Say Nothing About the Failing Satellite

The QuikScat satellite used for predicting the intensity and path of hurricanes could fail at any time (it's already past its designed lifetime). Without this satellite, the accuracy of US forecasters' predictions could be degraded by up to 16% — and there are no plans for any replacement. Bill Proenza, director of the National Hurricane Center, has been outspokenly critical of his superiors on this situation, but he has been warned to stop commenting on it.

Is it any wonder?

[Frosty Piss]

Like many important things, this has taken a back seat to the needs of the Military Machine to support Iraq and well as their own technology projects for spying on Americans and the rest of the world.

Trying to create their own reality again, I see...

[dpbsmith]

The current crowd in power really does seem to believe they can create their own reality. As Ron Suskind reported, [nytimes.com]

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'''

But, as Ronald Reagan said—quoting John Adams, consciously or unconsciously, without attribution—"facts are stubborn things."

Needed Expense?

[charlieo88]

Cause really, what are the chances that a hurricane would destroy a major metropolitan area? Oh wait...

Integrity

[Lazarian]

It's great to know that there's at least a few people with a sense of integrity and responsibility walking the halls of government agencies. People like Bill Proenza.

He'll be fired within a year.

full quote

[the_mighty_$]

The full John Adams quote (from "Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials"):

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

The Founding Fathers wisdom FTW!

Welcome to Dilbertville

[Tablizer]

Sometimes you have to choose between being right and having a job.

No, it's part of the new policy on global warming

[zahl2]

No, it's part of the new policy on global warming: if you can't detect it, it isn't there.

And so funding was cut on climate monitoring satelites. Even though we need more monitoring on ocean temperatures and the like to refine computer models. I imagine this was just caught up in it, since ocean temperatures are sorta coorelated with strong hurricanes...

No science is good science!

Re:16% of nothing is still nothing.

[DigitalSorceress]

''causing the "cone of error" well known to coastal residents to expand.''

They've obviously also expanded the "Cone of Silence"... on their own employees.

Re:full quote

[poopdeville]

Unfortunately, our passions often dictate which facts enter into consideration as evidence. Judicious lying can take care of the rest.

Re:16% ????

[BossTree]

The issue is the accuracy of the prediction of the hurricane path, not whether, when, or how the hurricanes form. And it's 16% less accurate as applied to the 2 day path estimation, which I believe is in the ~10% range on average. (Yes, I pay attention to this stuff being a resident of Southern Louisana for the past 5 years). Don't kid yourself: a significant increase like this in the 2 day path estimate has REAL impact on REAL people: 2 days is essentially the absolute minimum required to evacuate an area with any substantial population. A 2 day projection for may already span several hundred miles in terms of landfall, making this a significant change. Also consider the sea-side impact of prediction: increased need to pre-emptively abandon oil rigs in the Gulf and other significant effects on ship transport

Re:Is it any wonder?

[Chibi Merrow]

Except the deficit has been shrinking as federal revenue skyrockets since the tax cuts have been passed...

Re:Just love these exact aproximations

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pretty easily make an assessment. A large impact these measurements have is to provide initial conditions for weather models. You can turn them off and see how the forecasts compare. A large selection of cases can then be compiled to determine statistics.

Numerical weather prediction is more of an initial value problem than a misunderstanding of the physics.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[jbengt]

where are your sarcasm tags?

Rack Up Another Win For The Bush Administration

[NeverVotedBush]

There must not have been a contractor willing to line pockets thick enough to get this job done.

Seriously, this administration is letting everything essential rot on the vine while they push war, war, war.

BushCo just does not understand that when the decision is made to "go", it will be years before another satellite can be put in place. They are compromising safety, lives, and disaster response.

It's sad. Very sad.

Does the US ever do something with maintenance?

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing the Discovery report on the way the Pentagon was treated this kind of news really doesn't surprise me at all. For those of you unknown to this information: the news that the Pentagon was in a miserable state at some point and in fact breaking every state law there was with regards to safety and maintenance. Cellars flooding, water pipes eroding, etc, etc. To me the US sometimes looks like the Zentradi to me. The war hungry alien race (Robotech saga) which can do a lot exept manage to actually repair their own stuff.

Look at the shuttle.. Its an obsolete design but almost 20 years (if not more) after date its still the same flying bucket of bolts. Not even the heatshield has been replaced with something else. Please spare me the whine about NASA not getting any budget. If they'd been talking to European or Japanese companies they could have gotten the belly of the shuttle coated with a solution which would have done the same job as the tiles without falling off for the same price they'd now take for using the tile structure.

All in all; its just the US way. Once you got some working plan you stick with it for the next years to come and stop focussing on how you might be able to improve things. This is just another example... I mean; anyone could have foreseen the sattelite from going somewhere...

Congressmen Support "Kick Back Retirement"

[BoRegardless]

Which of course means delaying action by many decades on ESSENTIAL critical infrastructure items:

1. 50 years of discussion of the insolvency of Social Security from an actuarial point were and are valid.

2. 50 years of illegal migrants after the bracero program in California, and it & border security is still not solved

3. 35 years of oil supply crisis issues, and still there is not a single interim or long term program from congress

4. 20 years of pulling down the military in various ways has to be looked at from the perspective of the bad guys who change and hide and subvert and move from country to country: The U.S. must remain vigilant and up to date in peace time.

5. The constitution basically said the Federal Government should protect borders, commerce and currency and leave other issue to the states, and Congress is arguably not doing so good on a lot of these accounts (Mexico, foreign spying, China for a start resp.).

Re:Can someone who knows about hurricane predictio

[ctwxman]

I am a meteorologist. I primarily forecast synoptic scale weather, but I know a reasonable amount about tropical weather.

It is my opinion, lots of people have played fast and loose, blaming a multitude of things on global warming. GW has become as much a political statement as a scientific one... in fact, it's probably more political right now. If it were pure science you'd have heard more about the positive points of the global warming scenario - whatever they are.

The best info I have seen shows higher sea surface temperatures (SST) in most global warming scenarios would only add minimally to hurricane strength. Not everyone agrees. Proponents, like Kerry Emanuel from MIT, say higher SSTs will make a big difference. It is his voice you probably heard two seasons ago. Chris Landsea of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA and Dr. William Gray of Colorado State disagree.

Truth is, hurricane formation is a lot more than just SST. Last year there was an unusually high amount of wind shear, which inhibits formation. And, the number of storms doesn't necessarily equate with the amount of tumult. Hurricane Andrew, the "A" storm, came in mid-August of a pretty slow hurricane season - but it devastated South Florida.

I remember listening to Dr. Bob Sheets of the Hurricane Center lecture about twenty years ago. Even then he was predicting an increase in storm frequency, based on a multi-decadal cycle that is observed, but not understood.

The parent post was right about one thing. There isn't a particularly large amount of skill in these seasonal forecasts. As I remember, last year's seasonal forecast from the Hurricane Center was off by a factor of two, or so.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what Mayor Nagin said and the Governor admitted herself when she thought the cameras were turned off. Did the Feds screw up? Sure. But nothing compared to how badly my state borked the whole thing.

How badly the state and city governments handled things was pretty evident. But I think the Federal response was about 36 hours late in coming, made worse by the Feds lying on national television for a couple days about how the survivors were being taken care of. Maybe the State didn't get specific enough when they asked for assistance... fill out the right form and such, but when you need absolutely everything it is hard to start itemizing a list. Feds needed to just send everything, but instead they fiddled around for 2 days trying to count beans. No excuses are worth a damn for what happened that week, at any level of government.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[Anonymous Coward]

That hurricane hit within 30 miles of where they said it would 48 hours earlier.

30 miles is nothing compared to the size of a hurricane. The primary people who should be embarrassed are the mayor of New Orleans and their governor. THEY should had a plan BEFORE hurricane season. THEY should have taken steps to ensure life was protected during an approaching storm. THEY should have had a contingency plan in place for rescues after a major hurricane. THEY should have worked together after the fact. IT IS NOT LIKE NEW ORLEANS JUST RECENTLY SANK BELOW SEA LEVEL.

Has anyone taken the time to ask "Why hasn't any other coastal city fell apart after a hurricane?" It's not like there wasn't a Hurricane Andrew, Charley, Ivan, Frances, Hugo, Jeanne, Allison, Floyd, Isabel, Fran. Opal, Frederic... the list goes on. But New Orleans spends more time looking for a hand out and blaming other people for acts of God.

Boo hoo, it's all Bush's fault..

I will say that New Orleans has one hell of a PR campaign. You couldn't watch TV without a telethon to help New Orleans. Hollywood was tripping over itself to come to the aid of New Orleans. You would have never guessed that the Mississippi Gulf Coast was pratically wiped off the map. I guess Spike Lee doesn't like Mississippi.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't help the victims in New Orleans. I believe we should help all the victims of Katrina and Rita (You know the one that didn't hit New Orleans). What I am saying is that the local politicians should be the ones held accountable, and I pity the folks who let their local politicians pull the wool over their eyes.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[Plutonite]

Would you care to elaborate?

Egypt considers the war on an Arab despot a direct threat to it's own totalitarian regime, and in keeping with it's nationalist rhetoric the local media were all instructed to demonize anything American in this war, and support any force, terrorist or otherwise, against it. The US state department knows and understands this, as the Egyptians need this to heat up the people against a common enemy/"devil" or else lose power.

Saudi is not happy because now they have to protect themselves from an Iran wannabe state, run by militant shias whose entire sect is based on a political theme 1400 years ago. Threats have been exchanged.

Kuwait is unhappy to be part of a conflict in which it is portrayed as supporting the heathen American forces in invading and destroying a non-threatening Arab country.

Or did you mean the war will scare everybody into a US-style democracy? Is that even a good thing?

Bush bashing at any cost....

[argStyopa]

"In recent interviews with The Miami Herald and other media, Proenza has strongly criticized leaders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for spending millions of dollars on a public-relations campaign while hurricane forecasters deal with budget shortfalls."

I understand that Bush-bashing rates +1, cool! rating on Slashdot, let's back up a little.
While I realize it's easier just to assume there is a "darkly-hooded cabal of evil men"(tm) running our government, let's - for a moment - suppose that they are men and women just like you or me, basically rational, basically GOOD people trying to do the best that they can.

Rewind to Katrina: there were PLENTY of warnings, there was an extraordinarily good degree of accuracy in the predictions, and what happened? People blew it off. The human tragedy - no matter what you have to say about Ray Nagin, the city of New Orleans, the governor, etc - was that PEOPLE didn't get out of the hurricane's way *despite* being warned. And what is that? PUBLIC RELATIONS. Clearly, the agency believes, it has a credibility problem (I'd say it's a human-stupidity problem, but that's just me). So THAT'S their priority.

In a land of shortening budgets (and, for the Constitutionally-impaired out there, it's CONGRESS that sets budgets, not the President) everyone has preferences - this guy wants the new satellite, I'm sure other administrators want more staff, others want more ground observation, and all have very good reasons. BUT NOT EVERYONE CAN GET WHAT THEY WANT. And while I very much abhor much of the Republicans' spending priorities in the last 8 years, I don't see the Democrats RACING to correct them, aside from earmarks for their own districts, ie. business as usual.

So this guy, probably with the best of motives, decides he's not got enough traction internally, and takes his story to the sympathetic press who are slavering for any story that shows the "evil cabal at the top is clearly incompetent".

Yeah, I'd reprimand him too.

OK, just go back to your anti-Bush circle jerk, it's probably more fun than thinking.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[MrMr]

Ok, it was a cynical joke, but I'll elaborate:
I agree that Egypt,Saudi and Kuwait would feel threatened if Iraq and Afghanistan had become democratic countries, the current mess is therefore their win-1. The ousting of Saddam Hussein improved their position in the Arab world, that is win-2.

In other words:
All three countries (and probably many more in the region) are, covertly or openly, very happy to see the neighbourhood bully Saddam Hussein killed, especially when done by a bunch of infidels.
All three countries (and probably many more in the region) are, covertly or openly, very happy to see Americans getting killed for trying to force democracy on an unwilling nation.