Feds' weather information could go dark

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html

Thursday, April 21, 2005

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.

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

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.

...more

I know people who work for AccuWeather, and it has a reputation here in State College PA for being one of the worst companies to work for.

They make new hires sign a contract that basically states if the leave the job with-in 3 years, they have to pay the company several thousand bucks.

Asshats.

--p!

They're lousy tippers if you deliver food to them.

Working so close to a beer distributor, you'd think they'd mellow out. And there's Hout's, too; you can get anything at Hout's.

along with his evil, corporate comrades.

Joel Myers is the President of Accuweather, which is apparently behind Santorum's bill. Myers is a major contributor to Santorum. Here is a 1998 article about Joel Myers trying to cut back on the National Weather Service's budget to avoid competition. This was before the NWS had a good internet site. Myers was seeking that the National Weather Service be limited to routine general forecasts and severe weather warnings:

"The March 25th hearing of the House Science Energy and Environment Subcommittee (Chairman Ken Calvert, R-CA) was held to review the Fiscal Year 1999 budget requests for agencies under the Subcommittee’s jurisdiction, including NOAA’s atmospheric programs. At the hearing, former nuclear scientist and university professor, Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) closely and methodically questioned Dr. Joel Myers, President of Accuweather, regarding his earlier assertions that the National Weather Service (NWS) was unfairly competing with the private sector meteorolgical services.

Of particular interest tothe Michigan Republican was whether private forecasters were paying their fair share of the cost for NOAA’s stationary and polar orbiting satellites. Under oath, Dr.Myers not only asserted that he would be “out of business”without the NOAA satellites, but stated that it would cost the private sector “hundreds of millions of dollars,” if they had to duplicate the NOAA satellite coverage.The Ph.D. scientist also challenged Dr. Myers assertion that the National Weather Service should get out of the business of providing routine general forecasts and only focus on severe weather warnings.

Rep. Ehlers asked Dr. Myers if he was suggesting that NWS forecasters should behave like “firefighters” waiting “to go into action” to issue severeweather warnings while presumably sitting around when rou-tine everyday weather occurred. He called the idea a terriblywasteful use of government personnel. The Michigan Republican then asked Dr. Myers whether private meteorologists were recommending that they assume the responsibilityfor severe weather warnings."

http://www.legislative.noaa.gov/Archives/1998/informermay.pdf

of an article due to fair use rules.

Fixed

:thumbsup:

BTW, weather.com completely and utterly sucks elephant dick.

thankfully, the very strange "hover-up" ads are only compatible with internet explorer for windows. the site is still painfully slow on firefox for osx

Because these "for profit" weather services could require registration at their website, or one could have to sort through all these annoying pop up ads.

Believe me, when you have a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on you, you really don't want to see an ad about refinancing your morgage.

get their information? From privately owned satellites? Or are they mooching government funded information, repackaging it and selling it to us? The U.S. govt service is much more user friendly than weather.com in my area. I know that. I can never get the weather.com doppler map to move -- probably because I don't want to download their software. Last thing I need is another potential snoop on my computer.

I understand thay they get the Dada for free from the Weather Service sats...

we instantly own that data. Why should we pay a second time to get data that we paid for with our tax dollars?

When private citizens want weather information or are faced with inclement weather, especially a hurricane, they should be able to access the data in which to save their lives and property with no added fee attached. That information belongs to the people. The people are the government!

When a for-profit company utilizes the same data, they should pay a fee.

If Americans wish to subscribe to a for-profit weather service, that is their choice to make.

The Government employees for the National Weather Service are unionized, fairly well paid and have steady jobs. The cheap-labor fucking Republican bastards can't have that. They want to privitize the FAA as well, which depends on NWS. So planes will fall from the sky and lives will be lost in tornadoes, but these fucks will just continue to get richer and richer. :grr:

http://www.interwarn.com/

It gives me a very comprehensive radar and alert system on my computer. It's what I need when I have these big supercells surrounding me like they are today.

I suppose they'll shut all my radar connections down if the government gets its way.

altimeter...hang on...standby...the web is kind of slow...(hey Bob, is weather.com down?)winds are...nevermind; can you see the runway?"

Oh yeah, that's a REAL good idea Rick! Frickin' idiot.

NT!

consider me flumoxed

I live in PA, and I can say without a doubt that it's way past time to privatize Rick Santorum.

And welcome to DU.

good use of the word "privatize" - re: Santorum

OURS. PERIOD.

If private companies want to offer products and services with added value, that's terrific.

We the People, the taxpayers, the citizens OWN the federal government and all the information it produces.

:nuke:

If they're not complaining about how INEFFICIENT and WASTEFUL the government is in anything it does (and we should, therefore, privatize it) then they're whining about how the government does it cheaper! These fucking corporatists can't keep their own lies straight - and at least half of the public is too narcotized to pay attention.

Privateers are pirates.

This is ridiculous. Will private airports be forced to "buy" weather information? Good God, where will it end?

What ever happened to that gem of an idea?

If it had, the letter rate would look more like the price of gasoline . . .

(Edited for spelling)

On July 1, 1971, the US Post Office officially became the US Postal Service, an "independent" entity within the Federal government, whatever that means. At the time, the postage for a first class letter had just risen from 6 cents to 8 cents.

The only conclusion to be made is that Santorum is possibly the stupidest fucking member of the stupidest fucking Congress in US history.

here we go...

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/santorum_weather_ban_accuweather_421.htm

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday April 21, @07:01PM
from the privatization-overkill dept.
ckokotay writes "Here we go again. Apparently for-pay weather companies (specifically Accuweather) have lobbied Senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill to ban the National Weather Service from 'competing.' The NOAA just made data available for free on the internet in XML format. Essentially, that means no more free data, and the possible elimination of the NOAA web presence all together. Nothing like being able to buy off a clueless Senator - lets hope the rest do not fall in line, as I for one, do not like to pay for my information twice."...


http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/21/2058212&from=rss

Does this mean that my only link to the latest tracking updates (since the electricity is out), ie., my battery-powered weather radio, will no longer be providing this service?
This guy is such an ass.

Are they going to start charging people for sticking their heads out of their windows to see if it's raining? Some things should be free...like weather forcasts, since most of the time it is bogus info anyway. What a bunch of asses!

BAD WEATHER?
Senator aiming to nix federal weather forecasts enjoyed AccuWeather money

Some worry that bill is bad idea in wake of hurricanes

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

A conservative Republican senator who proposed that federal meteorologists be forbidden from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and the Weather Channel, has received nearly $4,000 from AccuWeather's founder and executive vice president since 2000, RAW STORY has discovered.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced the bill last week. The senator's supporters (among them the founder and executive vice president of AccuWeather) note the bill provides an exemption that would allow organizations the National Hurricane Center from alerting the public to hazards.

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said Barry Myers, the Executive Vice President of AccuWeather told the Palm Beach Post Thursday. "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"

Myers gave $1,000 to Santorum in the last election cycle. Santorum was the only senator Myers financially supported.

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/santorum_weather_ban_accuweather_421.htm

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said Barry Myers, the Executive Vice President of AccuWeather told the Palm Beach Post Thursday. "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/

Whatta prick.

...there are free but commercial weather services out there. They are free, they won't blatantly troll for personal info (like a registration process); however they will still display ads. You would still need the firewall to block tracking cookies most, if not all, of the time.

I use http://www.intellicast.com/

They seem to make their money off of detailed aviation forecast services. I have occasionally had problems with their radar loops being slow to load, but I suspect that's because the IT department that runs this university's network absolutely sucks, as my connection seems generally unreliable.

Hell, I didn't even know I could get XML forecasts directly from the NWS/NOAA until I read this.

That's equal to what - less than a week of Iraq occupation? It's not even 10% of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority that can't be accounted for.

Santorum probably wants NWS outsourced to Halliburton. I'm thrilled that bunghole is double - digits down to his likely Dem opponent next year. I hope Dean, MoveOn, etc pour huge money into defeating Senator "Man on dog sex."

If private security firms complain about competition, do we start doing away with the police or FBI? To paraphase Abe Lincoln: goverments are there to provide for all what cannot be provided individually. Any one in this country should have access to a free weather forecast. I check the NWS site regularly! What an idiot! If they could privatize the rain, they would charge for that too!!:mad:

When everyone invests in weather, the poor will all be swept up and away in tornados and floods. Voila! Poverty problem solved!

:sarcasm:

:banghead:

Corporate Greed will be the death of this country if we don't stop it!

probably within the last year. It was about public water fountains unfairly competing with bottled water companies.

:evilgrin:

This is an serious discussion of an important issue, and the LAST thing we need is for it to "hijacked" by the :tinfoilhat: chemtrails crowd...

Please do not presume to lecture the "chemtrail crowd" about having a discussion hijacked.

It wouldn't bother me a bit the US federal government got out of the weather forecasting business.
The worthless shits never get correct half the time anyway :P

On edit, forgot to ask what do you think they could get at an auction?

can you believe this crap?

"It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free," Santorum said.

... well then maybe they have a crappy business model?

I'm a meteorologist who works for the state. I know people who went to school with some of the Accuweather founders and others who have worked for them. Private forecasting is not a lucrative trade by any means (unless you're the boss). This isn't the first time this has happened. A similar proposal to privative the NWS came up in the 80s (and went nowhere). I have no great love for Accuweather. I have seen how they treat their workers and do not approve. I know they have used their influence in the past to get a direct line into the feds monitoring network. I also know that all the cutting edge technology whether it be monitoring networks, computer models or advanced warning systems are driven by the public sector money and partnerships with academia, NOT by private industry. It's an embarrassment for Santorum to sell this out for such a small contribution. I really do not think this bill has a chance of passage.

churches. :eyes:

The NWS's "extreme weather warnings" are valuable. Trashing them would be about as bright as trashing Social Security.

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.

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

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.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html

I live by the NOAA website. No sloooow loading ads. No popups for "spy video cameras" that apparently are only used to spy on women undressing.

F*cking Man on Dog Republicans!

and that is pretty cheap too. Accuweather's display really stinks.

our weather coverage is so lousy here in Maryland, they say they cover the weather as it happens, (I can do that by looking out the window).

Santo-Rectum must have been talking to the former mayor of Indianapolis, who wandered unsuccessfully through Bumbya's "Office of Faith-Based Give-aways" before landing a plush job with Boeing...

Goldsmith went to war with the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library once because they lent video tapes. Stevie said that was "Unfair competiton, being funded with Taxpayer Dollars, against hard-working private companies like Blockbuster..."

I think Blockbuster was a donor to his failed Goober-natorial race...

What about the "Free Market"? If Accu-jak Weather can't produce a higher quality product than what people get for free via the NWS or Weather Bug, then maybe they deserve to die.

www.post-gazette.com/nationworld/

Santorum's legislation would protect private weather forecasting companies by directing the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to limit the National Weather Services offerings to just those services that private sector companies cannot or are unwilling to offer. Although there are narrow exceptions for aviation and severe weather forecasts, Santorum would deny millions the information they now routinely get from the National Weather Services - to protect Accu-Weather, a private company based in State College, PA. What happens if this private company tanks?
Rick just says,"Whoops, my bad!"?

You too can buy a law for under $10,000! Just call Santorum's office. What did it cost Accu-Weather? So far, under $10,000 in contributions to Santorum.

IIMHOP, it is day-to-day weather forecasts which alert many of us to the possibility of severe weather, which are extremely important to our health and safety. I always check with NWS before I travel. Many friends check re whether to let their teenagers drive - especially in winter. (If NWS is not allowed to provide the hourly weather updates which people routinely can check, how will we-the-people even KNOW there is the possibility of severe weather.)

govt (re: we tax payers) pay for building the infrastructure - and for the ongoing personnel, staffing, etc. - but a private company reaps the financial benefits and requires us to pay a second time to access the "fruit" of our original tax dollars.

Hey Ricki - let accuweather COMPETE. If/when they deliver a superior product at a low enough price then maybe they will get more customers. Otherwise it is a problem with THEIR business plan. We shouldn't subsidize them and then pay for something we now get free because they selected a poor business venture.

That's right - from the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE. Kill the NWS, you kill the private services.

Idiot.

I'm sorry.. I've had it today! The First Lady (and that's a stretch) of some State is saying that newspapers should be punished and boycotted.. This bill, which is lunacy, now comes up. I read that Ralph Reed, professional Christian, is being paid 20k per MONTH by Microsoft. WTF is wrong with America? Why won't they wake up???

that they've created to enrich themselves. They, in case you were wondering, are Ken Lay, Skilling and Koch Industries. Thanks to energy deregulation and with a helpful nudge from global warming, welcome to the wonderful world of weather derivatives.

<snip>

Another firm to jump on the weather derivatives bandwagon is Pittsburgh-based WeatherWise. President Bernie Bilski notes that one of the first weather derivatives to hit the market was the “weatherproof bill,” created in 1994. Weatherproof billing allows energy consumers to lock into guaranteed energy bills for various lengths of time and thus manage their energy costs. WeatherWise, formed in 1996, eliminates weather risk for energy consumers. “Weather can be a bigger cause of uncertainty in energy bills than price, on a year-to-year basis,” says Bilski. “We’re looking at a number of weather derivatives, such as heating and cooling degree days, to lay off some of the risk we take on.” The deregulation of the energy industry is expected to spark widespread use of weatherproof billing, as suppliers begin to compete aggressively for customers.

And weather derivatives desks are growing at the bigger dealers as well. Koch has five people working full time on weather derivatives, while Natsource has three full-time traders and two managers on a weather desk. “We’re committed to it as a business,” says president Jack Cogen. “In the past six to nine months, we’ve seen the market really start to take off.”


<snip>

Gas and power are the most volatile commodities in North America. Within geographical regions, prices for power can vary widely as a result of transmission constraints, unit outages, differing reserve capacities and fuel transportation costs. Historically, energy producers have focused all of their attention on managing price risk. But the basic equation in the energy business is: the price of energy X the volume of energy demanded = a producer’s revenue or a consumer’s cost. How, then, are you supposed to handle the volume, or usage, side of the equation?

Traditional price risk management techniques are useless in hedging volumetric risk, because energy usage has a low correlation with energy prices. Aquila’s Mills offers an example: “In the summertime, when temperatures spike upward considerably, one’s first thought before turning on the air conditioner isn’t ‘What is the price of energy today?’ The same holds true in the wintertime with heat.” Colin Myer, senior vice president at Koch Supply and Trading, agrees. “Price and demand have little or no relationship in energy. The only driver of demand is weather.”


We're going to pay no matter what. :shrug:

support REpublicans. They'll only take my weather radio from my cold, dead hands.