Do We Really Need A National Weather Service? | FoxNews.com
While Americans ought to prepare for the coming storm, federal dollars need not subsidize their preparations. Although it might sound outrageous, the truth is that the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Weather Service, are relics from America’s past that have actually outlived their usefulness.
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Today the NWS justifies itself on public interest grounds. It issues severe weather advisories and hijacks local radio and television stations to get the message out. It presumes that citizens do not pay attention to the weather and so it must force important, perhaps lifesaving, information upon them. A few seconds’ thought reveals how silly this is. The weather might be the subject people care most about on a daily basis. There is a very successful private TV channel dedicated to it, 24 hours a day, as well as any number of phone and PC apps. Americans need not be forced to turn over part of their earnings to support weather reporting.
No, that’s not The Onion. Fox News, via researchers the Competitive Enterprise Institute, published a myopic-at-best piece calling for the end of the National Weather Service. …Because people could look at apps or the Weather Channel instead. Or that businesses would pay for it, if they really needed it.
I like to think I have decently thick skin for dumbass political rhetoric from any part of the spectrum. However this one hit a nerve. Not only for the snarkily advantageous timing as Hurricane Irene began its east coast crawl (which we all followed because the NWS was doing its job) but also the weak attempt to over-inflate a government bloat argument. C’mon, you have to try better than that—this could be a madlib for other absurd combinations: IRS on April 15th. The Presidency on Inaugration day. NOAA during a tsunami warning—which, in fact, is the parent organization of the NWS.
The countering posts/articles are decent, particularly those adding real-world context around the allegation that the NWS is more inaccurate than private company’s models (that still rely heavily on NWS data and infrastructure). From TheWeatherSpace.com:
There is a legit reason that National Weather Service is said to be more inaccurate by the general public than other private stations. The National Weather Service has guidelines, and these guidelines prevent their meteorologists from issuing some products until that criteria is set. Private offices do not have this responsibility like a government office so they can go all out, sometimes days before NWS even talks about it.
I should note that it was hard to find responses that actually backed the anti-NWS position and put real thought and data behind it. Most sympathetic posts simply repeated the content. The best I saw is that the piece was misunderstood, that they mean NWS should stop issuing ‘inaccurate’ warnings. I think that’s a bit generous.
Via Cliff Mass.
