I got this regular press release from NOAA this morning announcing an upcoming press conference. Ho Hum…but wait, buried at the bottom of the copy is a little nugget that brings me some hope. I know many NOAA employees read WUWT. Maybe our collective exasperation at the way they portray their Earthly understanding finally made it up the food chain. – Anthony
MEDIA ADVISORY
NOAA to Issue 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center will release its initial seasonal outlook for the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season during a press conference in Miami. NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco will discuss the outlook with FEMA Deputy Administrator Rich Serino highlighting the critical need for storm preparedness. They will be joined by a diverse group of NOAA hurricane experts available for questions and interviews.
What: Press conference announcing NOAA’s 2010 Atlantic hurricane season outlook
When: Thursday, May 20, 11:00 am EDT
Where: NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
4301 Rickenbacker Causeway
Miami, FL 33149
Todd Kimberlain, hurricane specialist with NOAA’s National Hurricane Center is available for onsite interviews in Spanish.
Media may also participate via conference call. Please call Susan Buchanan at the phoie number above to obtain the number and passcode.
Who:
- Dr. Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator
- Rich Serino, deputy administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency
This event will be conducted by Dr. Robert Atlas, director of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Other NOAA hurricane experts attending will be:
- Dr. Gerry Bell, NOAA’s lead hurricane seasonal forecaster
- Dr. Ed Rappaport, deputy director, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center
- Dr. Frank Marks, director, NOAA/AOML Hurricane Research Division
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Visit us at http://www.noaa.gov or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/usnoaagov.
– 30 –
============================================
Note the new wording in the slogan:
“NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment…”
That’s a significant change from the slogan we’ve all rolled our eyes at in the past which previously said:
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment…
You can read that old slogan at the very bottom of this May 6th, 2010 press release here:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100506_spillsampling.html
Is NOAA finally admitting they in fact don’t “know it all” or is this just a fluke from a copy writer with a conscience? I look forward to the next NOAA press release.
From NOAA’s paleotempestology resource center (been there since 2001 with little comment) http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/hurricane/
“Recent paleoclimate research reveals that relative to the past 5,000 years the most recent millennium has been a period of less intense hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin. More work to examine both frequency and intensity of severe storm events is currently underway in order to assess the 20th century in the context of the past centuries and the past millennium.”
Perhaps someone at this conference will ask them to explain why hurricane activity is at a 5000 year low?
I guess most Climate Scientists at NOAA (and at RC) must have voted against this change. Obviously from their email exchange, they know it all and better than any other.
Maybe with some more letters we can get NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenko; to repeat her experiment to prove that corals, and shellfish can grow in ordinary tap water that is dyed blue with a common laboratory blue dye. Except this time she should ask the Australian Embassy to send her over a few gallons of water harvested from the Great Barrier Reef, where we know for sure that corals and shellfish certainly do grow.
So Jane; try dyeing that water blue with your ordinary laboratory blue dye, and then show us if it turns yellow when you chill it with a few pounds of dry ice.
“NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment…”
They realise they are not God. Or someone accused them of false advertising.
Will they apply their new Carbon foot-print profiling?, that would be against our rights as CO2 exhalers.
Niels Bohr should be required reading at NOAA. Apparently he is not.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. ”
“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. “
geo says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:53 pm
> Damn it, now that “more perfect” allusion I made upstream has me singing the preamble to the Constitution in my head.
Right, and I’m going to get you for that!
BTW, the next Klotzbach/Gray forecast from Colorado State will be out June 2. It goes into much more detail than NOAA’s.
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/
They’ll have to announce a different number, now that you’ve stolen their thunderstorms.
We all need to understand the nature of bureaucracy. The first rule of any bureaucracy is to protect itself.
geo, your too fast for me. Just dittoed my whole comment I had meticulously composed.
But I’ll add: I’m still waiting for NOAA to say something like this on the radio one day…
“We at NOAA know a tornado is going to appear 5 minutes from now at this location and you might think it is going to lower to the ground, but it isn’t, and here are the reason we know for a fact …”
Maybe then NOAA could expand it’s expertise of knowing and predicting into the hours, then weeks, then months, then years of the future with some better level of confidence. Baby steps, NOAA, baby steps… (and put the word “strive” in your mission statement)
Thats right up there with ‘4 legs good 2 legs better’
By the way; How many days are left now for Gordon Browns tipping point?
He annonced we had 50 days left?
I have lost the count, and feel a certain panic growing now.
I’m sure this Cameron fellow keeps track on the days left, so I will whatch the news all day long when the day comes. I’m sure there ill be an announcement from the british government.
If they predict “changes in the earth’s environment”, do they publish how accurate their predictions were? I’d like to see them pressed for that data. And, as someone else pointed out above, if there is a failure to predict – there is a failure to understand. They need to be pressed for explanations for each failure to predict correctly since they supposedly understand. Is there a scorecard of past predictions? I wonder if there is a crossover between astrology and climatology? I’m talking serious peer-reviewed astrology here, not junk science.
I found this amusing. I wonder if Al Gore will? Perhaps all the Polar bears will not float away after all.
http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/transport/?doc=24366
I think the change in wording is the result of millions of monkeys typing on millions of typewriters… this is eventually what the Head Monkey decided to use.
Andrew
Meanwhile, over at RC, Gavin is writing: “NOAA disappoints…”
Gail Combs says (May 14, 2010 at 11:53 am): “According to ISO 9004, a mission statement explains why an organization exists. It defines its reason for being (its raison d’être).”
Here’s my suggestion for Congress:
“Our mission is to buy our constituents’ votes with their own money.”
Maybe its time to start boycotting “Science” (Journal), University of Tennesse, Penns State, Nature (Journal) etc for demeaning science and what it means apart from time to start some serious legal action. A lot of people need to be removed to return these establishments to acceptable academic standards (read ISO 2009, good practice)
I bet they just decided that they needed a mission statement. The current one was ok, but just to make sure people understood that they did have a mission statement, it needed to be… well, er.. re-stated as something that said it was a mission statement…
I also bet that the people who did that devoted not one brain cell for one nanosecond to the analysis of their predictive capability or anything remotely concerned with it.
“”” Gary Hladik says:
May 14, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Gail Combs says (May 14, 2010 at 11:53 am): “According to ISO 9004, a mission statement explains why an organization exists. It defines its reason for being (its raison d’être).” “””
Show me an organisation with a “mission statement” and I’ll show you an organisation that does not need to exist.
When I was in “college” as in University; not High School; all of the really smart students belonged to “The Society for Independent Intelectuals.” For the entirety of my College days; as far as I am aware, their meeting deliberations consisted of trying to put English Language words to what would today be called their “Mission Statement”. I’m not sure they ever succeeded.
And no I was not a member; I wasn’t nearly smart enough to belong to such an outfit; but one of the chaps who did; filled me in on their goings on.
So watch out for all the time that is wasted trying to come up with “mission statements.” You know damn well they are trying to come up with some sanitary way of explaining how come they can waste so much money on basically nothing.
What man knows, you can write a short paper. What man doesn’t know, would fill an entire library.
Buying constituents votes with other people’s tax money also works for me. Until, as Greece found out, trouble starts, when other people’s money runs out.
The silly old slogan can be made clearer by my adjusted statement:
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Universe…
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment…
The question I have is which is more chaotic – the Earth or the Universe?
The surface of the Sun sounds promising. The last round of sunspot counting out of SWPC/NOAA has to be a sore point.
Here’s hoping they get some healthy discussion going and come up with something realistic to portray the weakenss/miniscule spots better.
Anthony,
Who is NOAA is listening to?
http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/images/files/Report_on_Pub_Attitudes_About_CC%204_08.pdf
George E. Smith says (May 14, 2010 at 4:13 pm): ‘When I was in “college” as in University; not High School; all of the really smart students belonged to “The Society for Independent Intelectuals.”’
Is it my imagination, or is the name of that society just a bit oxymoronic?