GlobalShift

Obama administration announces creation of new climate change agency

The Obama administration announced that it is proposing to form a new agency to study and report on climate change. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco, said that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

From the the Associated Press release:

“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.”…

“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.”

According to Lubchenco more people are asking for more information about climate and how it will affect them. This is what led officials to decide to combine climate operations into a single unit. The press release notes that the NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide, where previously the warmest decade had been the 1990s, and remarks that most atmospheric scientists believe that’s due to human activity.

Officials also foresee a growth in the private sector around the introduction of the new agency.

Again from the Associated Press release: “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.”

This does not seem to be the equivalent of President Bush’s creating the new Department of Homeland Security, and it also seems that they will not have powers of enforcement. However, I’m skeptical of yet another federal agency. I suspect their scientific findings will also coincide nicely with the current administration’s agenda. Then again, having an American agency might help to better organize the information and debates surrounding climate change. Kinda like the National Academy of Sciences. Oh. Well,  maybe we can avoid some of the political pitfalls that a number of scientists on the IPCC seemed unable to steer clear of, which has subsequently made the IPCC reports difficult to accept by many. I’d be interested to here what others think of a new federal climate change agency being created.