More spew from Accuweather
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:10 pm
They actually answered my return email which simply said "what spew you send" or somethng quite similar. I know I used spew. Here is their reply.
We thank you for reading our email regarding the Senate bill and we would like to respond to your concerns.
Some members of the media have not been correct in describing SB 786.
For example, the bill does not require, or even suggest, that citizens pay for weather information. Steve Root, President of the Commercial Weather Services Association, and a well-known national speaker on such government data issues, endorses the bill because it requires that government data be made freely accessible to everyone.
He has also pointed out that: "The bill does not target any particular government activity for elimination." And, Barry Myers, Executive Vice President of AccuWeather (and a leading national expert on these issues) has said, "There is no objection whatsoever to NWS information going on the Internet and the bill allows for this activity to continue. Rumors in the press to the contrary are just wrong."
It is possible that the misunderstanding stems from inaccurate comments made to the press a few weeks ago by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, one of only a handful of members of Congress to accept political donations from the union representing National Weather Service employees.
In fact, the bill would, for the first time, write into federal law a requirement that National Weather Service forecasts and warnings (and I quote from the bill) "...shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be issued in real time, and without delay for internal use, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings."
NOAA and the NWS want to compete with private companies, using your tax dollars to develop services that are already offered in the competitive marketplace. This bill requires the Secretary of Commerce, who directs and controls the operations of NOAA and NWS, to determine what those competitive and duplicative activities are and requires oversight reports to Congress. Nowhere is the weather industry given any right to decide what the public gets; that decision remains in the hands of the government, where it is now.
While focusing on this competition with the private sector, the NWS is more and more neglecting its core mission - to issue weather watches and warnings to protect the public, to get the data out to you and to me, and to stop giving favored treatment to individual businesses and industries. Just last Friday, information, from hurricane hunter planes, regarding the strengthening of Tropical Storm Arlene, was withheld from the public, the professional meteorologists in the weather industry and in the media, and even weather hobbyists for over three and a half hours. The bill would put a stop to this government control and manipulation of data.
This NWS effort to compete is designed to weaken the meteorologists in the private sector who notice NWS problems such as the above and speak out against them. What does the NWS have to hide?
Don't be misinformed about this issue. Get the facts. Read Senate Bill 786 and the background information - and decide for yourself. We urge you to take a look at the website FreeTheWeather.com for more details.
We thank you for reading our email regarding the Senate bill and we would like to respond to your concerns.
Some members of the media have not been correct in describing SB 786.
For example, the bill does not require, or even suggest, that citizens pay for weather information. Steve Root, President of the Commercial Weather Services Association, and a well-known national speaker on such government data issues, endorses the bill because it requires that government data be made freely accessible to everyone.
He has also pointed out that: "The bill does not target any particular government activity for elimination." And, Barry Myers, Executive Vice President of AccuWeather (and a leading national expert on these issues) has said, "There is no objection whatsoever to NWS information going on the Internet and the bill allows for this activity to continue. Rumors in the press to the contrary are just wrong."
It is possible that the misunderstanding stems from inaccurate comments made to the press a few weeks ago by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, one of only a handful of members of Congress to accept political donations from the union representing National Weather Service employees.
In fact, the bill would, for the first time, write into federal law a requirement that National Weather Service forecasts and warnings (and I quote from the bill) "...shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be issued in real time, and without delay for internal use, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for simultaneous and equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings."
NOAA and the NWS want to compete with private companies, using your tax dollars to develop services that are already offered in the competitive marketplace. This bill requires the Secretary of Commerce, who directs and controls the operations of NOAA and NWS, to determine what those competitive and duplicative activities are and requires oversight reports to Congress. Nowhere is the weather industry given any right to decide what the public gets; that decision remains in the hands of the government, where it is now.
While focusing on this competition with the private sector, the NWS is more and more neglecting its core mission - to issue weather watches and warnings to protect the public, to get the data out to you and to me, and to stop giving favored treatment to individual businesses and industries. Just last Friday, information, from hurricane hunter planes, regarding the strengthening of Tropical Storm Arlene, was withheld from the public, the professional meteorologists in the weather industry and in the media, and even weather hobbyists for over three and a half hours. The bill would put a stop to this government control and manipulation of data.
This NWS effort to compete is designed to weaken the meteorologists in the private sector who notice NWS problems such as the above and speak out against them. What does the NWS have to hide?
Don't be misinformed about this issue. Get the facts. Read Senate Bill 786 and the background information - and decide for yourself. We urge you to take a look at the website FreeTheWeather.com for more details.
