1990 Budget Preserves Healthy Increase For Global Climate Change Research

The president's global change program looks impressive, thanks to a cooperative Congress and some sleight of hand. WASHINGTON--This year the federal government will invest $664 million to study global climate change, a fivefold increase over its 1989 efforts. But this seemingly huge increase is more a reflection of a broader definition than of a bigger pocketbook. The biggest change occurred when the National Aeronaytics and Space Administration shifted almost $500 million into its global change program. Last January, President Bush took aim at this pressing environmental issue by proposing to Congress a research agenda that integrated efforts by seven federal agencies. The plan was outlined in detail in July by the Committee on Earth Sciences (CES), an interagency panel set up by the administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy. It called for $191.5 million in 1990 to support research directly related to global change. Increases for individual agencies ranged from $4 million to $12 million. The total added nearly $60 million to the 1989 figure of $133.9 million. However, discovering what actually happened to the initiative as it wended its way through more than a half-dozen congressional spending panels isn't easy. The initiative appears to have come through relatively unscathed in the final 1990 budget on which Congress completed work in late November. Perhaps because of its small size, the program seems to have been sheltered from the $14 billion in across-the-board cuts that Congress imposed to reach its deficit reduction targets. And even individual agencies that received less than they had requested for other programs seem committed to preserving their global change efforts. "I think we fared very well," says Paul Dresler, CES executive secretary. Although at press time the final figures were still being adjusted, CES-member agencies were confident that the global change program would retain its $60 million increase from 1989. The National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, NASA and the Department of the Interior got close to the increases they requested. NOAA and the EPA got less than what they asked for, but that was made up for by a big boost for the Department of Energy, for a net increase of about $60 million. However, the final 1990 numbers (see chart) reflect a shift of some programs into and out of each agency's focused global climate research. Global climate change was spared in part because of a wrowing recognition within Congress of the problem's importance. For example, a last-minute decision saved NOAA from an earlier decision by both the House and Senate to hold its funding at 1989 levels. The initiative's coordinated approach has also won it points in Congress. "I think they are more inclined to fund the research knowing that it will not reside within the individual agencies," says Dresler. In some cases the support was explicit. The Senate appropriations committee specified that NSF spend at least $46 million for global change research; thanks to its Antarctic program, the agency will actually spend $5 million more than that. And while earmarking funds for a specific program usually means that other programs within that division must suffer additional cuts, this year NSF Director Erich Bloch signaled his support for the initiative by spreading the impact of the global change mandate across the foundation's entire research program. (In millions of dollars) Agency1989 requested1990 final1990 * DOE 20.2 27.2 45 USGS 5.3 11.3 11 EPA 27.4 35.3 17 NASA 14.5 21.5 489 NOAA 9 20 18 NSF 39.2 53.5 51 USDA 18.3 22.7 33 Total 133.9 191.5 664 * Estimated The Department of Energy fared even better. The Senate budget committees added $30 million to its request for $27.2 million, a bonus that was later pared to a final level of $45 million. The extra funds are to spur research that will be useful to policymakers. Included in that figure is $4 million to the University of California, Davis, to build a research center focused on global warming. While Congress was hammering out the numbers, the agencies were hammering out kinks in their definition of global change research. The result was a larger 1990 research base. A year ago, the agencies divided their global change programs into focused and contributing research. The former referred to work that dealt directly with global change issues, and the latter to work indirectly related. The second number was more than 10 times larger. And the opportunity to demonstrate a larger commitment proved irresistible to some agencies. The USDA made some shifts, but NASA made the biggest changes. At first the agency included only its new Earth Observing System (Eos) as focused research and asked for a $7 million increase in 1990 for the $14.5 million program. But by the time final figures were worked out, the space agency had decided to label as focused all of its earth sciences program except geodynamics. "We at first interpreted it to include things that were new," says Robert Watson, a branch chief in NASA's earth science program. "But then we made the decision to go to the other extreme. It's a more consistent definition." So NASA now says it contributes $489 million more to the global change research, which swells the final 1990 figure to $664 million. In 1990 it received its increase of $7 million for Eos. In contrast, EPA's contribution to global change research will drop in 1990. Originally it had requested a $7 million increase to its $27.4 million program, which included support for the development of policy as well as research. "It became clear that to be really consistent with what the CES was doing in its planning, it was not appropriate for policy and regulatory items to be part of that," says Tony Janetos, program manager for the EPA global climate research program. So EPA wound up asking for $17 million, $5.6 million to continue efforts in stratospheric ozone and the rest for global climate research, including climatology and regional ecologic effects. Although Congress transferred $4.25 million of that to EPA policy studies, Janetos' program still got a $4 million boost. The shifting definitions perpetuate confusion about just how much the U.S. is devoting to this issue. If one counts focused and contributing programs, then the annual totals for last year and this year both top $1.6 billion. (In fact, as projected by July's planning report, agencies will spend $7 million less in 1990.) Yet public officials have bandied different numbers. For example, Allan Bromley, the president's science adviser, has repeatedly quoted a $1 billion number that even his CES committee cannot explain. The situation may become even more confusing when the 1991 numbers are presented later this month. The leap from 1989 to 1990 came essentially because of NASA's reclassification of its efforts. But the Department of Interior (DOI) is also considering shifting some projects that could add another $50 million or more to DOI's focused effort. "It's evolving at a rapid pace," says Dresler. "I'm anticipating that 1991 will be much different." But whether or not a program is called focused or contributing, the bottom line is that some new funds will trickle down to the research community. One fourth of NOAA's global change budget will support university research. Last year it funded 14 of 54 proposals and expects to support about 20 more in 1990. About 60% of EPA's global change program will support scientists outside the agency. And, of course, all of NSF's $51 million supports work outside the government.

1990 Budget Preserves Healthy Increase For Global Climate Change Research

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