Congress Blocks Climate Analyzing Bureaucracy
November 24, 2011 by Sam Rolley
Congress recently blocked a $322 million measure that would have created a new Federal bureaucracy to make long-term climate forecasts similar to the short-term forecasts provided by the National Weather Service.
The National Climate Service was proposed in response to complaints from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the agency had been inundated with requests for climate change data in recent years, according to International Business Times.
The Democratic-led Senate approved nearly all aspects of the climate service in its budget, while the House, with its Republican majority, rejected all of it. Democrats claimed that the creation of the service would have no financial impact, but a report released by the House Appropriations Committee last week estimated savings of $322 million in fiscal year 2012 by rejecting the idea.
While many people who supported the new entity have called its failure a sign of climate-change denial, there is evidence that the Federal government is analyzing climate trends in other ways. A recent report from the Defense Science Board, a Federal advisory committee that reports to the Secretary of Defense, urges the CIA to begin sharing the intelligence it has accumulated on climate change.





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