Slashdot Mirror
Going Off the Fiscal Cliff Could Mean Missing the Next Hurricane Sandy
Lasrick writes "Alex Knapp has an excellent article pointing out that NOAA satellites enabled NOAA to predict the 'left hook' of Hurricane Sandy into the Eastern Seaboard, which in turn enabled local governments to prepare. Those satellites are at risk and there will be a gap of about a year between 2017 and 2018, when the old ones fail and the new ones are scheduled to launch. There's no alternative to getting that data, and the so-called 'fiscal cliff' will drive an 8% cut to NOAA's satellite program, so that those replacement satellites may go up even later than 2018."
If you have a better idea, please elaborate. For some reason completely oblivious to you, preparation against catastrophic events costs money.
If you have a better idea, please elaborate. For some reason completely oblivious to you, preparation against catastrophic events costs money.
The problem I have is that when times are good, governments spend the excess on crap, and then when it comes time to make cuts, they whine about how they'll have to cut essential services. We see it all the time with local governments as property taxes fluctuate. When revenues are down they say they have to cut police and fire departments and teachers, but there's never any talk about cutting what was _added_ during the fat years. We always had teachers and police and fire departments during the previous lean years, so what's the problem with going back to how it was?
We're seeing the same thing on the federal level, the difference being that there haven't been good times (ie: surplus) in over a decade. Replace "good times" with "when we're borrowing even more from China."
We had money to fund NOAA before the current people in charge borrowed more money than all previous administrations combined, why can't we go back to that? I think that's what the GP is getting at.
How is this Insightful? How about -1 Trite. Is it that hard to believe that government can and does provide useful services, especially those that have such a long time horizon and capital investment that the market will not provide them? Is it also that hard to understand that these valuable programs and the people who run them (at a huge discount relative to the private sector) suffer under the vagaries of political brinksmanship?
How much does one launch cost? How much does it cost to blow up innocent people (women and children included though I value them neither more nor less than males) by drone just about every day of the year.
I really don't know where my priorities are at -- what the fuck is wrong with me for valuing interesting scientific data over blowing up random people and making enemies of the survivors.
Yeah -- a big FUCK YOU to that. It's totally warranted and really, not even a tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of percent harsh enough for the total FUCKHEADS in WA DC.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good