This smells like Trenberth’s doings at the behest of Al Gore and his “Dirty Weather” Campaign. If so, then I’m against it, because all this will do is create another bureaucracy loaded with opinionated thinkers sucking up more tax dollars adding to the already out of control federal deficit.
From the National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Experts call on Congress to create first US Weather Commission
WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the U.S. economy vulnerable to weather events costing billions of dollars, an expert panel today asked Congress to create the first U.S. Weather Commission. The commission would provide guidance to policymakers on leveraging weather expertise across government and the private sector to better protect lives and businesses.
“The nation must focus its weather resources on the areas of greatest need in order to keep our economy competitive and provide maximum protection of lives and property,” says Thomas Bogdan, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. “Emerging technologies are providing an opportunity to create forecasts that are more accurate and detailed than ever, and to communicate them instantly to key communities and businesses. We need a U.S. Weather Commission to ensure that our entire weather research and technology enterprise provides maximum benefit to the nation.”
At a time of fast-changing technological innovation, the commission would advise federal policymakers on setting priorities for improving forecasts and creating a more weather-proof nation. The goal is to help ensure cost-effective spending on the nation’s weather systems while minimizing the impacts of both major storms, which last year alone cost about $52 billion, and normal fluctuations in weather, which have an estimated annual economic impact of $485 billion.
Earlier this year, the National Academy of Sciences released a hallmark report, Weather Services for the Nation: Becoming Second to None. The report concluded that, even with recent concerted and much-needed efforts to modernize the National Weather Service, the country faces challenges in harnessing the best science and private sector resources available for protecting the nation from weather impacts.
These challenges are rooted in evolving scientific and technological advances, rapidly changing needs of the nation’s weather information consumers, and an increasingly capable and growing third-party community of weather services providers.
Congress has twice created an ocean commission for setting direction on commerce, research, and defense related to the world’s oceans. But there has never been a U.S. Weather Commission, even though weather has far-reaching effects on all Americans.
Commissioners would provide guidance on issues such as making appropriate investments in satellite and radar systems, protecting vulnerable communities, setting research priorities, and meeting the needs of key sectors, ranging from agriculture to utilities to the U.S. armed forces.
“Weather is immeasurably important to public safety and our economic competitiveness,” says Pam Emch, a senior staff engineer/scientist with Northrop Grumman Corporation and one of the panelists. “Effective organization of the diverse entities that span our weather enterprise is necessary for economic stability, innovation, and the good of the nation.”
“Improved weather information can be an engine for economic growth,” says panelist William Gail, co-founder and chief technology officer of the Global Weather Corporation. “As we develop increasingly detailed understanding of our atmosphere, there is enormous potential for helping the public and businesses.”
“We must keep pace with accelerating scientific and technological advances and meet expanding user needs in our increasingly information-centric society,” says panelist John Armstrong, chair of the Committee on the Assessment of the National Weather Service’s Modernization Program.
Bogdan says that a commission approach, guided by key actors across the entire weather enterprise, will provide needed direction and consensus.
“The U.S. Weather Commission offers the promise of better research, state-of-the-art prediction, and protection for the health and prosperity of the U.S.,” he says. “It will also foster growth for the innovative private weather sector we have all come to rely upon. This is an issue that affects all members of Congress and all their constituents, no matter where they live.”
Today’s panel briefing was the first step in a process that will continue into the next Congress. The panel’s next steps are to brief staff and members on the importance of the commission and the role it will play, seeking their guidance and support for establishing the commission in 2013.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
On the Web:
For news releases, images, and more www.ucar.edu/atmosnews
Just what we need is another unconstitutional Government agency. In the case of a weather one, it stands to reason that they will never solve whatever problem they imagine it to be, so they have a public trough swilling for life.
This could be a good thing, if they stick with the weather, and known working weather predicting techniques, and avoid climate modeling altogether. Hopefully it won’t end up the the UK MET.
Is it just me, or is Jo Nova’s site down again?
dismantling the CAGW should be the priority, not building more:
19 Sept: Reuters: Alister Doyle: Climate change threatens nature from coffee
to Arctic fox-forum
Price said Colombian coffee plantations, for instance, would have to be
shifted to higher altitudes and onto more shaded northern slopes as
temperatures rose. “It’s going to require wholesale movements of coffee
plantations in Colombia,” he (Jeff Price, coordinator of the Wallace
Initiative) said.
That could put coffee more into competition with habitats for rare tropical
animals and plants…
In Scandinavia, the Arctic fox is among animals under pressure since climate
change is reducing the availability of its main prey, the lemming. And red
foxes, bigger than their Arctic cousins, are moving north as temperatures
warm.
“In a bad lemming year there won’t be many Arctic foxes born,” Anouschka
Hof, of Umea University in Sweden told the GBIF, which is funded by
governments…
Warming temperatures are also be a threat to many northern plants. The
northern bilberry, for instance, may gain niches such as on the coast of
Greenland in coming decades but will lose far bigger areas to the south.
“There are not many place where the northern plants can move into. The
Arctic is mainly ocean,” said Inger Greve Alsos of the University of Tromsoe
in Norway. “We expect a loss of range for many plants.”…
An early peak to greenhouse gases would give the biggest respite to animals
in places such as the Amazon basin, southern Africa, southern Australia,
parts of Russia and Asia.
Plants would also benefit most in the Andes, southern Africa and Australia,
according to ***modeling*** by the Wallace Initiative, named after British
naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-author with Charles Darwin of the
theory of evolution in 1858…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/us-climate-species-idINBRE88I0ZB20120919
ABCG Adaptation Workshop: Climate Tools
The Wallace Initiative is a collaboration of WWF-US, Tyndall Climate Change
Centre (University of East Anglia), Center for Tropical Biodiversity and
Climate Change and Research Center (James Cook University), National Climate
Change Adaptation Research Facility, Global Biodiversity Information
Facility, and Center for Tropical Agriculture …
http://frameweb.org/adl/en-US/7475/file/997/Climate%20Tools.pdf
bit more about the Wallace Initiative:
March 2010: CIAT: The Wallace Initiative: Preserving Biodiversity in an Era
of Change
by Julian Ramirez-Villegas |
Last year during a meeting at Copenhagen in March, our program leader Andy
Jarvis performed a set of very interesting presentations on the impacts of
climate change on agriculture and biodiversity. Luckily, and thanks to our
hard work, and to substantial efforts done by Jeff Price from WWF, Rachel
Warren from Tyndall Centre, and to the funding provided by GBIF, The
Wallace Initiative was born…
We then held a meeting in Tyndall Centre in August, while I was visiting the
UK to receive training on UK MetOffice’s PRECIS modeling system…
A new member of the Wallace Initiative was then appointed. Amy McDougall, a
PhD student from University of East Anglia, under Rachel’s supervision. We
invited Amy to Colombia, to learn the whole thing of modeling that we’re
doing at CIAT under The Wallece Inititative framework. Some of her feelings:
“It has been said that modelers are the James Bonds of the Scientific
Community, stepping out into the tropical heat of a Cali evening, there was
no one I felt less like. However, I came to Cali on a mission- as a newly
appointed member of the Wallace Initiative Team, it was time to learn my
trade.”…
http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/the-wallace-initiative-preserving-biodiversity-in-an-era-of-change/
Isn’t NOAA supposed to do this?
What use then is the weather service? This is yet another useless layer of the scam.
“…all this will do is create another bureaucracy loaded with opinionated thinkers sucking up more tax dollars adding to the already out of control federal deficit.”
I couldn’t agree more Anthony. Even if there were some benefit to the idea, it doesn’t make sense to do it at a federal level. Resources would be better devoted to addressing weather related issues at a regional level, e.g. the concerns of the gulf coast are pretty different from Great Lakes region. Not much thought put into this idea except of course to provide another federal teat for all the climate drones being cloned in graduate programs at universities everywhere.
This is government by decree. It doesn’t take much foresight to see dictatorship approaching. We’re already three fourths of the way there.
The naive and credulous will now tell me to put on a tin foil hat, I suppose. But this is from a very well respected Democratic pollster.
And the very first report by the new US Weather Commissioner would be something along the lines of “if we don’t spend an extra 1 trillion dollars studying CO2 we’ll be DOOMED. Doomed, I tell you.”
Skeptic says:
September 28, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Is it just me, or is Jo Nova’s site down again?
The site loads for me using Chrome — she is not quite fully back in the sense of new and interesting posts. Give her another day.
Commissioners would provide guidance on issues such as making appropriate investments in satellite and radar systems, protecting vulnerable communities, setting research priorities, and meeting the needs of key sectors, ranging from agriculture to utilities to the U.S. armed forces.
I read that as “Commissars would provide guidance on issues.”
Just about like asking the Mafia to set up a Federal Morals and Ethics Commission.
This is one very, very bad idea congressmen. Senator Inhofe, heads up.
@george e smith says:
September 28, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Just what we need is another unconstitutional Government agency. In the case of a weather one, it stands to reason that they will never solve whatever problem they imagine it to be, so they have a public trough swilling for life.
==================
Indeed. That is exactly what I was thinking!
What they need to do is free the met staff innovators in the trenches to continue enhancing the detection technology, as well as the methods for notifying vulnerable populations when a threat is looming. From where I sit (in Tornado Alley), there are parts of the country that could do with a good upgrading of their weather technology and staff, and have a few lessons on how to tell when a big blow is coming. There have been tornadic storms in some unusual areas lately. I keep thinking that if they had met staff like we have, and awesome radar technology like we have, they could have protected themselves.
If creation of this agency requires legislation, it probably won’t get through Congress. If it can be done by administrative fiat, then congress will get bypassed. This is likely to happen if the current administration gets voted back in November. Let’s hope for the former situation.
Just the creation of another utterly pointless bureaucracy, presumably designed to transfer existing bureaucrats in overpaid jobs into even more overpaid jobs in bigger offices.
I have tried hard, but I cannot think of any other reason for suggesting the creation of a new Weather Commission.
I know it has been quoted here many times before but is worth reminding ourselves again of Eisenhower in 1961:
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Katherine,
I read it exactly the same way at first: commissars.
The past century and a half has been about the best climate in history. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Temperature variation has been ≤ 0.8ºC over the past 150 years. You could not ask for a better global climate. It is as perfect as it ever gets.
Now the bureaucrats want to diddle with it. Or pretend to, because humans can only affect local climates through UHI effects. We cannot alter the global temperature. And the “carbon” nonsense is being falsified by Mother Earth herself. CO2 simply does not have the claimed effect.
Anyone who cannot see this as just a big government money making power grab should not be allowed to vote; they’re that stupid.
Of course, we need more committees, commissions, departments, agencies … h*ll, entire other governments! Where would we get a job without them? (sarc off)
Simple, USAans… Vote, when you vote make sure you choose an Adult. In Australia we forgot that last federal election, we chose a Party, the Party is full of children, and sheep of children, with only one or two real Adults. Choose wisely USA.
Think about your local representative. Think about your freedoms, anyone who for a moment mentions anything about curbing your freedom (to emit CO2, to build on your property, to fill your swimming pool, to eat what you want, to keep your animals, to decorate your house, to have parties…. or whatever) MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HOLD OFFICE. Look at their pronouncements, if they ever say I will impose this law “For the good of the community” be afraid, be very afraid and vote for someone else. “For the good of the community” is the key mark that your freedoms are being attacked.
PS. Jo Nova is getting there, I expect it’ll be bigger better and more hacker proof when she returns
Nickname it the King Canute Corps….
That man, William Gail, has the perfect name to lead the Commission, even if the Commission is a bad idea. Just saying!
Nice public stipends for the faithful members of the team.
Obscene but guaranteed to pass.
While they are creating agencies to deal with science fiction threats will they also be creating a group like Men In Black to deal with all the threats from alien species? Based on all the models, the threat from aliens is worse than we first thought. The models show it will get even worse as the population increases. Perhaps a human birth licence cap a trade market would also help?
This reminds me of this bit of wisdom from Dorothy Parker: