NOAA Weather will delete websites using Amazon, Google cloud services Saturday
109 comments
·April 4, 2025financetechbro
Excerpts from Project 2025. Godspeed, America. We’re all toast, and while we can compliant all we want about it, are we really doing anything to stop it?
> The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
> Break Up NOAA. The single biggest Department of Commerce agency outside of decennial census years is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and other components. NOAA garners $6.5 billion of the department's $12 billion annual operational budget and accounts for more than half of the department's personnel in non-decadal Census years (2021 figures).
> This industry's mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful func-tions. It should be broken up and downsized.
> NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
> Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather.
> Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.
> The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.
_fat_santa
I can't speak for others but in my experience, NOAA gave me the most accurate weather for my area, and it wasn't even close. If they take the site down I hope they at least keep the API's up so folks here can build frontends
financetechbro
Not sure what party of the excerpt gave you the impression that they are keeping any of NOAA around
krowfromthewall
its going to be like twitter, anything that remains up will be broken beyond any utility. And since this is not something which derives values from others' contributions, it won't even survive beyond this in any form.
insane_dreamer
> Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
The false promise of privatization.
kristopolous
About half the country think this is an amazing job and on the right track!
It's an absolute death cult.
damnesian
I am related to people who voted for it, and none of them are what I'd call enthusiastic. But they are not smart enough to imagine a way out of their little boxes.
ilikecakeandpie
They shouldn't be surprised. Stuff like this is exactly what they said they were going to do and ~70 million voted for it and ~90 million weren't compelled enough to vote for the other viable choice or choices
palmotea
> They shouldn't be surprised. Stuff like this is exactly what they said they were going to do and ~70 million voted for it and ~90 million weren't compelled enough to vote for the other viable choice or choices
But the problem is this was one of a million facets to the choice, and people were only able to vote on the whole package.
Personally, I blame the Democrats, because they knew what the Republicans "said they were going to do" and pretty much only used it for uninspired attack ad fodder. They should have been focusing on fixing the shit that causes voters to disapprove of them:
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/5224072-de...
> The Democratic Party’s approval rating remains at a low point, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released to The Hill on Monday.
> ...
> “Democrats continue to be seen as out of the mainstream. Their ratings are at record lows and, they will have real problems in the midterms if they can’t lift themselves up from this nadir,” said Mark Penn, the co-director of the poll.
> The latest polling matches similarly dismal numbers for Democrats found in other surveys.
It takes a special level of awfulness to lose to Trump worse than the first time.
kristopolous
Me too. They're addicted to cable news that gives endless praise with animations of waving flags.
It's clearly just non-stop propaganda.
The lying some people do to sell a couple ads...
mgdev
> But they are not smart enough to imagine a way out of their little boxes.
Do they know this is what you think of them?
How effective has this attitude been in helping you understand their perspective?
olcragg
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aaron695
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SkyeCA
[flagged]
ToucanLoucan
The wink makes me feel like you think that's a joke but it really isn't. "Forcing the End" is a common endpoint for cults, where they get tired of their doomsday predictions not coming true and decide the path forward is making them true, and it seems Evangelicals are hitting that point.
kristopolous
Groups with these ideologies typically leave power only after everything is reduced to smoldering collapsed ruin. It's time to seriously think about leaving. This isn't going to be corrected in my lifetime.
SkyeCA
It's not a joke, but if I don't laugh at the world at this point I'd be horrifically depressed instead.
I'm one non-American with zero power, there's nothing I can do except watch.
ryandvm
Mmmmm. Does that mean the public NOAA feeds are going dark?
feraloink
I can't even imagine what the rationale would be for doing this:
>The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is poised to eliminate most websites tied to its research division under plans for the cancellation of a cloud web services contract, a move that could snarl operations at several labs.
If Bloomberg is correct, it seems that the contract was cancelled prior to developing (and testing and announcing to the public etc.) any replacement.
>A contract for the services across NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — has been targeted for “early termination,” according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg News. As a result, almost all external websites reliant on Amazon, Google and WordPress services are poised to vanish early Saturday morning in Washington, wiping the bulk of the unit’s work, which includes climate and environmental science research, from public view.
Many Americans rely upon NOAA Research communications, both businesses and individual citizens. This worries me, not because I think that Trump is a fascist or because of my political views, but rather, because it suggests a lack of competent government leadership. NOAA Research is still doing its work, but we won't be able to access it anymore? I'm not a Bloomberg subscriber, so what I quoted was all I could read about it. I hope there's more info, e.g. about what the replacement delivery system to the public, will be...
kccqzy
> NOAA Research is still doing its work, but we won't be able to access it anymore?
You are not thinking far ahead enough. This is just the first step.
Step 1: these Amazon and Google cloud contracts are extraneous; let's cancel. The public can always find an alternate way of getting the research data.
Step 2: the number of times such research data is accessed has drastically decreased, suggesting that the public has not found them useful; let's cancel the research projects.
Step 3: these researchers aren't doing any research any more; they don't seem to have any work output; let's fire them for cause.
fabian2k
The most plausible rationale for this kind of broad and immediate cancellation of contracts is to indirectly shut down the function of these agencies.
ryandrake
Republicans have for a long time wanted to end free weather information and hand that job over to for-profit companies like AccuWeather[1]. Trump v1 nominated AccuWeather's CEO to run the organization[2]. Project 2025 calls for breaking up NOAA and commercializing it[3]. This is not some hidden agenda, and you don't have to speculate about their intentions. As is the case for everything these guys do, they are open and brazen about it.
1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/noaa-pro...
2: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-nominee-accuwea...
3: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-pro...
neuronexmachina
Yup, they're pretty clear that they see the NOAA as an enemy to be defeated:
> The document describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”
leviathant
This is exactly it. Rick Santorum was beating this drum decades ago (given that Accuweather is based in Pennsylvania)
null
feraloink
Yes. I'm worried about that being the underlying intent too.
tootie
I doubt that was the intent. They are cancelling contracts willy nilly right now. NOAA is getting hit harder because of their association with climate science but this administration is not doing a lick of diligence on any of these moves.
flyingmonkeyair
Literally their stated intention since before the election. Stated intention.
mooreds
> I'm not a Bloomberg subscriber, so what I quoted was all I could read about it.
feraloink
Thank you!
I've had trouble accessing that site *.is recently. Your link worked just fine.
windexh8er
I ran into the same thing recently. Did you end up seeing a boiler plate template site filled with Lorem Ipsum?
I believe there were certain DNS resolvers that seemed to have been incorrectly resolving. Whether that was intentional or not I didn't have time to look into.
LinuxBender
archive.is blocks most DNS requests coming from Cloudflare. One would either have to hard code one of their IP's in their hosts file or use a different resolver.
Here are a few archive.is IP's:
45.95.146.96
178.170.84.251
31.210.170.251yencabulator
Try archive.ph
amalcon
We'll likely never know for sure, since they will just claim that the goal is to save money. There's even a grain of truth to it: AWS and GCP are the most expensive offerings in that class. Of course, if the goal was actually to save money -- then first off, Wordpress wouldn't be getting cut. Also, the plan would be to migrate to more cost effective alternatives (of which there are several), not to just turn the thing off.
pogue
Firstly, they want to dismantle the government piece by piece and sell it off to the highest bidder, privatizing it. Secondly, anything they view as contrary to their world view, despite of (or regardless of) scientific evidence stating otherwise. Eg: they believe anything to do with climate change is completely bogus and don't believe there's any value in studying it, or hiding it's results for the benefit of their friends in the oil/gas industries.
damnesian
you want protection from the weather? you gotta pay for it.
macinjosh
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rbetts
They were fired by the administration. Looks to me like the system working. Government agency does something stupid. Congress investigates. Situation corrected. I'm looking forward to that oversight of the current administration. Enjoy your kite.
> In November 2024, FEMA fired a supervisor for directing relief workers to avoid assisting homes displaying support for President Donald Trump in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. In response, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into political discrimination at FEMA and held a hearing with former Administrator Deanne Criswell. This week, FEMA informed the Oversight Committee that it has terminated three additional employees for failing to uphold the agency’s standards of conduct. The agency is also implementing additional training to reinforce that political affiliation must never be a factor in disaster relief efforts.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-applauds-fema-for-...
dqv
Yeah that's shitty, but how does it justify getting rid of the NOAA?
ilikecakeandpie
You are making false equivalencies and being intellectually dishonest
knowaveragejoe
This is not even remotely true. Be better than this.
null
flyingmonkeyair
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9283409232
The plan is to privatize weather and sell out the country to Accuweather.
lynndotpy
I would like to add context for others that this was explicitly laid out in the "Project 2025" agenda. Accuweather was cited as an example, and Accuweather responded saying they do not agree with the agenda: https://www.accuweather.com/en/press/accuweather-does-not-su...
move-on-by
The current administration was also cited during elections as not being part of Project 2025 and not going to follow it.
Actions speak louder than words. We will see how it plays out I suppose.
garciasn
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
- GOP / Project 2025
alabastervlog
The actions were bringing in a ton of people who worked on it, to the campaign and nascent administration before the election, which happened before Trump's lies about how that wasn't the plan.
InitialLastName
The same Accuweather whose previous CEO (and founder's brother) was Donald Trump's nominee to run NOAA in the last administration?
Color me shocked that, under the last administration and when it looked like the Trump campaign had a good chance of self-destructing, they wrote a milquetoast "we don't support this at all ;-)" press release about his agenda.
sooperserieous
Aren't AWS and GCP already private? Oh, I missed the Tesla Cloud announcement (just a re-branded OCI)...
palmotea
It's too bad the Archive Team has halted their project to archive US government websites: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/US_Government
If you run their archiving appliance right now, it just archives stuff from the game Roblox.
cantrecallmypwd
Surprised DOGE hasn't fire-bombed the Library of Congress and triumphantly boasted about how much money was saved.
insane_dreamer
This isn't an accident or a random cut to save money.
The less you track climate change, the less pressure there is to do anything about climate change.
katelynsills
I suspect this is related to what Nikhil Rajpal was doing at NOAA. He was originally reported to be asking about Google sites. https://www.wired.com/story/doge-engineer-noaa-data-google-m...
@nikrdc, if this is you, why are you doing something so destructive and stupid?
walls
Because he's a piece of shit with no morals or stake in society. Seriously, how are people still asking questions like this.
katelynsills
Yes, I know. You don't need to tell me that.
totalkikedeath
[dead]
tmshapland
Sad.
ck2
Please tell me the Space Weather website is not going away
Why is the country being destroyed like this?
It will cost ten times more than it saves, it's just chaos on purpose
feraloink
You're referring to the Space Weather Prediction Research Center website, yes? I just checked the Newsroom for NOAA SWPC. There was nothing mentioned. I also visited their social media at https://x.com/nwsswpc and https://www.facebook.com/NWSSWPC/ Nothing there either; so far, so good.
NOAA Office of Space Weather Observations news https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news-events/search-news?combine=... didn't list any changes either. I hope you don't lose access on Saturday morning.
josefritzishere
The purpose is to enrich a few at the cost of the many. They will privatize the services we need to live, increasing the net cost of everything. They're destroying the American dream.
superkuh
I remember when the USA government spaceweather websites and FTP sites went away in the early 2010s. It was terrible. They replaced them with the current javascript monstrosities and hid the raw directories. It made automating mirroring of space weather resources much harder.
alabastervlog
> Why is the country being destroyed like this?
Long story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_tax_cuts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror#Costs
That's a start.
And a rise to dominance of populist conspiratorial thinking. ContraPoints had a good intro video about it recently.
krapp
And Obama. A lot of this is a trauma response from the American right to the election of a Black president.
alabastervlog
Yeah, I could triple the "read this to learn more" links and it'd still not cover all of it.
"The entire history of the Republican Party since Goldwater, our bad system of elections, the entire history of postwar 'think tanks', the McLuhan-sense 'message' of TV and especially the Internet, and a slow-motion more-successful knock-off of the Business Plot" covers a lot of ground.
conception
alabastervlog
Yeah, I didn't even touch on foreign strategies over that time. Like I wrote, it was a start. Apt addition, though.
bigyabai
> Why is the country being destroyed like this?
So that people like you (ingrates, from an administrative perspective) can stop paying the government to provide basic services and instead become habitually reliant on a paid alternative service.
feraloink
I couldn't read the entire article due to paywall. From what I did read, it doesn't seem like there is ANY alternative, none at all now, for the public to access NOAA Research.
hello_moto
Private will show up and be a hero any given day from now!
cmiles74
AccuWeather has been lobbying to remove weather data from the public view for years. The idea here is that AccuWeather will have access to this data and then sell forecasts to the rest of the country.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2005/05/16/plan-to-privatize...
Trump's nominee to run the NOAA? The CEO of AccuWeather!
If you are a US tax payer, it's important to realize that:
1. The federal government has already invested hundred of millions of dollars and millions of person years of scientific effort to collect all the valuable data that NOAA, CDC, NIH, the National Weather Service, etc. have collected, curated, and analyzed
2. The DOGE-ies and their ilk are flushing that all down the toilet -- all your investment will now be lost, or at least inaccessible to you or anyone else who might do something useful with it.