National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The prospects for ocean protection under a new president and Congress

This is a guest post by David Helvarg, an author and a coordinator of the upcoming Blue Vision Summit in Washington, D.C. His next book is Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes (May 2009).

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America now has, among other historic precedents, its first bodysurfing president. Of course, protecting the ocean (71 percent of the planet's surface and 97 percent of its livable habitat) is still not likely to be the top priority of Hawaii-raised Barack Obama. He's got more than enough policy challenges for his first weeks in office, with the collapse of a world economy based on American consumers buying stuff, two ongoing and intractable wars, and the civilization-ending threat from fossil fuel-fired climate change.

Still, healthy oceans and coasts are essential to the nation's economy, security, and stability. About half of America's GDP is generated in its 600 coastal counties (which are home to $4 trillion of insured property). And to some degree, everyone is at risk from the cascading marine ecological disasters of overfishing (loss of food security), nutrient and plastic pollution (public health threats), coastal sprawl (increased risk of disaster), and climate change (big increased risk of disaster).

The first sign of hope is the new president's insistence that change has to come from bottom-up engagement of our citizenry. On Martin Luther King's birthday, the night before the inauguration, some 300 people participated in a seaweed shoreline restoration in my Bay Area neighborhood of Richmond, Calif., and about half of the participants had heard about it on an Obama-linked volunteer website.

New NOAA head will have plenty of work to do

President-elect Barack Obama’s appointment of Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University marine biologist, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could be a major positive step for protecting America’s fisheries. In recent years, NOAA has ignored scientists’ advice when it comes to setting quotas for some of our most vulnerable fish species, favoring commercial […]

Obama announces science advisers in his weekly radio address

Barack Obama announced his science and technology advisers in his weekly radio address on Saturday. The list includes Jane Lubchenco as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and John Holdren as his assistant for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “Whether it’s the science […]

For NOAA head, Obama appoints yet another scientist who gets climate

PEBO has picked Jane Lubchenco, a prominent marine biologist at Oregon State University, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between 1997-98. A video of her talk on “Climate Change and its Implications for Oregon” can be found here. In “Obama […]

Obama taps marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco to head NOAA

Obama has selected Oregon State University marine scientist Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Reports The Washington Post: Lubchenco, a conservationist who has devoted much of her career to encouraging scientists to become more engaged in public policy debates, is also a vocal proponent of curbing greenhouse gases linked to global […]

NOAA: U.S. had another record hurricane and tornado season

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual climate report tells the warming tale: “For November alone, the month is fourth warmest all-time globally.” This comes on the heels of last month’s report of the second warmest October on record. Since the deniers have become overly fond of 60-day trend lines (see here), one can safely […]

Green groups propose nominees for lower-level admin posts

With Obama’s environment-oriented Cabinet posts now filled, some in the green community are floating the names of individuals they’d like to see in lower-level positions in the administration. The “Green Plum Book” [PDF], put out by the Arabella Legacy Fund on behalf of “several of the nation’s most significant conservation leaders,” lists the names and […]

Who will Obama tap to guide our oceans and atmosphere policy?

Washington Post columnist Andrew Freedman zeros in on the prospects for the top job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The pick will oversee fisheries and atmospheric science research, among other things. “[T]he next few years are slated to be a rebuilding phase for NOAA; similar to a sports franchise that has hit a […]

NOAA: Second warmest October on record

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports: Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for October and ninth warmest on record for the January-October year-to-date period. Given that this report is just out, I’m assuming they have sorted out the data entry issues that […]