I’ve had the NOAA weather app on my phone either since I bought my first smart phone or since there has been an app, whichever came first. It’s user friendly and reasonably accurate in forecasting the weather and I use it to plan my day. At $10 a year it was the best deal going.

I said “was” because this morning, slowly achieving full consciousness with my first cup of coffee, I tapped on the NOAA app and this was the first thing that popped up.

I did a spit take worthy of Eli Gold, but yes, I checked my email to make sure this wasn’t a scam and there it was, confirmation from Apple:

At the same time NOAA and NWS are being cut by twenty percent (I used the lowest estimate I found; some say as much as forty). Also, who is Mosaic S.r.l.? Who owns them? How many times has their CEO paid $1M to dine at Mar a Lago? Because he’s obviously trying for a stratospheric return on his investment here.

So…we get to pay six times what we were paying before, for forecasts which are going to be less accurate.

We all know why this is happening: Republicans don’t like science because it tells them what they don’t want to hear. Paul Krugman wrote about this the other day:

Republicans have long sought to restrict access to National Weather Service data to private companies like AccuWeather, which in turn would provide forecasts only to paying customers. And they may succeed. But this would be obvious profiteering, creating artificial middlemen for access to information generated at taxpayer expense...Since NOAA is a tiny budget item compared with Medicaid, what’s this about? Actually, there’s no mystery. Among other things, NOAA research helps us understand and predict climate change, and America’s right is firmly committed to climate denial. So Trump officials want to end research that might tell them things they don’t want to hear. (link)

Alaskans, especially those in the fishing and aviation industries, here you go:

Senator Lisa Murkowski

Senator Dan Sullivan

Representative Nick Begich

Leave a comment below should you feel so moved, but I would much prefer you access the links above. I can’t do anything but fume. If they made an effort to find their own spines, these people could actually do something.

Chatter NMFS NOAA NWS Representative Nick Begich Senator Dan Sullivan Senator Lisa Murkowski