Weather Data

$antorum Watch

Weather Data

Don't limit weather data

Sen. Rick Santorum's recent proposed legislation (S. 786, the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005) would seek to stop the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Hurricane Center from "competing" with commercial enterprises such as the Weather Channel and AccuWeather. In short, the bill hopes to restrict public access to free forecasts from federal meteorologists in lieu of for-pay forecasts.

Supporters say the bill will allow the weather service to focus on its "core mission of protecting lives and property" rather than daily forecasts of "warm and sunny."

But the language of the bill is deliberately vague, and daily federal forecasts are necessary. As Ed Johnson of the Weather Service puts it, "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."

More important, we as taxpayers have already funded this information, and we have every right to receive it unfettered from commercial interests that would make us pay twice.

Michael Kmiec, Philadelphia

Letter to the editor, Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr 30, 2005

Not a free service

The information offered by the National Weather Service is not "free," as described in the article "Storm Over Weather Service: Santorum Bill Would Protect Private Forecast Firms" (April 26). Unless I am seriously mistaken, the National Weather Service is funded with taxpayers' money.

Now, the private weather industry and their paladin, Sen. Rick Santorum, want the public to be denied access to a service the public has paid for. So, the public would have to pay twice for the same service: once to the government and once to companies such as AccuWeather. And I thought Republicans were against double taxation.

Francesca Di Poppa, Point Breeze

Pure protectionism

Way back (75 years), when I was young, I was taught senators represented all of their constituents, not just private weather companies. We all pay for the National Weather Service data. It's insane to force this service to refer to burdensome legislation to do its job.

Legislating protectionism for segments of a free-market society is not what Sen. Rick Santorum was elected to do.

What is his motivation here?

George H. Pilszak Sr., Franklin

Letters to the editor, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Apr 30, 2005

Santorum's bill excludes sunshine

Sen. Rick Santorum's consideration of the weather apparently doesn't include sunshine -- at least not sunshine in the sense of public disclosure.

He has introduced a bill that would prohibit the National Weather Service from disclosing to the public information that the public pays for and owns.

Although the legislation, S. 786, is titled, "A bill to clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service," it does anything but clarify how the NWS is supposed to conduct business.

The bill would limit the NWS to "weather forecasts and warnings designed for the protection of life and property of the general public," while prohibiting it from competing with any private, commercial forecasting service. It could tell Floridians of an impending hurricane or an approaching tsunami, but not of likely mild weather.

But, in order to forecast bad weather, the NWS will have to continue monitoring weather all the time. As one NWS scientist put it: "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."

And once the NWS collects data for forecasts, it is a very difficult argument to suggest that it should only disseminate to the public information relative to protecting life and property. Like the weather itself, its impact is difficult to predict. An inch of rain in one place can be devastating, while in another it might not have any impact on health or safety. The best way to promote public safety is to disseminate the information and let people with local knowledge apply it to their circumstances.

The impact of weather is so pervasive, of course, that the government should be careful of how some information is used. The agency should guard against professional forecasters using the agency's publicly funded expertise for financial speculation, for example. But that already is prohibited.

This issue is related to the Internet. NOAA's Web site provides, for free, much of the same information that private services offer on their Web sites, which are free to consumers but most often funded by advertising. The objective of Mr. Santorum's bill is to increase the profitability of the private-sector sites by returning the federal agency to the pre-Internet era.

Many private-sector companies engaged in many different enterprises, however, market online data that is available elsewhere. They do so by packaging it to the needs of specific customers within niche markets. The technological revolution that has produced more reliable forecasting and the Internet itself has not constricted marketing opportunities for information; it has vastly expanded them. Exploiting them does not require the restriction of public information.

Congress should not interfere with the NWS' dissemination of public information.

Editorial, Scranton Times Tribune, Apr 30, 2005

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