Editorial: Studying the perfect storm

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

Upgrades to the computers used to improve storm predictions and efforts to monitor U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have been delayed or curtailed because of federal budget cuts.

According to the Associated Press, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has delayed upgrading the computer used for hurricane modeling and storm predictions because of a 50 percent budget cut. And the budget for the agency's carbon dioxide studies has been cut by 30 percent.

NOAA, the only nonmilitary government laboratory dedicated to predicting and monitoring storms, is operating with 44 percent less money than it had in 2005, the AP reports. The war in Iraq, which costs a staggering $4.5 billion a month, and increasing costs of such entitlement programs as Medicare and Social Security have left less money for so-called "discretionary" programs, such as scientific research.

But some scientists and policymakers told the AP that the NOAA cuts are more about politics than a lack of money.

It is oddly coincidental that research focusing on a topic that the Bush administration hasn't cared to seriously address - the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and its effects - has been cut.

But slashing a program to upgrade the supercomputer that studies catastrophic storms - a budget cut made barely three months after Hurricane Katrina walloped the Gulf Coast - boggles the mind. Last week tornadoes ripped across Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri, leaving 27 people dead. And the start of the 2006 hurricane season is less than two months away.

Critics told the AP that earmarks - also called "pork" - force politicians who want, say, $450 million for bridges to remote Alaskan outposts, to cut long-term federal research programs that don't receive as much attention. But it would seem that learning to better predict where these killer storms will hit and preventing casualties would be at the top of Congress' priority list.