In its proposed 2026 budget released Monday, NOAA closes all federally funded weather and climate research labs, including the one responsible for maintaining the nation’s top hurricane models
The idea is to open the market for private weather forecasting.
Outlets like “The Weather Company LLC” are trying to figure out how to charge for privatized weather forecasts while publicly funded groups provide a better product for free. Better to kneecap any free alternatives, so people are forced to buy a subscription to your service.
So, “The Weather Company LLC” funds political campaigns, position themselves as the plucky free market alternative to communist big government weather forecasting, and as the ability of NOAA and other organizations to forecast is eroded, airlines/news outlets/etc all start to sign lucrative contracts with TWC.
“But what about hurricane forecasting?” You ask. Well. As soon as they figure out a way to monetize it, they will be happy to offer a monthly subscription. Same with tornado alerts and global warming research.
The profit model is probably charging government entities for weather information that they used to get for free to help with disaster planning and such
They are gonna privatize infrastructure to their pals, who will employ some of the same personnel but on worse conditions, gut everything not immediately profitable and provide worse service for more state money. They know well how to do it, they did it million times in eastern Europe.
The idea is to open the market for private weather forecasting.
Outlets like “The Weather Company LLC” are trying to figure out how to charge for privatized weather forecasts while publicly funded groups provide a better product for free. Better to kneecap any free alternatives, so people are forced to buy a subscription to your service.
So, “The Weather Company LLC” funds political campaigns, position themselves as the plucky free market alternative to communist big government weather forecasting, and as the ability of NOAA and other organizations to forecast is eroded, airlines/news outlets/etc all start to sign lucrative contracts with TWC.
“But what about hurricane forecasting?” You ask. Well. As soon as they figure out a way to monetize it, they will be happy to offer a monthly subscription. Same with tornado alerts and global warming research.
The problem with this is that weather forecasting isn’t really profitable
The profit model is probably charging government entities for weather information that they used to get for free to help with disaster planning and such
They are gonna privatize infrastructure to their pals, who will employ some of the same personnel but on worse conditions, gut everything not immediately profitable and provide worse service for more state money. They know well how to do it, they did it million times in eastern Europe.
This will just result in piracy but for checking the weather
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel