If the sabotage proceeds, effects will be felt by nautical, aviation, agriculture, commerce, water management, hydroelectric, and on and on. Weather is critical infrastructure for everything like roads and power. It can't be replaced by privatization.
You're not wrong, but their idiotic ideas having catastrophic effects hasn't stopped them doing anything yet. Probably because none of them have a clue what they're doing.
The billionaire class are bilking the country for every cent its worth, and when everything finally crumbles they will move to the next country with a stable middle class and start the process all over again.
They do not care about these consequences because they have enough resources at their disposal to protect themselves while everyone else suffers.
That is one possibility. Another is that many people truly believe in the religion whose mantra is "all government is bad, and the market always knows best."
This was once convenient propaganda for those who wanted lower taxes and less regulation of their businesses. Now the propaganda has been repeated for so long that many have forgotten it was propaganda, and believe that it is actually true.
As I grow older, it gets easier for me to accept that most often the world is not a vast organized conspiracy, it's just really stupid. Though in current times, it does appear to be both of those things at once.
I know there are people who genuinely believe that, but it would be naive to think that is 100% organic and isn't something corporations and the super-wealthy are holding a megaphone up to because it just so happens to suit their interests.
That's open to interpretation; Obviously, someone has a clue since it's part of a plan. It may just be that the people who have no clue are put there to make following the plan easier.
Just because they have a plan, doesn’t mean they have a clue. Their reasoning for this could be as simple as “government bad”.
Just look at the wild abandon with which DOGE has gone about its cuts. They literally fired the experts who inspect our nuclear arsenal, then had to scramble to hire them back because you know.. it’s literally nuclear bombs we’re talking about.
They have caused a lot of mayhem for federal employees. They have suppressed a ton of information and research. They have kept a significant amount of the public in the dark about their actions.
Yeah, they have done things we would both deem as "dumb" but their internal motive is what decides whether or not they have a clue. Furthering our motives has nothing to do with that.
The amount of fearmongering and scaremongering in this thread is literally off the charts.
No, the weather service isn't being shut down... one private organization decides to charge for API access (you know, to make money) and immediately you folks go straight into sabotage and end-of-the-world conspiracy theories.
It took me all of 3 seconds to find several mentions to the big ooga-booga, "project 2025". The article is literally about a private organization and you folks go right into the conspiracies... it's exhausting.
At this point, I think I have to assume some of you actually enjoy being afraid. Some sort of coping mechanism for losing an election and not getting your way for 4 years...
Accuweather spent a lot of money lobbying to charge for NWS data years ago. It’s not exactly a secret or a conspiracy to assume they wouldn’t like to replace free weather data with their own subscriptions.
So what does a private organization deciding to charge for their own API access have to do with the government???
Get your weather data from NWS if you want... serving an API to anyone/everyone costs money, and AccuWeather apparently decided enough was enough. AccuWeather has no obligation to give you free resources. Same as Reddit, same as Twitter, same as so many companies before them.
Oh no, that's right. It must be a conspiracy to end the world!
Here's the actual NWS API[1], you know... the free one that's not going away nor is charging for access.
Not true, there’s been a huge jump in deportation of people with no criminal record. You’re right though there has been only a marginal increase in deportations specifically of criminals.
Just because there can be MORE deportations and MORE tariffs doesn’t mean he’s not doing them lol. You’ve done a fine job of revealing your motivated reasoning anyhow. Clearly one shouldn’t take your predictions on NWS seriously.
So, you missed the part where "project 2025" is about the government ending access to this information?
And that this "private organization" is one of the supporters of "project 2025"?
This is not hidden. This is happening in public. And yes, the worst hasn't happened yet -- the government removing access to data that has long been free -- but if it does, would you agree that it is a bad thing?
If you think that the government should indeed do that, then this isn't a conspiracy theory; it's just saying out loud that this is a thing you're encouraging the government to do. If you think the government should not do that, then you should consider the evidence that it is in fact happening.
> AccuWeather Chief Executive Officer Steven R. Smith said “AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations. The authors of ‘Project 2025’ used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.”
Project 2025 is fundamentally a propaganda organization which has a symbiotic relationship with both the right- (through populism) and left- (through fear-selling) wing media (social and traditional). You should be immediately critical of anything said by or about them (and fact-check it), because a lot of it is reported uncritically and does not actual represent reality.
Aren't the problems you point to just business justification for companies offering this service for a fee rather than subsidizing the fees with federal debt?
Yes, of course. We're all reasonable adults who are capable of acknowledging that services of value cost money.
It just so happens that weather is a phenomenon which affects all people and requires large, distributed, passive infrastructure to effectively manage. It's a classic case where the public option is bound to be more efficient in terms of absolute resource allocation.
On what basis do I assert that it's "bound" to be more efficient? Simple: weather affects the production, transportation, and logistics of virtually all goods. The costs of weather are therefore distributed equally across society regardless of government policy. Government is very good at delivering this specific type of centralized basic infrastructure in a cost-effective way (see also: roads), so if we're all paying for it together regardless this is a no-brainer policy.
I've seen this repeated many times but I have yet to see anyone mention, by name, which paid weather service is selling a feed with the same level of service and coverage as the NWS/NOAA. Anyone?
Only NWS has a vast network of sensors: river gauges (with USGS), doppler radars, satellites, airport AOS automated observation systems, etc etc. to support the mission.
Most of the privates are just repackaging their feeds and data. So if you kill NOAA they will have to start almost from scratch.
Well you're describing the chicken and egg problem. If there is high demand for this data a company would fill that niche, but they would have no reason to until the free data is gone.
I also think this chain of comments is a bit off the rails of my original point (maybe my fault). It honestly doesn't matter if there is pain to be felt by removing government services, we spend entirely too much money and any solution to that will hurt.
If we are only willing to remove spending that hurts little to no one we might as well throw in the towel already, we'll never cut spending with that as a gate.
In my experience, having used several paid weather APIs for hobby crap, the NWS ones are generally the worst in every way.
They're slower, harder to query, the documentation is worse, and they have less data available because the others buy data from private weather stations and re bundle it in addition to pre processing and repackaging the Federal data into better formats on your behalf
I say this as a NOAA lover; the government just isn't good at building APIs.
Companies can and do offer data for a fee. In the same way that private toll road existing doesn't mean we should get rid of the highway system, a paid option doesn't mean the government should stop providing a publicly funded option given the immense value it provides to society
If the government option successfully creates a government monopoly, maybe we should?
In this case we simply don't know what the market needs or market value of these services are because no one is incentivized to compete with the subsidized government program.
How have they created a monopoly? This comment is on a post about a company that charges for this data, not to mention competitors like foreca or the weather company
I've noticed this user has a habit of asking these "questions" and then suddenly falling quiet when pressed more closely. (I think they are concern trolling)
If it's a public service or public data, it should be subsidized by the government.
Every American has an interest in seeing the weather for no cost. It's vital to business and recreation, not to mention safety. It absolutely makes sense for us to all pay a tiny amount.
If weather info is that valuable to so many private interests, wouldn't the public get a better deal by insisting that private interests pay market prices (to the public service provider) for that info?
We commonly assume that a publicly owned service serves the public good by giving away the service for free, but this assumes the public's only role is as passive consumer, whose sole interest is seeing the price as low as possible, if not $0
However the public is also the owner and as owners of the service, we are arguably being taking advantage of by private interests who take the free data, only to turn around and create private value with it.
Maybe the public would get a better deal fiscally.
Would having to change APIs every 17 months as providers change their terms, constantly having to deal with breaking changes, etc, etc, etc be a "better deal"? There's an advantage in stability, and that's one thing governments typically provide. Yes, you can argue "a private provider could provide stability... for a fee". Which works great until it turns out even the fee isn't enough to keep them around. And you have to switch providers. Again.
Like roads, parks, postal service, police, fire fighting, education, sewers, etc., the government is allowed to provide public goods. We don't have to live in a Libertarian dystopia.
We do pay for these services. Both as individuals and as organizations. It's called taxes. And those taxes are set by congress, people we elect to represent us. And congress also determines how those taxes will be spent. In this case, we've been collecting and spending taxes on delivering critical weather information and maintaining critical weather monitoring apparatus. Because commerce, safety, etc rely on that information.
Can you imagine how things might be different if there was an additional group of people involved whose only goal is to siphon money out? Capitalism is predicated on the idea that the goal is to charge the most and deliver the least. In this case doing that would mean delays at best and death at worst. Weather is dangerous.
If weather info is that valuable to so many private interests, wouldn't the public get a better deal by insisting that private interests pay market prices (to the public service provider) for that info?
There are plenty of private weather companies, and many private companies employ their own meteorologists and massive computers to generate their own forecasts. (Think agriculture, logistics, aviation, oil exploration.)
Not every company can afford a supercomputer. The NWS forecasts and data are valuable to every other person and company.
Also, the addition of NWS data makes everyone's weather forecasts better. Note how television hurricane forecasts don't show one model, but many models from many sources. All this again is in the interest of commerce, which drives tax revenue.
Compare and contrast the American and the British weather services.
In the USA it was the case that, if the taxpayer paid for it, then it was free. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Thatcher government decided that it would be best if government agencies earned their keep. As a consequence, in the UK, weather data became chargeable. This meant that there was no growth of third party applications that built on Met Office data.
This became a market distortion with TV weather, where the BBC had their data from the Met Office whereas ITV had to use American data, with a specialist broadcaster - The Weather Department - providing the video inserts. The Weather Department eventually came into competition with the Met Office providing their own video inserts, so the marketplace was uncompetitive yet 'competitive'.
Compare with the BBC online news, which does not have to pay for itself in the same way that the mainstream news organisations such as The Guardian, The Telegraph et al. have to either go for paywalls or a smorgasbord of adverts. It is essentially impossible to compete against the BBC for news eyeballs online in the UK due to this competition model.
With weather you need two independent supercomputer outfits that crunch the numbers and come up with forecast data. Why two (or more)? Because forecast models can be wrong in ways that human forecasters can understand and work with. If there are two 'sources of truth' then you can use your gut to go with which one feels right.
Vast supercomputer outfits cost lots of money and, until recently, only a government of considerable size could pay for such an investment. The investment isn't just in the computers, you need a constant stream of meteorologists that can work with the data, so that means one or more universities with the specialism. In the UK we have Reading, that is the best place to go to if you want to get into forecasting, for TV, the military, farming or aviation.
Free weather data is a public good and also 'soft power'. In Ireland they don't have their own weather supercomputers or universities that are renowned for producing expert weather forecasters, hence they need British or American help.
I also forgot the satellites, which is in another league of expense, but necessary for all kinds of observation data.
Observations are interesting as the reliance has historically been on airfields. We missed a chance to get mobile phone base stations reporting in to have vastly more data. Given the amount of money involved in mobile, when the governments sold off the spectrum they could have used the opportunity to insist on weather observation data being collected, in order to refine the model.
Sometimes you get a town next to a lake with a massive mountain behind it where the forecast will consistently be wrong due to how the modelling works and a lack of observation data to make corrections. There are many scenarios such as this and the mobile phone masts could have been used to fill the gaps.
If the UK provided free data (and the USA didn't) then we wouldn't talking about AccuWeather, it would be some British company that the world would be relying on for their apps. This British company would be modest in size but still providing good jobs and keeping graduates from Reading employed. In turn they would be working with people developing specialist apps, for example, weather for race courses and there would be much tax paid to government to make it worth their while, plus national prestige in having 'the best weather service' going.
Another example of a British mistake is the Ordnance Survey, purveyor of paid for maps. Nobody uses Ordnance Survey, it is always Google Maps, Apple Maps or OpenStreetMap. They get pennies from developers and architects that need the official Ordnance Survey maps but nothing from day to day usage, in effect they have lost out.
All these things need to be for the public good, paid for out of public taxation and a genuine free market of private enterprise fostered, otherwise nothing happens.
Thanks for that, I just checked out their free tiers and there is enough there to get started with. This is very much for hobby or development purposes, which is fine.
Imaginably I might want to write an app that needs weather data at scale, even for a simple thing. Imagine I sold chocolate teapots online and, in the delivery notes, wanted to advise customers to not leave their deliveries outside for too long if it was going to be sunny in their postcode area on the day of delivery. The free tier might work.
If it was something more popular, for example milk or veg boxes, then I would need to start paying. This would be for a marginal value but of wording in a delivery note, but something that might differentiate the service.
Or, imagine I sold outdoor gear, with a newsletter that goes out to 100,000 customers. Depending on their postcode I might want to promote deckchairs or umbrellas. Although this level of personalisation isn't going to win any awards for innovation, it is something that could be done, enabling a medium sized company to compete against the big companies that are optimising their promotions for the weather.
There is also the research aspect, to verify a suspected phenomenon against data in an amateur way that you would never get a research grant for.
All considered, I wish they did free with no restrictions.
I feel that it’s fine that businesses are charged for heavier use of a tax-funded service, especially when it would increase the running cost of those services, and where there’s no obvious benefit to the taxpayer.
I get the argument about using taxpayer services to leverage a more competitive business environment, and I agree that’s important, but I don’t think an advertising newsletter is a good example.
And honestly the data’s fairly cheap for high-accuracy weather data. You get a lot of API calls for not very much money.
The massive dataset, the GRIB, is either free or close to free if you get the US version but is expensive if you get the UK version. I appreciate your point that a fair price should be charged but you can't compete with free.
The UK government has made questionable decisions over the years regarding what it does, personally I think the government has no business making cars (British Leyland) or making planes (Concorde). But weather is important to the realm and a fair candidate to be funded by the taxpayer but with that data also being free.
It would be nice to think that uses of weather data are going to be life saving things, but the applications fall off quickly once you have the farmers and the sailors sorted out with what they need. You soon go from this to betting on horses and whether the ground will favour particular horses.
As for the example of selling deckchairs or umbrellas, consumer spending is what drives Western economies, like it or not.
Not all public goods have to benefit everyone, but there does have to be a clear distinction between what is best provided as a public good by government and what is best left to the private sector.
It's another attack from within.