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New Bill Would Ban Public NOAA Weather Data
ckokotay writes "Here we go again. Apparently for-pay weather companies (specifically Accuweather) have lobbied Senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill to ban the National Weather Service from 'competing.' The NOAA just made data available for free on the internet in XML format. Essentially, that means no more free data, and the possible elimination of the NOAA web presence all together. Nothing like being able to buy off a clueless Senator - lets hope the rest do not fall in line, as I for one, do not like to pay for my information twice." This debate picks up where the last one left off. According to the article, the bill's biggest critics are complaining of the bill's vague wording which makes it unclear what exactly is being banned.
here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
He is an extremley conservative senator, and so Dan Savage of Savage Love decided to name something horrible after him and try to overtake Santorum's official site as the number one site on Google. He succeeded... Hilarity Ensued. Check it out!
http://www.pterrys.com
There are many, many senators and representatives who are just conduits for corruption. Most people in the U.S. are overwhelmed and just don't want to know how corrupt their government is.
I wrote a short article that discusses a small percentage of that corruption -- Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government
You're going to have a lot of angry/annoyed pilots once they find out they can't use websites such as aviationweather.gov, duats.com, and duat.com just to name a few.
Yet another stupid bill brought to you by Corporate America(R).
...write him a letter or give him a call:
Santorum, Rick- (R - PA) Class I
511 DIRKSEN
SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6324
Web Form: santorum.senate.gov/contactform.cfm
Source
Here's the text of S. 786. Thankfully, no co-sponsors yet. Here's hoping that most Congresspeople see this bill for what it is - lunacy.
I wonder this will include GOES satellite data. This will be a major blow to me becuase I run my school's weather center. This is stupid if you ask me? Hopefully this won't spell the end for the NWS.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
It'll never work, unless you are a political contributor to Senator Santorum's political campaign.
The good news is, it's cheap! Only $3550.00 for the favor.
(Thanks to BooBoo at Fark for the link)
No sig
made that happen. Just do the google search on santorum" and see what comes up.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Now, I only worked (past tense) for the NZ MetSvc for 10 months so I've probably got this stuff wrong. :)
o c
My understanding is that by agreement national weather services share data with each other without charge - other than data distribution charges.
If the US started to charge for this, they might run into problems with (say) the UKMO.
It is standard practice for met organisations to make their model data freely available, Environment Canada does this:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/grib/index_e.html
The WMO lays it out pretty clearly:
http://www.wmo.ch/web/pla/Res40Cg-XII.d
If the US govt decides not to offer XML anymore, that's fine, they'll probably have to provide the grib... Grib is a lot bigger than the XML...
Google for "free grib data". GRIB is the file format used by the computer models.
So, if we really wanted to, we could parse the GRIB data and relay it as XML for everyone else.
Jason Pollock
His Washington D.C. Office number is: 202-224-6324 I just left a messages expressing how it seems unfair to the very people paying for NOAA, the American taxpayer, to pay for a service that would only be available through corporations. If we could slashdot his phone message service with many calls, at least he will know that the american people want free weather service!
use the data from the Meteorological Services of Canada (MSC is the Canadian equivalent of the NWS).
our favorite senator from pennsylvania who believes the first amendment should be done away with because "some kinds of free speech can offend people"
... whenever he opens his mouth, i'm offended. so, without it, he couldn't speak any more ... hmm
maybe he's right
vodka, straight up, thank you!
This Link has links to everything about the bill.
Thanks, Google.
The Bill's number is S.786
Title: A bill to clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Weather Service, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Santorum, Rick [PA] (introduced 4/14/2005) Cosponsors (None)
Latest Major Action: 4/14/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
I know it works in Canada. I use it in Canada. However the data comes from stateside. From the Gnome Applet's help file: The Weather report applet downloads weather information from the U.S National Weather Service (NWS) servers, including the Interactive Weather Information Network (IWIN)
This likely expains why radar maps and forecasts are unavailable for my city.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
"The cost was only secondary. Remind me again, how will this bill better serve the public?"
/. posts. The opposing viewpoint is that the NOAA is wasting taxpayer money providing these services for free. Their arguemnet is the public is better served paying less taxes for service they don't necessarily need.
RTFA. Don't rely on biased
Vote for Pedro
Despite of international agreements, the German Wether Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) doesn't publish data for free. They sell them to commercial companies which provide forecasts for media. The DWD publishes weather forcasts ans warnings but not the data the forecasts are based on. Tzey worward station measurements to other weather serveces for free according to the WMO agreement but the other European weather services don't publish them either because most of them have similar policies than the DWD. But the NOAA publishes them and so European hobby meteorologists get their weather data from the NOAA. The really strange thing is that a lot of commercial services in Europe obtain the free GFS oputput and plot weather maps from that which are copyrighted to them. So we may have the crazy situation that the national weather services in Europe such as DWD or UKMO would like the bill and ther commercial services won't.
Senator Santorum's bill would probably cause a measurable loss of life, given that numerous spotters such as myself rely upon NWS's Internet-accessible data to assist us in our spotting activities.
I just returned from spotting in extreme southwest Iowa (and am actually headed back out, as we have flash flooding to assess). I'm a trained weather spotter (not a chaser, mind you) and am an amateur radio operator. I'm one of two active spotters covering the far southwest-most county. Unlike spotting in a major metro (where I was first active), rural spotting often requires you work without a lot of coordination from net control at the NWS offices. We have to move to cover the storm, and this requires we watch NWS radar data very closely - both to allow us to be positioned to get a good view of activity (e.g. the north of most typical Midwestern supercells is a great place for hail but not for visibility - get southeast of it!), and to cover our backsides when things suddenly change and we're too close to the action.
I've used Intellicast, Accuweather and other sites. Their free data is delayed, poor, lacking sufficient detail, and simply not usable. As I donate annual training, several thousand dollars of equipment, radios, mobile broadband Internet, and my time, I'm not about to also purchase a subscription to Accuweather just so I can assist NWS and save lives. (A note about the NWS XML example: I've actually prototyped an XML to APRS relay of NWS data that uses their XML feeds - it's not just webpages we require!)
The people that will suffer will be those of you who are not weather aware and count on the quiet volunteers out there watching your back. Santorum's bill might prohibit our access to open source information and provide a handful of investors with financial gain, but it'll be someone's grandma in a rural community who will pay for that gain.
Please email your Senators on this bill and let them know that open source information is our property. Your weather spotters and ultimately our communities depend on this access.
S 786 states that the NWS must publish the information it collects and generates to the general public immediately. It also states that the NWS can't publish information in so doing it competes with the private sector. So the NWS is actually prevented from making weather reports (and this would, in fact, include hurricane warnings).
The military wont be without Weather data. Indeed they have some very interesting reaserch projects going on.
= full&PHOT=yes&AREA=pacific/eastern/pacus&PROD=vapo r&TYPE=sat&NAV=epac_westcoast&ARCHIVE=Latest&CGI=e pac_westcoast.cgi&CURRENT=20020829.2030.goes-10.wv .x.pacus.x.jpg&MOSAIC_SCALE=15
S IZE=full&PHOT=yes&AREA=pacific/eastern/monterey_ba y&PROD=vis&TYPE=ssmi&NAV=epac_westcoast&DISPLAY=La test&ARCHIVE=Latest&CGI=epac_westcoast.cgi&MOSAIC_ SCALE=15
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/researchproj.htm
I get what i need from here...
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat-bin/display10?SIZE
And here...
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat-bin/display10.cgi?
If you read The Onion, or more specifically the Savage Love column in their A.V. Club, you wouldn't need to google for the definition.
Sen. Santorum rated this honor for some of his past comments and deeds.
For this one he deserves a liberal dousing of the stuff.
...carrier dead.....
More than half.
Just barely
In fact, the unsavory use of the word was coined by gay sex-columnist Dan Savage to mock the Senator for his anti-gay political stances.
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/ind_detail/MYERS| JOEL+N+DR|STATE+COLLEGE|PA|16801|ACCU+WEATHER/
Presented by the Federal Election Commission
Contributions Arranged By Type And Recipient
MYERS, JOEL N DR
STATE COLLEGE, PA 16801
ACCU WEATHER
Contributions to Political Committees
SANTORUM, RICHARD J
VIA SANTORUM 2000
05/16/2000 1000.00 20020202948
06/07/2000 300.00 20020202948
SANTORUM, RICHARD J
VIA SANTORUM 2006
10/09/2003 250.00 24020050667
12/31/2003 250.00 24020050668
12/31/2003 1750.00 24020050667
Total Contributions: 3550.00
And here is the same content in LISP:
Now note: Is there or is there not whitespace before the "C" in "Contents"? The LISP makes it explicit, no matter how you break the lines. XML does not.
Now, you can make lots of rules to try to sort out what the XML expression should do, and there are such rules, but notice that you can pretty well figure out exactly what the LISP expression means without my telling you anything at all, just by looking at it.
This, in a nutshell, is why XML sucks: It's a way more complex syntax for a problem that was solved 40 years ago.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./tem p/~c109lAuHez::
Here's the bill and TFA is right. Also, it's very short, which tells me the senator from PA has no idea why this is a bad idea. DO fill out a web form for your senator. Make this bill die on thefloor of the senate.
Gorkman
It's misleading that the article suggests NOAA just scrapped a policy that stated what the National Weather Service's role would be in relation to private industry. A law had been in effect defining these roles, but the law had expired. In absence of such regulation, NOAA found an applicable OMB requiring them to disseminate the data in an open format. NOAA has made an effort to comply with the regulation and follow the law.
It is absolutely false that the NWS spends lots of time producing forecasts of warm and sunny. This is nothing short of a lie. Forecasts are issued twice daily in most situations. It will still be necessary for the NWS to produce a forecast in all cases because even if it's warm and sunny today and tomorrow, it's very useful for example to monitor and be aware of a storm system that will have an impact a few days out. Forecasts are produced more often or are updated when a change in the weather is expected, such as showers and thunderstorms. This is referred to as nowcasting and is a necessary function of the NWS. While I can't cite this as a fact, I would expect a much greater amount of time is spent nowcasting or forecasting significant weather than is spent producing these forecasts of warm and sunny.
The National Hurricane Center disseminates information about tropical cyclones and is not disseminating these forecasts of warm and sunny that the private industry suggests NOAA spends too much time doing. The NHC has an extremely important function and is working to improve its products for the purpose of providing better alerts to the general public about approaching threats. To suggest the NHC is hampered by such duties as producing warm and sunny forecasts is a lie.
Furthermore, it is extremely important that accurate weather data be available to emergency managers and to weather spotters. These are important beneficiaries of data such as radar data and nowcasts produced by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center. While emergency managers will likely pay the fee and get access to data provided by private industry, it is less likely that spotters, which are the general public, will be willing to pay. Effectively, this could cripple an important means of detecting severe weather. I guarantee that without accurate radar data, I'm not going to try to spot a tornado and relay the information in; it's just too dangerous.
I am a meteorologist and I have also heard the opinions of many other meteorologists that I attend school with. The consensus about companies such as the Weather Channel is that they do not provide accurate timely data. Their on-air personalities generally have little knowledge of meteorology. They operate their own forecast model which my fellow meteorologists do not believe produces quality and reasonably accurate solutions. And I've heard that many of the actual meteorologists at the Weather Channel lost their jobs. Anyone who's watched their broadcasts probably has noticed their tendencies to focus on the East and West Coasts even when the middle of the country is receiving severe weather. They hardly do a reliable job of disseminating information about potentially dangerous weather to the public. Is this really who we want in charge of forecasting and providing information to the public?
I find this bill to be based around lies and to have the ability to be extremely harmful to the ability to detect severe weather. The Senate should not approve this bill.
Why not do both: write to your senator AND the papers?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As an ex-employee of AccuWeather, I'm really not surprised to see this. Joel Myers is a corrupt tyrant. Slimeball Pennsylvania politicians were always coming into the building to meet with him. There's a picture hanging in the hallway of Myers shaking hands with Bill Clinton. I'm not surprised he has Santorum in his pocket now.
During my years at AccuWeather, there seemed to be only two things Joel Myers tried to accomplish - to stop NOAA, and to prevent the employees from creating a union. Joel Myers treats his employees like slave labor. He entices young meteorology students from Penn State into signing contracts with them - then works them rediciously long hours without compensation. If you want to quit, they will sick their horde of corporate lawyers on you quicker than you can bat an eyelash. Their lawyers write up big complicated contracts with their customers, which happen to have automatic renewal clauses if AccuWeather is not notified by certified mail within 60 days of the end of the contract. This is the way they run their business. They don't give a shit about their employees, customers, or the general welfare of American citizens who support NOAA with their tax money.
Anyone in Happy Valley reading this, avoid working at this place like the plague!
By the way, for those of you who don't know Rick Santorum, you may remember him from a few years ago when he made national headlines by comparing homesexuality to incest and beastiality.
Several years ago, before Rick Santorum was a big shot politician, I was living in Pittsburgh and he was running for some local office, going door to door trying to get support. I was in middle school at the time, in the yard playing with my dog. She saw Santorum coming and didn't like him at all.. she ran to him, started barking and growling. I guess she was a good judge of character.
http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email .html
That's a great site for looking up your Senators and Representatives. I wrote Virginia's senators and Pennsylvania's senators over this issue. I probably got the link from Slashdot originally so I'm returning the favor if this is where I originally found it.
I think this is a case of a Senator putting a business agenda ahead of the welfare of taxpayers. Our tax money pays for the National Weather Service and we have every right to see the weather data via our taxpayer funded organization.
Enron were all predominantly Democrat friends
Uh, no.
Never, in fact.
Global Crossing and Worldcom tilted marginally Republican, but close enough to call it even.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I have no disagreement with the rest of your comment.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
I had trouble finding the bill with just the above information (ie, a search for 786 on http://senate.gov found nothing). I found it currently identified as S.786.IS with the title "National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005". Here's a link to the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:1:./tem p/~c1094gbzVv::
Maybe this is old news to most of you, but I thought I'd try to help the people that are new at it (like me, obviously.)