The US understands climate change only too well. It just hasn鈥檛 bothered finding out how it might affect us.
That鈥檚 one criticism levelled at the by a panel in its latest report. Since the Bush administration reorganised the programme five years ago, it has successfully documented the extent of warming, and how it may continue to change both on a continental and global level, the panel has found. However, the programme has not delved deeper to find out how climate change will affect specific local regions. Worse, it has done little to assess the risks posed by climate change, or influence policy decisions on how best to adapt to the threat. For example, less than $30 million out of this year鈥檚 CCSP budget of $1.7 billion was spent on studying how climate change will affect the well-being of people.
鈥淭he programme has done little to assess the global risks posed by climate change鈥�
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Too little cash and too much bureaucracy have limited the programme鈥檚 effectiveness, says panel chairman Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Further budget cuts could lead to the loss of one-third of the CCSP鈥檚 120 satellite-based climate-monitoring instruments by 2010.
While the programme has completed two reports that 鈥渉ave been enormously effective in aiding decision making鈥�, says Ramanathan, 19 similar reports, which aggregate and assess climate research, are still unfinished.
