It's why I would never vote for them. Nothing surpasses the importance of our collective existence—not for one race or religion, but for all humanity, and for the only intelligent life we know exists in the universe. Anyone whose policies threaten our stability does not earn my vote. We are on a pale blue dot in the vastness of space, and we must honor our duty as caretakers of this planet. No amount of tax cuts can make up for it.
There really doesn't seem to be much else we can do. Write your congressfolks - especially if you've got red congressfolk (if they're blue congressfolk they'll already want to make sure that NOAA survives). This is just one issue out of many that highlight the stakes involved.
>if they're blue congressfolk they'll already want to make sure that NOAA survives
Even the blues will want to know that their constituents are paying attention. Swing state blues especially tend to lose their spine without support from their base.
Call them anyway and tell them to replace Biden with someone that can actually make a coherent case against Trump. These backroom discussions are happening right now.
You'd first have to drop the pretence of neutrality that most voting advocacy efforts lead with. Only one party has a policy platform of gutting state and federal bodies that are thorns in their climate change denialism.
People who need encouragement to vote aren't going to do their own research and dont have the ability to analyze the repercussions of their vote. NOAA policy isn't going to be mentioned on the campaign trail.
> You'd first have to drop the pretence of neutrality that most voting advocacy efforts lead with.
I bet there are legal and practical requirements for that. For instance, a lack of a pretense of neutrality would probably undermine the voters' feeling that they're exercising their voice, and instead make many of them less likely to vote because feel like they're being used to serve someone else's goals.
> Only one party has a policy platform of gutting state and federal bodies that are thorns in their climate change denialism.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats have such a policy platform. The official 2024 Republican Party Platform [0] doesn't mention anything about gutting the NOAA.
Project 2025 isn't part of the Republican platform–it isn't an official Republican Party document. It is just a wishlist from a coalition of conservative thinktanks. While those thinktanks are Republican-aligned, it would be a mistake to think any given GOP politician (Trump included) necessarily agrees with any or all of their proposals (or is even aware of them), and their proposals have no official status in the Republican Party. From time to time, Democratic-aligned thinktanks and groups publish their own "wishlists", and those aren't official Democratic Party policies either.
> Republicans will immediately stabilize the Economy by slashing wasteful Government spending and promoting Economic Growth.
Just need to read between the lines. Project 2025 argues NOAA is wasteful and ineffective public spending. The party platform is to eliminate wasteful public spending. Hmm...I wonder what'll get cut...
It is incredible to see people argue policy documents pushed by most of the largest conservative think tanks will probably have no bearing on anything the GOP will do. As if the Heritage Foundation has little to no influence over the modern GOP. What a joker.
And especially when it comes with neutering NOAA, its like everyone just forgot they were pretty close to doing it a few years ago. And have tried it in the past as well. You're essentially arguing for people to not trust what their eyes are seeing. This isn't some random one-off policy document spun this year, this is stuff the GOP has been trying to do for twenty fucking years.
Various corps have been lobbying for the NOAA to stop providing weather info directly to the public, so that it can be more efficiently (read that as monetized) distributed.
Seems pretty evil, since the vast majority of sat based and radar based weather info, including an upgrade ever decade or so, is funded by the NOAA. Of course the corporations want that part to continue. The corps just want weather info from NOAA for free, then charge users money (or ads) to get it.
They put forward the legislation. It got called out for how obviously corrupt Santorum was being in that case (Santorm got $2k literally two days before he submitted it!). That bill is still there, waiting to be called up. There hasn't been a vote either way on it.
They tried appointing the Accuweather CEO, which they didn't call to a final vote (for unknown reasons). That Senate was pretty incompenent and barely able to function though and only had majority briefly, so its not really a surprise they didn't pass something they claimed to want to do. After two years the nomination was rescinded.
I'd put it at being too obviously corrupt and too incompetent instead of all talk on the subject.
And even if it is supposedly all talk, why would you vote for the guy who's talking about hurting you all the time? Hey this guy's been swinging a knife at me for a while now. He's probably not going to stab me though; I'll ask him to hang around.
You are missing a big factor in this - “neutering” the National Weather Service is not something corporate lobbyists agree on. Yes, commercial weather services would love it to happen, because it would force people to buy more of their products, thereby significantly increasing by their revenue-so of course their lobbyists will be urging for that “neutering” (or even abolition) to take place. But, on the other side, many industries (e.g. aviation, space, maritime, agriculture) are heavily reliant on weather forecasts, and are used to getting them free or cheaply from the government, and don’t want to start paying $$$ to commercial weather services for them - so their lobbyists are going to be urging the opposite. And these other industries have a lot more money and established influence than commercial weather services do, so their lobbyists will win
The Wikipedia article you cited [0] says:
> The bill attracted no cosponsors in the Senate and eventually died in committee
So Santorum couldn’t find a single other Republican Senator to openly support his bill. Why? He may have been in AccuWeather’s pocket, but the other GOP Senators were listening to other lobbyists telling them to do the opposite.
Also, I expect the Pentagon would have been complaining about it behind closed doors. Weather forecasting is very important in the military, and the military is used to getting it for free from NOAA. Forcing them to buy it from commercial weather services would be adding a new expense to the defense budget. Not that people in the Pentagon - and defense contractor lobbyists - are opposed to budget increases, but they’ve got other things they’d rather spend it on than giving bucketloads of DOD money to AccuWeather.
This is the thing about “Rein in Wasteful Federal Spending”-everyone in the GOP agrees with it in principle, but not necessarily on what spending is wasteful. There are other areas of spending where you are far more likely to get a GOP consensus to slash it (e.g. NEA, NEH, CPB, NPR)
Whereas, Project 2025 is just thinktank blather. Thinktanks can recommend doing anything they like, no guarantee it will happen. I doubt many GOP politicians bother to read the whole thing. Very likely, if anyone in a Trump II administration actually tries to implement the “privatize the National Weather Service” part, lobbyists from industries that would be disadvantaged by that will swoop in, and the whole thing will die. Just like it did in 2005.
NOAA spending on medium-to-long term climate modelling, as opposed to short-term weather observation and forecasting, is more likely to get cut - it has limited short-term commercial value, so not many corporate lobbyists to defend it. I don’t think that’s a good thing, but it is what it is. (I should point out I am just an outside observer of US politics, not a participant, from the opposite side of the planet.)
You keep acting like it's something that would never happen but just completely ignore the biggest policy groups in the GOP are very vocally pushing it and Trump tried appointing the AccuWeather CEO his first time around.
You're arguing it's something the GOP would just never think to do despite the fact they're very openly thinking and trying it.
Unless you're arguing the Heritage Foundation has little to no influence in the modern GOP...
How many GOP members running for office have denounced Project 2025? None? Hmm...
Convince literally everyone you have ever spoken to, regardless of opinions or political affiliations, that they should vote.
A hundred million Americans have this insane idea that voting doesn't matter, or doesn't change things, or they don't like their options enough, as if that means somehow one of the two options won't end up in charge in a couple months.
The point of voting is not to get your personal favorite personality at the highest office. The point of voting is to take a poll that explicitly influences the direction your organization goes.
Advocate aggressively for things like ranked choice voting and voting holidays to ensure typically poor, underpriviledged people have no more excuses to not vote.
> A hundred million Americans have this insane idea that voting doesn't matter, or doesn't change things, or they don't like their options enough, as if that means somehow one of the two options won't end up in charge in a couple months.
Some people may think that first part is hyperbolic but it's really not far off from the real numbers. In 2020 we had a better than normal turnout with 2/3rds of the voting eligible public voting. Even with that, though, 80 million or so eligible voters didn't vote.
If one wants to live an honorable pleasant life, than honestly vote for your own interests.
It is wise to acknowledge people as they are, and not as one would like them to be... Note this perspective is not necessarily incompatible with Neutral Evil alignments. =)
They (DNC leadership) are already pushing him onto the ballot before the convention under the guise of meeting the Ohio ballot requirement, while ignoring that Ohio gave them an exception for the convention.
There is still concerted effort from both within[1] and outside the party[2] to push back against rushing the process. His fate is by no means guaranteed.
While there's almost certainly an element of "let's get this done and over with before the push to switch out Biden grows even larger," Jamie Harrison's explanation[0] would suggest that there's still a very real legal concern behind the push. Specifically, this little nugget[1] from the Ohio Constitution:
> [...]No law passed by the general assembly shall go into effect until ninety days after it shall have been filed by the governor in the office of the secretary of state, except as herein provided.[...]
So while Ohio eventually passed a law that would extend the deadline to avoid the original problem, because it wasn't done passed as an emergency law not subject to referendum[2] since that would have required a 2/3 majority, that law doesn't actually go into effect until 90 days after its passage.
In other words, the law changing the notification requirement from 90 days prior to a general election doesn't actually go into effect until 90 days after its passage...which is after the original notification deadline. It might seem like a technicality, but it all but guarantees the issue will have to be litigated and there's a significant possibility Democrats would lose the case in that case. Risking the possibility of Biden being left off the ballot as a result would be an absurd dereliction on the DNC's part.
The original post asked what can you do. Apart from hopelessness, you can put your body on the line. Hold a sign. Be present. Take up space. It's something.
Biden could be a literal corpse come election day and his cabinet/admin will still not paywall NOAA so why does that matter?
Both Trump and Biden are abysmal picks, for rather different reasons, but come November 9th, one of them will be chosen as the winner, because that's how the American electoral system is designed. If you don't like either of them, it doesn't matter. They still have explicit visions and plans for the future of the country, and surely you like one more than the other right?
People need to get this "perfect candidate is the enemy of the least-worst candidate" shit out of their head. The American political system was designed by a bunch of ethics and philosophy turbo nerds with an insanely optimistic view of how humans organize, a blatent neglect of already understood problems (refusing to create a term limit for the presidency even as Washington was trying to avoid being president for life, choosing to take no preventative action against the formation of political parties despite them obviously forming before the constitution was even finished, no formal system of succession, even though politicians were still dueling each other), and zero systems engineering or practical experience. It is flawed in all the ways you would expect a student project from first timers will be.
This stupid system is the one we are stuck with, and by design it can only be changed by participation, unless you are fine with murdering half your neighbors to enact a populist revolution and also convince everyone else to murder half their neighbors in your populist revolution.
Staying home isn't a protest. Not voting doesn't hurt anyone but yourself. Choose the direction you want the country to go in.
NOAA is a globally relevant working US service, and while one can live without eyes... it makes life more complicated when hurricanes pop up without warning.
As an organization it is data driven, where countless airlines, maritime shipping, and agricultural entities can't properly function without the service.
Any states that lose NOAA will also see just about every insurance premium balloon into the stratosphere.
If they do this maybe the blue states could absorb NOAA into some kind of sub-federal system to keep it alive until sanity can be restored? And then charge the red states for weather info - many of those red states are vulnerable to hurricanes & tornadoes.
That's only the beginning of what Project 2025 woudl dissolve. It's a fair debate what the worst ideas are in project 2025. It's 1984 and Mein Kampf rolled into one.
This would be an incredible act of vandalism. The hostility towards science, and specifically efforts to monitor and mitigate climate change, coming from the right of American politics is frankly terrifiying.
Unfortunately, hostility towards science is increasingly bipartisan. The testing and tracing infrastructure spun up during the pandemic is largely defunct. We are reliant on wastewater sampling and hearsay as we ride the current COVID wave in service of a "pandemic is over" narrative.
This seems like standard election year fear mongering and ignores much of what NOAA is and does while fixating on how it will affect the individual. Weather forecasts for you and me is just a side effect of their providing weather forecasts for all those air planes and boats along with keeping up to date information on various hazards like that new antenna tower planes need to watch out for or that a major storm system coming through the midwest is likely to cause a great deal of sediment to collect in certain areas of the Mississippi so decrease the load of your barges if you want to make it to New Orleans.
Business and international trade partners would put a great deal of pressure on any administration which threatened to screw with NOAA to this extent and I don't believe any administration would actually follow through with such a thing, it would have massive negative effect on trade and would probably cost the US far more than it would save. This is just politics exploiting that most people don't actually know what NOAA does.
>it would have massive negative effect on trade and would probably cost the US far more than it would save.
I'd love to share that certainty, it's a rational position but the Republican party are fully in thrall to an ideological commitment to capture or destroy the institutions of state and can't be relied upon to behave rationally. If you think the political right won't commit economic vandalism in the name of this idiological crusade just take a look at my home, Britain, where first austerity, then Brexit, then Liz Truss's free market extremism dumpded our economy in the trash and pushed our public services to the brink.
This goes far beyond what happened in the UK, this would mean thousands of planes being grounded because of the lack of reliable weather reports and every cargo ship coming into US waters taking on less cargo and possibly skipping the US all together if that decrease in cargo means the profit is just not there. NOAA is the source for the nautical charts shipping uses so navigation would become more difficult and slower, more money and incentive lost. Every plane and ship crossing the Atlantic and Pacific depends on NOAA at least indirectly, directly if they are going to/coming from NA. Every farmer in the US relies on NOAA for determining when they should plant and harvest, fishing industry for water and weather information, every meteorologist in the country relies on the data provided by NOAA, the list goes on.
The effect these changes would have on the international economy would be massive affecting every country that trades with the US which would compound the internal effects of dismantling NOAA. If the threat was sincere the article would be talking about this stuff instead of how it would effect your ability to plan a weekend picnic.
They could give less of a shit about any of that - they want people to pay their private cronies for the data.
And another big part of what NOAA does is climate research and they absolutely want to castrate that. Really I don't think you've been paying attention.
Pooping on floors is gross, nobody really wants that, they probably won't do it, just election time fear mongering reporting on floor pooping.
The platform suggests they'll do it. Lots of people in the party suggest they'll do it. They already started to do it last time the candidate was in office. It was only after a good bit of pushback the nominee ended up turning it down in the end.
Candidate A already had their pants down bent over the floor about ready to poop. But I'm sure he won't actually do it given a second chance! Might as well vote for him, I'm sure he won't do what he says he's going to do.
That will only make him even more excited to vote for Trump. Just look at his unhinged bigoted misogynistic transphobic posting history (with showdead=true to see his most vile posts, as well as all the unsubstantive comments and flame bait that dang has to keep asking him to stop repeatedly posting). Project 2025 was designed to appeal to hateful bigots like him. He's an archetypical walking talking example of why it's so important to vote against Trump.
I dislike Trump. I am not sure how I can be misogynistic considering I don't even aim for women, I rarely communicate with them unless they are my work colleagues. Look, I dislike identity politics and think likely I am just an awful comedian. I am definitely living in the greyzone politically where both sides catch it from me. I don't respect the rules of engagement here probably more than I should, feedback received, thanks.
You're living on the bigoted side by publicly posting false and ignorant hate speech against trans people, and the bigoted side is most extremely and vitriolically the Republican side, who has made misogyny and transphobia and racism part of their platform, so don't pretend you're in the greyzone politically. You're a bigot, and you chose to make your bigotry public and political. And no matter what side you claim to be on, and especially if you claim to not be on either side, you absolutely deserve to be called out for your bigotry, since you decided to make it irrefutable objective public knowledge that you're a bigot, in your very own words that you posted to Hacker News, of your own free will. You've already been called out by dang and asked to stop, and I'm calling you out and asking you to stop again. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and trying to play the victim.
What is the problem. Isn't it well known that free market will provide better, cheaper and more efficient service? After all we trust free market with other things, so why not with weather forecasting?
Some things are better left as a public good so everyone can benefit. Hurricane and Tornado warnings save lives. Why would we want to limit that knowledge?
The proposal is not to eliminate the NOAA, but to lock it behind paywalls run by private companies. Accuweather already packages up the NOAA data feeds and sells them. This proposal will just eliminate any way for an average citizen to get access to the same data Accuweather gets for free. We will still be paying for it, just will have to pay Accuweather for the privilege of accessing what we've already paid for.