A large consortium of the country’s scientific organizations have sent the following letter to congress:
June 28, 2016Dear Members of Congress,
We, as leaders of major scientific organizations, write to remind you of the consensus scientific view of climate change.
Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. This conclusion is based on multiple independent lines of evidence and the vast body of peer-reviewed science.
There is strong evidence that ongoing climate change is having broad negative impacts on society, including the global economy, natural resources, and human health. For the United States, climate change impacts include greater threats of extreme weather events, sea level rise, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems. The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.1
To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced. In addition, adaptation is necessary to address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others.
We, in the scientific community, are prepared to work with you on the scientific issues important to your deliberations as you seek to address the challenges of our changing climate.
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Chemical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Meteorological Society
American Public Health Association
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
American Society of Naturalists
American Society of Plant Biologists
American Statistical Association
Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography
Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium
Botanical Society of America
Consortium for Ocean Leadership
Crop Science Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Entomological Society of America
Geological Society of America
National Association of Marine Laboratories
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society for Mathematical Biology
Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
Society of Nematologists
Society of Systematic Biologists
Soil Science Society of America
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research1 The conclusions in this and the preceding paragraph reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the U.S. National Academies, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Many scientific societies have endorsed these findings in their own statements, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, American Statistical Association, Ecological Society of America, and Geological Society of America.
You can read more about it here and here.
Can’t say we weren’t warned.
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Open Mind 
“…and lessons not learned, will be repeated.”
that should do it! I expect brisk action from Congress. And everyone gets a pony!
Good effort. But we’re all in it with nature as a global conspiracy, you see. Ask Lamar Smith and Ted Cruz!
Sorry, but if the letter didn’t come with a
bribecampaign contribution, I don’t see how it will make a difference to the deniers.We breathlessly await the in depth replies from Cruz, Inhofe, McConnell, Barton, L. Smith, Ryan, etc. For those living in the US, please take the time to contact your congress critters…
“…please take the time to contact your congress critters…”
First thing I did upon reading the item. I hope lots of others had the same reaction.
Everyone may just possibly not ‘get a pony’, to use Mike’s figure of speech, but it can’t hurt for said critters to know that there is a constituency for sense on climate.
Notably missing: American Physics Society.
Interesting observation. The new American Physical Society climate change statement is here:
https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/15_3.cfm
It’s certainly consistent with the current letter, so one wonders why they aren’t a signatory.
I have been sickened my climate scientists comparing themselves to “planetary physicians” and saying they have no right to do more than diagnose and urgently advise appropriate changes in lifestyle and other treatments and that the patient must decide what to do or not do. In their immoral implicatory denial, they conveniently forget that a physician has an obligation to quarantine a patient whose illness represents a clear threat to other people and society as a whole. Katharine Hayhoe is right in suggesting that calling for a basin of water and washing your hands can remove your responsibility, just as it did for ol’ Pontius Pilate in days of yore.
This misunderstands how change comes about, we need a significant minority of the population normalizing low emisisons behaviour before anybody pays attention. Until then it’s just a bunch of profligate emitters telling other profligate emitters they have to change. Does anyone listen to the spouse beating their spouse cajoling others to stop beating their spouse ? Someone needs to walk to the front of the bus.
Until we lead, the politicians will not follow.. Actions matter.
You might be interested in this author, Keya Chatterjee, and her book:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-to-raise-a-baby-with-a-zero-carbon-footprint-1.1354403
Thanks. We all suffer from the disconnect between the necessary and the possible. Illustrations bring us back to reality. We can but persist, there is no other choice.
T-Rev: “we need a significant minority of the population normalizing low emisisons behaviour before anybody pays attention.”
Voluntary actions by individuals to reduce their personal carbon footprint shouldn’t be discouraged, but won’t be enough on their own, because AGW is a tragedy of the commons. Effective mitigation will require collective action on multiple levels of social organization, from the municipal on up. Measures on the national level will have the biggest impact, though. Those won’t happen until our legislators perceive there’s enough public support at the national level.
“Until we lead, the politicians will not follow.. Actions matter.”
True, so be an activist. Reduce your personal carbon footprint, but also do whatever’s required to get the attention of politicians. Lobby them directly, and in local and national media. Contribute to campaigns. Join advocacy organizations. Get your voice heard.
I think you are right–a point I’ve tried to make, repeatedly, to our local congresscritter.
I would say the bottom up and top down approaches are so inextricably entwined that to claim either as the key ingredient must inevitably be misleading. But I must say that whilst ordinary individuals are entitled to believe whatever they want, I think those who hold positions of trust and responsiblity on our behalf have a clear obligation to make decisions that reflect the abundent, consistent and persistent expert advice about damaging consequences and likely harms; for them to wilfully ignore that advice constitutes a breach of trust that can and should be seen as negligence.
This cannot be said enough. The frustrating thing is that despite many of us having said the same or similar, it has to date not made any impact (that I can discern) on the politicians that run many of the Western Anglophone nations.
I suspect that apart from the confusing of the public much of the true value of dissenting credentialed climate scientists is that it provides a reasonable seeming basis for ignoring expert advice, shoring up the “I’m not a climate scientist” and “the scientists disagree” excuses for failing to act. Ultimately this can be used as a legal defense against any future accusations of negligence. A neat means of responsibility avoidance much aided by a confused and divided public although I’m not sure it would survive actual court action.
The distinction between taking action and avoiding action is also inverted in this, so that unceasing pumping out of emissions can be framed as “responsible” restraint by refraining from hasty and precipitous action.
Precipitous… is a word that resonates in my thinking, but not the way those in the business of responsibility avoidance like to use it. I note that I use “act vs not act” in familiar fashion and am not sure it would be easy to change.
“The distinction between taking action and avoiding action is also inverted in this, so that unceasing pumping out of emissions can be framed as “responsible” restraint by refraining from hasty and precipitous action.”
Yes. I’ve noticed that that is the framing used by some, as in this exchange I had:
I keeping trying to chip away at that framing, but it’s about like chipping away at the political positions of my local congresscritter–frustratingly slow, as in “no visible change yet.”
So what sort of action beyond diagnosis and urgent advising are you suggesting, uilyam?
One example: https://vimeo.com/32368341
Leading Statisticians Establish Steps to Convey Statistics as a Science not a Recipe
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/06/28/2138245
[0]fork(2) writes:
[1]phys.org carries this story:
Convinced that better use of data will improve research, innovation
and literacy across other disciplines, six leading statisticians
recently published “[2]Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical
Practice” in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. Part of the
popular open access “Ten Simple Rules (TSR)” series, this piece
surpassed 51,000 views in only two weeks.
Authors Nancy Reid, of the University of Toronto, Rob Kass of
Carnegie Mellon University, Brian Caffo of Johns Hopkins University,
Marie Davidian of North Carolina State University, Xiao-Li Meng of
Harvard University, and Bin Yu of the University of California,
Berkeley, advise practitioners to first “treat statistics as a
science, not a recipe.”
In furthering this point, the authors stressed the need for
researchers across various fields of science to avoid misperceptions
and inaccurate claims resulting from faulty statistical reasoning.
Grappling with such subtle phenomena requires principled statistical
analysis, affirm the authors, who encourage researchers to consider
statistics “a language constructed to assist this process, with
probability as its grammar.”
[…] Meng notes “sound statistical practices require a bit of
science, engineering, and arts, and hence some general guidelines for
helping practitioners to develop statistical insights and acumen are
in order. No rules, simple or not, can be 100% applicable or
foolproof, but that’s the very essence that I find this is a useful
exercise. It reminds practitioners that good statistical practices
require far more than running software or an algorithm.”
[3]Here is a link to the “Ten Simple Rules” collection at PLOS.
————————————————————————
[4]Original Submission
Discuss this story at:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=16/06/28/2138245
Links:
0. https://soylentnews.org/~fork(2)/
1. http://phys.org/news/2016-06-statisticians-convey-statistics-science-toolbox.html
2. http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004961
3. http://collections.plos.org/ten-simple-rules
4. https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=14443
I’m sure that Congress is well aware of the threat surrounding fossil fuels. Any day now I expect Congress will pass a large funding package to assist Peabody and Murray Energy trade their way out of their Chapter 11s
Theoretically, of course, it shouldn’t happen, given the ‘free market’ ideology ostensibly driving most GOP legislators. I have little illusion that that’s as prophylactic of a Big Coal bailout as it should be, but at least the ‘optics’ would be pretty bad. Maybe someone will try to smuggle something as a rider into some unrelated legislation deep in the small hours of a marathon session? It wouldn’t be the first time.
Amazing how things fall together–or apart. Apparently, it’s not so much direct bailouts the taxpayer should worry about, as getting stuck with the land reclamation tab: