[February 15, 2010 / No. 1428]

Federals Announce Climate Agency in Commerce Department

In the same media report announcing the formation of a new federal Department of Commerce agency to handle climate change, there were stories underscoring the knotty problematics of that very complex subject.

Citing warming damage to agriculture in a Synthesis Report, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said, "In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50 percent by 2020." But The London Times last week reported Prof. Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC's climate impacts team, saying, "I was not an author on the Synthesis Report, but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines."

"This sort of claim should be based on hard evidence," said Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the U.K.'s department for environment food and rural affairs, in The Times Report. Watson also chaired the IPCC from 1997 to 2002. He said it was not based on peer-reviewed data.

The Dutch are also ticked officially. The IPCC reports say that more than 50 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level. The Dutch, who are understandingly sensitive to such matters, say the correct figure is 25 percent. And they are further honked because they are having a tough time getting the figure corrected.

Then there was the announcement by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke (former governor of Washington) and NOAA head Jane Lubchenco, that NOAA will have the new Climate Service working with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service. "Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," according to Locke.

I have written some skeptical stuff on the purported crisis aspects of global warming, but I think that having a climate change agency at the federal level by year's end is a good idea. There would be six regional offices, and Lubchenco announced there would be an online NOAA climate portal with a wealth of climatic data from NOAA and other sources.

But I do have a suggestion that would in my judgment make this project a better deal indeed. That would be an advisory committee that would include some members who are skeptical of looking at global warming as being for certain the worst impending disaster in human history. And some energy community people as well.

I would propose for membership the following climate people:

Richard Lindzen, climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia; and Bjorn Lomborg, Danish author, academic, and environmental writer who is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.

And from the energy world, I would nominate Tom Casten, founder and chairman of Recycled Energy Development; S. David Freeman, energy plenipotentiary who currently is interim GM of LADWP; and Peggy Fowler, retired CEO of Portland General Electric.

The devil, as always, takes residence in the details, and I am puzzled that the climate agency would have six regional offices. Regional climate? What is happening now in the U.S., and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, this winter reinforces the maxim that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. I look forward to tracking and reporting on the Beltway and regional development details of the climate agency [Cyrus Noë].