Like other cuts to public science made under the Trump administration, the losses from blows to this agency could be substantial. A 2012 analysis found that every taxpayer dollar spent on NGS’s coastal mapping program returned $35 in benefits, while a 2019 report found that the NGS program that models gravitational fields would provide between $4.2 and $13.3 billion worth of benefit over 10 years.
The National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) is a key component of our Nation’s infrastructure, supplying defined latitude, longitude, height, and other authoritative geospatial values throughout the United States. While not obvious to the average person, the NSRS is the foundation to nearly every aspect of our lives in which location matters. It underpins aviation, agriculture, emergency response, floodplain mapping, conservation, construction, water management, transportation, and much more. Use of the NSRS ensures consistent coordinates across all geospatial applications in the country.
The North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83) and North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88), although still the official horizontal and vertical datums of the NSRS, have been identified as having shortcomings that are best addressed through defining new horizontal and vertical datums. Specifically,
NAD 83 is misaligned to the earth’s center by about 2.2 meters, and
NAVD 88 is both biased (by about one-half meter) and tilted (about 1 meter coast to coast) relative to the best global geoid models available today.
Correcting these two issues will mean that every existing latitude, longitude, ellipsoid height, and orthometric height in the United States (as reported in the current NSRS) will change by as much as four meters (as reported in the modernized NSRS). Adopting the modernized NSRS is critical, as it finally aligns the NSRS with both international standards, as well as aligning with all Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS),
But what if I’m okay having my tax dollars go to make information free to the public? There is a lot of information around the world I wish i had access to, but the UKHO puts it behind a paywall, priced for a commercial outfit, and not some nerd who wants to read about the Singapore Strait in his off time.
Because there’s not enough “tax dollars” to cover the spending.
Your debt per taxpayer is now $323,050.
Perhaps you don’t understand that the free stuff you want isn’t paid for by your taxes but from borrowing money on which you spend $1.2 trillion per year in interest.
More free stuff = more debt = more interest … until catastrophic financial collapse.
Or we could raise the capital gains tax rate so that it equals the rate of tax I pay on my wages that I earn by actually working. Why in the heck are investor profits taxed at a rate lower than those of us who actually work for a living and earn our money through our labor and time? I’m sick of having a tax break for capital gains and the investor class. It should be taxed at least as much as EARNED wages, if not more.
If the capital gains tax was raised it would help reduce budget deficits without impacting services.
Really, NOAA, FEMA, EPA, NTSB, are what Federal taxes are for. I think we are at the point of our history in which it is time to ask why are we paying taxes? I don’t give a F**k about Isreal and the billions the US spends to support genocide, amongst all the other ridiculous crap our taxes go to…but weather info, our roads, natural disaster relief, the power grid…all things the feds should pay for, not individuals.
I’m sure the peanut gallery will chime in, but really, cutting weather buoys…come on man.
If you don’t want American Free stuff, pay for your own military to ensure freedom of Navigation. For what the US has paid to attack the Houthis, we could run NOAA for 2 months. The annual operating cost of NOAA is half of a new Gerald R Ford class aircraft carrier.
I’m not a huge fan of Trump threatening to pull support from NATO on the grounds of Europe not paying for their own militaries, or threat that the US can “Turn Off” US made weapons sold to other countries that don’t agree with us at the moment; But when you say consumers should be paying for their own weather reports, I too think the US should hang up our world police belt.
Never ever said that. But possibly to your utter amazement, people do pay for private weather forecasts because they want better than the standard. I know farmers here pay for longer term rain forecasts because the official ones are rubbish having stupid global warming algorithms built into the models.
You deliberately seem to accuse me of supporting some catastrophic shutdown of NOAA’s output when all I’ve ever said is that it can tighten its belt, management can adjust accordingly and life can go on.
The standard tactic here is to try to state apocalyptic consequences, $billions of losses to the economy, deaths and mayhem, avoidable catastrophes, quoting erudite but ludicrous cost/benefit guesses of tighter funding. I’ve seen the tactic before. It’s bog-standard reaction to tug the heartstrings but not engage the level heads.
Your nation is broke. And getting broker. But, of course, that’s not your problem. You’d prefer perfect weather forecasts for your consumption than to avoid a pending financial armageddon … at which time your “world police belt” will hang up all by itself.
Where do those private weather forecasts get their weather data?
Yeah, I gotta bring a ship across the ocean. I’d like to know what the weather is so I can avoid hurricanes/typhoons etc.
Are you out advocating for your own government to fund their own self defense entirely? If we go broke your National defense goes to shit and China takes over.
You have to be a special kind of gullible to believe this administration actually wants to balance the budget, any cuts are just punitive measures against Dems.
No sane person believes this administration wants to balance the budget. They just use the phrase to cut things they do not like. Example science: The thing that has separated the US from other countries until the rise of China in the last 20 years has been the money budgeted for basic scientific research. Now the current administration is cutting science to the bone and ceding leadership to China. This is contrary to every Republican presidents actions since Eisenhower who tripled spending on the National Science Foundation.
As a prominent astrophysicist said,
“If a foreign adversary snuck into our Federal budget and cut science research and education the way we’re cutting it ourselves — strategically undermining America’s long-term health, wealth, and security — we would likely consider it an act of war.”
From all sources, which again, to your utter amazement, includes data gathered privately by people such as farmers, amateur observers, mining companies etc. that are not collected by government weather bureaus because they aren’t “official” or properly certified.
You forgot to include the context of that quote, paying down your debt. But I agree, you need to know the weather, but I never said shut it down, just tighten the belt.
I’ve been mid ocean without weather forecasts. No big deal. Worse, I’ve been mid ocean getting forecasts 100% wrong with serious consequences for my ship, from your vaunted NOAA and USN after receiving numerous observations over days from me, the only observer in the area.
Do you contribute to the world’s weather watching by transmitting six-hourly observations from your ship?
I advocate self reliance, yes, and my stupid government is worse than yours. That’s not solely my fault. I fight for common sense in defence matters having served a full career in the RAN.
But we are interconnected. You rely on critical defence infrastructure and capabilities in Australia for your global defence networks. We buy your munitions. You have named warships in our honour for heroic deeds at war. We fight alongside you.
But to get back to the point … you can tighten the belt on your government’s spending without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So can we.
Does anybody anywhere here want to pay off the debt? Debt doesn’t care about a balanced budget.
Yup, I’d love to eliminate the debt and balance the budget. Unfortunately Trump has no intention of doing either, which is why I posted the debt ceiling increase and spending increase links that you so conveniently glossed over. Facts are hard.
Yeah imagine those satellites that support EPIRB detection (also NOAA) run by a private for profit company. Better to have a balanced budget than search and rescue locater information. What a waste of tax payer dollars. I mean most Americans will never need it!
It’s not within Trump’s power to do either. It’s the job of the congress, and there’s more than a handful of Dems in there obstructing.
I haven’t forgotten spending. Naturally, it’s embedded in marxist, Dem genes to leave the treasury bare and in huge debt when a Trump comes along so he’s got no possibility of implementing his agenda. But he implements it anyway and their heads explode. Beautiful to watch.
And congress has been asked to raise the debt ceiling so you can avoid defaulting on your $36 trillion debt in the next month or two.
Sounds to me kinda like you’re borrowing to pay your interest. Have you ever done that? That would be silly, wouldn’t it.
Within the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the lead representative to the Cospas-Sarsat organization.
So I guess we can rely on private actors to take up the slack on this? I’m curious how this system can be run by a for profit company but I guess the most important thing is a balanced budget. Those mariners in distress will just have to figure it out…