run their own models.

Curious if they use NWS weather station data or if they collect their own.

It is pretty much an independent system. There are only a handful of organizations on the planet operating an independent global weather model. For historical reasons the US operates two of them. A good argument can be made that the European model is better than either, so it might make sense for the US to combine some of those global weather model resources.

unless "all private except certain secure friends" is not in the spirit of US Federal Science?

Isn't it true that open methods beat closed expensive methods many times.. in the case of weather prediction, it is trivial to benchmark predictions.

For how long? Like seriously, how long until that department/company/office is shut down

I was a private yacht chef for 6 years. I would always source weather from https://www.metoc.navy.mil/ and plan meals around it. I'm pretty good with a Japanese chef's knife in 8 foot seas.

His cuts on dry land: ~~~

Some Mel Brooks level humor here

Air Force / Space Force already employ meteorologists for their own stuff, I'm sure the US military will have accurate information. It just will not get to the public until it has been properly sharpied.

There is no way private weather forecasting will be profitable enough to keep the required equipment running, at least at the quality we have had.

But people will make money selling the data, so who cares if it's worse.

I think the idea is that a private company will take the results of government produced meteorology and then have full rights for distribution. At least, that's the plan of one of the current private companies that does this, they want to be the monopoly.

It's insane. I don't understand what could possibly be the justification there.

More money and power for the decision makers.

They gave a bunch of money to Trump, and bully everybody else that challenges them, so it makes it the right thing to do.

Seems pretty clear to me - Trump is trying to cut costs for our government. He sees we’re spending all that money on forecasting and data that everyone else uses for free, and gets paid for it. Therefore, that data is worth something and the government should get a piece of the pie.

I don’t necessarily agree but it’s somewhat logical.

Why are government things supposed to be profitable now all of a sudden?

I don't think the "cut costs" is an accurate framing of intent or outcome here. High costs are not being cut, but individual programs that are cheap but have every high positive impact are getting completely whacked. Such as the National Weather Service, there are reports all across the country of not having enough staff to launch the necessary number of weather balloons or generate reports that cover 24 hours of the day, leading to very small cost savings but massive inefficiency. Meanwhile massive contracts out to failing defense programs are untouched, and military spending is being massively increased far beyond what the military even asks for. Add to that the massive IRS staff reductions and tax cheats are having a hey day, with more than $500B lost to that already, which is 10x our entire science budget, which is actively getting slashed.

The goal is to assert dominance and to punish anybody that, as a group, was unlikely to vote for Trump and who Trump voters don't like, such as scientists.

Crap equipment then and crap forecast.

Yeah it'll be interesting if they privatize weather forecasting in the US

FWIW, there is already a massive industry of private weather forecasting.

I know personally, or have met, at least six fully trained meteorologists who don't work for the government. Most are in the oil industry, but one is in aquaculture, and another in shipping.

Most big energy, aviation, and logistics companies employ meteorologists. Probably other industries, too.

That said, the loss of the NWS would be a national tragedy, and one of the worst mistakes in American government history.

One of the worst mistakes so far.

All private/paid weather forecasts still rely on NOAA’s infrastructure, so we may not have any reliable forecasting anymore.

I'm surprised they aren't privatizing GPS actually... seems to be a similarly helpful public service. While it does help subsidize future Korean airliners... it unfairly harms aircraft manufacturers. /s

You're joking but this is the current way some folks in power discuss government services

Why would "they" privatize the weather? How dramatic.

To save taxpayer money or for idiological reasons, like everything else that's ever been privatised in the history of the term anywhere on the planet.

To add to this “they” in this context refers to “the current officials in power”

Trump's choice for the head of NOAA is Barry Lee Myers, the 81 year old CEO of Accuweather who, with no scientific background, has been lobbying for years to dissolve the National Weather Service.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers

Why wouldn’t they?

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