ChimpCo Unveils Plan For 10 MORE YEARS Of Climate "Research"

WASHINGTON - "The White House on Thursday will issue a revised 10-year global warming research plan that sets five goals, chief among them identifying 'natural variability' in climate change, an effort that environmentalists say diverts the focus away from man-made pollution.

EDIT

The administration also will ask Congress for a new $103 million, two-year initiative to speed up 'high priority' research on carbon pollution, aerosols and oceans and determine the best ways to compile and disseminate information about them, Assistant Commerce Secretary James Mahoney told the AP. He said that effort would be included in President Bush's buedget proposals for 2005 and 2006 and would draw some of its funds from the existing $1.75 billion Climate Change Science Program.

EDIT

Annie Petsonk, an Environmental Defense lawyer who helped craft the first Bush's policy while working in his administration's Justice Department, said there is enough scientific certainty to begin taking action now to reduce warming.

'Where the administration has thought to take any action at all has been to delete climate references from reports and to try to repudiate the science that says global warming is happening now,' she said."

EDIT/END

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0723-06.htm

for the simian to go in 04!

Thanks for that first post. I heard some news on it on NPR, but didn't see anything in the mainstream press web sites to get more information. (No I am not trying to say NPR isn't a mainstream source. It is, but I just don't have their page bookmarked as they don't update their site as fast as I like)

(As a professional who consults to US EPA, I am going to try to watch my step here) There are several issues here that worry me. First it is the Commerce Dept., not the EPA saying this. I think the subtext is clear from that fact alone.

Second the science they are talking about including the massive regression curves of several million (if not billion points) has been done, and has found what they don't want to hear.

The administration are holding their ears and singing while the real adults are trying to be responsible stewards.

My secret sources tell me Bush is going to unveil a major initiate to fund studies to get to the bottom of the age-old question - is the world flat - or do those newly emerging spherical theories hold any water?

Of course, there'll be the predicable outrage from the conservative base, but Rove thinks it'll play well with the progressive, swing voter.

Their response was: find a way to deal with it, build bigger dikes.

Here's the NY Times article on this Bush PR stunt: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/25/national/25CLIM.html

And here's the relevant info from that article. Note the very last sentence:

Government Offers Plan to Coordinate Climate Study
By JENNIFER 8. LEE


WASHINGTON, July 24 — Seven months after first promising to come forward with a plan to look into the causes of global warming, the Bush administration introduced a comprehensive program today to coordinate current efforts studying climate change — and develop some new ones — across some 13 federal agencies.

The plan was presented at a news conference by Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Among its provisions was $103 million to be spent to deploy new satellite-based global observation technologies.

Officials did not identify how any of the program would be financed, however, bringing concern from scientists that any new initiatives would simply draw resources away from existing research efforts.

(snip)

Of the $4.5 billion figure, the budget for the Climate Change Science Program, which oversees the government's climate research, is about $1.7 billion. Budgets for the various research efforts on climate change are scheduled to be either flat or reduced in the next fiscal year.