which will provide guidance on national and _ international 
plans for climate research. 
Nevertheless we recognize, along with NACOA, that the 
urgency for information and assessments of climatological con- 
ditions as they might impact food production in this and 
other countries has intensified over the past several years. It 
is for this reason that we welcome the recommendations of 
the committee to take additional steps which can improve the 
ability of our decision makers to deal with the problems of 
variations in climate. 
In response to this urgency the Domestic Council has taken 
the decision to establish a Subcommittee on Climate Change 
of its Environmental Resources Committee. The Environmental 
Resources Committee is chaired by Secretary of the Interior 
Rogers C. B. Morton and the subcommittee will be chaired by 
Dr. Robert M. White, Administrator of NOAA. The purpose of 
this Domestic Council action is to undertake a policy assessment 
of further needs for national and international effort on prob- 
lems of climate. 
The advisory committee specifically recommends that the 
Department of Commerce/NOAA join with the Department 
of Agriculture in using available evidence of climatic variations 
to project the probability of crop failures for periods extending 
three to five years ahead. We agree that this is an admirable 
objective and one to which we will address ourselves. Initial 
work along these lines looking at crop productivity in relation 
to past and future climates is under way. To systematize and 
provide a focus for this kind of effort within NOAA so that 
it can work with the Department of Agriculture, NOAA has 
established a new Center for Climatic and Environmental As- 
sessment in its Environmental Data Service whose principal 
function will now be the assessment of the impact of the climate 
and other environmental variations on crop productivity, water 
resources, and other questions of concern to policy makers. 
The committee also specifically commented on the problem 
of understanding and separating natural from man-induced 
climatic changes. 
I can report to the committee that considerable progress is 
being made on the atmospheric aspects of this problem. The 
National Science Foundation and Department of Commerce/ 
NOAA are jointly preparing a National Climate Plan for 
