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"My friend George"

Congressman from East Los Angeles and for three decades a leader in science and forward-looking Congressional initiatives.

http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/George_E._Brown_Jr

SJS / GreenPolicy Siterunner:

George brought me into politics in the mid-sixties. I was a high school debater and nuclear proliferation was the topic of the year. George was a trained engineer, who was exceptionally informed about nuclear risks and he became a leader in the anti-Vietnam war effort even as I became one of the organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee.

California during the this era was a focal point of student energy on multiple fronts.

“It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system,” Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote as the Great Depression impacted the country.

“A single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

Many forward-looking ideas came to be and Congressman Brown led efforts to confront a host of profound challenges, from war and peace, to 'big science' (eventually as a chair of the House of Representative's science committee) and the formation of the beginnings of environmental protection laws. This era of environmental vision, establishing agencies, policies and programs were a foundation, a first set of laws originating legal, environmental protections and precedents from green visionaries like Congressman George E. Brown and his network, ranging from NASA to student campuses, Congress to California's first wave of green environmentalism.

Acting to Develop the Knowledge to Make Informed Policy

US climate science action began in earnest in 1977/78.

The 1978 National Climate Program Act began the US government's effort to study climate change. George Brown was out in front addressing the coming challenge, George proposed the federal government's climate program and science community immediately begin to move. He became a leader in drafting legislation, overcoming objections and obstacles.... He foresaw the value of having spaced-based research satellites to monitor the earth and its atmosphere. George's vision set in motion an array of initiatives to face humankind's greatest challenges as he and science supporters looked to a future horizon of national and global security...

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National Climate Program Act

An Act to establish a comprehensive and coordinated national climate policy and program, and for other purposes

95th Congress (1977-1978)

Authored by Rep. George E. Brown (D), Calif

The first climate program passed by the US Congress

National Climate Program Act

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Remembering George Brown and the first 'Earth Day'

Remembering the 'start-up' of the environmental movement...

http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_movement

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https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/STATUTE-92/STATUTE-92-Pg601/content-detail.html

92 Stat. 601 - National Climate Program Act

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Category

Bills and Statutes Collection

United States Statutes at Large

SuDoc Class Number

Publisher (Office of the Federal Register).

U.S. Government Printing Office Congress

95th Congress, 2nd Session, 1978

Dates in Session - Thursday, January 19, 1978 adjourned sine die on Sunday, October 15, 1978

Volume Volume 92

Citation - 92 Stat. 601

Pages - 601 - 605

Law Number Public Law 95-367

National Climate Act

Summary of Act / Congressional Research Service

National Climate Program Act - Directs the President to establish a National Climate Program to develop and operate a comprehensive climate research, monitoring, analysis, and data management program, improve the reliability of predictive capability and the dissemination of climatological information and alerts, and develop a global climate monitoring system.

Requires the Director of the Program to establish Program policies, priorities, and Federal agency involvement. Directs the Director to establish a National Climate Program Interagency Advisory Committee to assist in such duties.

Authorizes the Director to establish other advisory committees to assist in carrying out this Act.

Directs the Secretary of Commerce to establish within the Department of Commerce a National Climate Program Office to administer the program.

Authorizes the Secretary to make annual grants to the States for State climate programs. Requires the State Climate Programs to provide the National Climate Program with specified climate-related information.

Requires the Director and the Secretary to cooperate with the Secretary of State in participating in climate-related international conferences and in coordinating the activities of the Program with climate programs of other nations.

Authorizes appropriations of the Program with climate programs of other nations.

Authorizes appropriations for fiscal years 1978, 1979, and 1980 to carry out the purposes of this Act.

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The National Climate Program Act (Public Law 367 of the Ninety-Fifth Congress), called for the establishment of the National Climate Program (NCP), as well as the Climate Program Advisory Committee and the Climate Program Policy Board.

These entities are to issue periodic reports and plans to "assist the Nation and the world to understand and respond to natural and human-induced climate processes and their implications. (Dessler, 2006)" The act required the secretary of commerce to establish a National Climate Program Office that would coordinate efforts and develop a series of research and climate services, drawing together the strengths of NOAA and other governmental agencies. These responsibilities were delegated to NOAA. The Department of the Interior and its U.S. Geological Survey are among the other agencies assigned specific roles under the NCP.

The NOAA Climate Program conducts research and monitoring related to climate, climate change, and climate impact. It gathers and manages data from surface, marine, upper-air, and satellite observations; issues monthly and seasonal predictions of temperature, precipitation, and other weather indicators; predicts the impact of climate fluctuations on water resources, including fisheries, crop irrigation, and energy demands; and conducts new research.

Five divisions of NOAA contribute to these efforts: the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service; the National Marine Fisheries Service; the National Ocean Service; the National Weather Service; and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.

Several climate projects under NOAA have yielded important results. Under the direction of the NOAA administration, the United States is part of the Group on Earth Observations, an international organization developing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which will collect and manage data around the world. NCP awards grants and fellowships for outside research on the Arctic, on atmospheric composition and climate, on the global climate cycle, and other topics. It also operates the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program, a partnership with American universities to connect with local and regional researchers and policy makers. The Climate Program Office operates separate divisions for climate observations, research, climate assessments and services, planning, and communications and education.

By 1984, pilot programs and new structures, including a strongly linked network of regional monitoring centers, enabled the NCP to produce and disseminate useful climate data (Gerrard, 2007). These data were essential in the growing national and international understanding of the causes and the effects of global warming.

As policy makers became more interested in global warming, they were unable to make use of much of the pure science that NCP was conducting, and they pressed for more information in forms that would help them draft policy. In response, in 1990 Congress created the United States Global Change Research Program to increase understanding of and response to global warming through research presented by NCP.

References

Dessler, Andrew Emory, and Edward Parson. The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Gerrard, Michael. Global Climate Change and U.S. Law. Washington, D.C.: American Bar Association, 2007

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National Climate Program Memorandum From the President

October 31, 1978

Jimmy Carter

Memorandum for the Heads of Departments and Agencies

I have just signed into law the National Climate Program Act (P.L. 95-367). I am pleased to commit the Nation to this Program of improving our understanding of climatic changes, both natural and man-induced...

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National Climate Program Act

House of Representatives, Ninety-Fifth Congress, First Session, Report No. 95-266, May 6, 1977

The purpose of the bill is to establish a national climate program which will enable the nation to respond more effectively to climate-induced problems by improving climate monitoring in order to make the government and private sector aware of fluctuations and anomalies in climate, by augmenting basic and applied research, by improving services relating to climate, and by identifying domestic and international impacts of changes and fluctuations in climate. Other contents of the report are committee actions and recommendations; committee views; oversight findings and recommendations;congressional budget act information; cost and budget data; effect of legislation on inflation; and agency comments.

Publication Date: 1977-01-01

Committee on Science and Technology, Washington, DC

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https://www.amazon.com/National-climate-program-act-Subcommittee/dp/B003XW066A

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/95/hr6669

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August 2016

"A Facebook Post to George"

-- from SJS / GreenPolicy Siterunner

George E Brown is whispering to me. I wonder about this. Voices from beyond how, sometimes when you're working, they whisper to you. You have an idea that comes from somewhere and it's so right in the moment, your skin tingles. George has been talking, whispering to me again as he has in the past, off and on. He was alive when he first started advising on nuclear weapons. I was just debating proliferation of nuclear weapons. I told him what it felt like crawling under a desk covering my head in my hands. The siren was close to our school and when it went off back then, as the Kennedy-Krushchev missile crisis came to a head, I knew LA could be "fried". George was the local politician who got me into politics and we started a 35 yr mentoring. I didn't know the word then, but I learned over the yrs. The advice, the words, the knowledge, the whispering of his real words that came to me over and over and I set out to carry a torch, He was anti-war, anti-nuke, even tho he went on to head up big science in Congress, incl the national labs that oversaw the nuclear energy, nuclear weapons complex. George, I hear you still, I heard you today again as I wrote about no first-use. From high school debate to today, you have been accompanying me on the journey to do what we knew we should do .... and thanks, again, for being the man who proposed and wrote the first National Climate Act. Few knew you then, few know you now -- but what you did w the EPA, and Clean Air, and Climate Study, and Landsat Earth Science and on and on and on is alive today -- and we all have a better chance for a future as a result

• http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/George_E._Brown_Jr

• In Memoriam: To Congressman George E. Brown for his vision and work to launch, grow and protect the LANDSAT program.

Rep. Brown, as a leader on the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, was a key supporter of the LANDSAT program and its 'open' satellite imagery, science and data that sparked multiple new economies, industries and new ways of seeing and applying science to real-world mapping and rising environmental, eco-nomic challenges.

When the LANDSAT program was threatened with dissolution, Congressman Brown led efforts that succeeded in maintaining the pioneering earth science of this first generation of earth study, measuring and monitoring.

LANDSAT data users handbook

LANDSAT 9, gsfc.nasa.gov

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SJS: Looking back now, a h/t to our mutual friend, collaborator, and believer in California being "out in front" on environmental security, and space ;- Hat tip and green appreciation to Jerry Brown.

California green leadership, Governor Jerry Brown

California out in front of a green future

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article120928688.html

December 2016 / Sacramento Bee

Brown warned against proposed budget cuts under the new presidential administration that could effectively eliminate earth-observing satellite programs.

He reminded the scientists that he earned his nickname, Governor Moonbeam, in his first governorship for proposing that the state launch its own communications satellite, and even had an ex-astronaut on his payroll as a space adviser. “I didn’t get that moniker for nothing.”

“And, if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” he added. “We’re going to collect that data.”

He said if the federal government “starts messing with” the state’s renowned science facilities, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “I am the president of the Board of Regents. I am going to say, ‘Keep your hands off. That laboratory is going to pursue good science.’ ”

Later, he jabbed at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who before becoming Trump’s pick for Energy Department secretary tried to poach jobs from California. “Rick, I got some news for you,” Brown said. “California is growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas. And we’ve got more sun than you have oil.”

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