That has been touted around before, but what does the military do? I assume they are extremely aware of their supply chain and would not want to source weather from a commercial entity.
Will NORAD start doing clandestine weather modelling to be able to plan troop/ship movements?
It is pretty much an independent system. There are only a handful of organizations on the planet operating an independent global weather model. For historical reasons the US operates two of them. A good argument can be made that the European model is better than either, so it might make sense for the US to combine some of those global weather model resources.
I was a private yacht chef for 6 years. I would always source weather from https://www.metoc.navy.mil/ and plan meals around it. I'm pretty good with a Japanese chef's knife in 8 foot seas.
Air Force / Space Force already employ meteorologists for their own stuff, I'm sure the US military will have accurate information. It just will not get to the public until it has been properly sharpied.
They’re briefing Elon Musk on China war plans, I don’t think the current leadership will care much where they source weather data as long as it aligns with the current ideological purity purge.
There's no proof he was part of any briefing, and pretty much everyone has denied this has happened. You need to diversify your news sources beyond the ones that confirm your beliefs, truthful or not.
If you genuinely believe the real problem here is reporting, not that it's unclear (and had to be denied by the President himself) whether a private citizen with massive and well documented conflicts of interest and who doesn't hold a TS clearance was briefed on some of the nations most sensitive military planning I'd suggest I'm not the one with an information consumption and evaluation issue.
I think the idea is that a private company will take the results of government produced meteorology and then have full rights for distribution. At least, that's the plan of one of the current private companies that does this, they want to be the monopoly.
Seems pretty clear to me - Trump is trying to cut costs for our government. He sees we’re spending all that money on forecasting and data that everyone else uses for free, and gets paid for it. Therefore, that data is worth something and the government should get a piece of the pie.
I don’t necessarily agree but it’s somewhat logical.
I don't think the "cut costs" is an accurate framing of intent or outcome here. High costs are not being cut, but individual programs that are cheap but have every high positive impact are getting completely whacked. Such as the National Weather Service, there are reports all across the country of not having enough staff to launch the necessary number of weather balloons or generate reports that cover 24 hours of the day, leading to very small cost savings but massive inefficiency. Meanwhile massive contracts out to failing defense programs are untouched, and military spending is being massively increased far beyond what the military even asks for. Add to that the massive IRS staff reductions and tax cheats are having a hey day, with more than $500B lost to that already, which is 10x our entire science budget, which is actively getting slashed.
The goal is to assert dominance and to punish anybody that, as a group, was unlikely to vote for Trump and who Trump voters don't like, such as scientists.
Yeah it'll be interesting if they privatize weather forecasting in the US
FWIW, there is already a massive industry of private weather forecasting.
I know personally, or have met, at least six fully trained meteorologists who don't work for the government. Most are in the oil industry, but one is in aquaculture, and another in shipping.
Most big energy, aviation, and logistics companies employ meteorologists. Probably other industries, too.
That said, the loss of the NWS would be a national tragedy, and one of the worst mistakes in American government history.
I'm surprised they aren't privatizing GPS actually... seems to be a similarly helpful public service. While it does help subsidize future Korean airliners... it unfairly harms aircraft manufacturers. /s
Trump's choice for the head of NOAA is Barry Lee Myers, the 81 year old CEO of Accuweather who, with no scientific background, has been lobbying for years to dissolve the National Weather Service.
