The sub-heading for this should be, “And why I hate modern journalism.”
Military Times has this article. The title of which is clearly alarming, especially in light of this weekend’s horrific flash flooding in Texas (which of course liberals are blaming Trump for). According to Military Times;
Navy to stop sharing satellite weather data with NOAA
Why would the Navy do this? This makes no sense, right? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is an important part of our government’s monitoring of things like hurricanes. The Navy depriving them of all available information is just another example of the Trump Administration’s anti-science stance. Another all-too-common assault against their perceived enemies in the Deep State pushing a radical climate change agenda.
Or so you’d believe if you just read the headline, or at best the top few paragraphs of this report.
According to the Military Times author (I can’t call her a journalist), Zita Ballinger Fletcher;
As of July 31, the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center will stop sharing satellite weather data with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to a NOAA release.
“This service change and termination will be permanent,” according to the NOAA release.
Data gathered from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, or DMSP, all Near-Earth Space Weather instruments and other Defense Department-owned systems will cease to be provided to NOAA.
The DMSP satellites capture global imagery from space twice a day, monitoring cloud formations, velocities, compositions and drifts, and provide NOAA with data and imagery.
“Military weather forecasters [using the DMSP] can detect developing patterns of weather and track existing weather phenomena over remote areas, including the presence of fog, severe thunderstorms, dust and sandstorms, and tropical cyclones,” according to the Space Force.
There’s no rational explanation for this. I am outraged. Trump truly is Satan incarnate, and worse than Super Mecha Hitler! People will die. Hold on, maybe I should take a breath and read past the fold…
As the Defense Department transfers greater reliance onto the newly fielded Weather System Follow-on Microwave, or WSF-M, use of the decades-old DMSPs for weather monitoring is being rapidly phased out.
The WSF-M, a more modern system that can pinpoint developing weather data more exactly, was declared to have reached Initial Operational Capacity this April. The WSF-M, first launched in 2024, can analyze sea ice, soil moisture and snow depth, as well as measure winds and collect cyclone data.
NOAA will now rely on data and imagery provided by WSF-M as well as the Electro-Optical Weather System, or EWS, to replace the DMSP data, according to its July release.
“DMSP satellites remain operational today but are more than a decade past their expected end of life,” the release said.
So…the Navy isn’t stopping the sharing of critical data. In fact, the DoD is sharing data from newer, more modern, more accurate satellites. There’s no loss of capability here. We’re actually seeing an increase.
This is modern (very small “j”) journalism. The headline is all people see, which in this case is wildly misleading, if technically correct. If they delve into the article, they have to get several paragraphs in to get to the real story, which is clearly nothing to be enraged about.
The whole article would be much better, but generate less outrage and fewer clicks, should be inverted. We’ve got new technology to replace the outdated stuff we’ve been using. New, better weather monitoring and prediction capabilities. Which, if you watched the Texas flood, would be a good thing to remind people about. Something to give a little hope for the future.
Journalism is dead. We now live in the age of outrage porn click bait. Don’t be surprised if you see fewer Military Times articles in these parts, as it’s hard to take their reporting seriously when this is how they behave.
I want to be surprised that this is coming from a U.S. Military publication, but with the amount of super liberal leaders that I’ve seen over the last several years, I am not!
Well, Military Times has been considered more or less a tabloid for years now. Its various papers (Army Times, etc.) are usually located near the checkout and flaunt eye-catching headlines and pictures. Like many, I used to buy them regularly, back when they were the quickest and most convenient way to see promotion cutoff scores, reenlistment bonuses, and other things pertinent to my early career. I think I stopped regularly buying them around 2008. The last few I picked up were mostly full of half-assed “news” articles with a bunch of opinion and editorial pieces.
Army Enquirer (or so)…
Yes, for about fifty years the Army Times has been about as in unbiased as The Daily Worker, or as accurate as The Guardian.
Well, at least they could give Bat Boy a home again…
https://i0.wp.com/weeklyworldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/BatBoyLedTroops_HiRes-scaled.jpg
I, for one, greatly miss the WWN’s incisive and hard hitting reporting.
Its journalism is legendary. I miss reading it while waiting in the checkout line. Plus, I used to peruse it or one of its equivalents when I was a grocery store checker back when I was a freshman college student.
Well…all those people who lost their jobs at USAID had to go somewhere to keep earning a government paycheck towards retirement! I wonder what Zita with two last names resume looks like?
Its strange that liberals recognize Trump as God, but still won’t vote for him..
I saw this article early this AM, terrible headline and incredibly misleading.
Military Times papers have been neocon liberal fascists for decades. My mother used to work for their parent company Ganett who bought them out in 1997. They did sell them to Regent in 2016 which is run by centrist California Republicans. But mostly left wing.
Gennett was the owner of USA Today, commonly referred to as MacNews.
Randolph Hearst…grins!
Soooo…..it’s not so much UNWILLING to share, as it’s an UNABLE to share, due to a change in information format.
Got it.
And we STILL don’t hate the media enough.
“Journalism is dead.”
Word.
Lars tried to use this as a “gotcha” the other day. He got his pee pee stomped flat. Dumbass didn’t read the last paragraph of the “article”.
Navy weather-guessers at a flight brief:
“We bet your life.”
I hope that reporter Zita Fletcher ain’t related to Admiral Frank Fletcher, Fletcher class Tin Cans (destroyers)
Frank Fletcher. A name which appears twice as a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Rear Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher and his nephew Frank Jack Fletcher. Both received it for actions at Veracruz in 1914. The younger Frank Fletcher also got a Navy Cross for WWI.
I think they misspelled Zita’s last name. I believe the correct spelling is “Felcher.”
(Look up the definition yourself, but not on a work computer)
Glad there were no pictures.
Meh, allow me some nuance — my guess is that the complex data assimilation methods used in the weather models needs to be updated to use the more modern satellite data. Typically these sensors are calibrated, post-processed, and ingested in specific ways. That takes time. If the cut-off is happening before NOAA’s model is ready, that is indeed a degradation in performance, and a barrier. Heck, if NOAA has no research funding to incorporate the newer observational data, then the fact it exists is immaterial.
Think of it a bit like the A-10 — tried and true, and soldier fuckin’ love it. Replace the flying gun with a stealthy F-35? Clearly a technological upgrade, but it might take time to adjust tactics since it can’t have as much time-on-target.
Same principle applies when switching from anything tried-and-true to a newer, better thing. Now, sure, maybe if you don’t push folks, they’d stick with the old one, but just as I’m inclined to trust my friends who’ve been on the ground in Afghanistan that the A-10 is what they want over the technically superior F-35, .. I’m also inclined to trust that the NOAA folks have a good sense of what their models use, and are tuned for, and if they say this hurts them, there’s probably a good element of truth in that.
“if they say this hurts them, there’s probably a good element of truth in that”
Should have read the article.
“While the discontinuation of certain data streams from DMSP may seem alarming, the transition to WSF-M and EWS represents a modernization effort aimed at providing more resilient and enhanced environmental monitoring capabilities to improve our ability to understand and predict weather phenomena, including tropical cyclones,” NOAA said.
Holy shit, it gets better.
“Congress voted to terminate the DMSP program as far back as 2015..”
Why yes, I did read the article — hence the point that sometimes the brass has different views than the people on the ground, and the truth isn’t crystal clear.
And if you’re also arguing that that paragon of good sense, the US Congress, wouldn’t conceive of terminating a program without allocating funding to adapt to the new satellite data, well, bless your heart, Grunt. I wish I had your optimism.
None of what you posted is in the article. No complaints from NOAA, nothing about not being able to use the data from the new system. Just a “Gotcha” headline, probably created by a writer infected with TDS, intended to discredit the current administration. An accurate headline would read “Navy upgrades weather satellite systems, will share data with NOAA”. But who is gonna read that?
Other articles about this have had complaints from folks that use the NOAA models & data. Here’s one example:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-season-meteorologists-losing-vital-tool-forecasting/story?id=123305760
I don’t think it’s a ‘gotcha’ headline, it’s an article which lacked the context to justify the headline, which you can certainly blame the author for, but folks in the know seem to disagree that this is a non-story.
Now, I bet in the long run, the new satellite data will be better. But again, knowing a tiny bit about how this works, I do think the voices saying this will hurt in the short term are right.
It’s a click-bait headline, designed to grab attention. It’s factually accurate, but is essentially a lie of omission. Anyone reading the article can see its non-story. And the story you linked is chock full of contradictions.
What are the ‘contradictions’? Or by that do you simply mean different people see it differently? If that’s the case, damn near any article you can imagine has ‘contradictions’ if people voice different opinions.
My point was simply that ‘something better’ doesn’t always mean it’s immediately better, or that the resources are there to use it. Surely that’s not controversial?
Well, the obviously the legacy media has no realized technology has changed yet again and they are obsolete.
People don’t have to read their shit.
I wonder what their profit margin is these days.
They are own by bigger fish, but those bigger fish must be feeling the pain.
I am sure they write off as the price of taking down the evilest conservatives and the random rino.
At what point will the cost become unbearable?
I read the same articles in Army Times for essentially the entirety of my 35 years: the Army’s new rifle, the Army’s new uniform (always pinks and greens or a PT uniform), the Army’s new PT test. Took ‘em 35 years and barely anything is right yet.
Mason …
I will take a small bit of exception to your statement, “Journalism is dead.” I am a journalist – I edit three weekly newspapers in my AO and am a feature writer, as well as handling several “beats.” I do not for one moment fall into the trap that some of the MSM has laid, that of “click-bait” headlines that don’t tell the story. My headlines are anything but click-bait – I tell the reader what the primary point of the story is.
Journalism isn’t dead. It’s comatose; it’s on life support; but there is a glimmer of hope. I think it needs a visit from Dr. Gregory House, but Hugh Laurie isn’t playing that role any more.
I’ve been doing this for 49 years, broadcast (radio and TV) and print. I think it can be salvaged, but I am not sure how. If I knew, would I be at three weekly papers in Georgia?
The Commish
Journalism is comatose is a fair rebuttal. I’d be happy if the news media could just at least pretend they don’t have an agenda to proselytize. 🙂