Government’s New Climate Service Shouldn’t Be Used as Doomsday Device

Nicolas Loris /

The Washington Post reports that The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has proposed to create a new climate service and website that would provide the public with information and predictions about the impact of global warming. If this turns out to be yet one more source of apocalyptic government press releases and other such hype, it’s the last thing we need. Just look at the cover of NOAA’s already-existing National Climate Data Center report showing a photoshopped house under water to get a sense of how much are tax dollars are already being wasted on NOAA scares, not to mention those from NASA, EPA and other bureaucracies with a piece of the climate action.

What we really need is more scrutiny of such scary claims. Climategate – the release of emails showing exaggerated temperature increases and other misconduct among key contributors to the UN’s major global warming report, may well implicate some of NOAA’s work. But don’t expect to hear too much of that on the new website. Recent revelations show that claims of Himayalan glaciers melting and hurricane damage increasing due to global warming are also suspect, but again this is the kind of thing federal global warming researchers are busy trying to ignore. Rather than focus on bringing truth and transparency to the scientific debate on climate change, the government officials continually push that the science is settled and to save the planet we need resembling the actions of Audi’s “Green Police” commercial.

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