The Island of Doubt

President George W. Bush is getting plenty of attention for finally acknowledging that climate change is a problem, which is at least an improvement over the approach taken by the man overseeing the bulk of climatology being conducted for his government. Some have argued Bush's strategy is actually a cynical attempt to do an end run around the European campaign to slash greenhouse gas emissions. And now that theory is beginning to make sense, in light of the revelation of major cuts to American climate science itself.

AP reported yesterday that "The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space" and "U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space." The story is based on an an internal "pre-decisional" report to the White House by NASA and NOAA scientists, lamenting the impact of cuts to data-gathering satellite programs that are key to measuring global warming. Rick Piltz of Climate Science Watch leaked the report, which includes these nuggets:

Detecting climate change, understanding the associated shifts in specific climate processes, and then projecting the impacts of these changes on the Earth system requires a comprehensive set of consistent measurements made over many decades.... Interruptions in the climate data records make the resolution of small differences uncertain or even impossible to detect.

...

Some of the difficulties in establishing and maintaining climate observations from space are currently being highlighted by the de-scoping of NPOESS, in which climate observations have been seriously compromised .... unless revised plans compensate for the anticipated shortcomings in climate observations, gaps in several key climate data records (some that go back almost 30 years) are highly likely."

Piltz, who used to work within the government scientific establishment, is scathing in his response to the Bush administration's failure to restore funding to the satellite programs. At his blog, where there's links to all sorts of lamentations from scientific authorities, he writes:

We believe the current situation borders on criminal negligence. Unless strong corrective action is taken without delay, we will be living with the harmful consequences of this blinding of the nation's climate change observing capability for long after Bush leaves office.

Just how does Bush justify reducing the amount of data and analysis available to his policy-making team? Until now, he was arguing we need to know more before committing the American economy to whatever mitigating climate change might entail. Not anymore.

While there's long been enough worrisome data to warrant action, the last thing we need is less science. If the latest news about melting polar ice caps and rising emission rates aren't enough to rouse our politicians out of the torpor that afflicts them, then we're going to need more and better studies, not fewer.