Take a look at our map, based on new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, which shows just how much worse our forecasting would be without polar-orbiting environmental satellites.

For 2010′s “Snowmageddon” storm, without the satellite data, NOAA’s forecasts would have lost as much as 50 percent of their accuracy, underforecasting snowfall in Washington, D.C. by almost foot, and rainfall in the Gulf by up to an inch.

The resulting failure to prepare for flash floods, roadside strandings, air traffic delays, and transit interruptions could halt all commerce. Even worse, failing to maintain our satellite network, according to NOAA, would reduce future flood preparedness time from days to mere hours, putting human lives at risk.

We here at CAP and Climate Progress have been keeping close tabs on House Republicans’ efforts to make the country more vulnerable to extreme weather events. If Congress refuses to fund new environmental monitoring satellites to replace aging spacecraft that could fail at any time, it will undoubtedly expose Americans to increased risk from storms, floods, blizzards, and hurricanes. Meanwhile, more and more science is emerging that strengthens the link between unprecedented weather phenomena and human-caused global climate change.

The GOP-controlled Congress took steps to eliminate $700 million in funding for NOAA’s satellite program in its bill to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year (until October 2011). Though that bill is still being negotiated, the three-week continuing resolution that keeps the government open until April 8 also contained cuts to NOAA’s vital satellites.

As I have written, making these short-sighted cuts now will force taxpayers to spend three to five times as much to buy exactly the same equipment 18-months down the road—a delay extremely likely to leave the nation without coverage since our current satellites are approaching the end of their projected service lives. Failing to replace these vital sources of data is simply not an option. This is because these satellites are critical to our ability to predict and prepare for high-impact weather phenomena.

How critical? The graphics below show a “with” and “without” comparison of how forecasts for the “Snowmageddon” storm of 2010 would have been impacted by the loss of NOAA’s satellites. The first set of maps shows actual rainfall experienced in the central Gulf Coast; NOAA’s rainfall predictions; and the predictions that would have been filed without satellite data. The second set shows the same progression for the snowfall forecast in the mid-Atlantic region.

(click to enlarge)

Without the satellite data, NOAA’s forecasts lose as much as 50 percent of their accuracy, underforecasting snowfall in Washington, D.C. by almost foot, and rainfall in the Gulf by up to an inch. The resulting failure to prepare for flash floods, roadside strandings, air traffic delays, and transit interruptions could halt all commerce. Even worse, failing to maintain our satellite network, according to NOAA, would reduce future flood preparedness time from days to mere hours, putting human lives at risk.

Does it snow where you live? Does it rain? The GOP wants you to wait a year and a half and then pay five times as much to eventually get a reasonable estimate of how much wet stuff is going to fall from yonder cloud. Apparently their intention is to boost the economy through sales of bottled water, batteries, and toilet paper so everyone is prepared when the next big storm hits. Absent a substantial investment to maintain our environmental satellite network, it could happen any time—without warning—so you better start shopping.

Michael Conathan is Director of Ocean Programs at American Progress. This article is cross-posted at Climate Progress.

Despite several previous holds on the nominations, the LA Times reports that the vote was unanimous. Lubchenco also spoke to the restoration of evidence to the policymaking process:

“There will be no muzzling or muffling or distortion of science, or delays in science in this administration,” Lubchenco said. The best available science will guide policy decisions, she said, and discoveries or updates will be shared “whether they meet our preconceived ideas or meet our agenda.”

In a video address posted on the OSTP home page, Holdren talks about the current pressing national problems and says: “science and technology are crucial tools for dealing with theses challenges, and indeed for turning many of them into oppoutnites.”

It suffices to say that getting Holdren and Lubchenco into those posts would be good for the health of the planet.

Science Insider: NIH details are sketchy, but include increases; NSF would see 8.5 percent bump; more for scientific facilities though DOE’s Office of Science; earth science research funding and Orion money for NASA; 37.5 percent increase for EPA.

The Intersection and Yale e360: spending initiatives assume passage of cap and trade legislation, a significant political maneuver.

The Washington Post has a useful comparison graphic (article) showing the 2007-2008 budget and the 2009-2010 with stimulus funds side-by-side for several agencies and departments.

Also notable: the budget outline includes $1.3 billion for NOAA “weather satellites and climate sensors”; $50 million to support creation of regional innovation clusters; and says that the Patent and Trademark Office will be granted full access to its fee collections, a problem because Congress has previously dipped into the funds, which are the source of operating funds for the overburdened office.

As the Science Insider reporters point out, the format of the release as a pdf is “decidedly old-school style for the digitally minded Obama Administration.” Let’s be honest: this information needs to be available in a fully machine-readable format. They could take some cues from the NYT’s unveiling this week of its API.

Image: flickr.com/afagen

Weiss’s Notebook

CAP Senior Fellow Rick Weiss covered science and medicine for The Washington Post for 15 years, and now he brings his investigative eye to science policy. From cloning and stem cells to agricultural biotechnology and nanotechnology, Weiss examines the issues at the intersection of cutting edge research and public policy.

The presidential transition, begun quietly before the party conventions, now barrels ahead at full speed. And as soon as the transition team has completed its immediate work on the two most pressing issues of the day—national security and the economy—there is good reason to believe that the nation’s science agencies and offices will get fast and close attention.

It is a truism by now that the solutions to many of the major problems facing the United States—climate change, energy, the environment, health care, and food security, among others—have major scientific or technological components. It is also widely recognized that the Bush administration’s almost allergic rejection of scientific evidence and government oversight has badly stalled the development of new approaches to these problems, as well as others in the life sciences and public health. Transition officials clearly plan to act quickly to select new heads for the agencies responsible for these interlinked issues, with an eye toward enabling coordinated efforts.

Already, the Washington rumor mill is buzzing with names of possible science appointees. I have no inside information, but to satisfy the innate human urge to give and receive gossip, I’m happy to highlight some of what I’ve heard from others. For secretary of Health and Human Services, there is talk of former Majority Leader (and CAP senior fellow) Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who released a book in February on the nation’s healthcare crisis; Nobel laureate and former National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus, currently president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman and a family physician; and Kathleen Sebelius (D), the governor of Kansas, who made a name for herself when she successfully fought a major battle against BlueCross-BlueShield’s plan to become a for-profit company.

For FDA Commissioner, some have floated the names of Mike Taylor, a former deputy FDA commissioner with particular expertise in food safety; Mary Pendergast, who had a top post in the FDA under President Clinton and has also consulted for the pharmaceutical industry; and even Steven Nissen, the Cleveland Clinic maverick M.D. who has become a chronic thorn in the side of big pharma by repeatedly challenging the data that drug companies have used to back up their claims of safety and efficacy.

It’s been easy for scientists to gripe about their mistreatment during the past eight years. But now is not the time to demand payback.

The parlor game could go on, and it will. But what is more interesting, really, is just how many high-level science openings there are to fill. There are the cabinet-level positions overseeing such science-heavy departments as Agriculture, Energy, and Commerce. There is the surgeon general, the directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; the administrators of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the head of the United States Geological Survey, the all-important research arm of the Interior department.

Within the executive office of the president alone there is the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science advisor to the president (a position that many in science hope will be elevated to a cabinet level “assistant to the president” post); four associate directors of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; a gaggle of presidentially appointed members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; the chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality; the director and three associate directors of the Office of Management and Budget; and the administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which has in recent years become an increasingly important venue for scientific review and regulation.

Now feel free to skip this paragraph—and to seek help if in fact you make it to the end—but I would be remiss not to mention as well that within the Agriculture Department alone the president needs to appoint three science-based under secretaries—for research, education, and economics; food safety; and food, nutrition, and consumer services. In Commerce he must choose an under secretary for oceans and atmosphere. In Defense he must find a director of defense research and engineering; an under secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics; a director for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; an assistant secretary for health affairs; an assistant secretary for networks and information integration; a chief information officer; and an assistant to the secretary for nuclear and chemical and biological defense programs. In Education he must pick a director of that department’s Institute of Education Sciences. In Energy there are slots that must be filled for an under secretary of science; an under secretary for energy and environment; an assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy; an assistant secretary for environmental management; an assistant secretary for fossil energy; an assistant secretary of nuclear energy; and an under secretary for nuclear security.

And remember, we’re just talking about the most science-y presidential appointments here. We’ll ignore the nearly 500 others for now (but see below for a more exhaustive list).

Of these myriad positions, the most important will be the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This is a position that has traditionally been held by a physicist, a holdover from the days when the most important thing to think about in science was the risk of a nuclear attack. Today, as the nation faces a far broader array of scientific threats, including climate change and biological warfare, it will be interesting to see if the new president breaks with tradition and appoints an earth scientist or biologist to that central scientific coordinating position.

The fruits of all these transitional decisions will take time to ripen, but here are a few questions worth asking today:

Will HHS lead a quick and effective charge to focus more on prevention, reduce the cost of healthcare and insurance, and expand coverage to the un- and underinsured?

Will FDA work together with Agriculture to revamp the nation’s food safety system? Will it demand more of pharmaceutical companies, and will it regulate tobacco?

Will EPA get back to the job of using science to calculate honestly the effects of pesticides and other chemicals on the environment and human health? Will it lead the way to dealing with climate change and stand up for endangered species?

Will DOE jump-start the transition to a low-carbon economy by aggressively funding work on alternative energy sources and promulgating strict energy efficiency standards for homes and office buildings? Will it tackle the problem of nuclear waste?

And will Interior manage, in an integrated way, the nation’s precious fresh water resources and protect public lands for we the taxpayers who together own them?

To answer these questions in the affirmative will require a government commitment to data instead of ideology, which alone would constitute a real break from the Bush legacy. But it will also require a huge corps of scientists willing to speak up, and to provide and interpret those much-needed data for the good of the country.

The National Academies put it well in their 2008 report, “Science and Technology For America’s Progress: Ensuring the Best Presidential Appointments in the New Administration”:

The nature of our current national challenges, whether domestic or abroad, demands the best of science, engineering and technology to solve. “More of the same” will not work in the 21st century. Innovative thinking will be needed to a degree unprecedented in American history. Fortunately, large numbers of scientists, engineers, and health professionals have experienced positive change throughout their careers and have been enormously successful as a result. They have much to give back. Government service is an excellent means by which to repay that debt.

It’s been easy for scientists to gripe about their mistreatment during the past eight years. But now is not the time to demand payback. Now is the time for science to put its best foot forward and show the country what it’s been missing.

Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.

Key Science and Technology Positions

Adapted from the NAS report, “Science and Technology for America’s Progress: Ensuring the Best Presidential Appointments in the New Administration”

PAS = presidential appointment with Senate confirmation

PA = presidential appointment (without Senate confirmation)

NA = noncareer appointment

FT = fixed term appointment, with length of appointment indicated

Examples of Scientific and Technical Federal Advisory Commitees, by Origin and Purpose

But as I’ve watched Hurricane Dolly form in the Gulf of Mexico and careen towards the Texas-Mexico border—rapidly intensifying into a Category 2 storm just before landfall–I can only think one thing. If we’re worried about gas prices now, what will we do if (God forbid) at some point over the next several months, one or more Gulf hurricanes knock out oil production infrastructure and refining capacity?

Such a hypothetical disaster has already been discussed this year, based upon our alarming experience from the mega hurricane year of 2005. The Gulf of Mexico provides 30 percent of U.S. oil production and 45 percent of its refining capacity, according to the American Petroleum Institute. No wonder that after Hurricane Katrina shut down virtually all Gulf production in 2005, we saw average gas prices jump above $3 a gallon for the first time, climbing from $2.65 to $3.11 in the space of a week. (At the time, such a price was considered shocking.)

It’s worth raising questions like these in order to get a true and full assessment of our economy’s vulnerability due to our staggering dependence upon oil.

And then a month later came Hurricane Rita, another Category 5 aimed at oil rich Gulf waters and coasts. Taken together the two storms damaged 457 oil pipelines, destroyed 113 platforms, and most important, temporarily shut down oil production entirely. As the U.S. Minerals Management Service puts it, Katrina and Rita represented “the greatest natural disasters to oil and gas development in the history of the Gulf of Mexico.” Overall roughly three-quarters of total Gulf oil platforms were in the path of one or both storms, as were two-thirds of the region’s miles of pipeline.

To be sure, after the storms passed gas prices once again declined steadily, as production capacity in the Gulf gradually came back online and President Bush released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The American Petroleum Institute assures us its companies worked as hard as possible to recover quickly.

The vulnerability of our economy to oil price spikes at that time, however, was nothing compared to what it is now. Today we would kill for $3 a gallon at the pump, and the entire stock market swoons over any increase in oil prices. Some forecasts suggest price spikes in the event of another well-targeted Gulf hurricane could be as high as $5 to $6 per gallon. We’re much more panicky now: Could we really withstand a price blip like the one that occurred after Katrina?

That’s something to consider, because every indicator right now is that this hurricane season is something to worry about. We’re not in the August-October peak of the season yet, but we’ve already seen four named storms this year and two strong hurricanes—far ahead of the typical schedule. In particular, although the recently dissipated Hurricane Bertha didn’t ultimately cause much impact upon any land areas, it showed record longevity and near-record intensity for a storm occurring so early in the year. Bertha could represent a harbinger of a still-more active season once Atlantic sea surface temperatures reach their peak. The calling card of the deadly 2005 hurricane season, after all, was a hyperactive month of July.

Meanwhile, Dolly has already required a few platforms to be evacuated, although most recently oil prices have declined, based in part upon the anticipation that the storm’s track will not pose a severe danger to production. But another storm this year certainly might.

Granted, we shouldn’t get too alarmist: Neither 2006 nor 2007 saw anything like the hurricane destruction that befell the U.S. in 2005. Hopefully we’ll be spared this year too—but we won’t be forever. And so I believe it’s worth raising questions like these in order to get a true and full assessment of our economy’s vulnerability due to our staggering dependence upon oil.

And for that matter, why only focus on the danger to our economy posed by Gulf of Mexico hurricanes? Last year, a rare Arabian Sea cyclone, Gonu, very nearly made its way into the Persian Gulf—if it had, a true oil economy disaster could have been in the offing. And in fact, some climate models now suggest that global warming ought to increase the occurrence of hurricanes in the Arabian Sea.

For indeed, oil production and hurricanes may ultimately be linked via climate change—the burning of oil warms the climate, which provides more ocean heat for hurricanes, which can then (as we’ve seen) temporarily wipe out production of the oil. We’re still waiting for a definitive understanding of the precise hurricane-climate relationship, but it remains a reasonable assumption that the storms will get worse on average.

None of which is to say that we ought to burn less oil to prevent global warming so as to (in turn) prevent hurricanes. That’s strained logic indeed, given the amount of warming we’re already committed to and the fact that hurricanes will always be with us, irrespective of what the climate is doing.

However, it is perhaps to say that burning less oil in the future—and instead turning to alternative power sources—would reduce the impact of inevitable hurricane catastrophes on our wallets. And these days, that kind of reasoning sounds more and more compelling.

Chris Mooney is a contributing editor to Science Progress and the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.

Tomorrow, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Science and Technology will host a hearing on H.R. 4174: The Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act (FOARAM) Act. Representative Thomas Allen’s (D-ME) sponsorship of this bill follows Senator Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NY) parallel legislation, S. 1581: FOARAM Act of 2007, proposed almost exactly a year a go today. However, it was just recently that Lautenberg’s S.1581 was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar for a Senate vote.

The FOARAM bills in the House and Senate take into account the imminent and long-term threats of greenhouse emissions and industrial pollution; an increasing amount of carbon dioxide is being absorbed by the oceans. The bills take the first step to building a larger movement on ocean acidification awareness; they establish outreach activities, educational opportunities, and an incentive-based monitoring system of acidic levels in the ocean. They also establish grants for research projects to explore many of the unknown effects of ocean acidification. Under the direction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, FOARAM requires federal agencies to collaborate on strategic ocean research with public and private organizations.

Acidification monitoring will help curb faster paced increases in acidity and potential consequences for the ocean’s vast natural resources. Scientists can monitor reef habitats that protect marine ecosystems and prevent their destruction by hurricanes and tropical storms. Organisms being monitored for their environment’s acidification fluctuations will help researchers understand species-specific physiological responses and develop strategies for what can be done to prevent harm to wildlife.

Bi-partisan support the Senate and House versions of FOARAM brings an auspicious vision for future congressional resolutions on water policy. Last year Amy Carroll, a Republican aide with the House Science and Technology Committee, commented (subscription) during the Capital Hill Oceans Week: “This is a good year, and a good Congress for oceans issues.” Amy Fraenkel, senior Democratic counsel for the Senate Commerce Committee, said, “The House is becoming more active on these issues…the administration is also stepping up in this Congress in a way they haven’t before.”

The panelists at tomorrow’s hearing will address the above issues and beyond. Dr. Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will discuss how the current and future research on ocean acidification can lead to increased marine source management efforts. Mr. Brad Warren, a policy with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and technical advisor for many seafood suppliers and producers, will discuss the effects ocean acidification on the world’s seafood industry. With America boasting the world’s third largest seafood industry, Congress has another reason to pay special attention to FOARAM. Whether or not the natural resource losses caused by acidification will force Congress to move on this issue is unclear, but this threat is too long-lasting to stall another year.

Image: flickr.com/sam_and_ian

This week, the Senate resumes consideration of the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill (HR 3093, summary [pdf]), which funds science education ($28 billion, $2 billion more than 2007), global climate change initiatives ($1.85 billion for a program that has not existed previously), NASA ($10.5 billion, $1.01 billion more than 2007), NOAA ($4.0 billion, $56.9 million above 2007), NSF ($5.96 billion, $500 million more than 2007), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology ($831.2 million, $154.3 million above 2007 ).

Also in the Senate this week: the Labor-Health-Education appropriations bill (HR 3043, summary [pdf]), which funds the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In its current form, the bill provides $29.4 billion total for NIH ($549 million, or 3 percent, more than the current level) and $6.5 billion for the CDC ($192 million, or 8 percent, more than the current level).