• ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    70
    ·
    2 months ago

    AccuWeather’s owner and Republican megadonor Joel Myers has been dreaming for years about destroying the National Weather Service. He wants weather to be a for-profit venture (specifically his profit).

    • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      God damnit. if you understand anything about our global weather observation network you know that if America privatizes the entire world will have way way less accurate weather no matter what anyone pays.

      the only reason things work so well now is because the whole world openly and freely shares all of this data. this is important because all of the world’s weather patterns effect each other. there’s only so much data that can be collected without being in the territory as well. so much of the world’d infrastructure relies on this information being available and accurate. privatizing it would surely be massively profitable and horribly detrimental to everyone and everything. it’s one of the very few actually decent cooporative things humanity has ever done. of course rich bullies want to come and stomp it out.

      • DogWater@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 months ago

        You know, I’ve never thought about this. I know there are some things that scientists from different nations work together on even if the countries don’t like each other much (like the ISS and cern) but I’ve never thought about the weather.

        That’d be insane to privatize weather data but I’m sure that’s what they want to do because they can charge for it.