Next week is the beginning of hurricane season, but a storm is already raging.<\/p>\n
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are the federal geeks that make the predictions about the weather. \u00a0The month of May is their \u201cshowtime\u201d, when their annual hurricane forecast is released; the 2007 forecast calls for a nasty summer, with up to 10 Hurricanes expected, and up to 5 of those reaching Category Three or greater. \u00a0This has made a lot of people understandably jumpy all across the Gulf Coast, over at FEMA, and right up Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n
All of which makes it a great moment for a little marketing controversy. \u00a0In this year\u2019s NOAA budget is a $4Million line item earmarked for marketing NOAA\u2019s 200th<\/sup> anniversary. \u00a0The stated goal is to help people understand what NOAA is and what it does. \u00a0Pretty innocuous stuff, until Bill Proenza opened his mouth. \u00a0He\u2019s the new director of the National Hurricane Center (a division of NOAA).\u00a0 On May 17th<\/sup>, he complained to the Miami Herald that hurricane research is badly under-funded and that a key weather satellite was in danger of failing.\u00a0 And that the marketing program was shameless self-promotion and a waste of federal dollars.<\/p>\n The timing was perfect:\u00a0 as the NOAA guys stepped to the podium to give their 2007 prediction, they had to explain why their key hurricane guy can\u2019t get the funding he needs to do his job. \u00a0They weren\u2019t pleased, and a NOAA spokesman blasted Proenza, saying he was merely pissed off that part of the marketing plan was to rename his department the \u201cNOAA National Hurricane Center.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, it\u2019s not about the budget, it\u2019s just semantics.<\/p>\n Then why is the National Weather Center (another division of NOAA) also in an uproar? \u00a0Its directors, David Johnson and John Jones, resigned on May 19 amid implications that they too have complained about budget cuts in their department. \u00a0Their credentials are impeccable, one is an Air Force Brigadier General and the other has served the fed for 35 years. \u00a0So, not surprisingly, both NOAA and Weather Center spokesmen have stated the resignations are \u201ccompletely unrelated\u201d to the Proenza debacle.\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n Hey, enjoy your day at the beach this Memorial Day. \u00a0Relax in the knowledge that your government is spending your tax dollars wisely, and keeping you safe.<\/p>\n (Insert scary wind and slapping shutters noises here.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next week is the beginning of hurricane season, but a storm is already raging. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are the federal geeks that make the predictions about the weather. \u00a0The month of May is their \u201cshowtime\u201d, when their annual hurricane forecast is released; the 2007 forecast calls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[138,186,600,858,881,1026],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-bill-proenza","tag-budget","tag-hurricane","tag-national-weather-center","tag-noaa","tag-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}