Scientists back 'significant broadening' of climate research By Matt Smith, CNN January 5, 2012 -- Updated 1655 GMT (0055 HKT) The National Academy of Sciences says budgets will be an issue "Questions of how will become paramount," an NAS review notes Review also calls for advising policymakers on how changing environment affects people (CNN) -- U.S. scientists want to expand research into climate change to focus on its social effects and ways to adapt to a changing planet, but tighter budgets may crimp those plans, the National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday. The 10-year plan reviewed by the academy represents a "significant broadening" of the federal Global Change Research Program, which includes researchers from across the U.S. government. Thursday's report by the academy's National Research Council generally supports the proposal, but warned that researchers may have to overcome fiscal as well as scientific hurdles. "The proposed broadening of the program's scope from climate change only to climate change and 'climate-related global changes' is an important step in the right direction," the review committee concluded. But it cautioned that "in an era of increasingly constrained budget resources, those questions of how will become paramount." Thursday's report follows a 2009 review that recommended reorganizing climate research to focus on the relationships between direct natural effects -- increasing temperatures, shrinking polar icecaps and higher sea levels -- and human needs like agriculture or fresh water. The NAS review also calls for scientists to increase their role in advising policymakers about how to limit or adapt to environmental changes and their impacts on human populations -- a focus the panel called "particularly important and long overdue."