How open climate data can improve community resilience against climate change - TechRepublic

"In August 2010, I wondered whether climate data could be a change agent, striking a hopeful tone. Climate data gathered and released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 'could spur better decisions and a more informed society,' I proposed. In February 2010 the Obama administration proposed a climate service that would publish climate data in the same way that NOAA provides weather information. The data would be collected by satellites focused upon Earth's surface insteads of the stars, and published at Climate.gov, a "climate services portal" that launched that year. I'm not at all convinced that Climate.gov or the data on it has made a significant impact upon public opinion or attitudes about climate change or has improved understanding of the underlying science. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans believe that the Earth is getting warmer. There is, however, a significant partisan gap with respect to whether human activity is the cause of that change, with just 44% of American adults telling Pew that they support that position.  To say that's out of step with scientific consensus on global warming would be a gross understatement, with some 97% of climate scientists supporting the theory that human activity is behind climate change. Over the past year, that consensus in peer-reviewed science journals is even clearer, with just one author amongst 9,136 who contributed 2,259 articles dissenting. Accordingly, the US Department of Defense has drawn up a climate change adaption roadmap (PDF). In March 2014, the world's largest scientific society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) made a rare intervention into a public policy debate when it released 'What We Know,' an 18-page report and website intended to raise public awareness of global warming, warn of risks, and urge action to manage the resulting risks.  Years after seeing Climate.gov go live, I can't help but be somewhat chastened by my past optimism about the impact of any single website on public opinion. After all, while politics, ideology, and education all clearly matter to what people believe, it also appears that public attitudes may be at the mercy of the weather: what people see outside of their window heavily influences their thinking ... There are already tremendous websites focused on explaining climate change and the science behind it to the general public, backed up with reams of scientific data, research, and analysis, including NASA's climate site, NOAA's climate site, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and RealClimate.  Given all of that context, why should anyone think the Climate Data Initiative will be any different?  Put simply, this is about web services, not websites. It's about making huge amounts of archived open government data available to humanity, from satellites to the next generation of sensors in city buses. It's about encouraging the biggest tech companies in the world to use the data in their professional and consumer-facing services, not publicizing a .gov website.  How? First, start by recounting a few key facts: the White House and General Services Agency launched a new climate data community at a subdomain of Data.gov, not a new website.  This makes a lot of sense, as does publicizing it. Climate data is distributed across multiple agencies and isn't always clearly labeled or highlighted. Climate.data.gov aggregates government data from across agencies and provides tools to analyze it,