Burnt Orange Report

Santorum to Privitize the Weather?

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

Matt Hardigree over at East End brings to my attention that Man-on-Dog Senator Santorum (R) has a bill filed in the Senate to privitize Weather (meaning, let's get rid of that silly NOAA and restrict them to just "emergency" weather reporting).

The Palm Beach Post reports...

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service.

...

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

Supporters say the bill wouldn't hamper the weather service or the National Hurricane Center from alerting the public to hazards — in fact, it exempts forecasts meant to protect "life and property."

Many 'private' companies use NOAA information to complement their own forcasting, so why should I be forced to then pay for weather information which I've already payed for through my federal income taxes? Talk about double taxation Mr. Santorum.

"The National Weather Service Web site would have to go away," Bradner said. "What would be permitted under this bill is not clear — it doesn't say...

A spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the bill threatens to push the weather service back to a "pre-Internet era" — a questionable move in light of the four hurricanes that struck the state last year. Nelson serves on the Senate Commerce Committee, which has been assigned to consider the bill.

"The weather service proved so instrumental and popular and helpful in the wake of the hurricanes. How can you make an argument that we should pull it off the Net now?" said Nelson's spokesman, Dan McLaughlin. "What are you going to do, charge hurricane victims to go online, or give them a pop-up ad?"

Good point, but the next one made by AccuWeather's Exec-VP are really choice...

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said Myers, whose company is based in State College, Pa. Instead, he said, "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"

Well I'm sorry that we have so many days of just howdy-ho, average hum-drum weather Mr. Myers. If all you are going to do is bitch about the NWS making forcasts, then why do you want to have them so bad, like you can make them any more warm in sunny? Are we going to have "Extreme-Weather" to boost your sales? Maybe Reality-Weather programing, pitting cirrus clouds against cumulonimbus with a suprise visit by a monsoon.

If they want to limit NOAA to just doing "severe" weather, how in the world are they supposed to cover just that without compiling data on all weather patterns. They can't. Weather is dynamic and I think it would be hard to suddenly lose or gain control over reporting or providing data because a storm becomes "severe" or weakens just enough it no longer qualifies. They make is seem as if there are only two categories of weather, warm and sunny, and "severe" as if they existed in their own little worlds, 7 day forecasts by zip code, and news stories about submerged cars in floods and tornadic mobile home destruction.

Thankfully, NOAA can have quippy quotes as well so I'll leave you with this related line.

"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time," Johnson said. "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."