Crooks and Liars asks
Austerity! See how useful it is when we don't adequately fund valuable parts of our national infrastructure?
The New York Times
writes that weather satellites are dying, crippling forecasters' ability to predict the path, nature and severity of tropical storms.
Austerity zombies who scream about the deficit and the need to cut entitlements so that the 1% can have bigger tax cuts, have imperiled the funding of weather satellites.
WASHINGTON — The United States is facing a year or more without crucial satellites that provide invaluable data for predicting storm tracks, a result of years of mismanagement, lack of financing and delays in launching replacements, according to several recent official reviews.
The looming gap in satellite coverage, which some experts view as almost certain within the next few years, could result in shaky forecasts about storms like Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to hit the East Coast early next week.
All this week, forecasters have been relying on such satellites for almost all the data needed to narrow down what were at first widely divergent computer models of what Hurricane Sandy would do next: hit the coast, or veer away into the open ocean?
As a New Yorker, I appreciate Mayor Bloomberg's swift and proactive action in anticipation of what might be the worst storm to hit the East coast in decades.
Right on schedule, the five-day models began to agree on the likeliest answer. By Friday afternoon, the storm’s center was predicted to approach Delaware on Monday and Tuesday, with powerful winds, torrential rains and dangerous tides ranging over hundreds of miles.
New York and other states declared emergencies; the Navy ordered ships to sea to avoid damage.
(Apparently there one or two ancient ships the Navy still floats out there, despite what Willard tries to tell us, and they have been warned).
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City warned that no matter where or when the storm landed, the city would not escape its effects. And from the Carolinas to New England, public safety officials were urgently advising tens of millions of residents to prepare for the worst, including the possibility of historic flooding, power failures and snow.
See - knowing about the severity of a storm is useful, and you can take evasive action.
“We cannot afford to lose any enhancement that allows us to accurately forecast any weather event coming our way,” said Craig J. Craft, commissioner of emergency management for Nassau County on Long Island, where the great hurricane of 1938 killed hundreds.
On Thursday, Mr. Craft was seeking more precise forecasts for Sandy and gearing up for possible evacuations of hospitals and nursing homes, as were ordered before Tropical Storm Irene last year. “Without accurate forecasts it is hard to know when to pull that trigger,” he said.
Hospitals rely on accurate weather forecasts to keep their patients alive.
Experts have grown increasingly alarmed in the past two years because the existing polar satellites are nearing or beyond their life expectancies, and the launch of the next replacement, known as J.P.S.S.-1, has slipped to 2017, probably too late to avoid a coverage gap of at least a year.
This is what happens when you slash budgets in the name of austerity. But if you're a member of the religious GOP extremists in Congress, or those seeking to get there, one can forego silly expenditures like weather satellites. Because, dying a preventable death from a weather event, must be God's will too.