[Rhodes22-list] NOAA weather privatized?

[Bill Effros]

New York Times Editorial, Today:
June 4, 2005


  Overcast in Pennsylvania

Far from just talking about the weather, Senator Rick Santorum is doing 
something dank and cloudy about it: he is proposing to squelch the 
National Weather Service's growing role in the information age.

The Weather Service provides a priceless flow of nonstop measurements 
and readings that commercial forecasting companies package and sell to 
the public. Lately, the Weather Service itself has been trying to make 
all its information more accessible to anyone who wants it. But Mr. 
Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, has introduced legislation 
that would basically require the service to give much of its data only 
to those private weather forecasting companies. A dozen of those 
businesses happen to be located in Mr. Santorum's home state, Pennsylvania.

"It's not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, 
subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar 
products for free," the senator said, somehow overlooking that taxpayers 
finance this round-the-clock national resource in the first place.

Senator Santorum, who is running for re-election, is vowing to protect 
hundreds of Pennsylvania weather company jobs. But timing is everything 
in both politics and weather, and his case was not helped by the fact 
that two days before the bill was introduced, his campaign accepted a 
$2,000 donation from one of the weather companies lobbying for 
protection. This was dismissed by the senator's supporters as a 
small-beer coincidence in a $25 million race. But as they say on the 
weather segment, it's a lingering disturbance on the Doppler.


Mark Kaynor wrote:

>Slim,
>
>Hoo boy. Another one that's a bit tricky to explain w/ out speaking Geek.
>Like they say, it's all Geek to me....
>
>XML stands for Extensible Markup Language - it's a markup language (kind of,
>but not really like HTML), that's primarily used to describe and contain
>data for publishing on the WWW. Unlike HTML, however, which uses predefined
>tags, the programmer defines XML tags, making it very powerful for handling
>data - like weather or Amazon or eBay, or insurance info, etc. I know that
>sounds a bit obtuse, so I did a quick Google search and came up w/ this site
>which probably says it a bit better:
>http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_whatis.asp
>
>And here: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/xml/article.php/3473531
>
>Mark
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org
>[mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org] On Behalf Of Steve Alm
>Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 2:03 PM
>To: Rhodes
>Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] NOAA weather privatized?
>
>Mark,
>
>What is an XML interface?
>
>Slim
>
>On 5/19/05 8:00 AM, "Mark Kaynor" <mkaynor at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Folks,
>>
>>I've been hearing about this for a couple of weeks and thought I'd 
>>pass it along.
>>
>>Mark
>>
>>The National Weather Service recently began publishing weather data to 
>>the public via an easy to access XML interface. Previously NOAA 
>>released data in an arcane and complicated format created over 40 years
>>    
>>
>ago.
>  
>
>>This is a great boon for everyone, as the XML feeds allow for 
>>integration of weather data into personal homepages & computer 
>>applications, and makes it easier for scientists, meteorology students 
>>and people interested in the weather to use industry-standard tools to
>>    
>>
>access weather data.
>  
>
>>Well, its not great for everyone, particularly companies like 
>>Accuweather, who make their money reselling weather data to the public and
>>    
>>
>media outlets.
>  
>
>>Apparently they managed to lobby Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania to 
>>introduce a bill, S.786.1, which would prevent the National Weather 
>>Service from competing with for-pay weather companies. The language of 
>>the bill is very broad and if passed may jeopardize the XML Data Feed, 
>>the NOAA website, and even NOAA weather radio.
>>
>>The following link makes sending a letter to your senators easy - 
>>please take the time to do so if you want NOAA to be able to continue 
>>to provide free services (the ones we already pay for with our taxes).
>>
>>https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr003=uio7mzb8p1.app
>>8a&pag
>>e=UserAction&cmd=display&id=123
>>
>>__________________________________________________
>>Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>>    
>>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>
>__________________________________________________
>Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>
>  
>