‘Keep ‘em Barefoot and Ignorant': House Republicans on Public Access to Climate Data, Science

November 23rd, 2011 by Andrew

The Republican-led House of Representatives shot down a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) request to build and publicly offer a comprehensive online climate database on its website.

NOAA has “been overwhelmed with requests for information about climate data,” according to a Washington Post news report. Climate data downloads from NOAA Web sites surged 86 percent between 2009 and 2010, while climate-related phone calls and e-mails spiked up from 26,000 to 30,000, according to a Washington Post report.

The Republican-led House apparently believes that keeping the US public in a state of confusion and ignorance is the way to govern, at least when it comes to views that differ from their own. Certainly, it’s an effective way manipulate public attitudes and beliefs and keep hold of power, just not one we’re accustomed to in the USA.

National Climate Service Shot Down

Pres. Obama proposed establishing a separate NOAA National Climate Service in early 2010 that would serve as a centralized, user-friendly information resource to help governments, businesses, and the broad public better understand and adapt to climate change.

Carrying out the two projects would respond to increasing public demand for climate data and information, and they would cost essentially nothing, as NOAA requested no additional, new funding in its 2012 budget proposal to carry the projects out. The Democratic-led Senate approved most of the funding for the Climate Service in its budget. The Republican-led House rejected it whole.

There are numerous really good, valid economic reasons why establishing a national Climate Service and database would be of real value… besides the simple fact that public demand for such information has been surging. “Urban planners want to know whether groundwater will stop flowing under subdivisions. Insurance companies need climate data to help them set rates,” the Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag wrote, mentioning just two. (Think Progress has a good list of 10.)

Politicizing Climate

As NOAA states on its website, its products and services “support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.”

Republican House members don’t want a federal government agency legitimizing any science that legitimizes climate change. Two cited by Ashley Portero in her International Business Times article argued that the National Climate Service would “politicize” NOAA and make its website seem like “propaganda sources instead of science sources.” Rather ironic seeing as that’s exactly what House Republicans are doing.

Oddly enough, the federal funding earmarked for NOAA’s Climate Service was approved by the House, but it will be distributed across the agency instead of going directly into the project.

“We think it’s very unfortunate,” Chris McEntee, executive director of the 60,000-strong American Geophysical Union of scientists, told The Washington Post. “Limiting access to this kind of climate information won’t make climate change go away.”

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Tags: 2012 federal budget, climate database, climate politics, climate science, economics climate change, national climate service, noaa, public information access

About the Author

Andrew I've been reporting and writing on a wide range of topics at the nexus of economics, technology, ecology/environment and society for some five years now. Whether in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Americas, Africa or the Middle East, issues related to these broad topical areas pose tremendous opportunities, as well as challenges, and define the quality of our lives, as well as our relationship to the natural environment.

vern

This is a clear mischaracterization of the facts. This new program has a cost, if NOAA added this project to its budget and the overall budget didn’t increase then it is at most budget neutral, nothing is free folks. Setting this up will require management, project planning, tech resources, tech software and hardware purchases, and ongoing expense to maintain. If NOAAs budget didn’t increase, this means that this project is eating funds from other areas. Meaning 1- those other areas are somehow now not worth funding even if they were worth funding last year or 2 – this public information project is a high profile way to attract attention to NOAA and potentially secure future funding.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that NOAA sacrificed something once justified as important for their science endeavors in order to fund this. I say this based on working with government agencies in the past.

And don’t forget NOAA for quite some time resisted in sharing their data and calculations (corrections applied to the raw data to compensate for many placement and localized weather station issues). They play games.

And before anyone calls me some GOP shill, I’m a Democrat and voted for Obama. But that doesn’t mean I’m not weary of the waste and personal ambition driven power and funding corruption in our agencies.

I read 30+ sites dedicated to green energy, renewable technology, climate change, and other topics. I would appreciate if reporting like this and other articles on this site didn’t focus on calling out the GOP as I know for a fact that both sides have Green lovers and haters.
- vern
  
  ‘They play games’ in the 3rd section above was meant to be typed into an IM, and is NOT part of my comment on NOAA.
Tropical Day

Understand where the GOP get it’s money and you understand why they act on behalf of just a fortunate few. They turn a blind eye for a boat load of money. Most of them know climate change is a fact. Big oil and big coal, as the saying go’s, money talks but cash screams!
Shecky Vegas

Y’know, we used to burn witches, too.
Noschitt

GOOD glad to hear that some one is saying NO.. about time
- splook
  
  OK, it is definately your perogative to remain ignorant to the changes happening around you. But… why is sharing onfo about our world and what is happening not a good thing? Go suck on a tailpipe of a car and then tell me we aren’t changing the environment! Horray for people living in denial!
  - http://twitter.com/RexScientiarum Eccentric scientist
    
    I think I smell a troll.
    
    A lot of greedy fools will deny climate change (at least the human perpetuated kind) but I doubt too many sane ‘non-trolling’ people support denying the freedom of speech.
    
    Even if Noschitt (classy name btw, smells troll-ey) is serious it is sort of hypocritical no?
    Let trolls be trolls.
    - vern
      
      I think your comment like others I’ve seen on the topic is misinformed. There’s certainly no ‘freedom of speech’ issue here. And NOAA is every day currently providing summary data, raw data, software source, etc either via their public web site or FOIA requests.
      
      This proposal, which I am honestly kind of neutral on, proposes setting up a formal, funded program within the agency.
      
      My problem is that based on my experience with government agencies, establishing a program is a great way to start a prepetually funded, growing expense item. This I think we should be careful of. Especially at the expense of the true science NOAA should be doing.
      
      I haven’t made my personal conclusion on this thing yet. I need more facts to do so.
      
      Also, not every idea our agencies propose to Congress is a good idea to fund — even if the idea has merit. We simply can’t do everything.
      - http://twitter.com/RexScientiarum Eccentric scientist
        
        Ahaha, you sound like me bitching about the extreme leftists (these days getting nearly as bad as extreme right wingers) want to fund BS like video game ‘museums’. The difference here though is that like nbii (which is being shut down for who the hell knows what reason), is neither expensive nor perpetually grows. Certainly the data adds up but storage and server costs go down and the amount of info is minuscule compared to the mountains of useless shit that government stores for ‘national securities’ sake. It is relevant weather data. How is this wasteful? A program like this might cost a few hundred grand where a defense program like the f-35 fighter costs billions of dollars to develop 2 engines for the same plane when only one is going to be used. That is wasteful spending. This isn’t some little pet art project, or some bullshit guppy game (and yes, even I, as an evolutionary biologist think that little flash game piece of filth is bull). You want to cut BS projects cut crap like $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy where they rented a tank and flipped it upside and put a treadmill on top. Don’t get me wrong I like art, my mother is an artist but that crap isn’t art, its the government throwing money down the toilet. Legit science that has direct economic impact like this isn’t what we need to be cutting.
        
        Your right, we can’t expect the government to do everything so we need to get our spending priorities straight. This is something we keep. That megadeath super-maser dead-end perpetual defense program can be cut because we all know nothing is going to come out of it.The 10 mil for a Pakistani Sesame Street or the 60 grand for a wine conference in Ohio, or the 606 grand study of online dating. That is bullshit we need to cut out. There is at least 7 billion of that sort of smut in the current budget so if we need to redirect about 1 billion total (and that is REALLY a high end estimate) of that money to split between the USGS to maintain nbii, the US forest service to clean up the disgusting state of the Great lakes, and to the NOAA so they can provide legitimate researchers with up to date, accurate climate data, that is still a 6 billion dollar savings PER YEAR. With perhaps 2 exceptions to REPUBLICAN (and obviously I’m a pretty liberal leaning individual here) Senator Tom Coburn’s wastebook, I can say I agree with pretty much everything he says in there so I am all about making cuts and sacrifices.
        
        That 6 billion is before any medicare/medicaid reforms like those suggested by Senators Joe Lieberman and Tom Coburn (again) and social security security reforms like those proposed by Jason Chaffetz which should save the government 500 billion and 600 billion dollars over the next 10 years respectively (which actually would make these programs ALMOST sustainable). What we can’t sacrifice is the very few remaining science projects at the FEDERAL level, not state and city pet projects, federal level projects. At some point we have to protect the sciences, because science and technology are the only thing this country has going for it in the future.