This week the U.S. House is scheduled to vote on a bill that will instruct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to prioritize their funded efforts to predicting storms and de-emphasize work on climate change.
The bill’s author, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) is rightfully concerned about tornadoes that have caused much damage and loss of life in his state. But instead of working to get NOAA more funding to develop better tornado warning programs today, he wants to inflict even worse catastrophic events on the entire country tomorrow.
Coincidentally as the House prepares to vote on what many feel is an attack on the issue of climate change, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report yesterday that should send chills up the spines…of those who have them.
Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s story in The New York Times about this report:
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct.
The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants, which is killing some creatures or stunting their growth, the report found.
Organic matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause further warming, the scientists said.
And the worst is yet to come . . .