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Trump Administration Wants To Fire 248 Forecasters At the National Weather Service (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters. The idea, which is part of the 2019 fiscal budget proposal and caught the agency by surprise, is being derided by the NWS's labor union, which says the cuts will impact the reliability of future weather forecasts and warnings. All totaled, the Weather Service faces cuts of $75 million in the initial proposal. Some or all of those cuts could be jettisoned before the bill is voted upon. "We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
Further reading: The Washington Post
Further reading: The Washington Post
After a bunch of so-called deficit hawks and fiscal conservatives were finished with their 1 trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, they had to do something they could point at in November to reclaim their conservative bona fides. So they're going to attempt gutting every non-military program in the federal budget.
#DeleteChrome
Eliminate the NWs entirely, there are numerous private sources of weather forcasters so the government needs to step away from yet another unconstitutional government program.
... that Trump wants to fire them in order to hold them responsible for the bad weather?
Can any history nerds supply any information about a world power transforming itself into a 3rd world country as quickly as the US is? I know that other countries have fallen due to war, but have any other countries/societies/cultures fallen so far, so quickly, due to their own stupidity, as suddenly as the US?
I don't respond to AC's.
I can hear it already...
"There is no global warming! You people must be wrong. Fake weather news!!!!!!"
Over 5000 employees, and over a billion dollar annual budget.
248 jobs is a 5% reduction in staffing overall. $75 million is less that 7.5% of their budget. And these numbers were bandied about with the expectation that they'd be lowered after push back.
When most of the work in forecasting is increasingly automated and computerized, it makes sense to trim the fat.
But of course the labor union is going to get upset. That's what labor unions do when told the truth.
300 million is the hurricane damage to a single yacht.
Perhaps in the future, the parable of futility will be President Trump, holding back climate change.
human.
It's not like any big things like emergency preparedness will be effected. In case the previous sentence did not come across properly, it was intended to be incredibly sarcastic. Weather forecasters help emergency management agencies and accurate forecasts are critical for helping to save lives and avert disasters.
the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters
Geez, who rained on his parade?
This actually makes sense. We don't really need someone to predict how many times Trump will help those devestated by natural disasters and when he will do it. Zero, and never. Climate change isn't real if nobody pays attention to the climate! It's the Trump-Schroedinger principle!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
In other words, Trump is pushing against the water for three years, [...]
He could always just declare war on Neptune.
(Yes, I know Caligula didn't really do that. Don't care, it's a good story.)
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You obviously know absolutely nothing about how weather forecasting works.
Shouldn't they have seen it coming if they were any good at their jobs?
The Spanish Inquisition of Psychometrics; Burning all the heretics.
Somebody should create an app that shows you how fscking stupid your post is!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
He actually does, once you apply a simple Costanza transform on them.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
... their forecasts are FAKE NEWS. Sad. Listen, don't blame the hurricane only. Their were bad houses as well, ok? Bad things on both sides.
I don't need 248 to tell me what a single app can do in real time with better accuracy.
Lol, right.
You don't need weather forecasters.
You don't need weather satellites.
You don't need weather stations.
You don't need weather-forecasting models.
You don't need supercomputers to run the models.
You don't need a communication infrastructure to deliver the results.
You just need an app. Wow, the savings.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Not for any silly reasons regarding hypothetical global warming, just that it seems a bit short-sighted given the need to, you know, watch and predict weather and issue warnings and forecasts and stuff. I think this idea is kinda dumb, definitely.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Why not eliminate 247 white house staffing positions? The country saves money, the public doesn't notice anything different, we're good, right?
Oops, I forgot the #1 rule of cutting government spending. You don't cut the waste where it's painless, you cut the meat where it hurts like hell. Then the politicians say "See! they don't like it when we cut spending!".
I've never witnessed a hurricane.
A few tropical cyclones maybe, but never a hurricane.
Hey dumbshit ... You hear it because it is true. People are going homeless and hungry without more cuts. And no, it isn't because they are lazy and don't want to work. In fact the Dotard hates the immigrants who are willing to work 100 teams harder than he ever has the most. He doesn't resent them because they are "their worst". He hates them because they emphasize what a useless, lazy, incompetent and retarded fuckwad he is.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Obviously these cuts were selected by who is expected to fight back the least, not how critical the work done there is. A sure way into disaster and one prepared by utter incompetents.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Further, the union president is the last credible source. His primary job is to extract money from the treasury to line pockets.
No, his job is to protect the jobs of union-members. That makes him a biased source, but not necessarily a dishonest one.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If it came down to such a simpleton equation Trump would have been collecting unemployment you years before he didn't write "The Art of the Douche^^^^^eal"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yea, the app downloads the reports from NWS and delivers them to your phone combined with ads and market research trackers. It's almost pure profit and they'll have to raise the price to $10 if we eliminate free NWS access for parasitic app businesses.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Because it would take every single adult in USA paying $5 a year to make up the billion dollars it costs to run NWS
I suppose they could add a levy on everything that depends on it
Like flying, fishing, farming, construction, anything involving satellites...
A government agency screaming disaster if they take any cuts is nothing you do not hear from every single agency.
True, but sometimes their screaming is justified. You'd have to look into it beyond the assumption that government == bad.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's not a lie if you believe in it?
#DeleteFacebook
"We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
;)
To government bureaucrats a decrease in their next years budget increase is a hideous cut that will kill millions.
I say we compromise with a 10% across the board real cut to all non-defense, discretionary federal spending right now. If this actually happens. Lets hit defense, let some pentagon desk generals, staffs, drivers, house maids, yada, yada go, close most over seas bases, let most countries worry about their own defense, and cut the size of our military.
Then once that is done we will need to deal with discretionary spending (yes the so called entitlements) since that is where all the real money goes.
America went bankrupt a decade or so ago, along with several states. The government bureaucrats and politicians have been successful hiding this fact from most American people. But the (you know what) will hit the fan in the next 5 - 10 years and this whole house of cards is coming down.
Wonder what the spenders and takers will say then.
Just my 2 cents
*Using publicly funded satellite and sensor data. But we'll just 'add some value' and sell it back to you.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's a nice, and in this case, very accurate addition to the "under the bus" analogy.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters...
Well, with a track record like that, they clearly had it coming, didn’t they?
Those firings ought to teach the remaining staff a lesson!
Make the weather great again!
This widget fell apart because there's not enough screws holding it together! I know, let's punish it by pulling out more screws! That'll teach it for falling apart.
Who the simple fuck do you think FEEDS the goddam apps?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Slashdot marks the posts of iPhone users in accordance with Leviticus 13:45.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Aren't there meteorologists all over the country working for private news agencies whose whole job it is to do a barely passable job of predicting the weather just like NWS?
They want to part out the vital functions of a modern government, and let their donor class pocket as much of money as they can get on the back end. Don't be fooled into thinking that there is a genuine ideology motivating this, only a few of these guys are true believers, and quite a few of those are genuine radicals.
Deficits are a good thing for them, if it helps them loot and destroy the government sooner. It's hard to effectively eliminate the necessary government operations and programs with a wide base of popular support unless you create a crisis first.
Satellites aren't run by forecasters.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
If "Trump" is proposing eliminating 248 NWS Forecasters, exactly how many are there currently?
Apparently there are 122 NWS forecasting offices
So "Trump" is proposing the elimination of, on average, 2 forecasters per office - that doesn't seem so bad - but how many are there in those 122 forecasting offices?
It seems the NWS may already have over 248 "vacancies" currently in it's organization, so this may be nothing more than "Trump" adopting current staffing levels, rather than actually cutting people from eliminating positions.
For what it's worth, it seems the NWS has nearly five thousand employees, cutting 248 forecasters represents a 5% cut in staffing.
You may have noticed I put the name Trump in quotes - that's because only a fool would imagine that a sitting President has anything to do with actual staffing levels in an organization, but in today's hyper-political environment, many tend to refer to any action undertaken by anyone in an administration to be the responsibility of the sitting President - oddly, just a few years ago no one said things like "Obama illegally blocked tax-exempt applications by conservative groups" or "Obama illegally encouraged/facilitated running guns into Mexico in a program called "Fast n' Furious"" and so on - I wonder why that is?
Ken
After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters.
Is the administration (not Trump, Trump has nothing to do with staffing levels at NWS, get over your Trump Delusion Syndrome) eliminating unfilled positions or eliminating actual employees currently in those positions?
So we've had $300 MILLION in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, etc.? If that's the case, then why are spending BILLIONS to repair cities like Houston and the island territory of Puerto Rico to the tune of $125-150 Billion and $94 Billion respectively?
I'm curious, is the argument that there would be greater damages without our current number of forecasters, or is the argument that we'd have more hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, etc. if not for the current staffing levels at NWS?
Ken
Because it would take every single adult in USA paying $5 a year to make up the billion dollars it costs to run NWS
I think you're a bit off on the number of "adults" in America, but let's put that aside - that actual NWS budget stands at just over $1 Billion dollars, exactly who do you think is currently covering that $1 Billion dollar budget each year? Every working American, that's who.
Ken
It's not like it is going to be doom and gloom for weather prediction. Most of those cuts should be in management, even though they have a $1B budget and the meteorologists are coming in at $28k/year salary, they're not exactly attracting talent.
How about we start with the union reps, they are collecting $50/pay period and couldn't even negotiate a deal to prevent this or keep the service from becoming top-heavy. Then remove every manager that is not directly managing 15 or more employees.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The chart shows that they did the right thing in the 1930s. Did not matter how deep the depression got, they always balanced the books. Worked real good.
Then that evil Rosevelt ran up a huge deficit just because there was a war on. Crippled the country. The depression was over, no more dirt cheap labor.
Moving on, we see the deficit from Obama during the Global Financial Crisis. Weak. He should have been tough like Hover in the depression. When the economy shrinks you tighten your belt. Stands to reason. Then we could have had another result like the 1930s.
Reaganomics, on the other hand, is clear and purposeful. Cut taxes, increase military spending so you can create a crisis and then cut those socialist services that rot the morality of the working man.
There already was an 8% across the board cut five years ago.
"We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
I'll support the NWS when they begin delivering accurate and reliable forecasts. Now, whenever precip of any type is involved (especially frozen precip), forecasts are typically pretty stinking inaccurate.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Selling socialism to the richer middle class that Trump is generating will not work.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Yeah ... Go fuck yourself dumbshit. On Slashdot many of us know about auto-miscorrect. You'll figure it out someday.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No. "Do the opposite" ... It's a Sienfeld episode.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
OK. I just realized that you were referring to another Seinfeld meme. DOH ... Mea Culpa
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You do realize that if the Trump administration gets everything it wants at NWS, they will STILL have a $1BN+ annual budget. He's not shuttering the agency, he's taking funding from $1.114BN to $1.024BN - oh, the horror!
Ken
But the computers are (or rather the computer models are).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I'm a professional pilot and this is a very bad idea for the safety of air travel. We rely on weather forecasting to make decisions about how much fuel to carry, what diverts to plan, and to make decisions if the flight can be safely conducted or not. The public benefits in many not so obvious ways from weather forecasting. Getting on an airplane with a good expectation that you will safely reach your destination, or not run out of fuel going to a weather divert is just one of them. The President should think of that next time he gets on Air Force One, or in his private 757. Making weather information freely and publicly available increases the safety for everyone in the air and on the ground.
My political rant for today: I suspect there's a lobbying bonanza going on in the background and all of these privatization initiatives coming out of this administration and this congress have more to do with cronyism than the common good. When a Republic stops representing the common good, it is no longer a Republic, but a Plutocracy or an oligarchy. This is the bigger issue of our time, not collusion, not Trump, and not any of the other issues being touted in the media. Having an NWS is in the public's best interest.
The thing about that is it's true. Trump might not be a liar if he is truly delusional (not taking bets on either frankly), especially since the two are not mutually exclusive.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Or close to it. Estimates for Harvey alone are $180 billion. Of course 300 billion is larger than 300 million, but 300 million is not a useful lower bound to offer.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The point is not by how much the Trump administration is cutting the budget, it's where.
Links in TFA indicate that an RIF in the forecaster staff was contemplated before Trump's residency. Fine. No union can expect to get a no-layoffs clause in its contract.
The point here is that it's the Trump administration, not the NWS, that is indicating where the cuts need to be applied. That's micromanaging.
And per TFA, the cuts "caught the agency by surprise" as well, not just the union.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
As someone pointed out above, this is less than 5% of their workforce. You've fallen for the union propaganda, which is to instill fear that any cuts will lead to the direst possible consequences.
Annnnd wait for the cuts...
People are going homeless and hungry without more cuts.
We spend enough already to bring everyone above the poverty line. Obviously, they're not getting it. If you actually care about helping the poor, you should be fighting to get government out of the charity racket, because they SUCK at it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We don't do it to lepers anymore, only to iPhone users. The corruption of their apostrophes Slashdot's way of making them say "Unclean! Unclean!".
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The headline is a lie. The Trump Administration hasn't proposed firing anyone. If you look at the story this story is based on, it says "248 forecasting positions". Reading further, the agency currently has more open forecasting positions than that. So basically, if this 5% cut to their budget was fully implemented, they simply wouldn't get to hire as many new people. Oh, the drama!!!
You're worried about where the cuts will happen? Let's read the underlying WP article some more and see if we can figure out how they decided that:
Oh, you mean they did a study back when Obama was President and looked at where stuff could get streamlined and realigned and are basing this budget proposal on that? How sinister!!!
This is much ado about nothing. The only travesty here is that they aren't proposing to cut more. Why, this proposal will take the NWS almost back down to the budget level they had in 2015, when they couldn't get anything at all done!!!
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
You don't need supercomputers to run the models.
You might want to read the article there numbnuts. They just passed an additional 100 million for supercomputers and related infrastructure for the NWS last week above and beyond their normal budget. The fact of the matter is with proper computer support the NWS no longer needs more than 2 people on the clock in a region at any given time.
no one said things like "Obama [**inser crazy thing**]"
Sure they did, they said that quite a lot actually, there was a complete news network dedicated to come up with new crazy things to insert there. Sometimes it's correct that the administration of the current president is the instigator of some crazy things, but motsly it's as you say just things that comes with governing. In this case, I don't know, but budget cuts of $75 million is nothing to scoff at.
I agree that we need to get away from this black and white kind of reporting it doesn't help either side in the long run. I do not know if you are a Trump supporter, but if you are then you better concentrate on the reporting in your own camp, it's better to discuss these things with people that trust your intentions. If you are not a Trump supporter then yey for you.
I classified adults as everyone older than the 80odd million people under 20.
Yeah, they're already paying for it.
But most Americans aren't paying $5 a year for it. 45% don't pay any federal income tax.
Actually, in general, yes, they are.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
... predicting bad weather for trump gets you fired.
Bach says it all.
"We can't take any more cuts and still do the job" is the dependable whine and moan of every labor union that ever came into existence. Then the cuts happen anyway and somehow the job still gets done.
This isn't about the USA falling into the weather forecasting dark ages; it's about union dues and union membership, both of which have been dropping like flies for a while now.
Seriously, there's a labor union for weather forecasters??? Why? At what point have they been exploited as laborers for crying out loud? It's not like they're in a sweatshop somewhere. Sheesh.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Trump and the alt right are well on their way to turning the USA into a third world country. I guess that's one way to sort out immigration -- see to it that no one wants to immigrate here.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The storms will happen where God wants to punish gay people and Democrats. Look at all the money we saved.
-Dave
Calm down Ivan.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
So. Are you refuting that current technology requires fewer people?
:)
Are you stating that government agencies sometimes submit budgets requesting less funding?
Or are you just screaming out with name calling because you are mad and lack any ability to express it like an intelligent, conservative?
And, Fuck you.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I'm nowhere near the 1%, and I think I'm doing pretty okay. But then, I don't spend my life obsessing over how many toys people (that aren't me) have.
So, even with decades of tech, they need more people?
If they do not have more people then they would have never spotted Katrina?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Did we really need 248 people to do the job?
I'm asking... I have no idea. Despite this having to do with Trump, it might actually be a reasonable thing.
$214 Billion will always be more than $300 Million. The error was pretty obvious when the quoted story was posted in January and 5 weeks later it's still dumb.
But still... it's not as dumb as the kind of cuts the administration is making in areas the leadership wants to repress.
If Congress cuts their funding then the NWS should only do forecasting for states that Congress critters didn't vote against funding. So if the NJ senators vote against funding...no weather forecasts for NJ. That way we cut down on the cost and the NWS cuts down on their workload.
So, even with decades of tech, they need more people?
Possibly. The tech has made the forecasts more detailed and complex, rather than making it require less work. I suppose if we scaled back to 1950's level of forecasting we could do it with two satellites and 5-10 meteorologist and cover all of the US, it's territories and oceans. But no, I think people like having fairly accurate 10 day forecasts rather than inaccurate 3 day forecasts.
Air and sea travel depend a lot on good weather data. Not only for safety, but in constructing reliable schedules and rerouting of cargo and passengers. Tropical depressions are more important than mega hurricanes simply on the basis that they occur more frequently and can disrupt or delay travel more frequently. If you've ever travel in a small craft you'd appreciate NOAA weather radio and METAR. It can make the difference between having a good trip and a bad trip. (a three hour tour ... a three hour tour...)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Now that Oregon Scientific fans have close to 6 times the number of amateur automated weather stations, compared to the National Weather Service, I find free to be far more accurate when compared at an atomic level for local forecasting.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
they are not going to miss major hurricanes or anything like that because of cuts.
Honesty is a good thing even if it does not support your position.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
they are not going to miss major hurricanes or anything like that because of cuts.
I don't know how many times I have to repeat myself. This is not the issue.
Honesty is a good thing even if it does not support your position.
Goes both ways buddy.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No, but he tried: http://www.parabolicarc.com/20...
The National Weather Service has been predicting all this disastrous weather and done NOTHING to stop it.
(for the sarcasm/humor impaired and Republicans, that was a joke)