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2010-02-08 Home Front: Culture Wars

New federal climate change agency forming

Hark! have those gales of laughter, Chinese accents
The Obama administration is proposing a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

Researchers and leaders from around the world met last month in Denmark to discuss ways to reduce climate-warming emissions, and a follow-up session is planned for later this year in Mexico.

"More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it's going to affect them," Lubchenco explained. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.

Portions of the Weather Service that have been studying climate, as well as offices from some other NOAA agencies, will be transferred to the new NOAA Climate Service.

The new agency will initially be led by Thomas Karl, director of the current National Climatic Data Center. The Climate Service will be headquartered in Washington and will have six regional directors across the country.

Lubchenco also announced a new NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect a vast array of climatic data from NOAA and other sources. It will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information," she said.

Creation of the Climate Service requires a series of steps, including congressional committee approval. But if all goes well, it should be finished by the end of the year, officials said.

In recent years, a widespread private weather forecasting industry has grown up around the National Weather Service, and Lubchenco said she anticipates growth of private climate-related business around the new agency.

While most people notice the weather from day to day or week to week, climate looks at both the averages and extremes of weather over longer periods of time. And understanding both weather and climate, and their changes, are vital to much of the world's economic activity ranging from farming to travel to energy use and production and even food shipments and disease prevention.

Atmospheric scientists have long joked that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. But greenhouse warming is changing what can be expected from climate, and researchers are seeking to understand and anticipate the impacts of that change.

Posted by tipper 2010-02-08 12:37|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 Mr. Karl has been accused of politicizing a government (CCSP) report on temperature trends. His role in the CRU emails (climategate) has not been fully explored.

Posted by Free Radical 2010-02-08 13:36|| 2010-02-08 13:36|| Front Page Top

#2 No mention of the emails, forged and bludgeoned data.

Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions

I suspect that this is a flat-out lie by the AP.

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-02-08 13:49|| 2010-02-08 13:49|| Front Page Top

#3 We're bankrupt, but of course we can afford a new department of propaganda.

Posted by One Eyed Slins3386 2010-02-08 14:22|| 2010-02-08 14:22|| Front Page Top

#4 There called the Green Police and they're coming for your Styrofoam cups.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2010-02-08 15:38|| 2010-02-08 15:38|| Front Page Top

#5 Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Don't forget to throw in the plague of locusts and all other maladies know to man--Except the data was fudged; the scientific process was corrupted in favor of the political process. G-d almighty; just what we need another frigging governmental agency (sarc).

Posted by JohnQC 2010-02-08 16:48|| 2010-02-08 16:48|| Front Page Top

#6 Here is a link to all the things that have been blamed on global warming.
NumberWatch is a website that tries to combat some of the pseudo scientific hysteria in the world today.

Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2010-02-08 18:14|| 2010-02-08 18:14|| Front Page Top

#7 Time to gas up my snow-blower. We're getting another foot of global warming tomorrow.

Posted by DMFD 2010-02-08 19:08|| 2010-02-08 19:08|| Front Page Top

#8 Since Cap 'n' Trade 'n' Steal is dead in congress, this is a blatant effort to do it all through presidential fiat. Not laws, but regulations with the same effect. And since new regs can be declared almost instantly, even if hundreds are thrown out in court, they can be instantly replaced with new, even harsher ones. Then wait two years for the next court hearing.

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-02-08 19:41|| 2010-02-08 19:41|| Front Page Top

#9 We need a global warming Czar and a global cooling Czar, so that at any one time one of them has to be right.

Posted by bigjim-CA 2010-02-08 19:55|| 2010-02-08 19:55|| Front Page Top

#10 Roll Call Votes.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-02-08 20:18|| 2010-02-08 20:18|| Front Page Top

#11 They've created a Department of Imaginary Environmental Crises.

Posted by Lampedusa Omese6523 2010-02-08 21:52|| 2010-02-08 21:52|| Front Page Top

#12 Chicken Soup for the Democrats Soul

Posted by GirlThursday 2010-02-08 22:00|| 2010-02-08 22:00|| Front Page Top

#13 Did the author write this with a straight face? Does he think his readers are completely unaware of the string of scandals surrounding AGW "science"? You wonder why the MSM is dying.

Posted by remoteman 2010-02-08 22:38|| 2010-02-08 22:38|| Front Page Top

#14 We are too broke for the government agencies we already have!!!!!

Posted by 3dc 2010-02-08 23:17|| 2010-02-08 23:17|| Front Page Top

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