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.

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-...