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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I’d prefer to see an agency that would require full disclosure on scientific papers used as the basis for forming policy. Which means, the agency would have to be provided with all data and methods used to reach the conclusion of the paper, so the results can be replicated (or an attempt at replication can be made). And the disclosure is to the public not just the peer-review old boy’s club.
Thus, people like Mann, Briffa, Jones, Santer, et al can’t hide behind any fanciful walls if they expect to be taken seriously. If that’s the goal of the agency, I’m all for it.
James McFatridge (16:42:41) :
“Definitely not. Almost all of the problems with AGW are the result of limited sources of funding, limited access to study publishing, limited access to mainstream media, and centralized bureaucracies that decide for the entire U.S.
A national climate service would simply be another choke point to repress data and ideas that were out of favor with whoever gained control of the service.
We need to emulate the founding fathers and push all government services down to the lowest practical level of government”.
James, I love this: another choke point to repress data
Keep up the good work.
Isn’t NOAA a country-wide body responsible for this?
From their web site:
Welcome to NOAA!
NOAA is an agency that enriches life through science. Our reach goes from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor as we work to keep citizens informed of the changing environment around them.
From daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.
NOAA’s roots date back to 1807, when the Nation’s first scientific agency, the Survey of the Coast, was established. Since then, NOAA has evolved to meet the needs of a changing country. NOAA maintains a presence in every state and has emerged as an international leader on scientific and environmental matters.
NOAA’s mission touches the lives of every American and we are proud of our role in protecting life and property and conserving and protecting natural resources. I hope you will explore NOAA and how our products and services can enrich your own life.
That looks like the kind of divisions that UNESCO would throw out at us to bring in the MAB project, I wish they had stayed gone like Reagan wanted.
No. Make that he!! no.
sammy k nailed it when he said: talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars!!!..the only new bureacracy we need is a “National Center for the Elimination of the other Bureaucracies”
Bill Illis (17:39:22) : “The NOAA publishes a monthly new release that says “In March, 2009, US temperatures were [..] the 9th warmest this century”
2009. 9th-warmest?????
Lucy Skywalker (16:19:07) : “Or perhaps Australia is starting to emancipate herself now, thanks to Plimer and JoNova and other authors there, getting the message out…”
New Zealand too – “Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth about Global Warming” by Ian Wishart has reportedly gone straight to #1 in NZ on its launch.
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You’ve slashdotted Slashdot!
Having just read the results of Anthony’s work on surface stations available from Heartland, I can’t imagine the need for yet another failed bureaucratic organization. They should first fix the NCDC and the USHCN.
James Allison (17:01:05) : Our Met service (historically quite accurate if a little conservative) are predicting another meter of snow during the next 7 days – unprecedented in my lifetime!
http://www.nzski.com/report.jsp?site=mthutt
WOW! I think an article showcasing the developing winter in the S.H. might be rather interesting… The stuff in the link was rather, er, significant:
Last Fall 40 cm, 04 May 2009
Road Closed
The road is CLOSED to all traffic due to avalanche dangers caused by recent snow falls.
Snow Lower mountain snow depth: 70 cm
Upper mountain snow depth: 80 cm
Snow surface: Powder
Mt Hutt is currently receiving heavy snowfalls and creating potential avalanche dangers. Please note that the acess road is closed to all traffic and will not be reopened until we have completed avalanche control work. We do not expect to open the road this weekend as we are expected more snow.
Weather Snow, -3°C
Still Snowing heavily.
And you say they expect this to continue for a week?!
Any more Global Warming like this and the Island will start to sink under the weight of the snow and glaciers…
BTW, I’m finding the text ads not an issue, but it seems that if I come back to a thread it changes to top ads to a big high page weight graphical ad on the re-visit. That’s a bit annoying, especially when I’m on a low speed link.
I have found it pleasant to ring the Gore et. al. register by selective clicking AND got a dose of “reality check” about what the loons are thinking from some of them… The http://www.cop15.dk ad in particular was good “intel” in that these folks were openly advertising their intent to bugger the world economy (and giving the name of the company they work for) in Copenhagen. We can only hope that Russia, Czech, etc. manage to put a spanner in the works…
FWIW, the ads that pop up seem to be keyed to the article title key words. So, Anthony, I think we need an article titled “Halle Berry Hot Climate Images” about the way data are graphically presented in the climate debate with reds and oranges for cold, yeah, that’s it… Just as an experiment, of course!
😉
And, to stay a bit near topic, the last thing we need is a Climate Service (unless of course they will be able to move mountains, water deserts, change the national latitude, or move the ocean somewhere else…)
We don’t need another federal bureaucracy filled with pseudo scientists.
Global Climate Debate
Voice your opinion before the UN Climate Change Conference 2009
http://www.cop15.dk/blogs
Select this link from the advertiser menu, tell them what you think about the BS they have published on their site and Anthony gets advertising fees from the UN!
Let’s see if they are really in for a climate debate!
I think they censure skeptic responses.
Like a fish needs a bicycle.
The goal is clear and understandable, if you control the data then you control the whole debate, all data can then be gathered in to a central point, processed and ‘adjusted’ to fit a given narrative.
All through history there are examples of those who wish to control the lives of others for whatever reason exhibiting the pathological need to dominate and control the flow of information.
A single source for the gathering and disemination of of data is far easier to control and manipulate than multiple and independent sources, remember that he who controls the data controls the message.
You can bet your bottom dollar that this new ‘pravda’ will be headed and staffed with politically reliable and on message people and the inner workings and practices will become very secret and insulated from independent audit and review, information will be gathered in and adjusted to suit the political agenda and narrative and then given out to a client media, what is it about socialists and their inbuilt desire to control everything?
The upshot will be of course that once up and running with the doors locked and the blinds down the weather and climate will suddenly start to change and march in lockstep with the AGW/MMCC narrative, all of a sudden the outgoing data will depart from reality, you may see the rain clouds/snow/cool weather BUT you will be told a different story by the new weather/climate commissars, you may well complain to the monolith but by the time your complaint has beeen held up for months by a blind and confusing beaurocracy you will be handed a standard brush off letter if you are lucky and/or you will be marked as a trouble maker/anti social element.
Its rather sad to see the USA of all places become infected with the cancer of socialist/marxist idealism in action.
I vote No.
NCDC was supposed to gather, archive and disseminate data. They were doing OK until they started tinkering with the data itself with stuff like UHI corrections and retroactive alteration of observed data to conform to their in-house developed ideas about climate change. Tom Karl oversaw this operation and he is where the buck should stop. For his efforts in creating an increasingly unreliable data base he has been give accolades culminating in his present moonlight job, President of the AMS. Talk about the Peter Principle.
The incredibly rapid move to creat a socialist country where all the power is concetrated in a bureaurocracy which will become steadily further removed from the voting public is alarming to say the least. The NCS would be just one more concentration of power in a single Government agency.
If nothing else, the last few years…the IPCC era if you will…has clearly demonstrated that politicians and bureaucrats have no business in managing science. One failed projection after another, whether it be Global temperatures of Solar activity, ought to convinvce people how much of a travesty this is. Although the public is not getting the message from “reliable” news sources, they are instead starting to figure it out for themselves.
“National Climate Service”.
I wonder whether the name of this putative entity is intended to echo the UK’s National Health Service. If so, prepare yourselves for an organisation with more layers of bureaucracy than there are stars in the sky and an abject failure to deliver a good quality service no matter how much money is pumped into it.
To my, always flabby, mind there is a fundamental problem with a National Climate Service, namely that it cannot provide a new service.
A National Weather Service is different. Such a service can collate such information as it trusts and say “We think the weather today, tomorrow and next Monday will be this … but it’s only an educated guess, so don’t hold us to it.” That is what weather forecasters do everywhere in the world, and it is quite right that they should do so because people who are not in a position to make an educated guess want a bit of help before they invite forty friends round for a naturist extravaganza, a cold snap could cause highly embarrassing shrinkage.
What service can possibly be provided in relation to climate? “Service” is the key here. What service can it provide? In principle there is only one, the provision of information. That’s fair enough, a library containing every piece of research and every documented observation relevant to studies of matters climatic would be a jolly good thing. Somehow I doubt that they have such a thing in mind because there is easy access already to all relevant publications. Yet that is the only service that could be provided to the public.
Perhaps it is more realistic to look at the idea as a service for those at the top of the pyramid rather than for us little people at the bottom. Indeed, that is all it could be unless it is just a massive library. In other words, it can be nothing other than a propaganda machine aimed at stifling debate. I wish there were another option but there isn’t. It can be either a factual repository or a means to argue a case, nothing else.
Has anyone checked yet to see whether or not James Hansen could be persuaded to head the new agency?
The NWS Employees Union has weighed in…
http://nwseo.org/pdfs/NatlFwd0609.pdf
They don’t want the National Climate Service to become another Line Office of NOAA. Instead, they want to go the cheap route by putting the charter of the NCS within the National Weather Service (Call it the National Weather and Climate Service?)
The Climate Prediction Center and COOP program maintance is already under the NWS. Why not move NCDC and parts of OAR under NWS management too?
Maybe it is because that the run-of-the-mill NWS employees are somewhat skeptical of AGW (much like the broadcast meteorologists) that the Obama adminstration thinks it is better to get their “message” out by creating a new line office?
Something to think about
Lets try this again with a proper HTML link closure…
Wansbeck (17:38:09) : As population density increases and resources become scarcer we will need a better understanding of climate variations to assist planning and avoid disaster.
And exactly what resources are going to become scarcer?
Fresh water is unlimited, thanks to advances in desalinization.
There is no shortage of rock, stone, clay for bricks, etc.
There is more limestone for cement making that could ever be used, and more formed every day in the oceans.
The banded iron formations of the planet are hugh and iron is an incredibly high proportion of the planet.
Sand is functionally unlimited (see the Sahara).
So there is no limit on glass, stone, masonry, steel & iron structures.
Copper? It is present in manganese nodules on the ocean floor. We don’t harvest them because there is not enough demand for the stuff we can already harvest on land. There is about 500 BILLION tons and the harvest techniques are already developed (that’s about 100 TONS per person on the planet…) From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule
“The chemical composition of nodules varies according to the kind of manganese minerals and the size and characteristics of the core. Those of greatest economic interest contain manganese (27-30 %), nickel (1.25-1.5 %), copper (1-1.4 %) and cobalt (0.2-0.25 %). Other constituents include iron (6 %), silicon (5%) and aluminium (3%), with lesser amounts of calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, titanium and barium, along with hydrogen and oxygen.”
So there is no shortage of METALS and there never will be.
Plenty of ceramics, stone, sand, glass, metals – I’m running out of things to run out of…
Even then, we can make rather nice homes out of trash. The Earthship is an existence proof of that. Made from old tires, dirt, empty bottles, … They collect their own rainwater (and work in 7 INCH per year rainfall zones just fine…) and process their own sewage and make their own electricity… and work well even in the rather scruffy semidesert of New Mexico so land is just not a problem for them…
Maybe you’re thinking “Plastics, there’s a future in Plastics!”… well, we’re not going to run out of them, either. We can make them from plants (as several companies already do… I own stock in a couple of them BAK in Brazil for example). We can grow feed stock for bioPlastics at the rate of over 50 tons per acre …
So no shortage of plastics, nor any other “petro” chemical either… Paper, wood, forest products: they are all farmed and renewable too…
No, at the end of the day there is not much that leaves the planet so we never “run out” because it never goes away…
But surely we’re running out of fossil fuels! Yes, in about 500 years, maybe, if we try really really hard to burn it all. But we never run out of usable energy, and that is what really matters:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
And the simple fact is that as long as you have energy, you can get all the other resources you need or want at reasonable costs.
Food? Greenhouses & high rise pig / chicken condos. Land? Think vertical. Everyone on the planet could live at the same density of London in roughly 6 patches about the size of the UK with the rest of the planet being completely empty of people. Last time I looked London was an OK lifestyle…
Want an ocean view? Last time I did the calculation, everyone could have an ocean view condo with no structure higher than about 4 to 6 stories (though it’s a bit hard to figure out due to the coastline being fractal and of indeterminant length) using ONLY the North American continent and with no structure more than a hundred feet deep. (i.e. a single building facing the ocean with no buildings behind it…)
The simple fact is that the “running out” thesis is broken. We aren’t. We can’t. We won’t. It comes from folks being scared by exponential functions (and The Club Of Rome promoting the scare stories) and it is just wrong.
So no, we won’t run out, and no, we don’t need someone to make us more aware of climate variations. It doesn’t much vary. (At least not on anything less than 1000 year time scales). Weather changes, but unless you move an ocean, lower a mountain, or shift my latitude, my climate is going to be pretty much the same 1000 years from now as it is today (modulo Bond Events that are cyclical).
Please, let go of the worry. Let go of the “avoid disaster needed” mindset.
And especially let go of the notion that you need to give up some liberty so that the Powers That Be can help plan you out of the catastrophe that is just around the corner, because it isn’t there…
All they will do is plan you out of your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
(The scare stories already dampen the happiness …)
This life is not a dress rehearsal, take big bites, and do not ever let anyone tell you that there is not enough stuff for everyone on the planet to live a full, happy, and wealthy life. Just go make it happen.
It’ll need a catchy name,
How about
The Bureau of Wind
I just visited the UN Climate Change Conf. site and found two of these:
“Deleted due to terms of use violation”
I assume those here that tried to leave comments caused this. So I figure they will be extra careful now and I didn’t bother writing anything for them. I suppose one ought to read the terms of use and then try to slip something in that confuses them. I’m too tired tonight to try that but will keep it in mind.
As for a new National Climate Service: NO!
To paraphrase an old saying: When you find yourself screwing up, stop!
[OT: I just read Anthony’s report on the surface stations at the Heartland Institute’s site. http://www.heartland.org/books/PDFs/SurfaceStations.pdf
Well done! Buy a few and send them to your local paper, politicians, and such. Or send a link to them if you are short of cash.]
This is just what is needed as part of an economic stimulus package – jftb (jobs for the boys).
In some countries it is illegal to report weather or climate news that contradicts the national report. You know this is all about controlling the news and information.
Re: John F. Hultquist (22:48:39) :
I just clicked into the conference site, picked a presentation at random to look at, and immediately noticed a deleted comment. I then clicked on their TOS link to see what they are specifying. There I found the following said several different ways:
“if the content is characterized as harassment or is written in a demeaning or offensive tone, if the content is not in English or if it is impossible to understand”
If any of that is deemed to be true about a post, they consider it counter to the terms of use, and are free to delete it and possibly ban the user. They’ve also reserved to themselves the right to make all decisions…
I’m guessing that any comment that contradicts the premise of a post is an immediate candidate for “harassment” or “demeaning”, and as a last resort “impossible to understand”.
The article I picked at random seemed at a quick skim to be claiming that a huge uptick in natural disaster was somehow related to the general topic of climate change. The only comment I could make would be demeaning and harassing, I’m afraid, so I didn’t bother.
Climate is not national, why should climate offices be?
The current zones are in relatively logical locations for their respective climates. Adding an extra over-seeing layer above is nothing more than a make-work project… perhaps one of these “green jobs” we keep hearing about? What good are millions of “green jobs” if the government pays for them?
Across the border to the north is a similar zonal arrangement with West Coast, Prairies, Central Canada, and Maritimes. Each is a fairly similar area weather-wise, and each is completely different than the rest.
NO, but not for the reason given in the poll. We just shouldn’t have it at THIS moment. Because with the current AGW hysteria, something like that would only serve to give some alarmist guy more absolute control to create more propaganda and silence more dissenting voices. We definitely don’t want that.