Pres. Obama New on Climate Change

Open Email to Congress:

Dear Representatives and Senators,
According to the Washington Times, Pres. Obama is pushing for a $1 billion expenditure for climate change. The fund, which would need to be approved by Congress, is intended to help communities dealing with negative weather that's the result of climate change.
Notice that this proposed request for funding is completely different than the usual touting of a relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.
In this case, Pres. Obama is on target. There is now and always has been climate change. Climate change does cause extreme weather such as droughts or floods, in certain regions.
We do need a study of this, to see whether there is any way we can avoid the extreme weather or break it when it occurs. This would be qualified research, with some practical application in mind.
However, it is ridiculous to take $1 billion of taxpayer money to help communities deal with negative weather. You well know that any funding for projects involving taxpayer money always involves a lot of waste. The only reason that Congress has approved most of these funding recommendations in the past has been as a matter of pork, in which money from the general populace is taken to serve the interests of local constituents and thus lead to votes for reelection of congressional members.
Communities suffering hardship from droughts are generally able to adapt without any national assistance. Many times some minimization of disaster can be applied with a little common sense. For example, there was no question that there was a drought in the Southwest during the Dust Bowl years, but a major portion of that was caused by over-farming. We need the Department of Agriculture to give proper advice to farmers, so that they do not accentuate already bad conditions that may be naturally developing. With respect to floods, we have done a poor job in the past 20 to 50 years in flood control. The TVA authority demonstrated how this should be properly done with the construction of dams and lakes. For some reason, we seem to tend to avoid that lesson. Since we already have unemployment problem and need jobs, this is certainly one area, which is ripe for employment with positive results to the infrastructure.
The statesmanlike thing for members of Congress to do is to be sure that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has sufficient funding to engage in research efforts to discover how to minimize or compensate for extreme weather changes rather than establish a $1 billion fix-all kitty.