| The Obama administration has delivered
a vote of confidence in climate science by founding a service
to study and report on global warming.
It will put scientists and data from the national weather
service and various departments of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
under one roof in Washington DC.
Administration officials described NOAA Climate Services
- which will be accessible to the public at www.climate.gov
- as 'one-stop-shopping' for business, the public and
officials seeking information on climate change.
They added it could help shore up the public's faith in climate
science after errors in what was supposed to be the scientific
gold standard - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's
reports - and the exposure of hundreds of emails showing efforts
to evade requests for data and apparent attempts to cover
up flawed climate information.
"We are the world's largest library of data on climate change,"
said Gary Locke, the commerce secretary who has overall charge
of NOAA. "Creating this office will help us provide leadership
on more deliberate research on climate monitoring and assessment
and doing it in a much more co-ordinated fashion, so everyone
will be able to see exactly what NOAA does and the climate
service does."
The proposed reorganisation will not require additional funding,
but it will still need to be authorised by Congress.
Jane Lubchenco - who, as head of NOAA, is one of the administration's
most prominent scientists - noted that the new US climate
site will feature constantly updated data on temperature,
carbon dioxide concentration and sea levels, which will be
readily available to scientists and the public.
"NOAA is committed to openness to making available all the
data it collects freely and accessibly," she said. "The new
climate portal should make it even easier for the public to
access and be able to examine for themselves the information
that goes into various assessments."
She said that NOAA had become an increasingly valued resource
for business and planners. The service would seek to build
on that, offering information for schools, businesses and
town planners. "Having trusted sources as providers of that
information is critically important," she said.
She defended the overall credibility of the IPCC despite
the error on Himalayan glaciers, when it admitted that earlier
claims the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was
unfounded. "It is not a perfect process and I think recent
events have highlighted a couple of areas where it can be
improved," she said.
"That said, I think the vast majority of conclusions in the
IPCC are credible and have been through a very rigorous process
and are absolutely state of the science."
|
