GOP decides accurate weather forecasting and hurricane tracking are luxuries America can’t afford

[housewolf]

By Michael Conathan, CAPAF’s new Director of Oceans Policy

Weather predictions were once a frequent punchline but have improved dramatically in recent years. More often than not you’ll need an umbrella if your local television channel or website of choice tells you to take one when you leave the house. But we could take a huge step back to the days when your dartboard had a reasonable chance of outpredicting Al Roker if House Republicans have their way with the 2011 federal budget.

The House of Representatives is debating the Full Year Continuing Resolution Act (H.R. 1) to fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. The Republican leadership has proposed sweeping cuts to key programs across the climate change, clean energy, and environmental spectrum. They have also decided that accurate weather forecasting and hurricane tracking are luxuries America can no longer afford.

The GOP’s bill would tear $1.2 billion (21 percent) out of the president’s proposed budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. On the surface, cutting NOAA may seem like an obvious choice. The FY 2011 request for the agency included a 16 percent boost over 2010 levels that would have made this year’s funding level of $5.5 billion the largest in NOAA’s history.

Even this total funding level, however, is woefully insufficient for an agency tasked with managing such fundamental resources as the atmosphere that regulates our climate, the 4.3 million square miles of our oceanic exclusive economic zone, the ecological health of coastal regions that are home to more than 50 percent of all Americans, response to environmental catastrophes including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and fisheries that employ thousands of Americans and annually contribute tens of billions of dollars to the national economy.

read more...
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/02/18/207538/gop-cuts-noaa-satellite-weather-forecasting-and-hurricane-tracking/

[OHdem10]

1. Is this more Tea Party ideology???

[Altoid_Cyclist]

2. So, it looks as though Rick Santorum and AccuWeather finally got their way.

How special for them. The other 300 million + people who rely on accurate and FREE forecasts can always pay to subscribe to AccuWeather I guess.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=4245954&mesg_id=4245976

BAD WEATHER?
Senator aiming to nix federal weather forecasts enjoyed AccuWeather money
Some worry that bill is bad idea in wake of hurricanes

http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/santorum_weather_ban_accuweather_421.htm

[Demeter]

3. Stop the Madness, Already

[Doctor_J]

4. Splendid opportunity for Obama to jump on the teabaggers

"They claim the 700B we could gain from cancelling billionaires' tax breaks is a 'drop in the bucket' of the deficit, but now want to put lives at risk for one seventh of one per cent of that. That's what I call penny wise and billion-dollar foolish"

[Marnie]

5. The initial push for really reliable weather forecsting

came to the fore with D Day, or really allof WWII.
But for decades the next most important reason for reliable forecasting was agriculture (you know where food comes from.)

Just because the country is now largely urban doesn't mean that farmers and ranchers do not still need accurate timely weather forecasts.

Doesn't hurt for the safety of air and sea travel and shipping and fishing industries.