The Fifth Risk cover
The Fifth Risk
by Michael Lewis
Description: The Fifth Risk examines the challenges faced by government agencies as crucial programs, such as those in Agriculture, experience reduced funding and internal disruptions. Michael Lewis highlights the potential consequences of these changes on public services
ISBN: 9781324002642
Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
View on Amazon
We may earn a commission from purchases made through links on this page.
Not ready yet? Get weekly book picks.
zetazzed · 2020-12-10 · Original thread
This is a great time to check out Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk (https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Risk-Michael-Lewis/dp/132400264...), which does a deep dive into NOAA, the weather service, and the wretched attempts to strangle the usefulness of this public service while keeping it alive enough to act as a massive subsidy to accuweather and related bottom feeders. It should disgust both libertarians and proponents of active government, and really anyone paying attention. Accuweather wants NWS to do all the forecasting work but then funnel all the data through Accu and a few other private hands, who of course want to profit from this data but not pay for it.
Azerty9999 · 2019-06-14 · Original thread
For those interested in more background on NOAA and making money from it, I highly recommend reading The Fifth Risk[0] by Moneyball author, Michael Lewis[1]. It details how a couple private companies make a lot of money using NOAA data in interesting ways (e.g.: crop insurance (now acquired by Monsanto)). Another of those companies is AccuWeather whose CEO was appointed to head NOAA by Trump[2].

P.S.: Anyone notice that monitoring "Climate" was absent in the government announcement?

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324002646

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis

[2] https://oceanleadership.org/trump-taps-accuweather-ceo-head-...