From Slashdot and Networkworld
I suppose it’s natural for Washington to try and wrap issues up in a tidy legislative package for bureaucratic purposes (or perhaps other things more nefarious). But one has to wonder if we really need another government-led group, especially when it comes to the climate and all the sometimes controversial information that entails. But that’s what is under way.
Today the House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on the need for a National Climate Service that could meet the increased demand for climate information, the committee said.
The NCS would provide a single point of contact of information climate forecasts and support for planning and management decisions by federal agencies; state, local, and tribal governments; and the private sector.
“Climate affects all of us everyday in communities across the country. As our ability to understand and recognize climate cycles and patterns has grown, so has the demand for more information,” said Chairman Brian Baird (D-WA) in a statement. “It is in our best interest to structure a service that will utilize our expertise to deliver information that will not only support us nationally, but at the regional and local scale where adaptation and response plans can best be implemented.”
According a release from the committee, the hearing included witnesses from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Agriculture, and other organizations that deliver climate services as well as witnesses who utilize climate information that is currently available.
NOAA describes the NCS as being the nation’s identified, accessible, official source of authoritative, regular, and timely climate information. That includes historical and real-time data, monitoring and assessments, research and modeling, predictions and projections, decision support tools and early warning systems, and the development and delivery of valued climate services.
One has to wonder though are climate issues, which can require nimble action in some cases really be served by what would likely end up being a huge governmental entity.
The ClimateScienceWatch.org site put the challenges this way:
The need to be able to translate the fruits of the good work of the IPCC [Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change], the US Climate Change Science Program, and other ongoing scientific climate-related research and observations into information that is usable, useful, timely and relevant to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on present and future climate conditions is what the drive to create US National Climate Service is all about. In collaboration with officials from other agencies and research institutions, NOAA has been engaged in a deliberative planning process for establishing an overall framework within the federal government that would spell out the respective roles and responsibilities of NOAA and other federal and non-federal entities, and provide a prescription for managing and operating a NCS.
Though the idea has been kicked around for years-for example, the National Research Council has issued two reports of relevance: A Climate Services Vision: First Steps Toward the Future (2001) and Fair Weather: Effective Partnerships in Weather and Climate Services (2003)-a consensus has still not been achieved on how best to design, operate, and fund such an entity, or even whether a National Climate Service as it is being currently framed is the right vehicle for meeting today’s needs.
So what do you think?
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Frank K. (16:39:40) :
Just what we need during these tough economic times…more spending on “climate services”!! Really? What the heck is NOAA doing, anyway? Isn’t this the NCDC’s job?
BTW…from the NOAA document
http://www.sab.noaa.gov/Reports/2008/NOAA_SAB_CWG_NCS_Review_Sep08_FINALtoNOAA.pdf
Guess who’s on the review team??
REVIEW TEAM MEMBERS
.
.
Heidi Cullen
The Weather Channel
Frank, here we have it.
I adjust my prior advice.
We need to lock them up in straitjackets behind the thick steel walls of a mental institution.
The best way to combat government propaganda in science is the ability to disseminte data and ideas from an independent source. We do not need another political government agency using a political concensus to ram pseudo-science down our throats in order to spend tax dollars. As long as there are those who believe in and support a free press, we are all a lot safer from control by less than honorable rulers.
NO! It would become even more powerful than the EPA and be stacked with typical
bureaucratic oafs that toe a line of insanity!
talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars!!!..the only new bureacracy we need is a “National Center for the Elimination of the other Bureaucracies”
Yes, I agree entirely with the statement:
“Climate affects all of us everyday in communities across the country. As our ability to understand and recognize climate cycles and patterns has grown, so has the demand for more information,” especially the part about climate cycles and patterns.
As population density increases and resources become scarcer we will need a better understanding of climate variations to assist planning and avoid disaster.
Unfortunately any body ‘translating the good works of the IPPC’ is likely to have the opposite effect. Debate will be stifled and all “patterns” will be equated to AGW, that is unless they can translate the good works of the IPCC into science.
Now there’s a challenge!
So now the guvmint want something in line with the BOM and Met office – guvmint run climate scare offices! This new administration just wants to be in charge of everything, don’t they? As I read somewhere, Orwells’ 1984 was not intended to be an instruction manual. Maybe the guvmint should be reminded of that.
Anyone know where one can get the US monthly temperature numbers? If the answer is No, then we need a new agency.
The NOAA publishes a monthly new release that says “In March, 2009, US temperatures were the 13th warmest in the last 42 years and the 9th warmest this century”. But that is all one gets beyond a few maps that are unusually uninformative.
GISS gives us an annual temperature chart (that we know has been changed 4 or 5 times now).
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.lrg.gif
But the NOAA does not give us a reliable metric that says it has been getting colder over the past 18 months. Did you know that US temperatures have fallen 1.5C in the last 3 years?
So, I downloaded the monthly US temperature from here. (Thanks to the NOAA for not linking to this database anywhere – reminds me of the NSIDC).
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/CDODivisionalSelect.jsp
And produced these two charts of the 12 month moving average of US temperatures so there is better resolution of the trends but there is too much variability to use the normal “anomaly” method that we are used to seeing. (first one is in degrees F – second is degrees C)
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8913/ustempsf.png
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9651/ustempsc.png
So, Yeah, we need a new agency that is not so stuck in their ways that Iowa corn belt weather matters more to them than anything else.
@ur momisugly jeff id
LOL!
Jeff Id,
Sometimes life is so unfair: click
Totally off topic, but does anyone know what happened to icecap.us?
Mike Bryant @16:16:28
Like we really need even MORE agencies falsifying data.
Mike, it’s exactly the opposite reason that inspires this Agency.
With just one agency publishing and twisting statistics, it is much easier to control the output, with no unfortunate leakage of different adjustments from other sources spoling the party line. This is The One Source That Will Bind Them All.
“The need to be able to translate the fruits of the good work of the IPCC [Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change], the US Climate Change Science Program, and other ongoing scientific climate-related research and observations into information that is usable, useful, timely and relevant to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on present and future climate conditions is what the drive to create US National Climate Service is all about.”
Usable!? Useful!? Timely!? TIMELY!!??!!??
From the gum’mint no less!?!?!!!
Bah! Humbug! We’ve already paid for climate data and we’ve been ripped off. No sense throwing good money after bad.
Ed MacAulay (16:17:48) :
‘then no more need for Google trash ads? Oh well we can always dream.’
Ed, I’m having fun making Gore pay for WUWT
Government job creation through CO2 Cap and Tax.
I would have deferred to the opinions of our host and others here, who are experts in weather—I mean ‘climate’—matters, until I read this:
Imagine: the charter of this new government agency is “to translate the fruits of the good work of the IPCC!” Do you suppose they will engrave the quote that (to paraphrase) “Global warming is almost certainly the result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels” on marble in the rotunda of the Algore Climate Temple—er, building?
I vote no.
/Mr Lynn
I can see it now:
One of the first acts of the new agency will be to issue “carbon” ration cards to every citizen. We’ll be entitled to exhale all the CO2 we are able, because the new government believes in freedom. And we will be permitted to heat our homes to 68° F. And
Big Brotherthe Agency will allow us to emit exhaust from our scooters when we’re allowed to ride them on even or odd days. And barbecue twice each summer.Beyond that, we will have to pay an extra carbon tax for the right to emit additional CO2. How else is the government going to protect the climate from “carbon”?
Seriously, if the gov’t wants to do something productive and honest, it can start by fixing the U.S. Surface Station network — where 69% of the stations read 2° or more high. That’s more of an error than all the claimed warming since 1880.
“to translate the fruits of the good work of the IPCC!”
Quote of the week?
The notion that the US Government can impact the climate of planet Earth through policy decisions is just plain idiotic. That is not a political statement, that is a statement of reality. Anyone who thinks a “United States Climate Service” would make an iota of difference is a complete idiot.
I would at least have a pinch of respect if they just came out with the truth and said “We want to use fear of climate change, and people’s belief that we can control that change to create an agency that will allow us to manage people, business, and industry to a greater extent than we can today”.
It is lunacy, it is dumb, it is fantasy, and it is moronic. Not to even mention the arrogant narcissism that goes into thinking that the US alone can control the climate of the planet. What a load of nonsense!
Smokey-
I guess your ration card will be entitled, “Smoke on the water, fire in the sky.” The background will be Deep Purple.
Non voting, non American viewpoint.
No doubt a National Climate Service structure and operations would be based on and similar to the usual National Weather Service organisations of most countries.
That implies that not only will it be a source of a very wide range of climate information and data but will also be making climate forecasts for the short and long term future.
When the weather forecasting organisations get it wrong just a few days out, any decisions and very short term policies can be quickly adjusted and catered for albeit usually at some short term inconvenience but with little in the way of substantial long term damage or financial cost.
With a National Climate Service climate forecasting requirement, the consequences of a projected seasonal or decade long climate forecast being incorrect is almost a guaranteed given.
There will be immense pressure on government policy making bodies and large business organisations to base their long term outlooks on the prognostications of any such Climate Service.
Not to do so would leave many large shareholder owned corporations open to legal action.
Government departments in particular will be required to take the Climate Service forecasts into account when formulating policy.
As these policies are long term as in years and possibly decades, they will influence fundamental decisions which once made will take years to re-orientate and redress if and when the subsequent climate scene does not match the forecasts.
Farmers as an example, constantly watch the seasonal forecasts but are experienced enough and have been badly burnt often enough not to place any trust in the seasonal forecasts as issued by all the world’s various national weather and seasonal forecasting organisations.
The seasonal forecasts are only used by them as a guide at best to plan their season.
Power system planning, stock trading, agricultural, horticultural and live stock supplies, transport system planning and potential emergency planning plus many other long term based industries could all be very badly affected by just one wrong seasonal forecast.
The ability to change course in industries that have very long planning and cycle times is very limited and they often have to live with any bad decisions that have been made until the completion of that cycle.
Just as a possible example; In the power generation industry, a decision to say build or not build a billion dollar power station based on a long term climate forecast could take decades to resolve and at an enormous cost if that climate forecast turns out to be wrong.
And government policy based on the Climate Service forecasts may well force the power company to follow a course that it may not have chosen if left to decide purely on economic grounds as at present with some very serious economic consequences for both the customers and the investors in that power company.
Guaranteeing the impartiality of all data under the present climate dissension would be almost impossible to achieve but with the right legislation and personnel in control it may just be possible.
A central Climate Data organisation maybe!
A Climate Forecasting Service, No!
“The need to be able to translate the fruits of the good work of the IPCC [Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change], the US Climate Change Science Program, and other ongoing scientific climate-related research and observations into information that is usable, useful, timely and relevant to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on present and future climate conditions”
It says it all: what good work of the IPCC??? This is another attempt to create an extra bureaucracy and reward all AGWists with taxpayers money and pensions. So should Nature continue to be firmly in the realist camps, the trolls won’t have lost it all. At worst, this can become a thought minister that will harass climate realists and distort measurements that do not fit the agenda. Already, given the number of suspect publications coming out of so called peer-reviewed journals and the exploitation the media makes of them -the Steig et al. 2009 Nature cover and its spurious trends comes to mind- one wonders if science is becoming scientism and structures are now created to support this shift.
Snow Rollers on the Camas Prairie
March 31 2009
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/otx/photo_gallery/snow_rollers.php
On the evening of March 31st, 2009, Tim Tevebaugh was driving home from work east of Craigmont in the southern Idaho Panhandle (see map below). Across the rolling hay fields, Tim saw a very unusual phenomenon. The snow rollers that he took pictures of are extremely rare because of the unique combination of snow, wind, temperature and moisture needed to create them. They form with light but sticky snow and strong (but not too strong) winds. Some snow rollers are formed by gravity (i.e. rolling down a hill), but in this case, the snow rollers were generated by the wind. These snow rollers formed during the day as they weren’t present in the morning on Tim’s drive to work.
Based on estimations from Tim as well as the blades of grass in the picture, most of the snow rollers were about 18″ in height, while the largest rollers were about 2 feet tall.
Smokey (18:11:00) :
I can see it now:
One of the first acts of the new agency will be to issue “carbon” ration cards to every citizen. We’ll be entitled to exhale all the CO2 we are able, because the new government believes in freedom. And we will be permitted to heat our homes to 68° F. And Big Brother the Agency will allow us to emit exhaust from our scooters when we’re allowed to ride them on even or odd days. And barbecue twice each summer.
Beyond that, we will have to pay an extra carbon tax for the right to emit additional CO2. How else is the government going to protect the climate from “carbon”?
Seriously, if the gov’t wants to do something productive and honest, it can start by fixing the U.S. Surface Station network — where 69% of the stations read 2° or more high. That’s more of an error than all the claimed warming since 1880″.
Smokey,
You have entirely missed the the essence of the plan.
We have the UN IPCC telling the regional Climate Bureaus what to tell the Government about their predictions.
Than we have EPA taking care of the rules and the regulations.
For the execution of the rules we have ACORN who will send their buffoons from door to door checking on emissions, dealing dope, do a bit of loan sharking, selling you second hand cars, grab your vote for the next election and offer other services that could make you end up with a gun in your nose.
And if the ACORN officials get cornered by the angry public, they send in the Civil Army.
Anyhow, one false move and you get screwed by at least four independent Government Agencies and all the former thugs and free loaders from the neighborhood.
How else do you think Obama is going to create all those “Green Jobs” he promised?
I had to read the article 3 times before it dawned on me “NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE” What the h*** heck do we need with a national climate service, the national weather guessers can’t get 30 days right let alone changes over years.
If they have to spend money on something lets spend it on better weather stations and data collection, something that Anthony has been railing about over the last 30 or so years, and then maybe we can get a real picture of the local changes in weather and regional climate.
What is a service on climate? Do they provide climate to order? I vote NO!
OT
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