The Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment is a group of scientists and government officials tasked with assisting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in their production, every four years, of the federal document analyzing the current and predicted effect of climate change on our nation’s infrastructure, agriculture, and citizens. The Assessment is intended as a roadmap not for preventing climate change, but dealing with its unavoidable consequences; the advisory panel’s role is to help guide the government’s continued efforts so as to best include key stakeholders—that is, the public and private groups that must then plan for those changes—and identifying data and processes that would be most useful to those groups.
As of tomorrow, that advisory panel will no longer exist.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel. [...]
While many state and local officials have pressed the federal government for more concrete guidance on how to factor climate change into future infrastructure, President Trump has moved in the opposite direction. Last week, the president signed an executive order on infrastructure that included language overturning a federal requirement that projects built in coastal floodplains and receiving federal aid take projected sea-level rise into account.
Committee members intend to continue working on their final report, which will now be released independently of the federal government.
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TWEET OF THE DAY
A condensed package for your friends, acquaintances, and any relatives you have who aren’t neo-Confederates or otherwise right wing, but still don’t understand why these Rebel monuments should be melted down or turned into gravel.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—Chickenhawks push war:
But the fools in our country's governing junta see things differently. For them, war is a political tool, to be wielded when expedient. It's no surprise that almost none of the "invade Iraq" cabal have served: Bush, Cheney, DeLay, Wolfowitz, Perle, Fleischer, Rice, Barnes, Hannity, Kristol, Lieberman, and the master tactician himself -- Rove (Rumsfeld is the exception).
On the other hand, the veteran contingent in both parties have led the anti-war effort -- Powell, Hagel, Kerry (MA), Scowcraft, Schwarzkopf, Clark, and the entire uniformed cadre at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Armey is the exception). This is significant.
As Perle has said, this war is no longer about achieving any notable strategic considerations. It's no longer a military campaign. It's a political effort, all about saving face:
"The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.”
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