Nominee to oversee NWS wants to privatize weather forecasting

Wildfire Today ^ | October 15, 2019 | Bill Gabbert

[Norski]

Barry Myers is the former CEO of Accuweather

NOAA NWSThe person that has been nominated to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, thinks the NWS should reduce or eliminate the weather analysis and forecasting products it makes available to taxpayers. Barry Meyers resigned from his CEO position at Accuweather, a company founded by his brother Joel, in order to improve his chances of being confirmed by the Senate and Congress to run NOAA. The executives at Mr. Meyers’ family business would like to continue receiving weather data at no charge that NOAA and the NWS collect from weather stations and a constellation of satellites. They would then sell it back to taxpayers and private companies with little or no competition from the NWS.

Mr. Meyers was first nominated to head NOAA in October, 2017. He was approved by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee but his appointment has not been voted on by the full Senate. If finally confirmed he would be only the second head of NOAA that served without having a science degree.

Of the three elements that affect wildland fire behavior — weather, fuels, and topography — weather is the one that changes by the minute, hour, and day and is the most difficult to analyze and predict. Firefighters can see the vegetation and topography in front of them, but they can’t stand on a hill and predict with accuracy humidity, wind speed and direction for the next 72 hours.

It remains to be seen how privatizing weather forecasting would affect wildland fire management. Which company, if any, would issue Red Flag Warnings for the United States? The Weather Channel, Accuweather, or WeatherUnderground? Would Incident Meteorologists that are deployed to a fire with an Incident Management Team be employees of one of those companies?

The video below from “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” explores the concept of a businessman with conflicts of interest taking over NOAA and the NWS. Mr. Oliver briefly expresses his opinion about a politician, but the video is predominately about the concept of a former CEO of a weather company running NOAA. Warning: it contains crude language.

[Drango]

OK with me.

[Right Wing Assault]

Can you imagine Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey running NWS? What would that be like?

[Macoozie]

NWS, as a national service built to promote safety, understanding, economic activity and development should be a government service for the people.

IF it is non-partisan, professional, accurate, current science, national defense . . . The list goes on.

Imagine Patton having to pay for a weather forecast?
Rescue teams in remote areas? Farmers across the land?

So this guy gets the business from the smart brother. Contributes to poli campaigns to get nominated to run Globull NASa. Now wants to cut a slice of the pork-pie for himself, pay nothing, and sell it back one spoonful atcarime for whatever the political climate will bear.

Why be a criminal? What’s legal is so much more profitable!

[jjotto]

It won’t happen without limiting liability. NWS can’t be sued.

Doesn’t the military have their own weather forecasting?

[CARTOUCHE]

When I was a USAF forecaster back in the day the USAF had Global Weather Central (GWC) at Offut AFB, NE and the Navy had Fleet Weather Central at Monterey, CA. There have been lots of ‘realignments’ over the years but those places were strictly for support of the individual branches of service.

Question 1: Will a privatized service have the financial ability to replace a satellite when one goes down without government subsidy?

Question 2: What’ll all those unneeded NWS Meteorologists and their overpaid and numerous overlords in Silver Springs and DC do?

And finally: What happens when the privatized company(s) goes bust?

[Norski]

Excellent point. Thank you.