[NYTr] Scientists Deplore US Budget Cuts for Climate Watch

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Here's how the Bush regime is marking the beginning of the 2007
hurricane season and the 2nd Anniversary of the Katrina disaster in the
gulf states -- by cutting funds for climate monitoring and research.
Those tax cuts for the rich have to be made up somewhere. -NYTr]
 

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
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Washington Reduces Budget for Climate Watch 

By Roberto Perez Betancourt
AIN Special Service

US climate experts are concerned over the Bush administration's 
reduction of funds for weather forecasting and climate watch.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) cancelled the 
launching of a satellite that would have made a significant 
contribution to information on hurricanes, melting ice caps, droughts 
and deforestation among other adverse phenomena.

Americans remember the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 
in the country's Gulf Coast region, where residents are still suffering 
the consequences, especially in the poorer sectors of that region.

US President George W. Bush has decided that it is "more important" to 
go to Mars and the International Space Station, says Judith Curry, a 
specialist from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences located in 
the state of Georgia. "They have literally erased 'protect the planet' 
from the list of NASA objectives", said Curry.

The budget assigned to research was reduced by 30 percent between 2000 
and 2006 and it is estimated that 40 percent of the current satellites 
will be out of service by 2010.

Curry recalls that the coastal areas have also suffered from a lack of 
funds for its protection, despite the horrendous experience of Katrina. 
  William Freudenburg, professor of Environment and Society of the 
University of California in Santa Barbara, recalled that it was 
negligence that led to the poor construction of canals and engineering 
work, and a part of  a "corrupt police force" that benefited only a few 
with connections, leaving southeast New Orleans unprotected.

The Mississippi coast was badly hit, but the prices of real estate 
increased 20 percent, said Stephen Leatherman, Director of the Center 
of Hurricane Research of the International University of Florida.

"I cannot say how much better we are prepared in general, but in New 
Orleans the risk is the same than before Katrina," said Leatherman, who 
warned that the dikes have broken more than ten times in the past and 
will continue to do so.  He added that Hurricane Dean, which hit 
Jamaica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Mexico with winds 
of over 250 km/hr, would have had catastrophic consequences if it had 
Louisiana. The US president and the Joints Chief of Staff are out of 
touch with reality as they spend billions of dollars in wars in the 
Middle East and in sophisticated space stations.