Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Senate Appropriations Committee kills SEC budget

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003 19:34:25 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
From: "Steven Peterson" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Senate Appropriations Committee kills SEC budget

Just got this in from the ARRL. The following is an excerpt from their most recent
propagation report. Most likely, the snafu will be cleared up, but writing your
representatives in the House and Senate couldn't hurt.

Grim news emerged recently concerning the NOAA Space Environment Center in
Colorado, where most of the data for these bulletins riginates.  I suspect due to
some misunderstanding about their work, the Senate Appropriations Committee wants
to eliminate the Space Environment Center's budget for fiscal year 2004, which
officially began October 1.  The Senate Appropriations Committee said in a report
that NOAA's work should only be terrestrial and not extend to space, so it's
proposing to cut all funding for the SEC.
The House appropriations bill proposes cutting funding by 40
percent, even in the wake of severe cuts during the fiscal year just
ended.

The funny thing about the Senate report is that all of the effects
of solar flares and sunspots that concern us are here on Earth.
Claiming that NOAA should ignore the sun because it is in space
seems silly, since the same standard doesn't apply to NOAA's
conventional weather forecasting.  The SEC is a small part of NOAA, with an annual
budget of just 8 million dollars.

There's a story on this subject on the ARRL Web site (see ''Space
Environment Center Funding in Jeopardy''
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/10/03/3/).  The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer ran a story in its October 2 editions
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/142217_space02.html, and
there's an item on the September 20 SpaceWeather.com Web page, available in the
archive for that date
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php .

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