US Department of Defense will stop sending critical hurricane satellite data Satellite data used for hurricane forecasting was to be abruptly cut off from the end of June due to "recent service changes," but the department in charge has now put the date off another month. The data in question comes from the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), and the termination was announced via a …
Ahem, being one of 'the LGBTQIA+ community'* (a more disparate 'community' would be hard to imagine), your statement does not console me.
*1: I refer to myself as 'gay, male', but honesty I am so inept at it I might as well not bother.
2: No, I don't know what all the letters mean either, and as for the colours on the flag, just do not ask.
Oh wow, that's even worse. It seems the only people excluded from FLINTA are straight males. Maybe they could have a special committee meeting, decide to add straight males and we can all go back to just including all of humanity as "people", without any separation or segregation and all live happily ever after in harmony :-)
just call it the .+ community and be done with it
Don't call it anything because a) community members will tell you or b) 97% of the time it won't really matter, or c) there be monsters.
In which I had some FUN! after diving into body modification, then diving deeper into more extreme body modification. Then finding an interesting community that had either physically removed their gender, or just wanted to be genderless-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary#Agender
Which I found fascinating as I've always been interested in identiy, and identy politics. But that also had some very heated debates because someone was lobbying hard for that group to be known as 'neutrois', which they'd come up with as a catchy name for a 3rd gender. Which also rather missed the point because the people in that community didn't want a gender lable. It was a small group, and the person pushing the lable wasn't in it. This was also around the time of Labour's ID card and from memory 78 or so bits of data 'needed' to make up someone's identity. So then how to reflect the choice of a genderless person when systems wanted mostly binary choices.. Or now I guess a drop-down list with 'N/A' for sex/gender when people didn't want those lables. I think now they're lumped into the 'A' category, but the ones I keep in touch of it mostly try to stay out of the politics.
"and as for the colours on the flag, just do not ask"
I always understood to to be a simple representation of a spectrum as an analogy to a spectrum of sexuality. Them they started adding letters onto LGB and eventually started adding colours to the flag. That latter being an odd move because adding new colours to represent "new" additions to the community would imply that the original flags colours represented specific groups, which they never did. As a straight male, I'm now feeling left out and marginalised because there's no colour in the flag for me :-)
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It's important to recognize that when people been forced into poverty and terrible education by corruption and targeted oppressive policies. If you, your friends, and your family have all gotten a shitty education your critical thinking skills have likely been hampered. If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck you're most likely going to be spending all your energy on survival.
Those two things, among many others, make for a voting base that's easier for politicians to lie to because you have to have the energy and critical thinking skills to see through easy answers in order to see through their lies. There is a reason for the positive correlation between getting a good education and voting for liberal candidates, and that correlation means there's a strong incentive for politicians on the right to keep their constituents from getting one.
We've been told to blame each other for the way we vote. It's important to think about why we've been told that.
That sounds a very plausible theory, but in practise, I don't think it is entirely supported by the evidence.
There are a great many very well educated people who are not liberal minded at all.
Neither do you have to be a liberal to be against the establishment of an extreme right wing authoritarian dictatorship; and you don't need a good education or a great deal of intelligence to see that is precisely the direction in which the USA is currently being driven. Indeed, it is almost there (after only 6 months!)
Education is I think, only part of the story.
"Those two things, among many others, make for a voting base that's easier for politicians to lie to "
I understand this, and also why people are angry.
But if you willingly vote for a person who promises to deport 11 million people at gun point, my compassion is limited.
If you vote for violence against others, don't be surprised if it hits you instead. In the end, you will be treated as you treat others.
"There isn't a hurricane on the way
Well, that's what I think Mr Fish said."
That was the gist of what he said, and he was technically correct - the wind speeds didn't reach hurricane force, even though it felt like it to those of us who experienced the weather that night.
If you were running the US government on behalf of Russian interests, this is exactly the kind of move you’d make: degrade critical civilian infrastructure, hobble disaster preparedness, and do it under the thinnest bureaucratic excuse possible. Cutting off high-value satellite data during hurricane season, with no replacement and zero transparency, isn’t just negligent - it’s hostile.
Who benefits when US hurricane forecasts get dumber, slower, and less reliable? Certainly not coastal Americans. But it sure helps anyone looking to showcase US dysfunction, sabotage global climate science cooperation, or stir up domestic chaos after a preventable disaster.
And what better way to do it than cloaking the decision in "security concerns" while letting aging satellites rot and new ones remain unused - textbook sabotage by omission. The collapse doesn’t need to be loud. It just needs to look like “cost-cutting.”
>” the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting and other meteorological organisations will have been using data from those satellites too.”
That explains it, “the EU” ripping off America, can’t have that.
Fortunately, the US funded this via the defense budget… So we in Europe can seize the opportunity and put our own (fully SI units compatible) weather satellite network up and attribute the spend to the increase in our defence budgets.
I wonder when the US will switch off NAVSTAR…
Even if he doesn't switch them off, simply not replacing them will degrade the service pretty quickly and this has been happening for a few years, because, by being completely free, there's no revenue stream for maintenance, just the government budget. Russia has GLONASS, Europe's Galieo is nearly complete, and I think China has what it needs.
What's even crazier is that to a one, all those "coastal" states affected by severe hurricanes in the US vote republican. He's screwing his own people. But as far as the ones in those states who actually did vote for him, I have no sympathy. We tried to warn you what Trump was and you didn't listen. Now you will live (or not) with the consequences of your vote.
And since he's basically dismantled FEMA they won't get any help after the storm. And once the "big beautiful bill" passes a lot of hospitals in those states that are only kept going via Medicaid funding will be closing so if they get injured they might have a long ambulance ride to take them to the nearest hospital, and be out of pocket for it if they rely on Medicaid but are one of the 16 million who will be dropped to save money for tax cuts for billionaires.
And apparently, it's not just those satellites. The regional weather offices in (Rep) places like Tornado Alley? Nah, not really necessary...
At least he's consistent. Those big cuts in food stamps? Well, they're hitting the poorer states worst, like the Deep South.
Some seriously whacko thinking all around. At this rate, I wonder what will be left of the Republican party by 2028. Or of the USA. Or of elections.
Sadly I'm coming to the same conclusion.
If they allow Trump to impose nationwide "citizenship tests" for voting, where the US government is the sole arbiter of who is a "citizen" it will be really easy to strip millions of voters from the rolls. When after the election there's widespread proof of many many citizens being stopped from voting (mysteriously most of them being non-white) it'll be blamed on an unspecified clerical error, but of course there will be no way to correct the bogus results of a "red wave" that give huge republican majorities everywhere. Then in 2028 it will "somehow" happen again, after which the opposition will become disillusioned and realize there is no longer a democracy to save.
Fortunately for me I'm in a position where if that happens I can leave the US behind and watch Trump burn it down from a safe distance, but it will suck for those who lack that option.
> What's even crazier is that to a one, all those "coastal" states affected by severe hurricanes in the US vote republican.
Maybe I'm not understanding, but that seems factuality wrong.
Hurricanes can hit the entire east coast (and Gulf coast) of the US. I'm the 2024 presidential election, about half of those votes against Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
Yeahbut, without the data , will anyone know it's coming? Or will he just stay away through the entire season? On the other hand, what is the "season"? With a changing climate, the season may change, but he doesn't believe in climate change so might get caught out. And it'll all by Bidens fault :-)
77,302,580 people voted1 for this, whether they knew it or not, and a substantial portion of them are living along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast.
It's a good thing there's no such thing as karma.
_____________
I'm the person who submitted the original links. From further conversations on reddit, it's not coming from the WH or even top of DoD, it more of a "opps" level somewhere down the line. Apparently their are talks to restore the data, as usual its just a matter of finding who pays for it. and with all the money going to the peace shield^W^W golden dome its a mess.
Look what happens to Miami at 80cm is more like it. The ground is saturated with water, storm drains work in reverse at high tide and the entire area is, by design, criss-crossed with canals so people can bring their powerboats to their backyards.
Let's say they build a dike. Great. Now you have a drainage ditch in your backyard and hopefully you moved your flamingo-colored powerboat out to sea before they finished building it. And for those on the actual waterfront, let's just say a dike can be a tad of a bummer.
But people are still stupid enough to buy there. The funny thing about coastal real estate is how there is a neat little mechanism to look far ahead in time.
If you buy now, you need to look at 2055 which is your time horizon for your mortgage (low 30 yr lock-in rates with interest tax deductions FTW), when you presumably will be in the market for selling it.
But your buyers in 2055 will have their own calculations to do, looking at when they can resell. So, 2055+30, meaning 2085.
As soon as people get the implication of sea level changes timelines vs real estate timelines sentiment could turn rather quickly as demand will drop, marginally at first, faster later. And, yes, individuals can have ideological blinders, that's true: witness the 2024 elections. But banks will soon enough see the implications of financing mortgages for houses that will literally go under water. So will insurers and that's also another mechanism putting anticipatory pressure on real estate.
The insurance companies are already starting to bite and in De Santis' state of glorious and unfettered capitalism the solution has already been found: mutualizing the risk at taxpayer expense by increasingly bringing in the State of Florida as the insurer of last resort on rich folks' coastal villas.
Everything is completely normal in corporate USA.
"These satellites are obsolete, retiring them was always going to happen."
It was also announced that DMSP would be ending by the mid 2020's back in 2019 so I am not sure at the surprise.
And the replacement program has already started with the first of the new satellites in orbit (Weather System Follow-on Microwave-1).
It was also announced that DMSP would be ending by the mid 2020's back in 2019 so I am not sure at the surprise.And the replacement program has already started with the first of the new satellites in orbit (Weather System Follow-on Microwave-1).
Don't let facts get in the way of all the lefty Trump bashing. But there may have been some suprises-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satellite_Program#NOAA_16_and_17
Like they blew up. Pesky batteries. But interesting because the DMSP birds were typically multi-instrument, not just the AMSU sensors. So also things like Argos DCS-2 that was intended to collect data from the Argo floats and other instruments.
But it has little to do with El Presidente, and everything to do with budgets. Like DoD funded some, NOAA operated, NASA launched, and multiple data users. And like you say, other instruments are available, both from the US, EU, Japan etc. I think the WSF progam is interesting given it also has the ECP sensor, which could test theories like Svensmark, and any role in charged particles in cloud formation, and thus weather effects.
(And just for conspiratorial fun, NOAA cancelled AMSU sensors because their data had an annoying habit of contradicting climate models.. )
You can estimate and expect what will happen if you just look at the wind rotations and the overall movement. The Windy app and a lot of other weather apps will help you guess what's likely to happen. But that other side of this is that since "Climate Change" appeared then the original monthly storm environment in the Atlantic has become a lot lower.
Originally hurricanes appeared multiple times every year and the storms moved into the Gulf, but that's only happened a few times for years now.
Climate Change is observable, not predictable for years yet, Climate Change is a lot bigger than government intelligence.
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