Would You Like An Ad With That Weather Forecast?
Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) is sponsoring a bill that would require the National Weather Service to take much of its work product, including forecasts, offline.
Santorum is apparently fronting for private weather forecasters such as Accuweather and the Weather Channel, who don’t like the competition from one of their suppliers.
According to the article linked to above, Santorum has said “It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free.” (The predecessor to the National Weather Service was established in 1870).
This writer could support an argument for privatizing the weather service. But let’s assume such a proposition would be DOA and deal with what we’ve got.
In order to predict potential problems like hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, and the like, the NWS has to model the atmosphere and ocean every day — not just when there might be a problem. Since the output, paid for by the public, exists, the public should have access to it.
In fact, one wonders how much of a free ride the commercial services are getting from the NWS data. Supercomputers don’t come cheap. Perhaps the NWS should turn the table and charge the commercial users for the data — there’s a bill I could get behind.
Santorum’s email is here.
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