Science magazine 21st September:
Extracts from: Panel Gives U.S. Program Mixed Grades
An expert panel says the Bush Administration deserves “a pat on the back” for advancing the science of climate change. But the scientists assembled by the National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC) have serious concerns about the management, funding, and emphasis of the $1.7-billion-a-year Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). President George H. W. Bush created the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 1990 to bring under one umbrella the government’s efforts to understand climate change. In 2002, his son reshuffled the climate deck to create CCSP. Last week, the NRC panel took the first outside look at that program and concluded, says chair V. Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, that its efforts to understand how and why climate has changed and to make predictions are “proceeding well.”
Ramanathan says he’s troubled by the program’s limited success in “assessing [climate change] impacts on human well-being and adaptation capacities.” Those assessments would require reliable forecasts of climate change at the regional if not the local level, Ramanathan notes, a capability the world’s climate modelers are still struggling with. But gauging impacts on humans and figuring out how humans might adapt to climate change will take far more than the $20 million per year now spent within the program on social science studies, the committee said. It will also take better communication between the program and business interests, other agencies, and the general public. For starters, 21 synthesis and assessment reports were due from CCSP by now, but only two have been delivered.
Hello my friends 🙂
😉
Sorry Lamna,
It was an astronomer, not a statistician.
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
by Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Whew Lamnus,
If you say so ... what's that poem by Walt Whitman about statistics?
Apologies to Hissink, I attributed a quote to him in my last post which actually came from Thurkettle.
'I think you are projecting about me projecting. They didn't cover that one in Psychology 100' - Davey
Unless of course you are projecting me projecting about you projecting, they cover that in Psychology 101..
'the part I couldn't find ' - Jim
Politics therefore not science.. Apparently Dubya has no such scruples over globalised corporations out-sourcing their manufacturing from the USA...
'Biggest industry donors to Bush campaign
Enron $1.8m
Exxon $1.2m
Koch Industries $970,000
Southern $900,000
BP Amoco $800,000
El Paso Energy $787,000
Chevron Oil Corp $780,000
Reliant Energy $642,000
Texas Utilities $635,000'
- BBC, 8 May, 2001.
Anyone suggesting that donations of this magnitude do not influence policy, is frankly either astoundingly naive.. or being economical with the truth...
'Incidentally , wasn't it actually the US Senate ( 99/1 as I recall ) that wouldn't ratify Kyoto?
Were they all captured by eviloil as well?' - Jim
'There's no denying both political parties in Congress are now owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate interests. Our nation's elected officials in Washington have formed a partnership with the corporate supremacists and special interest groups in an effort to drive profits to the bottom line of U.S. multinationals at the expense of hard-working Americans.
Congress over the past few months has all-too-willingly approved corporate-friendly -- and often corporate-written -- transportation and energy bills, as well as so-called bankruptcy reform that further rents the middle class' social safety net. And not surprisingly, there's a serious correlation between the dramatic increase in money spent by special interest groups on lobbying and corporate America's taking over the deed to Capitol Hill.
Let's be clear about this: Calling these greedy people "lobbyists" simply because they convene in the hallowed lobbies of Washington is akin to calling parasites "bodyists" or viruses "blood-streamers." What they're really doing is selling out American workers and hastening the decline in our nation's standard of living and quality of life.
Corporations, entire industries and other special interest groups spent a record $2.14 billion on lobbying members of Congress and 220 other federal agencies last year, according to Political MoneyLine, a nonpartisan research service that tracks campaign contributions. That figure represents a 7 percent increase over 2003 and an astonishing 34 percent jump from the amount of money spent on lobbying in 2001.
Interestingly, while many major news stories tend to focus on campaign finance reform, twice as much money has been spent on lobbying Congress than on federal elections since 1998. All told, corporations and special interests have spent more than $12 billion on lobbying efforts over that time, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
Congressmen Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Marty Meehan of Massachusetts have introduced legislation that would, among other things, strengthen lobbying disclosure requirements, slow the "revolving door" between public service and lobbying and make it easier for Americans to learn about who is lobbying members of Congress. Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has introduced a similar version in the Senate.
But Congressman Emanuel says he thinks the leaders of Congress aren't interested in changing the way it operates, or even the way lobbyists operate.
"When the Speaker's gavel comes down, it's intended to open the People's House, and lately it's looking like the Auction House," says Rep. Emanuel, "Whether it's an energy bill that gives more $8 billion to the oil and gas interests while oil's at $64 a barrel, whether it's a corporate tax bill solving a $5 billion problem with a $150 billion solution, whether it's a pharmaceutical, prescription drug bill where the industry gave $132 million and walked away with $135 billion in additional profits."
The corporate lobby has become more effective recently because it's hiring more experienced players, in effect creating a "revolving door" between Capitol Hill and K Street. In fact, 43 percent of the eligible congressional members who departed government during that time have become lobbyists, while half of all eligible departing senators have become lobbyists. Nearly 250 former members of Congress and federal agency chiefs have become lobbyists since 1998, while more than 2,200 former federal employees have registered as federal lobbyists.
The striking rise in money spent on lobbying also increases the chances for abuse. Lobbyists are required to report who pays them and how much they're paid, but nearly 85 percent of the top 250 lobbying firms have failed to file one or more required forms, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The biggest abuses, however, stem from lobbyists' paying for politicians' dinners, trips, golf outings and more. Members of Congress over the past five years have received more than $18 million to travel the world at the expense of private organizations, PoliticalMoneyLine reports. Those expenses include 6,242 trips for 628 lawmakers from both political parties.'
- CNN, 12 August 2005.
Yes Lamna - the part I couldn't find which said that the reason Bush "claimed he didn't ratify it (his family's business interests in the oil industry and the massive financial backing that industry provided for his presidential campaigns are of course well documented"
The reason you've sited above is ensuring workers didn't lose their jobs.
So presumably you were just indulging in some comfortable, simplistic, prejudice reinforcing BS?
I went to Kyoto last September. The temples were lovely, but the traffic fumes toxic. Has Kyoto signed the Kyoto treaty?
P.S. I spoke to some Japanese punk rockers on the train. They had never heard of the Kyoto Treaty.
While there is a concerted blast at Bush for not signing the Kyoto treaty, the point that I made has been carefully ignored by the Bush bashers.
It is that the democrats now control both houses of the congress.
And they have done nothing about signing or ratifying the Kyoto protocol. Nor do they look like doing so.
I guess we should find a list of petroleum and energy companies which have donated to the democrats,, and the democratic contenders for the coming presidential election. That would be as interesting, or more so, than donations to Bush.
Can anyone provide such a list?
PP
Luke,
Glad to see you agree on funding - and on the cooling in Antarctica. It's a real penguin-poo day, here in southern WA. It was so cold overnight that one of my resident bandicoots came out of a fern clump fighting hungry this morning, and pushed the cat (that merciless slayer of biodiversity) off her breakfast. She is sulking by the wood stove - oh my God - greenhouse gas again? Will I ever get it right.