Photo from kevindooley on Flickr through Creative Commons

      Looks like Barack Obama is finally taking climate change by the horns. On Monday, February 8, the Administration announced the creation of a new agency to study and publicize the effects of global warming.
As concern about rising temperatures and the ecological impacts have gained mainstream attention, climate change has taken center stage on environmental issues. Now, after spending his first year battling the recession and health care reform, climate change is once again at the top of Obama’s agenda: 

• “Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.”

• “NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-09 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.”

Dr. Jane Lubchenco speaks at the World Climate Conference 3 in September 2009
Photo from US Mission Geneva on Flickr through Creative Commons

• “’More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it’s going to affect them,’ Lubchenco said. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.”

• “The new agency will initially be led by Thomas Karl, director of the current National Climatic Data Center. The Climate Service will be headquartered in Washington and will have six regional directors across the country.”

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