Republican Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania thinks the National Weather Service should be less of a service. He is introducing a bill that will make it illegal for the NWS to provide any information (other than severe weather forecasts) that the private sector could also provide. The decision on what services the NWS may provide would be made by one person: Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.
These other (non-severe weather) services that could be discontinued include routine public and marine forecasts that many citizens and residents of the US depend on. Moreover, Jeff Masters over at Weather Underground makes several excellent points about the quality of the NWS' services:
It is unclear from the bill's language whether the NWS would be allowed to continue making its routine public and marine forecasts. This decision would be made by the Secretary of Commerce. I believe the expertise of the NWS forecasters is unmatched anywhere in the world, and throwing away their forecasts would be a shameful waste. Although the private weather industry can and does provide routine public and marine forecasts, the quality of these forecasts is sometimes poor and would likely worsen if the NWS ceased issuing forecasts. When I participated in forecasting contests both as a student and an instructor, I discovered that while it was difficult--but not impossible--to beat the NWS forecast, it was nearly impossible to beat the "consensus" forecast--that is, the average of everyone's forecast. Private weather industry forecasters do their own forecasting, but will usually check their forecast against what the NWS says before sending it out. If the NWS forecast differs considerably, there will frequently be an adjustment made towards the NWS forecast, resulting in a better "consensus" forecast. So, with the proposed legislation, not only would we lose the best forecasts available, but the forecasts from the private weather companies would also worsen. Many sectors of our economy depend upon good forecasts, and passage of the bill might result in a loss of millions of dollars to the economy.
He goes on to say that other reasons for this bill to be opposed include (a) it wouldn't really reduce the NWS' spending, since in order to forecast severe weather, they have to forecast 24 hours a day anyway, and (b) the benefits to Americans and American companies from this bill are neither uniform nor highly likely to occur. You can read Dr. Master's Weather Undergroundentire commentary here. There is also an online petition to stop this bill: sign the petition
While I'm certainly not in favor of wasteful government spending, the effectiveness of the NWS as a centralized weather agency certainly seems to indicate that we shouldn't be messing with a good thing. The NWS doesn't have a material impact on our country's economy (not the way things like, oh, the war in Iraq do), so cutting its services makes little sense in the overall scheme of things.
