That only makes my question even more applicable... just with a wider scope.As for your question: I personally don&#x27;t want data, I want a service backed by sound data and expert validation+analysis.

Climate.gov was not the centralized and only storage spot for climate data. There&#x27;s petabytes of it all over the place.You want data? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.noaa.gov&#x2F;data" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.noaa.gov&#x2F;data</a> or <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.weather.gov&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.weather.gov&#x2F;</a> or <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climatedataguide.ucar.edu&#x2F;climate-data" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climatedataguide.ucar.edu&#x2F;climate-data</a> are a good place to start.

How can we use a bucket of mostly useless data to enrich ourselves by building more VC-funded apps? I&#x27;m asking the important questions.

YCombinator has enough smarts to figure this out.

I&#x27;m glad someone managed to save the data that we all payed for.My question is, how will this site stay relevant? The collection&#x2F;analysis&#x2F;monitoring of the current situation is as important as historic data. Turning current data into historical data takes significant resources.

Anything the US government publishes directly is in the public domain, including the contents of climate.gov, when it was online. One of the reasons the migration could happen without legal repercussions is precisely because the information was public domain.From the article:&gt; This is possible because US government data is public domain by law.From the FAQ on the new climate.us [0]:&gt; Can I re-use this data&#x2F;product&#x2F;image&#x2F;video?&gt; Yes! Any content dated prior to June 30, 2025 and credited to NOAA Climate.gov is in the public domain can be freely re-used with proper attribution.&gt; Any content after June 30, 2025 and credited to Climate.us, is under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-SA 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.climate.us&#x2F;faqs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.climate.us&#x2F;faqs</a>

Partisan politics aside, frankly, anything data the government publishes like this should be public domain by virtue of it being published by the government.How can the government &quot;for the people by the people&quot; claim propriety&#x2F;intellectual-property over anything?

Which part? I interpret it as:1. The temporary situation (private copy with donations) is not sustainable.2. The activity is within the proper role of the US federal government.3. It gives diffuse public-benefits, which should be funded normally, rather than rely on concentrated private donations.Disseminating the collected data publicly is not only a moral imperative--we already paid for it!--it&#x27;s also how one maximizes the overall return on investment.

They’re using the broadest definition possible, where tax dollars are generally meant to provide public service.But at that point you’re just in an argument over which public services are most important to whom.So then implying that tax dollars should be used instead of donations is wrong.

From my understanding of USA as a foreigner, tax dollars are for corporate bailouts and military.

I agree with parent, the full quote is: &quot;The whole thing relies on donations to keep it afloat, which is really what tax dollars are for.&quot;I think this is a great site, love what they are doing, and support them (including a literal donation). But a government maintained website for this data is low on my list of things of what tax dollars are for. In fact, I think this is better done privately. To be clear, many of the things every US administration does including this one I also think is better done privately.

&gt; The whole thing relies on donations to keep it afloat, which is really what tax dollars are for.Hmm. I don’t believe that’s accurate.

The media in the US is utterly feckless and broken.

What if pedophiles were sent to jail instead of elected.Technical tricks like IPFS can’t prevent even 1% of the damage caused by giving criminals this much power over society.

The Library of Congress runs Webrecorder&#x27;s Python Wayback for their web archive replay and has an extensive collection of over 35,000 web archives each comprising multiple pages: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.loc.gov&#x2F;thesignal&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;beta-release-of-library-of-congress-web-archives-playback-services&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.loc.gov&#x2F;thesignal&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;beta-release-of-libr...</a>

Honestly, if anything the library of congress should be operating a system similar to the way back machine. Isn&#x27;t preserving historical information one of its objectives? And what libraries do in general?But I&#x27;m very in favor of maintaining &quot;the record&quot;, as it were, for government websites. If we can have changelogs on bills then we should elsewhere. It informs the citizens of the actions of our government. What has changed and &quot;who done it&quot;. That can go both ways and I hope it would incentivize those trying to actually do good and not just treated as a liability.Hell, if the NSA can just gobble up all the Internet traffic and store it on servers in Utah then the least we can do is make public records accessible. The archival work has already been done and we&#x27;ve already paid for it

What if government websites were distributed &amp; archived as a default, from the beginning? Think IPFS as a first target for publication, &quot;normal web&quot; only as a mirror.Is it feasible?Should we push for this default?First obvious objection is that lots of government services need backend and dynamic content, but let&#x27;s say this requirement only goes for static content.

Blog post from a few weeks ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.climate.us&#x2F;news-features&#x2F;feed&#x2F;climateus-launches-independent-website-trusted-climate-information" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.climate.us&#x2F;news-features&#x2F;feed&#x2F;climateus-launches...</a> (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=48689182">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=48689182</a>)

I&#x27;m pretty sure all they care about is $$$. The political winds don&#x27;t matter which way they are blowing.

With the AI rush, it all makes sense why suddenly all Silicon Valley became pro Trump and anti climate overnight.

Please don&#x27;t post like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we&#x27;re trying for something better here. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>

This was my thought on the issue as well. How does moving it to private companies benefit anyone except the companies (who can now legally price gouge)? This is a centralized service, and just like healthcare, the numbers show that integrity goes out the window once financialized.

do you care about climate data? then pay. or else you dont actually care enough to be inconvenienced. put up or shut up. i care, so I&#x27;ll start. will make a $15 donation (as soon as i figure out how)

Who is going to pay for the data collection? If we can&#x27;t trust the government, what are we paying taxes for?

&gt; stations in remote places all over the countrys&#x2F;country&#x2F;world&#x2F;There are many large projects to collect this information ranging from extremely specialized satellites to networks of ocean buoys. It turns out that weather is a global phenomenon and warming seas on the other side of the planet affect wherever you are.

You&#x27;re not wrong, but I would like to point out that there is also the Civilian Weather Observer Program (CWOP) that is fed by a lot of private weather stations (the kind you can buy at Walmart of Amazon and put at your house). I believe the data is aggregated and averaged to account for variations in installation deficiencies, and used to inform&#x2F;enhance the government maintained data feeds.

The only reason we have good weather data is because the government maintains stations in remote places all over the country. Who else would maintain that?

I respect cynicism and questioning stuff but this is misplaced. You have to trust the government since they are potentially the least partisan source here. Yes the data can be misconstrued by legislators but the truth of the data cannot be in question. It’s healthy to question it but the solution is to require proof of non-sabotage. It takes a lot of money and resources to pull this data together. It’s compiled by organizations across the world and being the trustworthy anchor is the most efficient way to achieve this. With that the government agency has every incentive to be non partisan and operate with integrity.

Hard disagree. Public funds are absolutely for funding research into things that affect the public on a large scale. That&#x27;s the whole point. What could be more &quot;general welfare&quot;, as envisioned in the constitution, than making sure we are not screwing up our collective home?

I agree with your feelings but &#x27;activists and independent scientists&#x27; do not have the resources to maintain that sort of infrastructure over the long term and will also be continually fending off attacks on their credibility. Institutions exist because volunteering has limitations.

That would be great if the courts were actually neutral arbitrators and not captured political entities.

Private companies can pay for their own data collection and if they have a dispute with the government&#x27;s analysis, they can go to court.Who exactly is going to pay for these non-governmental independent data collection&#x2F;analysis efforts?How about taxpayers pay for one analysis, private parties pay for theirs, courtrooms can resolve inconsistencies on a case-by-case basis.

Ah yes, we can&#x27;t trust that our elected officials understand their duty well enough just fund Science and find out stuff works, so better throw up our hands and let the &quot;market&quot; do it.Your view isn&#x27;t controversial because it&#x27;s daring, it&#x27;s just plain nihilistic. It&#x27;s just anti-government dogma which is cultivated by an incredibly cynical media atmosphere.

Congress abdicated the majority of their authority to the executive over time by creating executive agencies. Now everybody is upset because the executive is actually using the power that Congress gave to it. The primary check on government growth is the three branches contending for power. No branch wants another branch to become more powerful and make their branch irrelevant. So, to fix the current issue, Congress can remove the power it has given to the executive and restore balance.

These checks and balances failed long before Trump started abusing the system

You misspelled &quot;self-corruption&quot;

This notion of &quot;the government&quot; is the wrong premise. The US government is (supposed to be, I should say) an elaborate system of checks and balances to enable self-correction mechanisms. The Trump administration has turned that into a travesty, obviously, but the system itself is explicitly set up to be split into three branches that keep each other in check, and thus supervising itself.

&gt; how can we trust either its legislative or executive branch to ensure that their creations are effective or efficient?Glad you asked. That&#x27;s actually the job of the Inspectors General. One of the first groups of people Trump completely eliminated.It was their job to stop things like corruption, waste, and fraud in the federal government.

Ignoring the guy who&#x27;s there now. How accountable is the president really, especially in their second term.And do consider that the supreme court has ruled that they&#x27;re immune for anything that&#x27;s an &#x27;official act&#x27;.Accountability of the executive left the room in 2024

Except the Federal Reserve for some reason.

All agencies are ultimately accountable to the public via democratically elected leaders as the Supreme Court recently upheld. No part of the government is independent body, it’s in one of the 3 branches.

&gt; CIA regulates itself with its own supervision tooThat&#x27;s not true lol. There is a gigantic supervisory apparatus constantly breathing down the IC&#x27;s neck, including but not limited to your very own elected Congressperson&#x27;s investigative powers.

That doesn&#x27;t seem controversial to me.I wish the same were true of all federal organizations though. For example, CIA regulates itself with its own supervision too.Other orgs do it too. I don&#x27;t think they do it well.

This is the American way.The end result? Judges being elected that nobody knows. Some even running unopposed. Yet, they all are &#x27;elected&#x27;.No. I don&#x27;t think Americans can elect more people. I would be shocked if over 10% formed their own opinion on which judge to pick for example. If you&#x27;re lucky they did that for the ballot measures...

Yes! We could pool our efforts though, in a larger organization (let&#x27;s call it a democratic republic), vote on who should preside over it, be on the &quot;board&quot; and hire some people to run the day-to operations of the whole thing.If a single organization proves too unwieldy, we could even have a federated solution.Edit: another suggestion <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;reply?id=48898415&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D48897945%2348898415">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;reply?id=48898415&amp;goto=item%3Fi...</a>

This makes no sense to me. National governments have no moral or legal responsibility to monitor the environment, because they also regulate pollution? Is this a joke?Only private companies with some fantastical profit motive to install satellite and sensor networks all over and above the globe should do it, not the government?

&gt; To that end, I hope the Trump administration&#x27;s actions cause independent data collection and analysis by activists and independent scientistsActivists and independent scientists ... funded by whom? Data collected by whom? Data stored and distributed by whom? Data analyzed by whom? -- All of these roles are non-trivial, unlike your understanding of &quot;the government&quot; as a single monolithic entity; The government has&#x2F;had different branches for the collection and study of climate vs (eg) the enforcement of emissions. The issue in our government today isn&#x27;t the trust&#x2F;separation of these different entities but the attack on them from above and abroad.

This may be a controversial view, but I don&#x27;t think we should trust the actor in charge of regulating and limiting emissions with its own supervision. The Federal Government has a plethora of agencies which regulate pollution and energy usage; how can we trust either its legislative or executive branch to ensure that their creations are effective or efficient?To that end, I hope the Trump administration&#x27;s actions cause independent data collection and analysis by activists and independent scientists.

Simply hosting the website wasn&#x27;t costing that much

That&#x27;s easy to do. No one has expectations of this one.As soon as a government website is down, it&#x27;s an outrage.I&#x27;m sure money could&#x27;ve been saved. But the cost of this site really isn&#x27;t the hosting, it&#x27;s the data being gatherd with all the research

That&#x27;s the Republican M.O.Strangle funding to a public service, complain that public service isn&#x27;t performing, use the consequences of their own actions to justify eliminating the public service indefinitely.

They may have, unfortunately, proved DOGE&#x27;s point. The new climate.gov probably costs a fraction of the old one.

Climate.gov was destroyed. Open data saved it