by Judith Curry
An eminently sensible and constructive statement from the American Meteorological Society.
I just spotted this new policy statement from the American Meteorological Society:
Weather, Water and Climate Priorities
Understanding how the Earth system works and transforming this knowledge into action will allow our nation and the global community to effectively respond and adapt to changing weather, water, and climate conditions. National investment and leadership combined with enhanced partnerships across the public, private, academic, and nongovernmental organization sectors are necessary to make this vision a reality.
Introduction. Access to reliable, accurate, timely, and understandable weather, water, and climate (WWC) information is vital for the safety and well-being of society. Decision-makers at all levels need this information to formulate and implement effective strategic, tactical, and policy decisions across all interconnected sectors of society, including health, energy, food, water, infrastructure, transportation, and national security. Extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, wildfires, severe coastal storms, and heat waves, and the impacts of longer-term climate changes such as droughts, changing snowpack, and sea level rise threaten the social and economic security of our nation and society as a whole. While these challenges pose serious risks, they also offer a remarkable national opportunity for enhanced knowledge, advanced tools, leadership, and actionable information.
WWC observations, science, and services are critical national infrastructure essential for meeting human needs. They have led to technological innovations, fueled economic growth, stimulated social prosperity, and mitigated potential WWC-related disasters. AMS public, private, and academic-sector members acknowledge the ongoing vital commitment and support of the American public and its leaders to the advancement of WWC observations, science, and services. This support improves forecasts, makes new information products possible, trains the next generation of scientists and decision-makers, and enables more effective communication. As a result, people have been better prepared for disruptive WWC events, and many lives have been saved.
The value of WWC tools and information to economic growth is increasing as is the cost of WWC- related disasters. Individuals and business and government leaders are shaping decisions and actions based on detailed knowledge of meteorological, hydrological, oceanographic, geophysical, and ecological conditions, and on an understanding of how society responds. As society responds to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme WWC events, it needs and expects ever more reliable and actionable information to deal with pressing local, regional, national, and global economic and societal challenges that can range in time scales from minutes to centuries.
Recommendations. Economic and social prosperity belong to a society that understands and effectively responds to Earth’s changing WWC conditions. To meet this challenge the following actions are required:
Develop the Next Generation of WWC Experts. To ensure we have a diverse workforce equipped to communicate uncertainties and inform WWC decisions, investments must continue to: (i) educate and train students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and (ii) develop the next generation of WWC researchers that can advance the science and its applications to meet society’s evolving information needs.
Invest in Research Critical to Innovation and Advanced Services. To ensure continued leadership in understanding our complex and changing planet and application of this understanding for the benefit of society, increased investments are needed to support new discoveries, innovation, applications, and model development in the geosciences, engineering, and relevant social sciences.
Invest in Critical Observations and Computing Infrastructure. To ensure advances in scientific knowledge and more accurate and timely delivery of WWC products and support services at scales useful to decision-makers, and to preserve national security, targeted investments are required for: (i) atmosphere–ocean–land–ice observational infrastructure, (ii) techniques to translate the resulting large data sets into forms suitable for information services and prediction models, and (iii) leading-edge high-performance computers and software.
Create Services that Harness Scientific Advances for Societal Benefit. To ensure society’s most pressing needs are met and its capabilities are optimally utilized, mechanisms for engaging users and moving research into practical applications in a timely and effective fashion must be encouraged, developed, and implemented.
Prepare Informed WWC Information Users. To ensure we have informed users who can take full advantage of advanced WWC information and tools, education and communication programs must continue to focus on enhancing WWC skills and understanding by both decision-makers and society at large.
Build Strong Partnerships Among WWC Public, Private, and Academic Sectors. These sectors have always worked together to meet America’s WWC challenges. As the job grows more consequential, urgent, and complex, a coordinated Federal effort is needed to support, strengthen, and encourage strategic inter-sector partnerships, including efforts to increase the global suite of Earth observations, advance long-term stewardship of environmental data, and improve national and international community-level resilience to climate change and variability.
Implement Effective Leadership and Management. To ensure that WWC investments are made in the best interests of the nation, effective leadership and management approaches will be needed, including: (i) appointing strong, qualified, and diverse leaders to top WWC policy positions in the White House and Federal agencies, and (ii) implementing management structures that support integrated WWC research and services planning and budgeting across Federal agencies and the Congress. These structures should proactively engage the academic and private sectors.
Expected Outcomes and Conclusion. Implementing these recommendations will better enable individuals, communities, businesses, and governments to manage risks and explore opportunities associated with changing WWC conditions. Economic and social prosperity will be enhanced, and further progress will be made toward saving lives, enhancing commerce, protecting property, and adapting to a changing world. In so doing, our nation will advance its leadership in promoting technological innovations that are critical to the success and well-being of a global society.
JC reflections
This new statement by the AMS is as close to ‘pitch perfect’ as I’ve seen for a statement related to climate. Mega kudos to the AMS for this statement.
Compare this statement with the AMS’ 2012 Statement on Climate Change, with its unequivocal statement about how and why climate is changing and how it will change, with imperatives for ‘action’:
Avoiding this future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. The ongoing warming will increase risks and stresses to human societies, economies, ecosystems, and wildlife through the 21st century and beyond, making it imperative that society respond to a changing climate.
So, what changed at the AMS? I’m not sure. However, I don’t see a monolithic change since the AMS signed onto the recent AAAS letter to U.S. policy makers. Since the AMS has its own carefully thought out take on what is needed to address the broad climate challenges, its really too bad that the AMS didn’t follow in the footsteps of the APS, who did not sign onto the AAAS letter:
“The American Physical Society did not sign the [2016] letter because it was presented as a fait accompli, and there are significant differences between the letter and the APS Statement on Earth’s Changing Climate,” it said in a statement.
I don’t know who was on the writing committee that wrote this statement, but they did a superb job. And kudos to the AMS Council, who approved this statement.
The Recommendations in this statement are exactly the sort of issues that professional societies should be working on.
Here’s to hoping that we will start to see more of this kind of sense and insight from the professional societies on climate change.
Pingback: AMS: Weather, Water and Climate Priorities – Enjeux énergies et environnement
Well that’s good news!
I had stopped involvement with AMS because of the cultism and cult of the personalities involved. There must have been a lot of complaints.
No mention of V&V. That’s a worry.
“If we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got.”
I am not impressed with this statement. To me, it reads like a pile of meaningless motherhood.
For example, there is no indication that they’ve recognized that until we have an acceptable damage function there can be no valid justification for spending money on climate policies or for continuing to spend exorbitant amount of public funds on climate research.
That’s the lesson to pass on: the need to adapt– This repeating cycle of 100,000-year glaciations and 10,000 to 20,000 year interglacials has been fairly consistent over the past 2.6 million years. The planet has trundled through the entire cycle dozens of times. If the pattern holds, we are due for another major glaciation sometime in the next several thousand years: The northern hemisphere will again become substantially covered in glaciers, ocean levels will fall hundreds of feet, and the earth’s overall production of plant biomass will fall substantially below what the current human population needs to feed itself. That will pose some ticklish technological challenges even for our hyper-adaptable species. Hopefully, such changes will be incremental enough to allow for adaptation. (See, “Twilight of the Climate Change Movement” by Mario Loyola)
I agree with both of your posits: The inevitability of the next glacial cycle, and the need to adapt to it. For two articles on these subjects, see http://ofthingsthatmatter.com/global-warming-next-glacial-stage/
and
http://ofthingsthatmatter.com/earthquakes-climate-change/
Unfortunately, few are listening. But the AMS statement is encouraging.
“The inevitability of the next glacial cycle, and the need to adapt to it.”
Err, excuse me.
Your link talks of the next cold part of the orbital cycle occuring in 11,000 years time (which by some estimtaes from the Milankovitch cyles is several 10’s of thousands of years early).
Given that, I submit that (especially given the current trajectory of mankind) there is absolutely no necessity to “adapt to it”.
Tony Banton,
You preach it, brother!
Those thousand-year predictions only matter if they’re caused by CAGW:
Tony Banton
Perhaps you are reading the graphs backwards; on one of them, the time scale is reversed. Or, if you are referring to the statement at the end that says “at 11,000 years out, we are about due for another temperature downturn,” that means we are 11,000 years past the last minimum temperature, and 10-15,000 years is about how long the warming trend lasts. According to the graphs, we are already in the long, slow cooling part of the cycle.
The gradual cooling occurs as the glaciers build up. The rapid warming occurs when the glaciers are retreating. We are already at or near the high temperature point of the cycles. A further decrease in Arctic sea ice, and further cooling of the North Atlantic from increased Arctic circulation, can feed increased snowfall and renewed glaciation. This could begin within the next couple hundred years.
I agree that the cooling will probably be slow enough for us to adapt, but it would be prudent to start thinking about it.
Wagathon, Pope and others:
By the way, there is a way that we might be able to avoid future continental glaciation, although it would be a Herculean task. It has been suggested to build a huge dam between Greenland and Svalbard, to close off deep circulation between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. Without the deep circulation, there would be little surface circulation either. The Arctic Ocean would get very little warm water input and would have a permanent ice cap. The reduced cold water circulation from the Arctic would keep the North Atlantic Ocean warmer. The combination of frozen Arctic and warm Atlantic would reduce the likelihood of sufficient northern hemisphere snowfall to create continental glaciation.
I do not advocate this, as we don’t know all the side effects that could be far worse. And, it would be difficult to undo, if we found out that we have made a big mistake.
The repeating major warm and cold cycles have stopped. In a major warming, sea level must rise more than now to get enough water in the oceans to provide enough water for enough snowfall for a major glaciation. The water is now locked up as ice on land and cannot get back into the oceans.
The cycles have stopped? I doubt it. And the sea level is up 120 metres (400 feet) since the last glacial, with not a lot more to go if all the rest of the ice were to melt. So I don’t buy your “locked up” argument.
The hundred thousand year cycles have stopped.
The new normal is new, smaller, thousand year cycles.
The past bigger cycles were all about putting more ice on land, with each cycle, that did not melt and return to the oceans.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page54.html
Look at the data.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page81.html
not a lot more to go if all the rest of the ice were to melt
The ice is always melting, it is warm now and it is snowing and rebuilding the ice on land faster than the melting.
It is always snowing and it is always melting, when oceans are warm and thawed it snows more than the melting, when oceans are cold and frozen it snows slower than the melting.
This is clearly visible in the data.
Alex Pope
I don’t see a reason to expect that we are in a new normal. The chart on your site makes it look like we are in a more stable climate than prior to 20,000 years ago. But that is because the horizontal scale changes at 20,000 years ago. If you use a constant scale, it looks like we are in the beginning part of the next decreasing part of the temperature cycle. The increase in small-scale variability is because we have more data for more recent history. You can see that as you look further back in geologic time on the chart, even though they use further compression as they go back in time.
Most of the difference that brought about the Pleistocene Ice Age is the positioning of the continents that closed off the Arctic Ocean from much circulation with the Atlantic Ocean, and almost entirely from the Pacific. There are some who believe that there was an opening at Panama unitl late Miocene that previously allowed significant circulation between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Recent studies suggest it was closed off much earlier. Either way, I don’t believe it is necessary, and the Ewing and Donn model does not require it.
I know who Bob Dole believes will be most helpful in making further progress, toward saving lives, enhancing commerce, protecting property, and adapting to a changing world, First Lady Melania Trump or Bill Clinton?
The AMS is calling for a change in research priorities so that more climate research is useful — and can thus be beneficial to society. Their recommendations follow recent calls for reform of the science/policy interface — as called for in the book The Rightful Place of Science: Science on the Verge and by a series of essays from John P. A. Ioannidis at Stanford. Two of these essays were discussed, in relation to Climate research, here at Climate Etc. recently.
It is indeed an excellent statement by AMS, and one word stands out – “diverse”, as in: “appointing strong, qualified, and diverse leaders to top WWC policy positions in the White House and Federal agencies”.
AAAS has become so whacked out on climate, by the way, I cannot bear it.
I see no hope there.
You seeing no hope… that’s a good sign.
While I am not surprised that the AMS is concerned enough about the risks and challenges of a changing climate to issue this statement, it is encouraging that this blog is finally endorsing these concerns rather than dismissing them.
That would be your premise, her premise, or their premise? Hmmm
So do you also agree with how the AMS states the challenges and risks ahead for WWC? I think this was more a step forwards for Judith than for the AMS, and I expect she will leave many of her denizens behind on this wholehearted endorsement of the AMS statement.
This blog and JC has always endorsed concerns and been invested, but properly addressed and prioritized the issues and risks on its own well-heeled scrutiny and exploration.
How about first things first?
I notice that the AMS has snuck in a need for “climate experts”. Why not concentrate on weather (that seems hard enough), and let the average of weather – climate – look after itself.
If “WWC” slides into acceptance through the back door, the myth of climate as an independent entity will be perpetuated.
Funding requests for “climate research” will continue apace. Could that money not be better spent on trying to find out how the atmosphere works, rather than wasting it on yet more fanciful computer games?
Oh well, I tried.
Cheers.
The good news is, there are no statements like “all weather is caused by CO2 in the air.” (i have heard this!)
“As society responds to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme WWC events . . .” They need to get this unproven, unscientific rhetoric out of their vernacular — an obvious concession to the Warmists.
Good catch.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
JC-approved May 2016 Policy Statement from the American Meteorological Society.
– It includes encouraging a Federal effort (among other things) to advance long-term stewardship of environmental data.
– It also does not contain the words carbon, renewable, or offset.
– It does however use as a premise “increasing frequency and severity of extreme [Weather, Water, and Climate] events.”
Mega kudos to Professor Curry for her role in convincing AMS to adopt this “eminently sensible and constructive statement” of policy for the American Meteorological Society.
omanuel,
At least it’s a start. As Lao Tzu mentioned – “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. I believe there are many miles to go.
Cheers.
I’d be wary. These management-speakers and vision-staters don’t like getting their feet wet.
Amen Generalissimo.
One minor question or two (or maybe more) –
Who defines what a “WWC expert” is?
Or is the whole statement a thinly disguised sciencey demand that really says “Give us all the funding we ask for, and don’t ask questions, because we’re the experts and you’re not!”?
Can you imagine the howls of outrage from the “WWC experts” if the taxpayers had the effrontery to actually demand accountability, or even what specific outcomes were to be delivered?
Cynics might think the whole effort a shameless grab for cash, undeserved respect, and unelected power.
Cheers.
It may be a start but I’m afraid that the last couple of decades have created a sour taste in the mouth so I’m tending to disagree.
I read WWC and think AGW.
I read
“Understanding how the Earth system works and transforming this knowledge into action will allow our nation and the global community to effectively respond and adapt to changing weather, water, and climate conditions.”
and think but you’ve consistently told us that you already understand how it works with the climate models.
“As society responds to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme WWC events, it needs and expects ever more reliable and actionable information to deal with pressing local, regional, national, and global economic and societal challenges that can range in time scales from minutes to centuries.”
The difference in the need for ‘Climate’ research is a change of name. Yes we are bored and non responsive to claims of AGW, re-branding with a different name isn’t going to change that.
“Develop the Next Generation of WWC Experts. To ensure we have a diverse workforce equipped to communicate uncertainties and inform WWC decisions, investments must continue to: (i) educate and train students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and (ii) develop the next generation of WWC researchers that can advance the science and its applications to meet society’s evolving information needs.”
Same old climate scientists need money.
I don’t disagree with the necessity to continually improve the ability to predict the weather but this boondoggle has run past it’s sell by date.
Sorry, disenfranchised.
“I read WWC and think AGW.
I read
“Understanding how the Earth system works and
transforming this knowledge into action will allow
our nation and the global community to effectively
respond and adapt to changing weather, water, and
climate conditions.”
and think but you’ve consistently told us that you already
understand how it works with the climate models…”
Yep , we’ve had re-branding before.
Lord Beaverbrook,
Spot on. Thank you.
+1
Lord Beaverbrook: Same old climate scientists need money.
I think that your post got it about right.
“…diverse workforce equipped to communicate uncertainties and inform WWC decisions…”
Now I know you’re wondering why they didn’t say: “…workshop diversity to equip WWC to communicate decisions and inform uncertainties…”
It’s because the new blather machines are programmed to make each load of academese sound slightly different to the one before. It’s a real breakthrough.
This phrase is standard, however: “Investments must continue…”
“…diverse workforce equipped to communicate uncertainties
and inform WWC decisions…”
Communicating uncertainties?
“Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow.”
H/t T.S. Eliot.
“Understanding how the Earth system works and transforming this knowledge into action will allow our nation and the global community to effectively respond and adapt to changing weather, water, and climate conditions. National investment and leadership combined with enhanced partnerships across the public, private, academic, and nongovernmental organization sectors are necessary to make this vision a reality.”
This is a breathtaking call for collective action on a national and global scale, calling for national and global government control and decisions without showing any regard or respect for private property rights, individual liberty, and constitutional limitations on government power. I am sorry to see Judith Curry endorsing this call for nationalization and globalization of human adaptation to the requirements of living.
Maybe there will one day soon be a drastic oversupply of electricity?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tiny-hard-drive-uses-single-atoms-to-store-data-1468854001
A miniature tele-porter of a sort, someone found a way to use a STEM, to make money for a change.
paulg23,
But hasn’t Dr. Curry positioned herself as a luke-warmer, and not a skeptic?
It takes all kinds to make a horse race.
If you want to smell out a shift in AMS climate policy with this policy statement, you probably should compare it to the last statement of its type.
Access to … understandable weather ??????
I too tend to see this as a rebranding of CAGW. From global warming to climate change to water worries. The specter of Tom Karl’s National Climate Service looms in the background.
Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but here goes anyway.
Bhagwat, Shonil A., Anastasia Economou, Thomas F. Thornton (2016) The Idea of Climate Change as a Belief System: Why Climate Activism Resembles a Religious Movement. GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 25 (2): 94 – 98 [Digital Object Identifier:
http://dx.doi.org/10.14512/gaia.25.2.8%5D
For some reason the link got screwed up. this is the direct link
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oekom/gaia/2016/00000025/00000002/art00009?token=0051131a0257e41225f4038382c404654763f25257074576b34272c5f7b3d6d3f4e4b340fb6453e0d
The statement’s title is Weather, Water and Climate Priorities. The statement’s content, however, is focused on changes in extreme weather events, and in a manner that implies Climate Change is the cause of these hypothesized changes.
“Extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, wildfires, severe coastal storms, and heat waves, and the impacts of longer-term climate changes such as droughts, changing snowpack, and sea level rise threaten the social and economic security of our nation and society as a whole.” [my bold]
Where has it been validated that any of the listed extreme weather events are functions of the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s climate systems?
“As society responds to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme WWC events, it needs and expects ever more reliable and actionable information to deal with pressing local, regional, national, and global economic and societal challenges that can range in time scales from minutes to centuries.” [my bold]
Where has it been validated that there is an increasing frequency of any of the listed extreme weather events and that the increasing frequency is solely a function of the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s climate systems?
“Economic and social prosperity belong to a society that understands and effectively responds to Earth’s changing WWC conditions.”[my bold]
Anthropogenic-Dominated Climate Change in a Weather wrapper. One Hypothesis wrapped by another Hypothesis.
“Where has it been validated that there is an increasing frequency of any of the listed extreme weather events and that the increasing frequency is solely a function of the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s climate systems?”
Dan, you question the Canon? Oh dear. That’ll be level 6 for you i’m afraid! Please deliver my regards to Epicurus, I may not have the chance when i pass by.
+1
New paper on Greenland and Antarctica:
Dynamic ice thickness changes are computed as the difference between the total ice thickness change and the ice thickness change caused by surficial processes. It should be noted that other studies have reported the presence of additional instrument-related elevation bias between ICESat
campaigns (Hofton et al., 2013, Siegfried et al., 2011, Zwally et
al., 2015). However, as no current agreement exists regarding an
inter-campaign bias correction (IBC) the data in this study have
not be adjusted for it during processing.
Antarctica…..West Antarctic Ice Sheet…
‘suggests regions where subglacial geology has a profound influence on ice sheet behavior.”
Profound. Give those guys a Mars bar. Not that a cursory review by a 5th grader with an overlay of geothermal activities and the region of unstable glaciers would not have wondered if there is a connection. But 5th graders are not eligible for Federal grants.
JC: “This new statement by the AMS is as close to ‘pitch perfect’ as I’ve seen for a statement related to climate. ”
It’s as close to perfection (I agree) because it says absolutely nothing.
Peter Lang:
“I am not impressed with this statement. To me, it reads like a pile of meaningless motherhood.” Exactly!
From the point of view of a skeptic, I must say +1.
Isn’t the AMS’ statement the unavoidable conclusion of serious scientists who consider the observational evidence and refuse to adopt a set of beliefs based solely upon unverifiable models?
“… If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look.
“Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.
“But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger.
“It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.
“The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result…
“That the Sun might now fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. So when Nigel Calder and I updated our book The Chilling Stars, we wrote a little provocatively that “we are advising our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.”
“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel argued at the recent UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that the cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years. His explanation was a natural change in the North Atlantic circulation, not in solar activity. But no matter how you interpret them, natural variations in climate are making a comeback…”
(While the sun sleeps, Translation approved by Henrik Svensmark)
I don’t see any reason to read further than the first paragraph…
“Understanding how the Earth system works and transforming this knowledge into action will allow our nation and the global community to effectively respond and adapt to changing weather, water, and climate conditions.”
Either they continue going round in circles with the assumption that natural variability is internal, and have no means to forecast the teleconnections needed to predict regional climate changes. Or at the inevitable cost of kiboshing the CO2 does most of warming mantra, they look into the influence of solar indirect forcings on the NAO/AO, ENSO, and the AMO, and acquire the knowledge to actually be able to forecast a lot more than zilch. It has to happen sooner or later.
“Develop the Next Generation of WWC Experts.” A lot of work for Professor Mann!
It’s great.
The AMS is sharing with us a plan for a new direction for what it has learned. That’s good but equally and perhaps more important I believe is for the AMS will be to also share with us what it has learned about the AGW movement and academia’s betrayal of science.
Patrick Moore didn’t just return to science to look for the truth. Moore also talked about what he learned were the real motivations underlying the self-appointed experts of the environmental movement–
At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986. ~Patrick Moore, ‘Why I Left Greenpeace,’ WSJ (2008)
Let’s hope they are not the next generation of “Weather Water Climate experts”.
All I see in this AMS statement is a thinly veiled suggestion that more Federal tax dollars be spent to study climate.
Sorry, not interested. I’d rather spend my tax dollars on other things. Too much money has been wasted on climate science over the last 25 years. I’d be for cutting Federal climate science spending by 75% — and that means cutting climate science professorships and students down dramatically.
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog.
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Judith, is this an indication that the AMS is rejecting the CO2 hypothesis? If so, good. ‘Climate criteria’ are chaotic when observed by ‘weather conditions’ against the atmospheric CO2 content.
However, IMHO ‘Sol’s activity’ represents a ‘precursor’ to the ‘energy input’ into Earth’s systems by the way that UVb interacts with Earth’s systems. UVb insolation is initiated by sunspot activity and is received by Earth with a ‘~long penetration’ depth. This data needs to be addressed.
Best regards, Ray.