David Salmon wrote:

James, it so hard to tell what you are rambling about, but let me be
perfectly clear for you and anybody else;

Let me be completely clear, if I have not been already. Santorum
is trying to help a constituent by screwing the larger public. Some
people would emphasize the former as proper constituent service
provided by an elected official. I prefer to emphasize the latter.
SMMV (Santorum's milage may vary :-) ).

My interest in separating government/university forecasts from private
forecasts is entirely for value-added products. Government (NWS) and
universities can forecast the wind, forecast the temperature, forecast
clouds, forecast the precipitation/type, but apart from life and limb
forecast, stay away from producing "results" for commercial endeavors!

How about "private" universities? Are they to be allowed to compete
with "private" meteorologists in your world? What about about
climatological and meteorological services provided by state
extension services to agriculture? And why shouldn't students at
universities be allowed to expand their horizons into the "value
added" arena if it helps their educations? While the undergrads
might not be interested in this, I can imagine that a graduate
student project could produce results which impinge on what you
would claim as your territory. Should the government be empowered
to enforce prior restraint on the free speech rights of that person
to present his/her results, free of charge if that person so chooses?

I
have no interest in producing a wind product for the Indian Ocean. If there
is some commercial application of such a forecast, and where a private
company is/can do it, it should be left to them.

I do have considerable expertise in producing heating and cooling demand
forecast for the U.S. with regional and national population-weighted values,
calculated each business day. NWS had a tame, once-per-week version of that
long ago and that was okay. However, more recently they began a daily
product as well, and then they have added some derivatives to their
otherwise generic 6- to 10-day product too; that I will contend, oversteps
their bounds. I'm more than willing to go head-to-head with NWS or a
university or any other private company on a generic 6- to 10-day (which I
also do), but the public funded folks should stay out of the "commercial"
results/value-added portion.

Well, it depends on how one defines "value added". If you think the
forecasters and other line staff are sitting around saying, "Gee,
let's figure out what we can do to add to our heavy work load and
screw our colleagues who work in the private sector, I say you're
wrong. I could (now) tell you some stories about how some of these
new products from NWS come about, but I won't (at least not here).


I have considerable expertise in producing soil moisture products and other
soil condition derivatives. NWS has gradually encroached on that arena too.
I still believe my product to be superior to theirs (and to other privates'
I have seen) especially as it relates to agriculture, but it is a hard sell
when a potential customer can get something mediocre from NWS or a
university for free vs. paying a modest price for the very best.

Well, certain units of the NWS need soil moisture for their work,
most or all of which (like drought monitoring) IMO are valid NWS
activities. Now the question arises: if this information has been
gathered with tax payer money, why shouldn't the tax payers get to
look at at? This is a valid area for debate, IMO. As a tax payer,
I want what I paid for. IMO that's completely understandable. Of
course, you would like me to pay you for it, or something like it,
because you get more money. That's completely understandable. IMO
my position is the more reasonable.

My
day-to-day efforts in deriving my soil products would be so much easier if
NWS (and their little buddies at the FAA) would just concentrate on telling
me how much precipitation has occurred!

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/product...s_precip.shtml
isn't good enough?

If they would do their jobs they
have been given, they would have some much time on their hands to dream up
ways of cutting my (and my fellow private meteorologists') throat(s).

David Salmon

David, you're talking through your hat, as my mom would say. I still
have tingling in my fingers from my time working for the NWS, from
sitting for hours at a stretch without a break using mouse and keyboard
to make forecasts and get them out on schedule. The line forecasters
don't have time to figure out ways to cut your throat and as I said,
in my experience they have no desire to.

Cheers,
Russell
--
All too often the study of data requires care.