Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Land Shark who wrote (102065)	7/6/2007 1:13:52 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 173976

It's a cycle thingy

To: Land Shark who wrote (102065)	7/6/2007 2:08:40 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 173976

more BAD leaders in the Bush administration... millions for a birthday...and NONE to save a CRITICAL SATELLITE Crisis at Hurricane center -More SHADES OF BROWNIE! 23 staffers call for removal of hurricane center chief By ELIOT KLEINBERG Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 05, 2007 Opposition to National Hurricane Center director Bill Proenza grew to a full-blown mutiny late today when 23 staffers signed a petition calling for his ouster. "The center needs a new Director, and with the heart of the hurricane season fast approaching, urges the Department of Commerce to make this happen as quickly as possible," says the memo. "The effective functioning of the National Hurricane Center is at stake. The staff of the National Hurricane Center would like nothing more than to return its focus to its primary mission of protecting life and property from hazardous tropical weather, and leave the political arena it now finds itself in." Among those signing: James Franklin, Richard Knabb and Richard Pasch, the three senior specialists who on Tuesday had told the Miami Herald Proenza had hurt office morale and public confidence and needed to go. Also signing today's note: senior specialist Lixion Avila and Evangelina Maruly, Proenza's own secretary. Proenza, whose office said he wasn't in today, has said he won't resign. The man who's been director only since January was praised for his candor and gumption earlier this year when he called out his bosses at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He criticized them for planning to spend millions on a birthday party for the National Weather Service while making little or no plans to replace an aging satellite that could fall out of the sky at any moment. NOAA has argued QuikSCAT is an experimental NASA satellite anyway, and is just part of a strategy that includes other satellites as well as planes, buoys, computer models and extra staff. The hurricane center senior forecasters told the Herald Proenza had overplayed the significance of losing the QuikScat satellite and said it wasn't nearly as important as reconnaissance flights into storms. One, Rick Knabb, appeared to contradict himself; he'd said in a June 2006 hurricane center workshop, "When QuickSCAT is gone, it will be like going back several years in tropical cyclone analysis." Supervisors had called on Proenza to tone down his rhetoric and focus on forecasting. Proenza had made their letters public and stuck to his guns. On Monday, NOAA sent a team to Miami "to conduct an independent assessment of the center's overall capabilities because we have become aware of some concerns about the Tropical Prediction Center's ability to meet its mission," director of communications Anson Franklin said from Washington. Franklin said the team was to report no later than July 20. At the time, he said the team wasn't focusing on a single issue - either Proenza's candor or his job status. Proenza's "satellite vs. birthday" tirade had led to public outcry, and politicians had lined up to criticize his superiors. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson "plans to address the hurricane center and its needs" as early as next week in Senate Commerce Committee hearings on QuickSCAT, spokesman Bryan Gulley said today. U.S. Reps. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Pembroke Pines, wrote NOAA's parent, the Commerce Department, on Tuesday, wondering if the surprise visits were a way of pressuring Proenza and asking why they couldn't have been done after the season. The discussion changed as the week progressed. Ron Klein didn't comment on Proenza's job status today. But, he said in a statement, "If it hadn't been for Bill Proenza, Congress wouldn't have known that the premiere hurricane tracking satellite was in danger of falling into disrepair." Today, Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for Weather Underground, called for Proenza to step down. Masters, in a blog, did support some of Proenza's complaints about cuts in research. But he challenged Proenza's conclusion that losing the satellite could cut the accuracy of a 2-day forecast by 10 percent and a 3-day forecast by 16 percent. Masters said the satellite deals mostly with intensity forecasts and focuses on storms that are far out at sea. He said Proenza based his figures on 19 cases in a six-week period: "This sample is too small to draw definitive conclusions about the impact of the QuikSCAT on tropical cyclone forecasts." The Miami Herald and Staff writer Robert P. King contributed to this story.