My question is, how will this site stay relevant? The collection/analysis/monitoring of the current situation is as important as historic data. Turning current data into historical data takes significant resources.
You want data? https://www.noaa.gov/data or https://api.weather.gov/ or https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data are a good place to start.
As for your question: I personally don't want data, I want a service backed by sound data and expert validation+analysis.
Instead, each citizen has a volition and a voice and a vote—with exceptions, and at personal expense.
And as a humanitarian with reservations, I say tax the bots for UBI.
Each citizen can't evaluate climate data. Specialization is necessary.
Not sure about you, but I'm glad we moved away from a system where an anointed cadre of people tell us what's what.
Example: Gary Stevenson is an inequality expert with a masters in economics but people keep demanding where are the PhD grads with his opinion, which there are, but it's a statement to distract and discredit
Don't expect to find it in the US.
I could go with ad hom. I accept rude. It was rude.
How can the government "for the people by the people" claim propriety/intellectual-property over anything?
From the article:
> This is possible because US government data is public domain by law.
From the FAQ on the new climate.us [0]:
> Can I re-use this data/product/image/video?
> Yes! Any content dated prior to June 30, 2025 and credited to NOAA Climate.gov is in the public domain can be freely re-used with proper attribution.
> Any content after June 30, 2025 and credited to Climate.us, is under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-SA 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
What a bizarre thing to say. It's in the public domain. Why would you need attribution?
I don't think this is what's going on here but CC0 was expressly created because not every jurisdiction had a concept of "public domain", so a special license was needed to make sure it acted as if it were in the public domain for those cases.
From a CC0 FAQ [0]:
> Do I have to attribute the person who applied CC0 to their work?
> No, there is no legal requirement that you attribute the affirmer ...
From a Berlin Universities Publishing FAQ [1]:
> ... Since a waiver of copyright protection is not possible under German copyright law, CC0 is equivalent to a waiver of all possible rights and legal claims by the creator.
But, regardless, public domain or CC0 doesn't need attribution whether it's in the US or Germany.
[0] https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#What_is_the_di...
[1] https://www.berlin-universities-publishing.de/en/beratung/li...
Many Bothans died, or even worse were fired, to bring us this information
A little appreciation to the people that were prosecuted just for being scientists, vomiting at the sea all day long, would be a nice detail.
Is it feasible?
Should we push for this default?
First obvious objection is that lots of government services need backend and dynamic content, but let's say this requirement only goes for static content.
Technical tricks like IPFS can’t prevent even 1% of the damage caused by giving criminals this much power over society.
Once Trump dies of natural causes I assume some intrepid journalists will go through the mountain of evidence and dig out some exciting snippets of what went on behind closed doors. Maybe a few more people will have to resign because of it.
I'd be interested to hear the contrast between what the Trump Presidential Library considers his greatest accomplishments and what, say, Bob Woodward writes.
I do remember when they went on and on about how the Democrats and Jews were all Satanic pedophiles and then they elected the King of all pedophiles to stop it. And then they objectively interfered with good faith efforts to police sex abuse for years with false flags and conspiracy nonsense like trying to find a secret entrance to Hillary Clinton's child sex slave dungeon under a pizzeria with a shotgun, and declaring all transgender people "groomers."
A broken clock may be right twice a day, but when it is, it doesn't deserve credit for being a good clock.
I vaguely remember it being along those lines.
The MAGA folks are trying desperately to say they were right all along when the only pedophiles they didn't see were the ones that were actually real.
But I'm very in favor of maintaining "the record", as it were, for government websites. If we can have changelogs on bills then we should elsewhere. It informs the citizens of the actions of our government. What has changed and "who done it". That can go both ways and I hope it would incentivize those trying to actually do good and not just treated as a liability.
Hell, if the NSA can just gobble up all the Internet traffic and store it on servers in Utah then the least we can do is make public records accessible. The archival work has already been done and we've already paid for it
This admin absolutely will never take any steps towards transparency, education, sharing, or even simple kindness. Any hope of implementing something like this will have to come later.
Hmm. I don’t believe that’s accurate.
1. The temporary situation (private copy with donations) is not sustainable.
2. The activity is within the proper role of the US federal government.
3. It gives diffuse public-benefits, which should be funded normally, rather than rely on concentrated private donations.
Disseminating the collected data publicly is not only a moral imperative--we already paid for it!--it's also how one maximizes the overall return on investment.
But at that point you’re just in an argument over which public services are most important to whom.
So then implying that tax dollars should be used instead of donations is wrong.
Would be an interesting exercise to poll the public. We could probably break the country up into a bunch of districts, then have them vote to elect representatives to get together in some special location and negotiate how taxpayer dollars are spent.
They could put something together like "a budget" and then that money gets actually committed directly to the purposes that our elected representatives negotiated about.
Would definitely be an interesting exercise to go through one day!
January 2013: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/call-time-congressional-fundr...
> A PowerPoint presentation to incoming freshmen by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, obtained by The Huffington Post, lays out the dreary existence awaiting these new back-benchers. The daily schedule prescribed by the Democratic leadership contemplates a nine or 10-hour day while in Washington. Of that, four hours are to be spent in "call time" and another hour is blocked off for "strategic outreach," which includes fundraisers and press work.
April 2016: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congr...
> Rep. Rick Nolan: Well, both parties have told newly elected members of the Congress that they should spend 30 hours a week in the Republican and Democratic call centers across the street from the Congress, dialing for dollars.
Low voter turnout allows for bullshit to slip through the cracks by targeting very small blocs of voters.
I genuinely believe that most problems in government would be fixed if voluntary voter turnout was around 99%, and that low rates, especially during midterms, is the largest threat to democracy in the United States as we know it to date.
So if you poll these people it will just be a proxy question of "Do you approve of your government".
Further, the Trump administration is happily destroying things that are funded by the lawfully passed budgets.
Why do so many grown-ups fail civics 101 so blatantly?
Practically we also need expert organizations and agencies to help advise the representative and implement their ideas, but I wouldn’t describe glossing over that sort of detail as “failing civics 101.”
This is why we get people with expertise to figure out what’s important and temper the utterly, utterly childish impulses of easily corruptible politicians.
So it might be a little nitpicky, and your point still stands. A lot of money is spent on defense and business, but not as much as the before portrays.
Where businesses benefit is in not paying the tax, instead of receiving payments. That's definitely a problem, but it's a different thing.
It’s not though. The social security you pay is used to fund the current social security payouts. It’s not saved away for you
Any money collected by the feds is whatever. Hopefully it goes toward NASA putting another robot on Mars.
Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff because the sovereignty of your locality is heavily circumscribed by state and national authorities. That means the real budgetary decisions made about the future of the nation, anything interesting, anything made with some level of self-determination, is made at the national level. Unfortunately, in the USA, budgetary discretion is used for war and rhetorically defended by all politicians while the non-discretionary spending on e.g. social security, is constantly attacked.
> Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff
My state has completely state-funded healthcare, and a renowned state-funded university system.
USA is a nation of states and those states (mostly) make their own way. I live in one of the good ones.
I think this is a great site, love what they are doing, and support them (including a literal donation). But a government maintained website for this data is low on my list of things of what tax dollars are for. In fact, I think this is better done privately. To be clear, many of the things every US administration does including this one I also think is better done privately.
https://api.weather.gov/
https://www.noaa.gov/nodd/datasets
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/
Santorum's bill was laughed out of Washington. It stands alone.
In 20 years worth of history - you can't identify a single piece of legislation or a single executive action to demonstrate an ongoing threat to NOAA? You have to immediately jump to the tautology of "Project 2025 is dismantling NOAA because an article two years ago said Project 2025 was going to dismantle NOAA"?
Give Google a continuous feed of the weather data which they cache locally. I can't imagine that being a particularly expensive thing to operate - no need to reply to an API call from Google every time someone searches for "weather".
They get it for free from the government. They offer it as a paid service to the general public. Then they try to ban the government from giving it away for free to any potential competition.
In general, they aren't.
The sole example I can think of that even skirts with this was specifically an attempt by AccuWeather in the 2000's, coordinating with then-Senator Rick Santorum's office. And that was universally decried by the entire weather enterprise.
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
There's little reason to believe that isn't still the goal.
NOAA is helmed by veterans of the weather enterprise. Do you see the American Meteorological Society issuing statements decrying the commercialization of the NWS or NOAA? Honestly, because NOAA is a Department of Commerce agency and the head of that cabinet department - Lutnick - has no interest whatsoever in weather or climate, there really isn't any ongoing concern that NOAA will be massively torn apart.
They've already implemented over half of the policies suggested in it.
https://www.project2025.observer/en
As mentioned they've already implemented many of the recommendations related to NOAA in the document. If anything they've gone even further in many of the cuts as they've cut the budgets so much a lot of balloon launches haven't happened vastly reducing the ground truth needed to keep models and forecasts accurate.
Instead, they've moved such things to... drumroll...private corporations.
https://www.wired.com/story/private-companies-step-up-to-gat...
Tell me again how this is conspiracy theory?
1. "Note: The administration is firing NOAA employees and closing NOAA offices; reconciliation bill rescinds some NOAA funds." Uh, no - there have not been any NOAA office closures. The President's FY26 budget eviscerated NOAA OAR, but those cuts were almost entirely rolled back by Congress. Yes, NOAA and NWS employees were caught up in the DOGE probationary purges back in early 2025, but in many cases (a) they were hired back, and (b) the NWS is aggressively hiring at all levels to replace churn.
2. "Note: Private companies are now gathering weather data for NOAA; administration is "readying plans" to transfer National Center for Atmospheric Research work to private companies." NOAA has purchased data from the private sector for 30 years. The explosion in commercial earth observation has dramatically increased the available data that can be directly used in numerical weather modeling, and NOAA has operated a Commercial Data Program for over a decade to supplement its own investments. This is an expected evolution of the weather enterprise that was predicted and urged as far back as the National Academies' "Fair Weather" report in 2003 [2]. Furthermore - NCAR is part of the NSF, not NOAA, which really calls into question WTF your website is talking about.
[1] https://www.project2025.observer/en?search=noaa [2] https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/10610
NOAA's budgets may have been approved by Congress, but they still face massive staffing shortages. The Trump administration has made it clear they don't care about impoundments and choosing to not spend money allotted by Congress.
When the regional climate offices went offline, do you think it was just incompetence, or testing the waters about letting such programs just die?
Sounds like they just haven't been fully successful at implementing their obvious policy goals. If they didn't want to do it, why write the budget that way? Why authorize those DOGE cuts? Isn't the expansion of commercialization in the plans of increasing commercialization?
It's like you refuse to see the obvious reality immediately in your face and choose to believe a convicted fraudster.
Uh, no. The CDP has moved forward at nearly the same rate it's been trudging along. There's a broad consensus across the weather enterprise that the CDP should _grow_ to better allow NOAA to access new data coming online from commercial sources - data which is already being acquired by competitor agencies such as the UK Met Office and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting.
Furthermore, it's ridiculous to conflate the bumbling executive actions like DOGE with earnest, deliberate restructuring of NOAA.
> NOAA's budgets may have been approved by Congress, but they still face massive staffing shortages. The Trump administration has made it clear they don't care about impoundments and choosing to not spend money allotted by Congress.
That's embellishing quite a bit. Define "massive" staffing shortages, will you? All those roles being actively filled by the National Weather Service? I can't go a single day without seeing someone in my extended network on LinkedIn announcing that they've been hired for a NWS forecaster role!
The one thing I'll give you is that there has been significant churn across OAR and EMC - but that's more due to the huge amount of money flowing into AI/ML ventures into weather/climate and more lucrative private sector opportunities than we've seen for a very long time.
> When the regional climate offices went offline, do you think it was just incompetence, or testing the waters about letting such programs just die?
You mean Regional Climate Centers? Despite the same set of challenges that virtually any institution that leveraged federal funds has seen, none of these have been "shut down."
> Sounds like they just haven't been fully successful at implementing their obvious policy goals. If they didn't want to do it, why write the budget that way? Why authorize those DOGE cuts? Isn't the expansion of commercialization in the plans of increasing commercialization?
Sounds like they _aren't implementing those goals_. You're mistaking the chaos of 2025 with actual policy coherence.
> It's like you refuse to see the obvious reality immediately in your face and choose to believe a convicted fraudster.
I don't believe anything other than what I see with my own eyes and do with my own hands, day-in and day-out working in the weather enterprise.
This is obvious evidence of them trying to fill the shortfall. If they were so well-staffed, would they be hiring so much? They have so many openings because they have a shortfall!
> none of these have been "shut down."
They were, temporarily.
> Furthermore, it's ridiculous to conflate the bumbling executive actions like DOGE with earnest, deliberate restructuring of NOAA.
This bumbling executive action is the Trump administration's attempt at restructuring. The budget proposal is the attempt at restructuring. Why do you continue to bury your head in the sand and hand-wave their actions while saying they never would try to do these things when they're actively and openly trying to do these things? Who do you blame for the DOGE cuts of not the Trump administration?
> The CDP has moved forward at nearly the same rate it's been trudging along.
This is probably untrue. They've publicly announced more spending in 2025 than what they spent total in 2024 and that's just in big headline contracts. They haven't bothered reporting actuals in the 2025 CDP spend like they have for the previous decade. Huh I wonder why.
> I don't believe anything other than what I see with my own eyes
So go read their budget proposals. Go see AMS' own worries about what the administration will do. Go see them talking about staffing shortages. See the fact the NWS isn't launching as many balloons. See the lack of staffing in Oklahoma during tornado season. See the elimination of public datasets at climate.gov, see those staffers who were laid off and never had those positions backfilled.
They would never do the things they continue to say they want to do and attempted to do several times!
> This is obvious evidence of them trying to fill the shortfall. If they were so well-staffed, would they be hiring so much? They have so many openings because they have a shortfall!
You do realize that the NWS was understaffed _before_ the administration and the DOGE cuts, right? We're also riding the crest of a retirement wave from the major restructuring that happened in the early 90's.
> They were, temporarily.
Because of funding lapses during the _government shutdown_. Like many _other_ agencies and offices. Geeze.
> This bumbling executive action is the Trump administration's attempt at restructuring...
It really isn't. Anyone who has been around the public-private nexus surrounding NOAA knows the folks who have been itching to overhaul NOAA, and they're not particularly subtle about it. Notably, none of them were brought into any administrative or leadership positions that could actually effect structural change at NOAA.
The reality is that despite its section in Project 2025, conservatives don't actually care about NOAA; they care about climate change and have used scalpels to excise key government programs relating to it. But NOAA has been shielded because of any executive agency, NOAA and the NWS have extremely favorable ratings from the public and are actively and vigorously defended by a bipartisan coalition in Congress.
> This is probably untrue. They've publicly announced more spending in 2025 than what they spent total in 2024 and that's just in big headline contracts. They haven't bothered reporting actuals in the 2025 CDP spend like they have for the previous decade. Huh I wonder why.
Everyone expected the CDP to grow following the success of EPIC and the maturation and adoption of JEDI has the next-generation data assimilation framework for our modeling ecosystem. Hell - part of NOAA's last major action plans in the early 2020's explicitly called for it to grow in scope!
The reason you don't see actuals from CDP spend is because (a) the government is dysfunctional and Congress is ignoring its oversight to actual make sure these numbers are published in a timely manner, and (b) very few awards have actually been given out. It took what, 4 years for the first microwave sounding data purchase to happen, and it was only a 1-year award to Tomorrow and OMS?
> So go read their budget proposals. Go see AMS' own worries about what the administration will do. Go see them talking about staffing shortages. See the fact the NWS isn't launching as many balloons. See the lack of staffing in Oklahoma during tornado season. See the elimination of public datasets at climate.gov, see those staffers who were laid off and never had those positions backfilled.
I do read the proposals. I spend time on Capitol Hill working through these budgets with offices in both chambers and from both political parties. I also spend time with the House Science and the Senate SST committee staff.
Yes, there are real issues that NOAA and the NWS face. And I would absolutely fault the federal government for not being _as aggressive_ at remediating these issues.
But you're cherry-picking issues to paint a significantly more sinister story than what is actually happening.
Their budget proposals trying to slash a quarter of NOAA budgets doesn't seem like a cherry-picked issue. DOGE firing several hundred people and taking a while to fill those positions doesn't seem like cherry-picking issues. Seeing them fail to renew important contracts until after the public freaks out about it doesn't seem like cherry-picking issues.
And acting like the things happening at the NSF don't have any relationship to data used for NOAA is another thing. Oh, it's just programs being axed at the NSF, no worries, they'd surely never touch NOAA. I'm sure data about ocean temperatures has absolutely nothing to do with weather!
You see "the government is dysfunctional and Congress is ignoring its oversight" and yet that isn't an additional concern about the future of these programs, even though you understand the small amount of congressional oversight is the only thing that spared NOAA from massive cuts. What's guaranteeing this congressional oversight doesn't get worse? It's the only real backstop we seem to have and it's track record recently is abysmal, but you're telling me it's all just roses and sunshine!
> conservatives don't actually care about NOAA
Then why did DOGE happen? Why submit budget proposals slashing NOAA by a quarter??
Acting like these things aren't happening is continuing to ignore the foxes circling the henhouse. You were seemingly even unaware about the Regional Climate Centers going offline, telling me it didn't happen. Not understanding that their rapid hiring recently is because of massive staffing shortages, shortages mostly inflicted by this administration. Thinking Project 2025 is just a conspiracy theory when they have been actively working towards many of these policy goals all because Trump told you an obvious lie. I'm sorry, but if you're one of the people supposedly there helping to ensure these programs have a successful future and don't see the obvious attempts to smash these programs it makes me even more worried about their futures.
> Because of funding lapses during the _government shutdown_.
This is false! There wasn't a government shutdown at the time! The government shutdown happened from October to November but the climate centers going dark happened in April! Is April between October and November?
The centers went offline because the administration chose to delay reviewing the contracts. That was this administration's official position on the story. You're inventing a government shutdown out of whole cloth, its not even their own excuse.
> You do realize that the NWS was understaffed _before_ the administration and the DOGE cuts, right?
And yet you were just suggesting to me they're not understaffed, calling into question my claims of the NWS being understaffed. You're building your argument on shifting sands. First they're well staffed, now they've been understaffed for forever. Which is it?
Because these aren't part of a plan specifically targeting NOAA. They're broad attacks on government infrastructure. The distinction is important.
> And acting like the things happening at the NSF don't have any relationship to data used for NOAA is another thing. Oh, it's just programs being axed at the NSF, no worries, they'd surely never touch NOAA. I'm sure data about ocean temperatures has absolutely nothing to do with weather!
How, specifically, does slashing programs at NSF lead to "privitization of NOAA"?
> Then why did DOGE happen? Why submit budget proposals slashing NOAA by a quarter??
Because _that's what Conservatives do_ in American politics. They virtue signal to their base and then run away from things as their efforts are neutered. Where have you been since the 2000? The executive branch doesn't set the budget, their recommendations to Congress are ceremonial at best. A cheap and easy way to generate optics without committing to actions with extremely negative repercussions.
Tell me - where are the Republican Congressional budget proposals which slash NOAA's OAR budget?
> Acting like these things aren't happening is continuing to ignore the foxes circling the henhouse. You were seemingly even unaware about the Regional Climate Centers going offline, telling me it didn't happen
Now you're just being disingenuous. You said they were cut - they _weren't_, they were caught in the blast radius of government funding shenangians in Congress along with hundreds or thousands of other programs. Show me an EO or a piece of legislation that eliminates the RCCs, will you?
> Thinking Project 2025 is just a conspiracy theory when they have been actively working towards many of these policy goals all because Trump told you an obvious lie. I'm sorry, but if you're one of the people supposedly there helping to ensure these programs have a successful future and don't see the obvious attempts to smash these programs it makes me even more worried about their futures.
No one said Project 2025 is a conspiracy theory.
It's not productive to waste time with you. You have no idea what you're talking about. But let me be very blunt - _you are making everyone's job harder_ by defaulting to Project 2025 and ascribing motives to actions where there aren't any. The Trump Administration _literally doesn't care_ about NOAA, and the agency has its defenders on both sides of the aisle in Congress who have actively responded to acute crises whenever the Admin's chaos creates them.
As the wailing about "muh NOAA is being privatized!" grows louder, it derails our interventions to safe harbor the agency because thoughtful, constructive compromise can be washed away as P2025 doomerism.
Stop exaggerating what's going on to win internet points.
A 26% budget cut proposal and massive firings aren't actually an attack. Sure. Oh its not specifically targeting only NOAA, I guess that's fine then. If they were to dismantle only NOAA that'd be a problem worth concern, but because its tied up in other things too its A-OK!
> The executive branch doesn't set the budget,
Tell that to the Trump administration which seems to constantly fail to spend money budgeted by Congress while spending billions on a war Congress told him not to engage in. How's all that USAID spending going these days?
> they were caught in the blast radius of government funding shenangians in Congress
Continuing to push this lie that even the administration isn't making. They were shut down briefly because the executive stopped cutting the checks by their own admission, not because of a congressional funding shortfall. The government was fully funded in April 2025. You act like I don't have a clue while you continue on with this easily checked thing.
> No one said Project 2025 is a conspiracy theory
Its in this comment thread, just not by you I agree. Strange for you to say such an obviously untrue thing. You do end up trying to downplay its influence left and right though.
> what Conservatives do
If you think this administration is just what normal conservatives have done in past administrations you really haven't been paying attention.
> The Trump Administration _literally doesn't care_ about NOAA
You're right, they don't. They suggest they want to cut about 26% of it. They would seemingly love to never have to care about it again.
> thoughtful, constructive compromise
Thoughtful and constructive compromise about what exactly? That global warming doesn't exist? That anthropogenic climate change is a fraud?
> it derails our interventions to safe harbor the agency
Safe harboring the agency? From what? Why do you need to be worried? What is it that you're harboring it safely from? You've just told me its obviously not the Trump administration.
Quit burying your head in the sand and wake up my dude. The only reason why the DOGE cuts were unsuccessful were because people spoke up. Quit acting like the only way to ensure bad things don't happen is to be quiet about things and ignore obvious issues. If you see something bad happening, speak up.
That's a good example of how government open data can support both people and business.
And it's not like Google is a charity, you're paying for it either way. The question is: do you want to pay for that weather API via your taxes, or do you want to pay for it via the advertising budget of the products you buy - with Google taking a decent chunk and selling your location data while they are at it?
And it's not like operating a weather API is that hard. You can easily find commercial parties who sell it for less than $1 per million API calls. Assuming you're polling for weather updates every 15 minutes 24/7, that's less than $0.03 of your yearly taxes going towards providing accurate weather information!
The public __already__ pays for Google, The Weather Company, Apple, and really __everybody__ -- down to your local weather person and surf report -- to use weather data on a massive scale.
Government weather data underpins huge chunks of our modern, globalized economy. It should absolutely be better funded and even allowed to directly distribute data to the public and industry. NOAA and NASA et al could be given 10x their current allocation of tax money and you and I would still be getting a great deal.
That makes no sense to me. But we can agree to disagree.
And no, having all research be privately funded is a bad idea. No one will try to find a new antibiotic for example. Big Pharma rather researches cures for chronic diseases that will make money for the rest of a patients life
Someone has to be collecting the data. I believe that should be something our tax dollars pay for.
After the data is present, someone should make the data accessible and useable. That also seems like a good use of tax dollars.
Hiqh quality data on climate is relevant to many, many organizations and polities. That's the sort of coordination problem that I want my government to solve.
In practice access has always been restricted to this "public" data because there is not remotely enough bandwidth, either network or storage, to give everyone a copy of the data that may want it. They often don't even have enough capacity for internal users. A lot of it also sits in offline or near-line archival formats due to the scale of the data.
This is a general problem for data models of this type. You need to compute on the data in-situ or it won't scale but virtually no one can build that type of infrastructure at the scale required for these data models. It would also be extremely expensive to build and operate.
There really isn't any Earth observation you could make that can't be grossly compared with other types of observations. There is literally no value in taking "biased" observations; where's the market for temperature stations that are _wrong_? I promise, energy and commodities traders don't want that data!
Does the government have private access to forming unbiased information?
IMO the government's incentives are generally better aligned with truth telling but there are reasons[1] that independent studies may still catch the government out.
1. Famously, up here in Canada, Stephen Harper suppressed accurate dissemination of climate data during his administration that was only really discovered through independent analysis.
A company may have accurate information that their product causes cancer, but they aren't going to tell you that. They'll outright lie and say it doesn't, hire scientists to create fake research to "prove" that it's safe, and harass, threaten, and discredit anyone who tries to tell the public the truth.
I almost wrote "even for the most asinine pro-market believers," but that's not true. There are plenty of pro-market believers so asinine that they can't even describe the classes of problems that markets are known to fail at solving – weather data collection falling into several of such classes.
Heck, it's not merely "canonical", it's goshdang prehistoric: Governments have been involved in weather tracking (and responding to bad events) for more than five thousand years!
I'm having a hard time thinking of any task with a better pedigree, aside from adjudicating disputes or waging war.
We had the Climate Commission, which did alot of great work. It was a government department and fully funded by the government.
Then a conservative, climate denying government came to power and shut it down.
Literally within 48 hours, they obtained alternative funding from private sources, then rebirthed the organization as the independent Climate Council.
Many of the fired workers were re hired and the new organization does similar work to the previous one. It's still in operation today.
Is the oldest trick in science. Do it for free. We are looking for: "enthusiastic", "volunteer","vocational", "young", "exploitable". We'll pay cancer research with this nice charity event...
Every single scientist has heard this crap thousands of times, and the independent climate council should bill those conservative politicians for their job. Each time they need something for them. If not they will never learn to not mess with science.
If you see evidence of abuse, please flag their posts or email us. This is what helpful participants on HN have always done.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
To that end, I hope the Trump administration's actions cause independent data collection and analysis by activists and independent scientists.
Meanwhile while you are willing to give $15 for good data, Koch is willing to spend $15 million for a guy with a degree in fine arts to tell us he's a scientist and actually CO2 is super healthy and awesome.
We elect officials and tax not just for the climate data most people will care about, but also for random things like sewage data that people might not be thinking about but is also important to public health. Trying to piecemeal fund all these studies and turning science into a game of advertising and begging for causes will put us right back into the dark ages where only the absurdly wealthy could engage in any sort of scientific research.
> Trying to piecemeal fund all these studies and turning science into a game of advertising and begging for causes will put us right back into the dark ages where only the absurdly wealthy could engage in any sort of scientific research.
it was already the case, even with tons of funding. (in case you don't know, i have a phd in chemical biology)
Why yes, there is. Here's an example of that list for the federal government [1]. States and cities also have similar lists though they may not be as accessible to the general public (a problem to be sure).
> or is it just vibes? if not, how is that not rife for abuse?
Not really vibes, it's spelt out in statute. In some cases that responsibility can be pretty wide and in all cases the president can chose heads of office that don't care to or ignore the duties of those statutes. The remedy if you feel like that's happening too much is voting.
> how is that not rife for abuse?
Abuse can certainly happen. However, the US does have some inordinate amounts of oversight over federally ran programs precisely because a lot of people worry about abuses. Where the abuse tends to happen is when the US is funding private institutions rather than running the programs themselves.
I have family that currently works for the US gov writing software. As they tell it, it takes 3 weeks to bring in a new version of a library due to the mandatory review process in the statutes. Meanwhile, they can hire a contractor who can use any library they like (but also who can bill whatever they like and are often friends with senators).
> it was already the case, even with tons of funding. (in case you don't know, i have a phd in chemical biology)
It used to be much more open ended. It has, however gotten worse and it's about to get much worse. Exactly because of concerns for abuse and waste. The system from clinton to trump wasn't great but it was somewhat functional. We are about to enter a new era, however, where funding for grants can be axed while the research is in flight if the administration decides that they don't like what's being researched. That's the abuse and waste I'm actually worried about.
if you care about science not being political, dont use political means to obtain your science. simple as. youre just trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Climate change is the poster child for this. We predicted the weather problems and patterns of today when I was a child. But because that truth was inconvenient to the fossil fuel industry, they decided to spend ungodly amounts of money buying conservative politicians and broadcasters to lie about what the science said. And here's the thing, that worked. Their politics overrode good science and science based policy.
Do you care about roads, schools, fire stations and police too? Please donate to those please.
s/country/world/
There are many large projects to collect this information ranging from extremely specialized satellites to networks of ocean buoys. It turns out that weather is a global phenomenon and warming seas on the other side of the planet affect wherever you are.
The classical US ground station network is actually run by volunteers and has been seriously degrading in quality over time. Its data was identified as corrupted and useless for climatology decades ago, which is what led to the US CRN being built. Other countries however did not do an equivalent, and their networks are still very low quality. Most of the UK's network, for example, is considered unusable for climate monitoring under WMO standards (but they are still used regardless!).
Who exactly is going to pay for these non-governmental independent data collection/analysis efforts?
How about taxpayers pay for one analysis, private parties pay for theirs, courtrooms can resolve inconsistencies on a case-by-case basis.
And in any case, an imperfect adversarial judicial system is dramatically better than whatever la-la-land "government has no data of its own" dystopia GP is imagining.
Disagree. The primary check on the government is consequences for violating the law and the constitution. That's just all gone out the window.
Power without oversight, no matter how distributed, will tend towards either complete chaos or tyranny (or both, if such a thing is possible). Giving three mutually distrustful criminals guns will not cause law and order to spring out of nothing.
An informed, angry and unforgiving citizenry is the only check on government, and we ain't go that.
cause the problem then complain the problem exists. that’s been their intentional platform for years and years.
Also, not even sure what you are talking about. My point specifically was about the congress, where the Republicans have stonewalled legislation, stolen SCOTUS seats, and shut down the government the vast majority of shutdowns since it became a "legitimate"(?) tactic.
> Democrats have also pushed the slider further and further toward executive power every chance they get
for example...?
Glad you asked. That's actually the job of the Inspectors General. One of the first groups of people Trump completely eliminated.
It was their job to stop things like corruption, waste, and fraud in the federal government.
And do consider that the supreme court has ruled that they're immune for anything that's an 'official act'.
Accountability of the executive left the room in 2024
And I don’t think that’s wrong. But let’s clarify. Either we trust the process to elect leaders who actually hold power or we think voting is broken and we need a body of leadership which exists independently of the democratic process.
No that's not what I said. The courts can hold someone in the executive branch accountable. They're the check on their power.
Except the president, because of that one ruling.
So if the president commits fraud as part of an official act he's immune? No other person in the executive branch has this immunity. And it was given to the most powerful person.
The specific ruling is about the president being immune from criminal charges while in office. And yeah, you can’t be taking George Washington to court (or jail) while he is leading the revolution. It’s essential for the nation to have a functioning leader, especially among the fog of war.
The Bible story of David and Saul presents another example of this principle.
To bring it back though… what you’re telling me is we can’t trust a democracy to elect an executive.
The fact that an executive order is incompatible with the constitution is something completely different. That's a law being judged on its merits. Immunity is about the executive as a person.
Your view isn't controversial because it's daring, it's just plain nihilistic. It's just anti-government dogma which is cultivated by an incredibly cynical media atmosphere.
I wish the same were true of all federal organizations though. For example, CIA regulates itself with its own supervision too.
Other orgs do it too. I don't think they do it well.
That's not true lol. There is a gigantic supervisory apparatus constantly breathing down the IC's neck, including but not limited to your very own elected Congressperson's investigative powers.
Perhaps you mean to say: I don't see it eliminating their misconduct and behavior.
The notion that the CIA is “not limited” by checks and balances is beyond laughable.
How many people have you met who work there? Ever talked with someone about the limitations (or lack thereof) on their work?
I will bet the answers are zero and no. Am I wrong?
I have first-hand experienced being non-consensually preyed upon and experimented on by that organization, and am traumatized from my experience with them.
Yes I've taken the appropriate escalations and saught support from my elected officials. So far, no relief. My experience dictates that most people are quick to laugh and ridicule me, like you and your hostility and Ad Hominem style logical fallacy based messaging. I think you are just a astroturfed style personality on the web and if you didn't mean to be hostile, I hope you know that you certainly came across that way. edit: I see this is not an engagement that is serving me in any way, and is hurtful and abusive over substantive or providing value. I'm going to check out now and wish you luck at whatever it is you seek.
Just like getting into a car accident does not mean we don't put significant efforts (and successful ones!) into preventing such accidents.
If a single organization proves too unwieldy, we could even have a federated solution.
Edit: another suggestion https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=48898415&goto=item%3Fi...
The end result? Judges being elected that nobody knows. Some even running unopposed. Yet, they all are 'elected'.
No. I don't think Americans can elect more people. I would be shocked if over 10% formed their own opinion on which judge to pick for example. If you're lucky they did that for the ballot measures...
I think this falls under "least worst option". I confess that I (and most others) don't have the time or focus to properly evaluate judicial candidates, so I turn to "trusted resources" to help guide my vote.
It's easier to vote on higher level issues, like ballot propositions or state/federal representation.
That said, the fact that a significant portion of the voting public voted in a man who epitomizes the most unqualified and inappropriate person into the US presidency has shaken my faith in democracy.
Only private companies with some fantastical profit motive to install satellite and sensor networks all over and above the globe should do it, not the government?
Activists and independent scientists ... funded by whom? Data collected by whom? Data stored and distributed by whom? Data analyzed by whom? -- All of these roles are non-trivial, unlike your understanding of "the government" as a single monolithic entity; The government has/had different branches for the collection and study of climate vs (eg) the enforcement of emissions. The issue in our government today isn't the trust/separation of these different entities but the attack on them from above and abroad.
As soon as a government website is down, it's an outrage.
I'm sure money could've been saved. But the cost of this site really isn't the hosting, it's the data being gatherd with all the research
They used it to flat out destroy the economies in much of Europe, while somehow China and India were ignored despite being orders of magnitude bigger problems, according to their own narrative.
If any of the above were honest, there would have been blanket trade restrictions and sanctions on China and India so quickly it would make your head spin.
I think, especially in the US, there's no shared starting point anymore. Which makes it very hard for people with different opinions to have a conversation. Not funding science can only make that worse
Strangle funding to a public service, complain that public service isn't performing, use the consequences of their own actions to justify eliminating the public service indefinitely.