Smog in Mexico City. Even this smog isn't as murky as our government's reasons for inaction on climate change.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government has a lovely new climate website to act as a portal for the latest climate change information and media.\u00a0 It’s obviously for the general public, because it looks nice, it’s moderately useful (for the public), it explains things simply, and people can find out the basics of what global warming is.\u00a0\u00a0 It contains pictures and videos and charts and graphs and supposedly, the latest climate change news.\u00a0 The old government climate change websites are still there:\u00a0 Climatescience.gov, which for some reason directs you to http:\/\/www.globalchange.gov<\/a>, and where we are told: <\/p>\n Continue to the new USGCRP website at http:\/\/www.globalchange.gov<\/a> Confused?\u00a0 There is also the EPA climate science site, NOAA and NASA’s climate change data center.\u00a0 There is also the Energy Information Administration, part of the U.S. government too.\u00a0 So many government agencies and websites on climate change! \u00a0 You would think that the government would be drowning in global warming information to act upon — yet even with all this glaringly obvious information, the Congress and the president can’t seem to get anything done on climate change legislation.\u00a0 In fact, Congress might drop climate legislation this year and go with energy-only\u00a0 legislation.\u00a0 This will not be adequate to fight climate change at all, and instead will give a big boost to dirty coal.\u00a0 The energy-only bill also got a failing score from the CBO.<\/p>\n The recently much touted alternative \u201cenergy only\u201d bill would not cost fossil industries, but instead would cost taxpayers $13.9 billion a year, according to this scoring by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office \u2013 that has been gathering dust since September. This failing grade from the CBO has received no publicity at all. I can\u2019t imagine why, can you?\u00a0 The bill would authorize a total of $48.6 billion over the first three years. It would add $13.5 billion each year to the deficit.<\/p>\n . . . .\u00a0 The \u201cenergy-only\u201d bill is co-sponsored by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) who led the attempt to overturn the recent EPA ruling on greenhouse gases, and it has strong Republican\u00a0 and Chamber of Commerce support.<\/p>\n This is a terrible idea!\u00a0 We need climate change legislation now more than ever.\u00a0 Yet media and public interest seems to be dimming.\u00a0 Even our government’s interest seems to be dimming, despite their own growing number of websites about it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The\u00a0 newest government climate site was announced via a memorandum to only mild fanfare.\u00a0 In fact, it’s really just a redundant site. \u00a0 Maybe they are trying to deflect our attention away from the fact that Congress (or Obama) won’t act decisively on all these mountains of data and information on climate change. \u00a0 e360 from Yale put it more charitably:<\/p>\n The Obama administration is creating an office to coordinate and report the latest climate change data, a unit analogous to the National Weather Service that [...]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Smog in Mexico City. Even this smog isn't as murky as our government's reasons for inaction on climate change. The U.S. government has a lovely new climate website to act as a portal for the latest climate change information and … Continue reading
\nVisit the old USCCSP website at http:\/\/www.climatescience.gov\/default.php<\/a><\/p>\n