Editorial: Climate program falters

Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

A new federal report says that a five-year-old climate change study has documented global warming's existence, but has failed to adequately research how man-made products have contributed to climate changes and has made no proposals for mitigating or adapting to them.

The National Research Council, which is part of the National Academies, released its first progress report Thursday on the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. Launched in 2002, the program is designed to collect and analyze data from 13 federal agencies that study climate change.

The report lauded the program for making "good progress in documenting and understanding temperature trends and related environmental changes."

But the report says the program has not made much progress in studying the "human drivers of climate change, such as energy consumption, the impact of human systems such as political institutions and economies and mitigation and adaptation options."

Part of the problem, the report says, is that only $25 million to $30 million of the climate program's $1.7 billion annual budget is devoted to studying the effect that human activity has on climate change. And its director does not have the authority to reorganize how research money is spent or to drive the direction of research among the 13 agencies that are collecting data.

Likewise, the report says, members of those 13 agencies lack the authority to set priorities on their research budgets to fund the studies needed.

What's more, federal funding for satellites that are used to collect climate data has been drastically cut, leaving missions canceled or long-delayed. "Without these satellites, scientists' ability to monitor and predict climate change will decline, even as the urgency of doing so increases," the report says.

In essence, the Bush administration set up the U.S. Climate Change Science Program for looks, and has set it up to fail.

It is just another example of how President Bush stubbornly disregards any science that interferes with his political agenda and could obstruct his efforts to protect the interests of industry over those of the American people.