This is reminiscent of communist Russia with their disastrous five year plan, which while the plan encouraged industrialization, damaged Soviet agriculture to such an extent that it didn’t recover until after the Second World War. The plan was considered by the Soviet leadership so successful in this sense that the second Five-Year Plan was declared in 1932, lasting until 1937. (source: Wikipedia)
In the same vein, the US opens a new line of attack in the AGW battle, which I expect to damage both industry and agriculture:
Administration Releases 10-Year Global Change Strategic Plan
The Obama Administration today released a 10-year strategic plan for research related to global change, identifying priorities that will help state and local governments, businesses, and communities prepare for anticipated changes in the global environment, including climate change, in the decades ahead.
The Plan—released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which for more than 20 years has coordinated Federal global change research— was developed collaboratively by more than 100 Federal scientists. It reflects extensive inputs from stakeholders and the general public, as well as a detailed review by the National Research Council, chartered by Congress to provide independent expert advice to the Nation. The Plan will be implemented through the USGCRP and the 13 Federal departments and agencies it represents.
“Human actions are altering the atmosphere, the land, and our oceans, placing new pressures on the Earth’s ecosystems and threatening the health and economic welfare of our Nation and the world,” said Tom Armstrong, Executive Director of the USGCRP. “High-quality and well-coordinated research is essential if we are to better understand and predict future changes, develop strategies to minimize our vulnerabilities, and adapt to changes that can’t be avoided.”
Federal research under the USGCRP has for two decades focused largely on detailed documentation of specific environmental changes by satellite and other Earth-observing technologies and the development of sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s climate system to predict how such changes will manifest in the near-term. In the ten years going forward that emphasis will expand to incorporate the complex dynamics of ecosystems and human social-economic activities and how those factors influence global change. By including these added dimensions, USGCRP-sponsored research will generate information of unprecedented practical use to decision-makers in a wide range of sectors including agriculture, municipal planning, and public works.
“It is no longer enough to study the isolated physical, chemical, and biological factors affecting global change,” Armstrong said. “Advanced computing technologies and methods now allow us to integrate insights from those disciplines and add important information from the ecological, social, and economic sciences. This new capacity will deepen our understanding of global change processes and help planners in realms as diverse as storm water management, agriculture, and natural resources management.”
The Strategic Plan describes four key goals for the USGCRP during 2012 – 2021:
- Advance Science: Advance scientific knowledge of the integrated natural and human components of the Earth system, drawing upon physical, chemical, biological, ecological, and behavioral sciences.
- Inform Decisions: Provide the scientific basis to inform and enable timely decisions on adaptation to and mitigation of global change.
- Conduct Sustained Assessments: Build a sustained assessment capacity that improves the Nation’s ability to understand, anticipate, and respond to global change impacts and vulnerabilities.
- Communicate and Educate: Broaden public understanding of global change and support the development of a scientific workforce skilled in Earth-system sciences.
Work towards these goals will help the USGCRP fulfill its Congressional mandate to “assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change,” as called for in the Global Change Research Act of 1990. To achieve these goals, USGCRP is developing an implementation strategy that will draw in part upon its expertise in conducting National Climate Assessments—broad assessments of global change impacts across U.S. economic sectors, the latest of which is currently under development.
In combination with USGCRP’s expanding communication and education activities, the new scientific findings and decision-support tools expected to emerge from the Strategic Plan will empower a broad range of stakeholders to make more informed and effective decisions as they prepare for and respond to the many dimensions of global change.
To learn more about USGCRP please visit: http://library.globalchange.gov/us-global-change-research-program-factsheet
http://www.globalchange.gov/whats-new/689-new-usgcrp-strategic-plan-for-2012-2021
There is absolutely no comparison between the “Five Year”, centralized control approaches implemented by the failed Soviet system in the past. Every organization must develop plans for future efforts based on the simple premise that organizational survival requires effective management, reasonable predicability, and appropriate utilization of energy systems. To survive organizations have to understand vital life-enhancing ecological systems and especially the cumulative impacts of their relationships with all other organizations, communities and individuals. This is obviously a massive undertaking, but we have the capacity now to achieve this result and hence, to make decisions which optimize our chance for survival.
There is a quote from a Norwegian VP of Exxon which I will roughly paraphrase: Communism failed because they failed to take into account the importance of alternative economic systems; capitalism is in danger because we are failing to acknowledge the importance of ecological systems.
It would indeed be a LOL except for the economic and human suffering these idiots will inflict upon everyone as a result of their stupidity. But, I guess it goes back to what the man said about people, in the end, getting the government they deserve.
Reminds me of the old quote about needing to grow the beauracracy in order to support the growing beauracracy.
This agency sounds an aweful lot like Homeland Security. Just another redundant redundant layer of red tape and spending which performs exactly the same functions already performed by the agencies it coordinates, and those agencies already have overlapping and duplication of functions.
I really like how they just decided to expand thier mandate beyond the original Congressional license, so that they now have an arm to expedite the disemination of thier agenda through “education”. I guess the word “education” in this context translates into advertising money and grants for special interst groups. The original Congressional charter wouldn’t have really justified an advertising budget or donations to groups like WWF, but now they can!!
Hugh Pepper says:
May 2, 2012 at 12:07 pm [ … ]
As always, Hugh doesn’t have a clue.
If I remember correctly, part of Stalin’s 5 year plan involved building tracked farm vehicles. They ended up having a huge number of tracks but no vehicles. Then Germany invaded and they used them as wheels on some of their artillery pieces.
Maybe we’ll be able to use the vanes from all the wind farms to build the Marines really big Ospreys. (Assuming we still have any gas left to fly them.)
umm, wrong Hugh – communism failed for not taking human corruption into account (not to mention it also fosters laziness) and capitalism is failing from over regulation and a lack of teaching ethics to people when they are young and holding ethical behaviour in high esteem. Truely, without ethics all human endeavors collapse.
Groupthink, groupthink, groupthink gone on a spending spree with our money.
Fixed it for ya!
DaveE.
This is not exactly the group think you think it is. It is actually a game very common in DC and the states called “Ive got a pot of money and you can have some if you play the game right, look busy, and continue doing my side agenda as we discussed in the back room meetings”. Don’t be fooled–these are money games with no real agenda in mind for real outcomes like high speed rail to nowhere and funding renewable energy projects with only tongue and cheek due diligence.
Myrrh says:
May 2, 2012 at 2:34 am
_Jim says:
May 1, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Thanks Myrrh, Jim is always defending the bankers and I get sick of being called insane by him when I mention bankers or the UN or Agenda 21.