This is a must read imho by Levi Cowan, a highly intelligent and very knowledgeable pro meteorologist who provides the Tropical Tidbits website for free and whom I have enormous respect for:
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Planned or ongoing bulk workforce cuts would irreparably harm the National Weather Service, NOAA, and their scientists who save innumerable lives by warning people in advance of tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, blizzards, and other life-threatening hazards. Many of you reading this may knowingly or unknowingly be alive today because of their work, or know someone who is. As a direct consequence of wounding the NWS and NOAA, the public would be less safe.
My personal mission to bring hurricane science, data, and forecasts to the public would not be possible without the weather observations, doppler radar stations, computer models, hurricane hunter aircraft, and weather satellites provided by NOAA and the NWS. Your favorite weather apps, TV meteorologists, and private weather companies would also be unable to function without this data or the civil servants who live and breathe it to synthesize it into public safety information.
All of these benefits cost each taxpayer the equivalent of a few cups of coffee per year, and surveys show most would be willing to pay much more. The American weather enterprise saves many, many times more money than it costs to run, making it one of the biggest bangs for your buck in the government.
The impact of quality weather forecasts and infrastructure on society is multiplied many-fold by preventing economic disruptions, keeping public transportation efficient, and providing lead time to prepare for and mitigate disasters. Most importantly, it saves priceless lives.
Careful, long-term plans to streamline or reorient the weather enterprise in an evolving world are not bad, but *this plan* is insane. A feverish rush to take a cleaver to this workforce is self-destructive and dangerous to Americans who rely on the services they provide.
https://twitter.com/TropicalTidbits/status/1894874568965108084?
This is an everyday weather related concern to us. Levi’s and my concern has nothing to do with climate science. This is a horrible plan and Levi explained why perfectly. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.
Thanks much, Larry!
His assertion that model data will be less available is exactly wrong. Trump/Musk are not cutting off the electricity to models that don't get paid a salary and run all day long with minimal humans needed. We both get enormous amounts of this data. 99.9999% of the forecast information we get from models comes from computers.
We need a human being to operate the computer but they have the thousands of equations and millions of solutions that go into the forecast and the computer generated weather maps a meteorologist uses.
The computers don't earn a salary. They just cost electricity to run.
With regards to the other assertions. I don't know that Trump is cutting the number of trips that Hurricane Hunters will make to investigate hurricanes. Does Levi know something that the rest of us don't and isn't telling us?
Or that he's cutting services that result in more timely warning for severe storms which, again are tied to the technology of the Dopplar radars that use electricity.
He's certainly sensationalizing on cuts meaning lives will be lost. As I stated previously, where are the details and specific examples of a planned but resulting in many lost lives.
All watches, which are issued days in advance will be the same.
Hurricane warnings will be the same. Winter weather warnings will be the same.
Worst case scenario, there is the slight chance that Flash Flood warnings and Tornado Warnings might be impacted a tiny bit but again, they are based on automated radar technology and automated reports fed into a computer in today's age.
We've all known with absolute certainty from reading dozens of articles that computers and automation will be replacing humans on a huge scale in the years to come.
It's already happening and NOAA/NWS have been leading the way with almost all the work being done by computers and technology today.
Why WOULDN'T this lead to less need for humans?
It's probably way overdue in many realms and has been inevitable since we've started designing computers to do the work of humans but thousands of times faster and more efficient.
I've been an operational meteorologist for 4+ decades that could only do my job when the NWS/NOAA products are there for me to use. I honestly can't think of how my job will suffer much or that public safety will suffer as this guy insists with certainty will happen.
It's possible. I won't rule it out but just stating that it will with no examples is telling me that he doesn't have specific examples..........or he would be using them.
I have hundreds of links that I go to every day, like here:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/83844/
Please scroll thru all those maps and tell me how many are hand drawn by humans(like they were decades ago) and how many are computer generated and constantly updated WITHOUT a human.
I'm not saying that we don't still need plenty of humans.....just not as many as before when computers are doing almost all the work.
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Let me pick out a paragraph of his that I think is bogus sensationalism:
"My personal mission to bring hurricane science, data, and forecasts to the public would not be possible without the weather observations, doppler radar stations, computer models, hurricane hunter aircraft, and weather satellites provided by NOAA and the NWS. Your favorite weather apps, TV meteorologists, and private weather companies would also be unable to function without this data or the civil servants who live and breathe it to synthesize it into public safety information."
The stuff in bold are automated and computer derived. Machines that do all the work, don't earn a salary and just use electricity.
There is 0 indication that he's going to pull the plug on any of that information. ZERO!!!
His contention that all these sources will be unable to function without that data is correct but he's completely wrong about that data going away. In fact, all thoses sources WILL be able to function based on my perception. We've not seen the specific cuts, so the assumptions could change but its not conceivable that Trump is going to cut DATA services or COMPUTERS or RADARS or automated observations sites.
Human beings that have been replaced by that technology? Probably yes.
Hey Mike,
It hasn’t yet been determined what cuts, if any, will actually occur. But if one doesn’t want massive cuts, the worst thing to do would be to be silent. Silence implies being ok with whatever cuts Elon and the Trump admin want. What Dr Cowan is doing is the best thing to reduce that chance, pushback. The main purpose of his tweet is pushback and to encourage others to push back. It is the first time in all of his years that he’s done this. I can empathize with his general thoughts. There probably is some sensationalizing, but it may be more beneficial than harmful in the goal of getting others to push back against the possibility of massive cuts. The Trump Admin often sensationalizes and lies all the time. Sensationalism on one side may require sensationalism on the other side in the fight back.
The worst thing would be for Dr. Cowan and others to be silent. Silence is often deemed to be equivalent to being ok with an action. Protest is vital.
From all that I’ve read, the NWS is one of the most efficient govt orgs in existence. Keeping that in mind with lives that it saves is telling me that massive cuts would be stupid. Being that I’m a wx enthusiast, that by itself admittedly also biases me against major cuts. But I have seen firsthand how cuts made 20+ years ago in the last round of cuts have resulted in a downturn of services in some local areas due to cutting down the number of manned WSOs.
I would like to add that based on many years of following Dr. Cowan’s tweets and you-tube videos, he isn’t the least bit of a sensationalist when it comes to storms and forecasts. He’s about as even keeled and fact based as any pro met I’ve followed. He’s also a great communicator with detailed explanations to help the listeners/readers learn. He’s near the top of my list of favorite tropical forecasting mets.
“I am now hearing from multiple folks in the past two hours (including some who have personally been fired) that mass firings have now commenced within NOAA--including, yes, at the National Weather Service.”
https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1895221446789747072?
I have a unique personal story that relates to this.
I graduated from the University of Michigan in 1981 with a BS in atmospheric and oceanic science, intending to work for the NWS as an operational meteorologist for my entire life.
But President Reagan had different plans for me.
He put a freeze on hiring all new federal workers for 1 year, which included the NWS. What a bummer, no job for me in that field because if that. So I decided to try broadcast meteorology.
I volunteered my time doing weather for a local radio station in AnnArbor every week and drove an hour every Monday and Friday to Lansing to do the weather for a Michigan State university cable station that used broadcasting class students from MSU.
My youngest sister was a student there and told me that nobody wanted to do the weather because they had no meteorology department and everybody else, doing the news and sports read from a script.
So they were thrilled to have me. I would stop by North campus at UM for an hour before the trip and look at all the weather maps, then head to MSUs campus to do the weather there, thinking about what I would say for 5 minutes with no weather graphics.
I sometimes had massive migraine headaches on the way home from nervousness and stress.
This was NEVER what I wanted to do for my career. I never even took a broadcasting class in school but suddenly it was my only option and I became determined to overcome my fear of speaking, which as it turns out took a couple of years.
After doing this for several months, I got the contact information for all the small and medium sized tv station news directors and general managers in the entire country……including Alaska and sent them a resume for a job as their meteorologist.
No response except for a few that wanted somebody with actual experience and with a resume tape.
i found out about this new John Coleman venture that would feature 24 hours a day weather with 50 meteorologists called the weather channel. I applied for this dream job, working with 50 weather lovers like me all day in 1981. I had a couple of phone conversations with them. They wanted a degreed meteorologist just like me…..but with some on air experience.
However, one of those experienced meteorologists working at a private weather service called "Weather Scene" at WLWT in Cincinnati got hired by the Weather Channel and needed a meteorologist to replace him and had just received my resume the day he gave his 2 week notice.
So The Weather Channel, indirectly got me my first job in meteorology in Feb 1982 in Cincinnatii!
After 9 months doing radio weather and working the 11pm-7am shift and practicing in the WLWT studio before their 5pm news(and using that to make a resume tape) I contacted all the small/medium sized market tv stations across the country(including Alaska) again.
My tape/letter ended up on the desk of the general manager of WEHT in Evansville, the day that their meteorologist, John Bernier gave his 2 week notice after accepting a job in to do weekend weather in Cleveland in September 1982.
1 reason that they hired me without interviewing anybody else was that the general manager, Ernie Madden had a bodybuilding son and I was also a bodybuilder/power lifter.
At it turned out, the Weather Channel CONTACTED ME in September 1985 and wanted to hire me but I'd just married a month earlier. I now had a 6 year old daughter and her entire family lived in Evansville. The TV station was treating me right too.
They arranged for me to fly into Hurricane Gloria in September 1985. Put up a huge billboard with my picture on it.
They also had a word contest after the 6pm and 10pm shows to increase ratings and I was the person that called people to see if they knew the word crawled across the screen at 1 point during the news. If they did, I gave them $500!
At the end of that month, I picked out 100 names from 10s of thousands of post cards mailed in and each of them got a key. Only one of those keys started a $25,000 new car.
This helped launch me to #1 in the market in the research surveys they did. At least for a few years.
Anyway, if Ronald Reagan had not put a job freeze on hiring any new NWS employees in 1981, that's where I would have worked my entire life. I would have never gone to Evansville. Or discovered commodities trading (because of my focusing on the agricultural forecasting here and learning about corn/beans trading off of the weather forecast).
Never have become a chess coach(because my sons were going to a school that had chess and the chess coach died suddenly in March 1998.
I've coached well over 5,000 kids and am at 5 schools now, while running the biggest chess tournament in this part of the state every year.
Thank you Ronald Reagan for freezing new NWS jobs in 1981 and FORCING me to take this path.
Turning lemons into lemonade
Anyways, with regards to these major cuts, I would prefer to have the NWS at 100% strength and not lose any services of any kind.
But I have a preference that is MUCH stronger than that.
Having a country that doesn't go bankrupt before my grandkids are old enough to enjoy the same things that the last few generations have..........as we piled up such a massive debt with reckless abandon, that I honestly thought there was no hope to escape this black hole, sucking us deeper and deeper because of self serving politicians that would NEVER agree to budget cuts and spending cuts because of lobby money gushing into their pockets to bribe them to vote to approve spending on all sorts of pork projects.
Is this too much?
I dunno. But if it didn't happened, our future economy was doomed. I'm willing to take cuts in things that I consider important. That's actually the problem with most people, especially politicians with their pet projects. Nobody wants to bite the bullet or make a sacrafice with THEIR stuff.
“Here we go. Weather models and services could be impacted by the firing of NWS/NOAA meteorologists that started today. Effective immediately and until further notice, the National Weather Service (NWS) is indefinitely suspending weather balloon launches at Kotzebue, Alaska”
Thanks, Larry!
I see the original source of this message:
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=PNSWSH&e=202502271430
Something doesn't add up here because Alaska has been expanding AUTOMATED balloon launches across the state that don't require humans.
This sounds like it could be part of that project.
Demonstration project underway as Alaska receives first autolaunch stations
https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-adopts-technology-to-automate-weather-balloon-launches
After nearly two years of field testing the technology in Kodiak, NWS has initiated a demonstration of autolaunchers in Alaska, with two of the state’s 13 upper-air sites already using them. Annette, Alaska, will receive an autolaunch system this month, and the technology will be installed across the state’s remaining 10 sites over the next two years.
The Alaska autolaunch demonstration is part of a broader agency initiative to move the signal used to transmit weather balloon data out of the radio frequency now used by NOAA’s new GOES satellites. Proceeds from the sale of government radio spectrum are funding new ground station equipment at all 92 weather balloon sites across the U.S., and autolaunchers at roughly 25 percent of them, to ready the upper-air program for the frequency migration. NWS is evaluating potential locations outside Alaska to receive the remaining autolaunch systems.
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U.S. weather service union fears automation threatens jobs and sacrifices forecasters’ local knowledge
25 Apr 2018
Autolaunchers have operated around the world for decades, but NWS has just begun to use them.
Once deployed across the state, the $1.2 million machines, built by Finnish company Vaisala, will save about 8 hours of forecaster time a day—and about $1 million a year at NWS, Buchanan says. That's because the agency tries to staff each remote site with three people, but job vacancies mean overworked employees are shuffled around the vast state to keep up. "We have a difficult time recruiting people to go to these locations," Buchanan says. Recently, some stations have skipped scheduled launches.
Now, Buchanan says, NWS will need just one person at each remote site, to serve as a community liaison and to reload the autolauncher every 12 days. The other staff will relocate to bigger offices, like the ones in Anchorage or Fairbanks, where they can retrain for missions such as forecasting sea ice conditions and volcanic ash hazards, she says. The agency also plans to scale back office space and housing at the remote sites.
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Are they using this news to try to blame Trump for something already in the works for many years???
I'm all eyes and ears waiting to receive all news with an open mind about this, then let the authentic facts speak for the impact. There WILL BE some services that are cut back. There has to be. There absolutely has to be major spending cutbacks in some realms or our country would go bankrupt in X number of years. Just the interest on the astronomical debt is one of the biggest expenses.
This is insane and not sustainable much longer. It's already hurting our economy. Yes these cutbacks will hurt the economy and be painful but they WILL make our economy stronger and more stable in the long run, if done properly.
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https://2020plan.net/interest-payments-on-national-debt-to-top-1-trillion-a-year/
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https://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/development
Look at those graphs and try to appreciate how extreme the situation is that we are in. Our future absolutely requires some serious pain short term. Other than somebody like Ron Paul, who probably would never have been able to push thru his spending cuts. If not for Musk, who do you think would be able to do what nobody else has been able to do to stop the (death spiral) trend of those charts above???
“I am now hearing from multiple folks in the past two hours (including some who have personally been fired) that mass firings have now commenced within NOAA--including, yes, at the National Weather Service.”
https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1895221446789747072?
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I don't give posts like this on social media much credibility. Just read the nonsense comments below it from both sides, most that don't know a dang thing about this situation or even how the NWS operates but have been sucked in by their political affiliation.
I've also followed Levi Cowan's hurricane stuff at Tropical Tidbits for years and for sure he is the best at what he does.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/blog/
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However, just because he's never spoken out before on politics doesn't make him an objective source. His previous message, to me at least is loaded with speculative alarmism based on things that are not likely to happen.
Instead of just giving a description with my words, I will use his specific words again that I'm referring to and objecting to.
"My personal mission to bring hurricane science, data, and forecasts to the public would not be possible without the weather observations, doppler radar stations, computer models, hurricane hunter aircraft, and weather satellites provided by NOAA and the NWS. Your favorite weather apps, TV meteorologists, and private weather companies would also be unable to function without this data or the civil servants who live and breathe it to synthesize it into public safety information."
Why is he suggesting that services like weather observations, computer models and doppler radar stations or weather satellites might be in jeopardy?
Most weather observations are automated anyways. It would make no sense to cut something that is automated. Are they trying to save money on the electricity?
Below is a map of the many hundreds of locations with AUTOMATED weather observations. They are NOT going away. No computer models will be going away. They are not going to retire satellites in orbit around the earth or shut down doppler radar sites on a large scale.
I will add that I CAN'T KNOW exactly what will be cut and my opinion is based on an understanding of the products and sources the NWS uses, which is better than the VAST majority because I've been using them for the past 4 decades and know what is out there and what changes have been made to make the NWS so MUCH MORE automated than it used to be just a decade ago.
From Joe Bastardi, who has never shown himself to be a big fan of even the non-climate science portion of NOAA as he felt they were trying to put Accuweather out of business 15+ years ago:
“The fact is if the people making cuts spent 5% of the time I do on NOAA sites that have been developed by their researchers, they would look at things very different. You must separate that from the climate
part which is a huge waste and deserves it IMO
Taking a machete to NOAA and laying off meteorologists and researchers WITH MERIT is not what was supposed to happen with regard to reduction of the federal government from @doge. The Climate part is one thing, where most of the shady past is”
https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/61421-winter-banter-24-25/page/30/#comments
So, even Joe Bastardi is against the indiscriminate large amount of firings of the non-climate science portion of NOAA. I wasn’t expecting him to actually come out and say that. I thought he was going to either just say nothing or defend all of the firings. When even he doesn’t do that, that is telling. After all, he certainly didn’t say this due to political bias.
On Joe B.
I love this guy and agree with everything that he says, especially the climate part. And again, I don't know where exactly the cuts will be but its not likely to cut the automated products or models that don't require humans. I'm speculating based on what makes good sense and not looking for comments from people that say things to support what I want to believe.
Cutting back on and privatizing the NWS is actually nothing new.
Here's a great discussion for everybody to understand what it is the NWS does. ALOT!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service
Included in that huge informative article is this:
While respected as one of the premier weather organizations in the world, the National Weather Service has been perceived by some conservatives since the early 2000s as competing unfairly with the private sector.[64] National Weather Service forecasts and data, being works of the federal government, are in the public domain and thus available to anyone for free under United States law. From time to time, the situation receives official review to ascertain if a leaner, more efficient approach may be had by some degree of privatization.[65]
In 1983, the Reagan administration and NOAA administrator John V. Byrne announced a proposal to sell all of the agency's weather satellites at auction with the intent to repurchase the weather data from private contractors that would acquire the satellites. Under the proposal, 30% of NOAA's workforce would be reviewed for potential layoffs, and certain specialty forecasts of agricultural and economic importance would be eliminated. NOAA also proposed outsourcing weather observation stations, NOAA Weather Radio, and computerized surface analysis to private companies. The proposal was met with negative reactions among the public, members of Congress, and consumer advocacy groups (including most notably, Ralph Nader), objecting to the possibility of weather information intended for the public domain being sold to private entities that would profit from the sale of the data. The proposal to sell the satellite network failed in a Congressional vote, while other aspects of the proposal to dismantle portions of NOAA's agencies were eventually scuttled
Main article: National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005
In 2005, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005,[66] a bill which would have prohibited the NWS from freely distributing weather data. The bill was widely criticized by users of the NWS's services, especially by emergency management officials relying on the National Weather Service for information during fires, flooding, or severe weather. Groups such as the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association condemned the bill's restrictions on weather forecasting as threatening the safety of air traffic, noting that 40% of all aviation accidents are at least partially weather-related.[67] The bill attracted no cosponsors, and died in committee during the 2005 Congressional session.
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I disagree with these proposals in the past but we should recognize REAL movements in the past from REAL people that had some momentum for the same reasons for the current cuts.
Everybody wants to MIS-characterize this as being completely loony and unprecedented because its from Musk but its been an issue for some time for many people.
I totally get that the way Musk is going about it is extremely unprecedented. The old ways resulted in no changes, no cuts and business as usual............in most realms.
The old/previous ways also resulted in this chart, that I posted earlier:
https://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/development
There is an absolute need to make extreme cuts in many places to save our future economy and programs like social security which WILL go bankrupt with certainty if we don't drastically cut back on government spending.
Extreme cuts, with certainty will impose some pain. If they didn't, then our self serving politicians would have made those cuts in the past. Every year NOT making the cuts, makes the pain worse and worse. Instead of blaming Musk for the severity of cuts needed to fix it........ we should be blaming the ones that were responsible FOR BREAKING IT!
Personally, I don't trust or like Elon Musk 1 bit. However, my personal feelings for the person, have 0 to do with an opinion about whether something is good or bad for our country/people.
And I am totally willing to adjust my opinion AFTER having more information to base the opinion on.
I teach my pupils that in a chess game, the most important move is what your opponent did last. Same thing in life. The lesson is to not get married to a position or opinion because IT MIGHT BE WRONG.
Our objective in life should be to intentionally try to find things wrong with our assumptions and belief system. That's the only way to discover when we might be wrong and quickly adjust to being right. It's known as the Scientific Method!
Most people just go to sources and places that reinforce what they think they know.
Doing that is a 100% guarantee, that when we are wrong......WE WILL STAY WRONG FOREVER!
Mike said: “And again, I don't know where exactly the cuts will be but its not likely to cut the automated products or models that don't require humans.”
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Hey Mike,
1. Although the models don’t normally require a human to run, I assume you realize that computer outages often require human intervention to find out the problem and get them running again. Human cuts could easily lead to longer outages for US models.
2. So far, you are the only pro met. that I’ve read who’s voiced an opinion on these cuts that wasn’t in opposition to the machete style cutting of Musk’s group. I realize that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll end up “wrong” if there is a concrete right vs wrong ever determined. I feel you enjoy having relatively unique stances among your fellow mets. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Maybe it will end up not being as bad as I’m fearing. But the start hasn’t been what I wanted to see. The NWS is a relatively efficiently run organization with a relatively low budget per US citizen from all I’ve read that has saved many lives. It doesn’t need massive cuts from what I’ve read. Silence would be the worst thing for those who are concerned. Thank goodness there’s currently already a lot of protesting online. We can’t just sit back and just let this administration dismantle govt orgs to the degree Trump and Musk want. They’re not kings although they’re trying to be. That is not what our constitution wants. And then treating political opposition as enemies is absolutely awful.
3. By the way, why does the richest man in the world, who wasn’t elected or approved by Congress, have so much power over govt spending right now? Can you say oligarchy? Can you say conflicts of interest? Musk is doing what’s good for Musk rather than the working class.
Thanks, Larry!
1. how Often does this happen? are you suggesting a person paid to be there, 24 hours, 365 days that might be needed 1 time every few years? That’s exactly the sort of job that wastes tax payer's money.
2. im glad you noticed and thank you. This mentality is exactly the problem with this country when it comes to the crushing deficit. People that are only concerned about themselves and their benefits and the things that they refuse to give up. And never willing to sacrifice anything for the good of others or the good of our country or the good of our children’s future……which is absolutely going to be required, without question in numerous realms, by definition if we are to have a chance to fix this problem that’s on the verge of crushing the future prospects for the United States. I’m very willing to accept some personal pain or cuts for the good of our country. Thanks again for recognizing that as being unique in my profession on this topic.
3. it’s actually the ELECTED officials that created this entire problem. Spend crazy,corrupt politicians with self serving interests that include:
a. Maintaining their position by constantly showering their constituents with benefits from government spending to make them happy and buy their votes. causing desperately needed but painful cut backs to wasteful spending is the recipe for being defeated by unhappy voters who will replace them with somebody promising to give them things they want.
b. Sadly, our system is set up to enrich politicians that we voted into office with massive, legal bribes from rich corporations that use that money to influence politicians when it comes To authorizing spending packages and spending legislation. These powerful corporations and entities hire professional lobbyists that meet with our elected officials and use tactics to exploit the corrupt, wasteful spending of money in our system via using their specifically targeted donations as bribes that pay off up to 100+ times in government benefits to special interest groups hijacking the control over spending from our bought and paid for politicians. You know this is true!
it’s so ironic that these people putting up resistance to the needed cuts have united with some characterizations of Musk that are supposed to disqualify him.
c. He wasn’t elected by the people, so he’s not legit…..when the ones elected by the people are exactly the entire problem. You can’t fix an almost insurmountable problem by doubling and tripling down on all the things causing the problem. You need new leadership with creative CHANGES that reverse the policies that caused the problems. A person that takes control AWAY from the bought and paid for elected officials from BOTH parties that sabotage any efforts to make severe cuts in spending.
d. There is the assertion that he is only doing this so that he controls government spending in a way to enrich his investments because he’s the richest man in the world. Actually, that describes career politicians to a tee……..that we pay big salaries to so that they can apply spending that enriches themselves at the tax payers expense, and the biggest dysfunctional dynamic describing a badly broken system that MUST change or our goose is cooked.
e. Musk is not earning a salary that for somebody that wealthy would be insignificant so he must be doing this to enrich himself., is the explanation.
Thats possible. If he is and he saves the economic and financial future of our country doing it…at least it’s better than letting hundreds of elected but corrupted, self serving politicians do the same thing ……while they destroy our country!
We know with 100% certainty what the politicians did to the system the past 2 decades. They ARE the problem.
Why not give somebody else a chance that isn’t beholden to,the same powerful entities who control our elected politicians?
They are the ones putting out much of the negative messaging because the rug just got pulled from under them. This is a really good thing And the opposite of the narratives they are trying to pin on Musk.
As mentioned many times here, I don’t trust Musk but am, instead basing it, not on personal opinions of individuals but on whether their actions and agenda are good for most Americans or good for the human beings in the world.
For so many speaking out right now, they are not willing to give this a chance. Before even seeing what cuts are happening and why. I totally get why the resistance is so powerful and messages, many misleading sound so convincimg.
In many cases, these people are sincere. I know that you are, Larry.
I think that very few people realize the enormity of this problem.
Also, all these massive cuts in government spending so quickly could cause a massive slowdown in growth and an economic collapse.
That sort of pain should be avoided but not making severe cuts right now is just delaying that eventually.
US pop in 2024: 340 million
-FY 2024 NWS budget: $1,706 million
https://ww2.aip.org/fyi/fy2024-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration
$1,706/340 = only ~$5/American for 2024 FY for NWS!!!
These are very low amounts. It is a very efficient govt org that saves lives! Musk’s group needs to leave NWS alone as far as large cuts are concerned. That’s tiny! This is absurd! Its value is way higher than that.
Worrying about the cost of a lifesaving org that costs only $5/American per year is ridiculous imho. The proposed tax cuts/year are WAY, WAY higher than that:
“First, it calls for extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade.”
$4 trillion/10 = $400 billion/year. That (400/1.7) is ~235 times the annual NWS budget!
If you’re concerned about the deficit, you’re looking in the wrong place imho.
So, I maintain my original thought that major cuts to the efficient NWS would be stupid and harmful.
Thanks, Larry! Great information on the budget.
That makes sense but you're giving this agency a free pass without ever scrutinizing any expenses and dividing the number by 340,000,000 to turn it into a small number. Those are all tactics used by a biased person.
I totally get the bias too because I have the same bias for my favorite agency of all of them.
But I have to recognize the magnitude of the problem and not make exceptions for MY favorite program(s).
So here's the exact point.
Below is the budget from your page:
Last year they requested $6.824 billion with Joe Biden as the president.
Using your approach, dividing it by 340 million, meant that Congress should have approved that entire $6.824 billion.
But they didn't. The Senate only approved $6.506 billion and the House only approved $5.431 billion. Why not the entire $6.824 billion? Why did the House only approve $5.431 billion?
You have no idea what the items in the budget were that caused that substantial difference but you think we should just give them the entire amount they ask for because it's worth it after dividing the number by 340 million. Or because important weather guro's(as biased as you can get) that make a living using NWS products are tweeting that we should not make any cuts. ..........even though they DID make cuts to the original budget last year and they DO make cuts to the proposed budget EVERY year.
Or because NOAA is involved in the business of saving lives with their products, so they are worth the bigger number.
Would they have saved MORE lives this year if they had approved their original request? Or the amount the Senate approved?
How many lives might have been lost if they had only approved the MUCH lower House number??
Again, this link that you provided is AWESOME!
On the tax cuts being enormous.
I agree 100%. Even though rich people pay way more than their fair share, I'm ok with making it even less unfair to reduce the debt by increasing the tax burden on the wealthy.
However, these are 2 completely independent elements. One relates to income for the government. The other relates to expenses by the government.
It's not defensible to justify expenses by siting something on the other side of the balance sheet........income.
Wasteful spending is still wasteful spending, regardless of the tax code.
The tax code deserves its own discussion and debate and should be used to accomplish the objective and determines how much money we have coming in but we should be trying to use BOTH these elements to maximize the reduction/pay down the debit.
Mike said:
“However, these are 2 completely independent elements.”
———-
Hey Mike,
You posted graphs earlier ITT regarding a concern about the enormous debt. Since you did that, I feel it’s perfectly appropriate to followup with that by showing how Trump’s budget has proposed annual tax cuts that are equal to 235 times the entire annual NWS budget to put it in proper perspective especially keeping in mind that Musk, who would benefit enormously by these tax cuts, is in charge of DOGE. Can you say “conflict of interest”?
Larry,
I apologize for not communicating that better.
Discussing tax cuts and income and anything to do with the debt is exactly appropriate in a discussion like this............and anything else you or somebody else wants to add.
It's good to bring that up and I agree strongly with you.
My point is that I don't think that tax cuts should be used to JUSTIFY potential wasteful spending and in this case, big tax cuts, justify making NOAA completely exempt from any scrutinizing at a time when EVERY government expenditure is being scrutinized.
2 wrongs don't make a right with the budget. Both of them just add up. A huge wrong, doesn't justify the smaller one.
+++++++++++++++++
I would bet that as an operational meteorologist for well over 4 decades that lives and breathes weather every day. An obsession and love at the same time.......whether being paid on radio/tv to deliver, sometimes potentially life saving information or sharing it with 1,000 people on my chess email list or here, with its relation to money making opportunities with fellow trading pals.........there have been very few people on this planet that have spend as much time as me using NOAA products in their life.
In addition, I absolutely do NOT affiliate with either political party. I greatly dislike Donald Trump and Elon Musk (who I don't trust because he one of the world most convincing charlatans).
Yet, somehow I am not designating NOAA or the NWS as qualified for"protected" status when it comes to looking for wasteful spending.
I made my case here for why that is and just wanted to also clarify for new readers what my political positions are not.
And its great to have a conversation like this where we can have respectful disagreements and, Larry I really do understand your points and hope that the NWS cuts will not be so severe as to impact any services that we use.
If they are important to the industry, especially or life saving value, I will be the first one to be screaming bloody murder!
That COULD happen but we can't know that right now, even though some of our weather guru's are making crazy assumptions based on alarmism and personal fears that they will lose something.
Mike said,
“My point is that I don't think that tax cuts should be used to JUSTIFY potential wasteful spending and in this case, big tax cuts, justify making NOAA completely exempt from any scrutinizing at a time when EVERY government expenditure is being scrutinized.”
——————
Hey Mike,
I’m not against “any scrutinizing”. But that’s not what Musk is doing. He’s applying a machete as Bastardi put it. Musk, who has a major conflict of interest due to major benefits he’d receive as a result of the Trump budget plan, has no clue about the detailed inner workings of the life-saving, very efficient NWS.
Larry,
I take with a grain of salt, a weather guru using the term machete when they have no clue about what will be cut. All they know is that nothing should be cut and they fear that they might lose something.
Elon Musk is just 1 person. He obviously has a huge team of people assisting him in the scrutinizing and decision making process.
Just look at last years NOAA budget that YOU submitted.
Please tell me what was trimmed from it in order to get the final budget?
This process takes place every year with NOAA budgets as you proved. To suddenly reject budget scruntiny because its coming from Musk and not the House and Senate like it usually does is ignoring the authentic facts about how the NOAA budget is determined.
It's always been scrutinized but by elected officials that are 100% responsible for getting us in this national debt mess. Now, Elon Musk has taken over their jobs.
We don't even know what Musk will cut.
Did NOAA and the weather gurus gripe last year when Congress cut back on their proposed budget/expenses? Did they say that they are already a lean organization with no room for cuts and that making cuts would cost lives?
No
Were lives lost last year or any years from Congress cutting back from the proposed budget?
I will remind you that there have been many people, going back to Reagan calling for the NWS to be privitized, to take the cost of these services off of the American tax payers.
I'm in extreme disagreement for such a move but this uproar about the NWS is pretending none of this exists and existed for decades.
Mike said:
“I take with a grain of salt, a weather guru using the term machete when they have no clue about what will be cut. All they know is that nothing should be cut and they fear that they might lose something.
Elon Musk is just 1 person. He obviously has a huge team of people assisting him in the scrutinizing and decision making process. “
———-
Hey Mike,
1. Bastardi isn’t the only one using that or similar terms describing what Musk’s team is doing. 800 folks have already been fired:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/02/27/politics/noaa-federal-workers-firings
2. Musk, the richest person in the world, is just one person but he’s in charge.
Mike said:
“To suddenly reject budget scruntiny because its coming from Musk and not the House and Senate like it usually does is ignoring the authentic facts about how the NOAA budget is determined.”
———-
Hey Mike,
1. You’re talking like you have no problem with the super-rich Musk, who is unelected and also not approved by the Senate, being in charge of spending cuts. There are serious conflicts of interest and you don’t seem to care.
2. This isn’t how the highly efficient and life-saving NWS budget has ever been determined.
Mike said:
“I will remind you that there have been many people, going back to Reagan calling for the NWS to be privitized, to take the cost of these services off of the American tax payers.”
———-
Hey Mike,
1. “Many people” calling for the NWS to be privatized isn’t the same thing as saying most people want it to be privatized.
2. You’re talking about all of $5 cost per American thanks to a very efficiently run org that saves lives. Keeping it in the federal govt allows for uniformity of warnings and other products throughout the country and also coordination between WSOs. That helps with efficiency and insures that the entire country is covered. If this $5/American were privatized, then Americans are still going to have to pay for these services. Furthermore, you’re then at the mercy of private orgs covering all areas of the country and doing that in a uniform manner.
Hey, Larry
You don't have to try to convince me of something that I strongly agree with you on (vehemently oppose privatizing the NWS) and have stated it in this thread a couple of times.
Hey Mike,
1. You’re talking like you have no problem with the super-rich Musk, who is unelected and also not approved by the Senate, being in charge of spending cuts. There are serious conflicts of interest and you don’t seem to care.
2. This isn’t how the highly efficient and life-saving NWS budget has ever been determined.
++++++++++++++
I've addressed that specifically at least a couple of time now. Please reread responses if you want that again.
‘It's not just a job to me': Hurricane hunter among NOAA employees laid off in DOGE cuts
Andy Hazelton is one of the DOGE victims. He isn’t the guy you see on television telling you where the hurricane’s going, he’s one of the NWS employees who work on making the forecast models as accurate as they can be. Now he’s gone.
Hazelton was at the National Hurricane Center, working on improving the GFS storm tracking model, when the email came in. He was fired after working more than eight years with NOAA, as a contract employee and recently as a federal staffer, still in his probationary period.
Kerri Englert is featured in a video on the NOAA website. She is, or was, a hurricane hunter, the crew member who gathers data during those daring flights into the eye of the storm, until she got the pink slip yesterday.
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/noaa-employees-laid-off-in-doge-cuts/3555471/
Thanks, Larry!
I get that everybody, everywhere that likes their job will be upset when they lose it. Regardless of how much they contribute.
Andy Hazelton is one of the DOGE victims. He isn’t the guy you see on television telling you where the hurricane’s going, he’s one of the NWS employees who work on making the forecast models as accurate as they can be. Now he’s gone.
“It kinda hit me very heavily, I mean I think we all thought it was possible,” Hazelton said.
Possible, they thought, but not likely, because their work is vital for public safety. Hazelton was at the National Hurricane Center, working on improving the GFS storm tracking model, when the email came in
+++++++++++
The very misleading description above, suggests that the forecast models will not be as accurate now.
Fact is that models will lose 0% of their current accuracy. without this person. Not 1 iota. The models were invented and existed for many decades already. They are based on mathematical equations that represent the physics and driving forces of the atmosphere. Those laws will never change.
For the last several decades, we've done updates of the equations to boost the accuracy of the models a great deal. I've observed it myself the past 4+ decades. However, like with many realms, weather modeling improvements have been fighting"the law of diminishing returns". Each additional improvement contributes less and less and less than the earlier changes.
Most of the work and benefits and accuracy have already occurred. For sure the GFS/Amercan model can be improved(The European model beats it with skill score even though the US spends more money on it).
On the graph below (I grabbed this one about a different field, because the curve demonstrates the principle), we are at the point where the benefits are very small to adjustments to the equations.
One thing with certainty is that if we lay off a weather modeler or, even many more than that in 2025, we can still use the current models, exactly as they are with 0 loss in anything.
There will be no degradation in any of the model products because the computer does all the work. The computer is programmed with thousands of the SAME equations that process all the information and solves all the equations that don't change.
The equations don't go back to 2020, 2010 or 2000 because a modeler got fired.
However, each additional hour and each additional $$ spent to pay a modeler will follow the law of diminishing returns for that money and time. Less and less value. Less and less bang for our buck. Less and less improvements in the models.
Can they be improved. YES! Incremental improvements are still expected with time.
But in a country going bankrupt, does it makes sense to pay people thousands of dollars for X amount of improvements, when the same amount x in improvements were being made 40 years ago for hundreds of dollars?
The law of diminishing returns is an indisputable, powerful force in this realm that means that tax payers are getting less and less and less for the same amount of money spent to slightly tweak models over time.
https://investbro.id/the-law-of-diminishing-return/
Numerical Weather Models
https://www.weather.gov/media/ohx/PDF/Weather101WeatherModels.pdf
“The issue with the NOAA airplane employees is something that could affect forecasts this hurricane season.”
++++++++++++++
Somebody that understands the process, please explain to me specifically, how this is going to cut back on the information?
The same planes, on the same schedule, gathering the same information, processed by the same models, resulting in the same forecasts, watches and warnings based on the same criteria......but with a few less people.
Saying that lives will or could be lost, as if each and every person is indispensable and without them, the products suffer COULD BE TRUE.
The question is not whether the NWS can do the same job after losing some people because clearly they can.
The question is.........HOW MANY people would need to be fired in key jobs before it starts to significantly impact the services they perform.
One side, acts as if every single employee is vital. No way.
My position, once again is to insist that there needs to be some pain with the needed cuts to expenses(especially wasteful spending but even more than that) to save our countries future.
Than pain needs to be equally distributed so that most industries are impacted. If there was just 1 industry that I could protect THIS WOULD BE THE ONE. I note many of the other weather gurus disagree with me because they don't want to take a chance of losing any of their goodies.
That exact mentality is what caused us to be here. Everybody wants to protect services that impact them.
Sorry that I don't buy the argument(yet) that this service is different because losing any people will cost tons of lives or that its cheap compared to others so it should be exempt from the cuts that all the other industries should get.
The misleading headlines of "forecasting progress likely 'compromised", like all the other ones, intentionally leaves this out below:
Is that important?
Only if you want to understand the valid reason for the needed cuts!
Probationary employees across
and the
are being terminated today, including those in mission-essential roles.My own wife is among them, essential to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's 24/7 critical mission of seismic monitoring and tsunami prediction to protect the public.Remember, most of the NWS is understaffed as it is. While there surely is waste to be found, this is not where to look. Indeed, this is not "looking." This is a blind swing of a sword.
https://twitter.com/TropicalTidbits/status/1895234841110794434?
"While there surely is waste to be found, this is not where to look. Indeed, this is not "looking."
Thanks, Larry.
We should note that they repeat this over and over.
"There is waste to be found" but never once suggesting to us that they actually have the skill to know where that waste is and only telling us that it's NOT where the current administration found it.
In other words, they will not identify the waste, all they will do is vehemently reject where ever Musk claims the waste is.
An entity that claims to be an authority on identifying waste like this.........at the very least, should be able to show us that skill.
Don't you agree.
Displaying 0 skill at identifying waste now or at any point in the past. And 0 desire to apply it now or at any point in the past does NOT make one an expert at scrutinizing another sincere entity is trying to do those things.
The crystal clear tactic is 100% rejection of all the cuts everywhere.
If not, then where is the alternative they offer right now?
Where were the alternatives in the past, while we racking up the ever increasing, trillions in bloat to the government spending?
We've been using elected officials, in a dysfunctional/broken system designed to increase and maintain waste with special interest groups, lobbyists and elected officials that generate votes by increasing spending.
Where are some examples of alternatives to this other than responses that indicate we should only NOT do what Musk is doing and to just stay broken, which is the 100% recipe for our country to go bankrupt.
+++++++++++++
My position is actually the 100% opposite of this rejection of everything. I believe that we must do SOMETHING and do it fast and do it with gusto to have any chance at preventing a bankrupt country real soon. I believe we should at least give somebody, finally willing to do what's needed A CHANCE, instead of rejecting every thing while offering 0 solutions themselves. I would make the case that anything but this, guaranteed disastrous future below makes more sense.
Here's part of the underlying problem.
Government printing of money and spending greatly stimulates the economy. Note the quintessential example of this happening to rescue the country from a COVID induced recession in 2020..........which spiked up the National Debt.
Politicians and others know this and INTENTIONALLY use it to justify extra government spending, even wasteful spending because it DOES stimulate the economy and is wonderful for today but a dysfunctional long term dynamic that guarantees the country going bankrupt at some point in the future. It's always been in the DISTANT future. But the bankrupt time frame just keeps getting closer and closer and we can now see it happening in the near future(those that want to look).
So its inevitable that these severe cuts will cause an economic slowdown based on economics 101.
Maybe Trump thinks the reduction in taxes will cause a stimulus that will offset that because people will have more disposable income that will be used/spent to stimulate the economy and offset the cuts in government spending.
I very much understand the concerns about the tax cuts because that REDUCES government income that can help pay for expenditures and make the debt closer to being balanced or even reduce it if we cut enough spending, which is the objective of this administration.
The tax cuts could POSSIBLY accomplish this....very speculative but there is uncertainty and a highly elevated risk that severe cuts to government spending, coming first will cascade into a major recession real fast.
If/when that happens, the unrest and rage, amplified by the MSM and D message gatekeepers could explode. Widespread protesting, already a given could turn into major rioting, like it did in the Summer of 2020 during COVID, when people were very upset about what was happening and wanted to vent.
In addition, these people fired will no longer be getting paid by the government for doing their jobs but they will qualify for government unemployment benefits for an extended period. At any unemployment hearings, the fired employees will win EVERY time because it WILL BE determined by the unemployment office, that the employees did nothing to justify the firing.
A company can replace you because they are downsizing but you are still owed unemployment, some of which is paid thru them. In this case, it would all be thru the government. The only time unemployment is not owed is if the employee did something to deserve it or if the employer offered them another job that earned at least XX% of what they were making at the job they were fired from.
How big will the unemployment bill be to the government, paying for people to do nothing this year?
https://www.themuse.com/advice/will-i-get-unemployment-if-i-was-fired
In many cases, yes—you may still be eligible for unemployment if you were fired. You're eligible to collect unemployment benefits if you were terminated for no fault of your own. These include becoming redundant, cost-cutting by your employer, or a company-wide layoff.
++++++++++
https://unemploymenthandbook.com/laid-off-fired-or-quit-do-you-qualify-to-file-for-unemployment/
Another significant element is that the unemployment rate will jump higher and be significant in regions where federal workers make up a high% of the workers.
Norman / The Washington Post / Getty Images
Experts have identified some potential economic benefits and big risks from President Donald Trump's mass firing of federal workers.
Should the Trump administration achieve its goal of reducing the federal workforce by 75%, the unemployment rate would skyrocket in places where the federal government is a major employer. In Washington D.C., for example, the unemployment rate would spike to 9.6% from its current level of 2.8%, an analysis by think tank the Urban Institute found in January.
Directly related to the huge federal deficit you’ve been rightly concerned about:
The House GOP tax cuts would be $4.5 trillion for 2026-34, or $500 billion/year:
The entire FY 2024 NWS budget is $1.357 billion, or a mere 1/370th of the proposed tax cuts per year.
https://ww2.aip.org/fyi/fy2024-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration
Also, keep in mind that this 1/370th of the size of the proposed tax cuts is for a life and property saving organization and thus an org that results in a return on that 1.357 billion/year.
Per page ES-17 from the following link, the total value of the NWS to US households was calculated in 2021 to be $102.1 billion based on an average annual household willingness to pay level (WTP) of $898.50 out of taxes:
https://www.ametsoc.org/sites/ams/assets/File/policy/CoFU2_JKL_2024.pdf
So, 102.1/1.357 = ~75. Thus, US households in the aggregate are valuing the NWS at a whopping 75 times the super efficient NWS budget (i.e., a 75:1 return on investment), a budget that’s only 1/370th the size of the proposed tax cuts!
Thus, I fully maintain that major cuts to the NWS would be both stupid and harmful. Based on the above analysis showing a whopping 75:1 ROI, even minor cuts may be a bad idea. If done, minor cuts should at least be done very carefully after detailed analyses of the inner workings of the NWS/the value of individual jobs as opposed to what’s already been done in a ridiculously short period of time.
Larry,
I agree with you pretty much on most of that.
My biggest disagreement is the wild, alarmist predictions of lost lives and lost service that will very likely NOT happen, coming from the very people that use the services and don't want to make ANY personal sacrifices.
This is the exact recipe that caused the problems. Nobody wants any cuts in any areas that impact them.
I get that this is a UNIQUE field because of what they do, which plays a role in saving lives.
After being a professional, operational meteorologist for 4+ decades that has used all these products more than 99.999% of people(for hours on most days in my life), I might know a thing OR 1,000 about what these services are, what they do and how they do it.
I would rather take an honest position based solid facts, which we don't even know right now vs a compete rejection of any cuts and wildly exaggerated consequences, some that are complete hogwash BASED ON WORDS.
My position is that everybody should share the pain of the cuts, unless the powerful evidence is that they they will cause major harm.
Some of the incredible speculative harm statements that I've read about the NOAA cuts just makes me not consider those sources as credible.
I appreciate you playing with math to justify no cuts in this field but I will use YOUR evidence to give the opposite side again based on YOUR link that shows they make cuts EVERY YEAR. So NO CUTS this year is a totally unreasonable position to have:
+++++++++++++++++
Re: NWS/NOAA major cuts to efficient life saving org would be stupid/harmful
By WxFollower - Feb. 28, 2025, 10:15 a.m.
Worrying about the cost of a lifesaving org that costs only $5/American per year is ridiculous imho. The proposed tax cuts/year are WAY, WAY higher than that:
“First, it calls for extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade.”
$4 trillion/10 = $400 billion/year. That (400/1.7) is ~235 times the annual NWS budget!
If you’re concerned about the deficit, you’re looking in the wrong place imho.
So, I maintain my original thought that major cuts to the efficient NWS would be stupid and harmful.
Re: Re: NWS/NOAA major cuts to efficient life saving org would be stupid/harmful
By metmike - Feb. 28, 2025, 11:19 a.m.
Thanks, Larry! Great information on the budget.
That makes sense but you're giving this agency a free pass without ever scrutinizing any expenses and dividing the number by 340,000,000 to turn it into a small number. Those are all tactics used by a biased person.
I totally get the bias too because I have the same bias for my favorite agency of all of them.
But I have to recognize the magnitude of the problem and not make exceptions for MY favorite program(s).
So here's the exact point.
Below is the budget from your page:
Last year they requested $6.824 billion with Joe Biden as the president.
Using your approach, dividing it by 340 million, meant that Congress should have approved that entire $6.824 billion.
But they didn't. The Senate only approved $6.506 billion and the House only approved $5.431 billion. Why not the entire $6.824 billion? Why did the House only approve $5.431 billion?
You have no idea what the items in the budget were that caused that substantial difference but you think we should just give them the entire amount they ask for because it's worth it after dividing the number by 340 million. Or because important weather guru's(as biased as you can get) that make a living using NWS products are tweeting that we should not make any cuts. ..........even though they DID make cuts to the original budget last year and they DO make cuts to the proposed budget EVERY year.
Or because NOAA is involved in the business of saving lives with their products, so they are worth the bigger number.
Would they have saved MORE lives this year if they had approved their original request? Or the amount the Senate approved?
How many lives might have been lost if they had only approved the MUCH lower House number??
Again, this link that you provided is AWESOME!
If we wanted to save some serious money, this is the biggest NOT necessary expense by an extremely wide margin.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110205/#110236
Mike said:
“ That makes sense but you're giving this agency a free pass without ever scrutinizing any expenses and dividing the number by 340,000,000 to turn it into a small number. Those are all tactics used by a biased person.”
————
Hey Mike,
How am I giving them a free pass? I said that if there are going to be cuts in the very efficient org with a 75:1 ROI that is the life-saving NWS that they should be done carefully and only after a detailed analysis of its inner workings/jobs, which is NOT what they’ve been doing. They suddenly fired 800+!
The NWS ROI is 75:1. The NWS saves lives, reduces injuries, and reduces property damage. And its $1.357 billion budget is a mere 1/370th of the size of the proposed tax cuts.
Why are we even allowing the richest man in the world who was neither elected nor approved by the Senate to be in charge of cutting budgets that would allow for huge tax cuts and thus allow him to line his own pockets? This is a serious conflict of interest and and it isn’t even Constitutional as Congress is in charge of the budget. It sounds like you don’t care, which is disappointing.
Massive cuts to the NWS are both stupid and harmful. And Musk shouldn’t be allowed to head an organization to do those cuts. He has no Constitutional authority to do so. My hope is with the courts putting a stop to this nonsense.
Thanks, Larry!
More stupidity and potential harm thanks to DOGE: just what we all want soon after 40 folks were killed by severe wx:
The "building lease issue is in flux," a NOAA spokesperson said.
Republican Rep. Tom Cole claims that he intervened and that the center in Norman will not lose its lease.
But the building is still listed, along with hundreds of others, as a target of DOGE's cuts.
What’s next, big NHC cuts in August?
Thanks, Larry,
I continue to share your concern on this issue but that story and many like it has a pack of lies, especially the the title which is the opposite of what they know is the truth.
The Storm Prediction Center is not losing that building and they know it.
No storm prediction center employees have been laid off and they know it.
The authentic facts, when I return to my office later today.
Here's that blatantly dishonest story again:
The "building lease issue is in flux," a NOAA spokesperson said.
ByMaryAlice Parks and Daniel Peck
March 18, 2025,
+++++++++++++++++
1. That building was saved at least 11 days ago and they are pretending(lying) that it wasn't and that it's still in jeopardy. They even admit they know in the story but make it sound like a wild, unreliable claim by a nobody instead of acknowledging THE TRUTH.
"Republican Rep. Tom Cole claims that he intervened and that the center in Norman will not lose its lease.
"I am so proud to have advocated for them. As the Representative for Oklahoma's Fourth District, I will always fight for Oklahomans and my constituents!" Cole wrote in a release last week."
2. At the end of the story, they lie about this: ABC News has reached out to local Oklahoma lawmakers for comment, but hasn't heard back by the time of publication.
How do we know its a BLATANT lie?
Because Tom Cole is doing back flips trying to tell anybody and everybody about how he saved the Storm Prediction Center for his constituents in the state of Oklahoma. He's actually the one with all the political clout that had the power to do this. And he did do it well over a WEEK AGO. You can't tell me they couldn't get a statement from his office in 1 week? It's because they DON'T WANT TO PUT THE TRUTH IN THIS HIT PIECE. This is the opposite of professional journalism. Its dishonest political activism at its worse, trying to brainwash readers using a severe weather outbreak and lies about the cuts.
Absolute proof below:
Story by Alyse Jones
• 1w
March 4, 2025
https://cole.house.gov/media/press-releases/cole-statement-national-weather-center
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
March 7th was 11 days ago and Tom Cole is THE authoritative source on this issue and the media is extremely aware of it........and they know exactly what he will say, which will contradict their false narrative with the authentic truth. It's just not believable that: "ABC News has reached out to local Oklahoma lawmakers for comment, but hasn't heard back by the time of publication"
No wonder Trump nicknamed the press "The enemy of the people"
Making up their own version of the news and censoring the ones best informed with the truth because they would contradict the version the media is trying to impose on readers/viewers.
The news media already has near 0 credibility for many people. This is exactly why. This is just another example of how they operate. This is not an isolated example. They get away with it because:
1. There is no entity holding them accountable for lying
2. They are in the business of making profits not telling the truth. Sensationalizing and catastrophizing stories SELLS and boosts profits. Not everybody in that business is that way but it was bad before and only getting worse with Trump as president.
3. Many to most in the media are also political activists that picked that field because they like the ability to use their position to influence the views or readers/viewers. The vast majority also vote for the D party and man, you can frequently see it in their work! There is a near 0 chance that the person that wrote this story for ABC news is not expressing their POLITICAL VIEW at the expense of telling the truth, that includes the side they don't want readers to know about.
I'm just some yahoo meteorologist and chess coach in Indiana NOT a professional journalist. Look how easy it was for me to find information thats been out there for almost 2 weeks that was excluded intentionally by the people BEING PAID to find it and inform readers about it.
They let every reader of this story down and are a disgrace to ABC News and the journalism industry(that already has no ethical standards).
https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Do_97_percent_of_journalist_donations_go_to_Democrats
Is Brat correct that 97 percent of donations from mainstream media go to the Democratic Party?
According to Juliana Heerschap, Brat's communications director, the congressman was referring to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), which examined donations by journalists to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the presidential primaries and the first month of the 2016 general election campaign.[2]CPI reported that more than 96 percent of those donations were made to Clinton.[3][4][5]
Ballotpedia also reviewed three other analyses. The Center for Responsive Politics found that 65 percent of contributions from those identified as journalists went to Democrats in the 2010 election cycle.[6]An analysis by MSNBC.com found that 87 percent of the 143 donors (who made contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign) gave to Democrats or liberal causes.[7] The Media Research Center found that 94 percent of donors affiliated with five news outlets also contributed to Democrats between 2008 and 2016.[8]
++++++++++++++++++
It shows in their biased reporting with how they manipulate facts to support personal ideologies! Most readers don't fact check. They assume the reporters did all that for them. They usually go to the sources that tell them the news that lines up with their own belief system.
Most people that do fact check, only fact check things that they don't want to believe. If its something that they want to believe..........they assume that its true and give it a free pass.
+++++++++++
Larry,
It's another screed for you from the king of screeds.
But at least my screeds are power packed with authentic facts to support every opinion and intended to provide enlightenment and truth, not just a bunch of convincing sounding words, like those of the message gatekeeper charlatans that tell us what we want to hear or what they want us to think.
Thanks, Mike!
I decided to go right to the DOGE website, itself, for the first time:
It’s a hard site to go through, but I did it/was worth the time. It says this: “Last updated March 11th, 2025. This will initially be updated weekly”.
I scrolled down to “Contracts”, where it says “Displaying 5356 contract terminations totaling ~$20B in savings”. In there I clicked “View All Contracts”. Under that I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled. I finally found “Dept of Commerce” entries. There are 102 of them. I clicked on all 102 twice to make sure I didn’t miss any. I couldn’t find “The National Weather Center”. So, assuming I did this correctly, it appears it was removed by March 11th.
I saw an article from yesterday from The NY Times that says, “The three offices, however, still appear to be included in a list of cancellations on the Department of Government Efficiency’s website.”
Yesterday’s ABC article had this:
“But the building is still listed, along with hundreds of others, as a target of DOGE's cuts.”
After doing my own check, I’m concluding that ABC and NY Times got that from elsewhere rather than researching the DOGE site, itself. I doubt it was intentional. Doing what I just did was time consuming and not easy to navigate.
So, combined with what Rep. Cole said, I’m now assuming The National Weather Center has been saved. That’s great news in a sea of a lot of bad news from my perspective.
From another BB as a response to my listing the good news and with which I agree:
“Well that’s good news. The fact that that building was even on the chopping block in the first place is still ridiculous…Elon probably didn’t even realize it with how carelessly he’s running DOGE.”
Me: Elon, Trump’s largest donor and the word’s richest person, shouldn’t have even been allowed to be in charge of this as I’ve often mentioned. Not only are there huge conflicts of interest but also it isn’t even Constitutional! Furthermore, he’s cutting with a meat cleaver!
Thanks, Larry!
Great work!
You don’t think this was intentional???
The basic standard for professional journalism is to verify stories from several indepdent sources.
You and I aremt even in that business and we proved it definitively wrong using 2 separate independent sources.
not only does journalism 101 have us do what we just did, I know they lied by PRETEMDIMG to attempt to confirm the story by CLAIMING to try to con tact OK lamakersfor comment but not getting a response back.
When was the last time that a major national news network , ABC News was unable to reach any law makers/politicians in the entire state on a top story about news that’s over a week old?
How about NEVER!
That is completely impossible to believe and them stooping this low to pretend they did it as part of their practicing journalism 101 shows how DEVIOUS and POLITICAL they really are.
ABC News, you just got busted by 2 independent, objective sources that did the job that is required of all professional journalists.
They and the others in the media intentionally EXPLOITING the severe weather outbreak and fake news for their political agenda ….instead of reporting the truth should be fired.
Instead, they are more likely to get a promotion in a corrupt, for profit industry that is most interested in SELLING stories with sensationalism and disasters TELLING readers what to think based on their constant spin to one side by political activist reporters.
Again, this defines mainstream journalism in 2025 and is not isolated. The entire Ukraine war has featured this exact type of reporting every day.
And what main source do we have telling us the news from the other side?
Fox news…..with even LOWER standards that makes the MSM news sources appear to actually be credible.
of course people just go to the news sources that spin the news so it lines up with their political ideology and never fact check things they want to believe like you just did, Larry!
Good on you!
Confirmation bias occurs when journalists seek out sources that support their pre-existing beliefs or perspectives. This is a significant danger because it skews the information and leads to an imbalanced narrative. For example, a journalist with a political lean could seek out sources that align with their views, ignoring sources that might present opposing viewpoints. This kind of biased reporting distorts the truth and alienates readers who might hold differing opinions.
Unreliable or biased sources can often exploit journalists, feeding them misleading or sensationalized information in exchange for attention or favor. This is particularly common with sources who have ulterior motives, such as political operatives, activists, or individuals seeking to manipulate public opinion. Journalists must be cautious about such exploitation and ensure their sources are not using the media for their own agendas.
The rise of “fake news” has become one of the most significant challenges to source credibility in modern journalism. Fake news refers to deliberately fabricated stories that are presented as legitimate news, often with the goal of influencing public opinion or causing harm. These falsehoods are typically shared on social media, where they can quickly go viral, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction
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In the case of this Storm Prediction Center story, it was much more than just confirmation bias, it was clearly intentional. The exploitation was not from the sources exploiting the reporters but the reporter(s) was THE ONE doing the exploitation. The reporter actually created the fake news by intentionally NOT presenting the easy to access, 1+ week old information that contradicted THEIR fake news message.
It's impossible to conceive that this was unintentional for a reporter representing such a major news network, ABC News.
The saddest thing is that this has become an accepted way to deliver news in this age.
Much of our news, when politics is involved is more like propaganda from political activists disguised as informative (very 1 sided) stories.
A huge reason is the fact that people's news sources are changing. TV news and hard copy newspapers are becoming a thing of the past with ratings and profits plunging because of the increasing competition from other sources that are stealing their money making ratings and circulation away.
So they have had to LOWER THEIR STANDARDS!
Sensationalizing and catastrophizing sells. Spinning the news to line up with ideologies is able to attract people with a similar political affiliation. Fox news has the franchise on this. The political activist reporters have more opportunity to express their biased views by the way they communicate the story.
I was the chief meteorologist for WEHT-TV in Evansville IN from 1983-1993 and was the weather part of the news for the Noon, 5, 6 and 10 pm shows on Mon-Fri thru that time. I understand the mentality of reporters and objective of broadcast media(profits) as well as anybody from it being my life for 11 years.
This is when I used to be good lookin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w7_CLn8QSs
By metmike - March 19, 2025, 11:58 a.m.
NASA is the single largest customer of Musk's company SpaceX.
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By metmike - March 19, 2025, 12:09 p.m.
The stupidity and cuts to an already incredibly efficient organization (every dollar spent pays off in very high multiples of return) continues to be done with a multi multi billionaire in charge who was not elected nor approved by Congress (who per the Constitution is supposed to be in charge) and who has many conflicts of interest:
Breaking: due to NOAA/NWS staffing issues, the following National Weather Service locations will launch only one weather balloon per day — rather than two.This limits how much data is being fed into weather models, and may slightly decrease accuracy over the northern U.S.
https://twitter.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1902839900279316786?
Thanks, Larry!
https://www.weather.gov/chs/upperair
The weather experienced on the ground is generated within the lowest 15 miles of the atmosphere. The National Weather Service (NWS) uses multiple platforms to observe the weather: Doppler radar, satellite, aircraft observations, automated surface observation stations, etc. However, the weather balloon remains the best platform for observing temperature, wind, relative humidity, and pressure above the ground. Weather balloons carry an instrument called a radiosonde which is tracked by specialized ground equipment.
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In my senior year in a synoptic meteorology weather lab class, we went to the NWS to observe them launching and tracking the data from a weather balloon. The one thing that always got me was the extreme waste(money-wise and environmental trash-wise). The box with all these expensive weather instruments is launched, gathers data 1 time then falls back to earth as trash, along with the huge, deflated balloon. There is an address on the box that allows people who find it to mail it with postage paid back to the NWS(where they can be reused) but most of them never come back. At least thats how it used to be. The data from these weather balloons is absolutely vital for weather forecasting.
Fortunately, weather balloons will soon be a thing of the past, replaced by cheaper, MUCH more efficient and MUCH more environmentally friendly, technically advanced weather drones.
However, it's a bad idea to have less balloon launchings in 2025 during key time frames when severe weather threatens BEFORE that data is completely replaced. I'm not sure why they picked these specific sites.
However, we should note that the NWS press release statement included:
"Offices will perform special observations as needed"
That tells me that they will still likely do the balloon launches when that data is most important(ahead of severe weather outbreaks, for instance) and reduce to just 1 balloon launch/day when the data is not that critical. ........until they are replaced with the new MUCH better in every way technology below.
https://www.thedronegirl.com/2025/03/20/meteoglider/
With an impressive reusability factor of up to 50 times, this sustainable solution significantly reduces the environmental impact of single-use radiosondes, which have historically been used. By retrieving and reusing radiosondes, companies and national weather services can cut costs by as much as 30% per launch site annually. That’s a potential savings of $50,000 per year per location.
What you are missing about Musk is that he cut Twitter's (now X) work force by what 1/2 to 2/3 and it operates just fine. Alot of people said it would not work, that you couldn't cut that much out, but it worked.
He has developed the most successful space program in the history of space travel. he superseded Boeing, Nasa, both economically and engineering wise.
X probably makes money, now. That is what a businessman's job is, and he excels at it. This is what politicians and government employees don't understand. Until a person has run a business its hard to understand that you have to cut the fat.
Thanks cutworm and agree.
a huge problem with government is elected officials not driven by a goalof efficiency But instead, self serving interests.
1. Voting to spend money for many special interest groups and projects that equate to more votes on Election Day.
2 Taking lobby bribes from powerful, wealthy corporations with the understanding that money will Yield a block buster return from government spending for their agenda/project.
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it can’t be fixed by a broken system of elected officials that ARE the exact problem.
people are upset because musk wasn’t elected(and beholden to the same entities which cause the corruption/wasteful spending)
that’s exactly why he CAN fix the problem.
Regardless, elon musk is a charlatan and I don’t rust him.
I stop short, at this time, of calling him a Charlatan, although we should keep our eyes open.
Charlatan a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.
"a self-confessed con artist and charlatan"
Synonyms for charlatan include shyster, quack, or faker
I would say that there is some evidence that he and his team know how to cut waste and unnecessary(stupid) spending. (I'm thinking about X) Because some of this causes pain does not
He has openly said he was trying to cut a trillion. WX has been to the website, reported that it was clumsy, but the info seemed to be there. Thats being open.
I know your opinion of electric cars, going to mars ect. But there is nothing immoral about him having these goals.
Thanks, cutworm,
This will be like a foreign language (again) to gullible people that are taken in by Musks charlatanism on mars.
1. Musk claims he’ll have humans on mars in the next 5 years. This is possible.
2. Musk claims that in 20 years or so that we will have 1 million people colonizing mars in SELF SUSTAINING fashion.
3. He claims that this will allow humans to escape our planet that we are destroying from the climate crisis! because of too much CO2.
4. The amount of well mixedCO2 right now on our planet is just under 430 parts per million. The amount of atmospheric CO2 on mars is 950,000 parts per million. More than 2,000 times the level on earth.
5. Mars atmosphere is 95% CO2 and there is 0 oxygen.
6. There is no organic matter on the planet. Nothing can grow there. Martian soil is toxic for plants and people.
Martian soil is toxic for plants and people because of the high level of perchlorates(chlorine). https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounders/soil-on-mars
7. The distance from the sun means that sunlight is too weak to conduct effective photosynthesis. Constant dust storms also block out the sun.
8. Temperatures are well below 0 for much of the time on much of the planet. The average temperature on Mars is about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius), although it can vary from minus 195 F (minus 125 C) near the poles during the winter to as much as a comfortable 70 F (20 C) at midday near the equator.
9. Because there is no atmosphere and no magnetic field on mars, the amount of damaging radiation from the sun That bombards the surface is 700 times the level on earth.
10. it took almost a year to rescue a handful of people stuck in space just above the earth. Somehow, in 2 decades we will be able to get 1 million people on mars using the same technology. Mars is 50 million miles away(distance varies a great deal), 200 times farther than the moon.
12. Even if this were possible , the cost would be in many trillions. For the smartest money managing guy in the world, when it comes to DOGE cuts, and spending money wisely, this is a complete diametrically opposed polar opposite, contradiction to spending money wisely.
Only the richest charlatan in the world would say the delusional things about humans colonizing mars so he can continue to steal more billions in funding from taxpayers and gullible investors in his mars nonsense.
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There is nothing immoral about him having these goals?
Wanna bet?
me having a delusional goal of bench pressing 1 million pounds or running a marathon in 5 second is not immoral and about as likely as his mars goals.
What makes it immoral in this case and him the king of the charlatans is that he uses his mars nonsense to steal tax dollars from government funding and from gullible investors that actually believe him and give their money to him based on a fraudulent, impossible goal.
cutworm,
This exact same message applies to you and our relationship here:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Putin's Lapdog in Chief
By metmike - March 23, 2025, 11:35 a.m.
My motivation here is a bit different than what you're used to.
I am on YOUR side. I am your friend, first and foremost.
I see you as a wonderful, very bright and sincere person that wants to make the world a better place. I know this is true from the hundreds of conversations with you on MarketForum!
The thing that bothers me most are these dishonest, often diabolical sources and information gatekeepers taking advantage of my friends. Stealing their intelligence for their self enriching schemes and political agenda.
Sad:
The Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC) provides timely, high quality climate data to the public. But as April 17, 2025, that data is not available to WRAL meteorologists to consider in their forecasts.
Founded in 1989, the office is located in Chapel Hill. Our WRAL Severe Weather Team has developed a great working relationship with them and rely on their data on a daily basis.
"They provide perspective on the weather of the day," said WRAL meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner.
WRAL meteorologist Brian Shrader added," Their data puts our weather in context."
WRAL uses SERCC data to:
Data from the SERCC provides a way for WRAL meteorologists to provide context to the weather on any given day.
Thanks, Larry!
From your story:
If NOAA approves a final year of funding for SERCC, it then goes to the Department of Commerce to approve. If that funding is rejected, we lose a critical data source. And if it’s rejected, there are no plans for additional contracts for regional climate centers.
Hopefully, they will approve the funding and nothing is lost.
From our weather pages:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/83844/#83853
Updated daily below:
https://mrcc.purdue.edu/cliwatch/watch.htm#curMonths
Support for all MRCC-hosted products and services is currently suspended as of April 17, 2025, due to a lapse in federal funding from the Department of Commerce through NOAA.
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There is likely going to be some minor issues and loss of services which I will post here honestly but my main problem on this topic is the "yellow journalism" and sensationalizing with fake news by the mainstream media on any topic related to Trump.
If you read this particular article you get a completely distorted view of reality.
This is actually my field of expertise!
In Paducah, Kentucky, the weather service confirmed a record 22 tornadoes for the region, as well as a new four-day rainfall record of 15.59 inches.
WOW, Paducah! That's actually OUR LOCAL NWS!
Let me show some of the threads on MarketForum, the past 2 months, which have featured one of the stormiest periods in the middle of our country in the last few decades ( NOT caused by climate change which REDUCES violent tornadoes and many severe storm dynamics).
On 2 dozen+ days, I spent almost all day long, tracking severe weather using NWS products the entire time. I've used these products constantly since they became available.
How much difference in their availability and comprehensiveness did I notice?
None! There could have been some minor changes that I didn't notice but they did NOT impact the quality of their service in a substantive way.
4-4-25 Continuation of weather threats
26 responses |
Started by metmike - April 4, 2025, 12:50 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110908/
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3-30-25 TORNADO outbreak on 4-2-25
37 responses |
Started by metmike - March 30, 2025, 3:08 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110789/
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3-25-25 Severe weather for 3-30-25
26 responses |
Started by metmike - March 25, 2025, 10:51 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110671/
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Tracking Severe Weather-3-14-25
29 responses |
Started by metmike - March 14, 2025, 10:58 a.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110445/
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Severe weather outbreak 3-12-25
Started by metmike - March 12, 2025, 11:46 a.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110407/
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Windbag Storms! 3-5-25
Started by metmike - March 6, 2025, 1:41 a.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/110314/
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You can get all the comprehensive weather here with most of these maps constantly updated. We should note that many of these products are AUTOMATED.
With regards to computer forecast models, they process the amount of information, using thousands of math equations, at a speed comparable to the equivalent to what 1 million humans could do, for instance.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/83844/
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So my point is not that the cuts are causing some negative impacts. I agree strongly with Larry that this is an area of government service, using tax payer money that provides a huge bang for our bucks. As such, cuts should be careful not to impact services that are actually worth every cent.
The point is:
MSM!
Please stop sensationalizing, exaggerating, embellishing, alarming and misleading on this and everything else you report on related to President Trump or other politicized topics!!!
Do your jobs as professional journalists and use authentic facts that accurately and objectively report, especially on both sides, when your strong personal views line up with only 1 side.
Please separate your reporting from your personal views.
Sadly, many in this profession with the national media in 2025 actually do it BECAUSE it provides them the opportunity to impose their biased views on readers and viewers. They are certainly sincere and believe in their causes(many are just-some I agree with)................but that's NOT their jobs when reporting most news.
Same thing but different topic:
Related to this.
The droughts and disastrous financials for farmers in the early/mid 1980s that absolutely justified the government stepping in and spending massive amounts of money to save most of them..........but they were abandoned by the Reagan administration for years.
At a great cost to the farming community and to countless others.
Yes, there is MUCH too MUCH government spending and waste but sometimes, we need the government to step in and save Americans from disasters.
Please scroll down at this link:
By metmike - April 21, 2025, 4:27 p.m.
Here’s some good news for a change:
The Southeast Regional Climate Center products and services have been restored as our
&
contract has been renewed. We very much appreciate the support we received from our many users.. :-)
This is great news, Larry!
We are both posting at this thread at the same time!
So far, despite all the hoopla and this temporary issue, I can't find any MAJOR, longer term problems with the cuts that impact the NWS.
