The Sun (Wikipedia photo)
Eighty prominent scientists, researchers and environmental business leaders – many of them physicists – have called on the American Physical Society (APS), the nation's leading physics organization, to revise its policy statement on climate change. The century-old APS is the premier scholarly group in the U.S. dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of the knowledge of physics.
The signers of an open letter to the APS Council, the governing body of APS, are current and past members of APS. They disagree with the current APS policy statement on climate change, which contains such language as, "Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate,” and “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”
The group of 80 scientists and academic leaders is urging APS to revise its statement on climate change to read as follows:
Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th [and] 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.
Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.
The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human – on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.
This is a far cry from what we are reading in the very unscientific mainstream media. As a matter of fact, it would be a great surprise if the major media even report the challenge of these courageous scientists to the APS status quo.
When asked for a comment on the open letter, APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby issued the following statement: "The APS president Cherry Murray has formed an ad hoc committee to examine the APS statement. The committee will advise Dr. Murray and the APS council on whether any changes to the statement are necessary."
The current APS policy statement on climate change was issued in November 2007. But since then, a growing body of evidence has been emerging that challenges the facts and conclusions of the APS statement. It remains to be seen if APS will consider all of the available evidence and recent research. Much of this new information would be embarrassing to politicians, including the President of the United States, because it will show that global warming as a result of human activity is a myth.
The Administration and congressional leaders are in the heat of a legislative battle over health care, but they are also pushing a radical climate change or “cap-and-trade” bill that would dramatically increase the cost of energy for U.S. consumers and businesses. If APS reviews its statement in light of recent, more accurate research, its council may be inclined to adopt the revised statement on climate change from the open letter. But will APS leaders have the courage to do so in the face of intimidation by political leaders who don’t want to change their policies? It wouldn’t be the first time that political power trumped science.
This open letter is just one more piece of evidence that the theory of man-made global warming is losing credibility. Is anyone in Washington listening, or will misguided members of Congress enact their big-government “cap-and-trade" legislation without so much as a healthy debate about whether man-made global warming theory is even scientifically valid?
APS Policy Statement on Climate Change
An Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
Comments
The American Meteorological Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of England and many other scientific societies have issued similar statements to the American Physical Society. Evidence that the climate is warming continues to accumulate. The best explanation for that warming is the production of greenhouse gases by man.
Much of the "new evidence" against global warming are in my humble opinion unproven hypotheses.
Weather Oldie,
Check out one of my earlier articles "Global cooling replaces global warming" and click on the first Daily Tech link in the article. This will lead you to four major climate tracking centers that have all recorded lower global temperatures recently. Call this "unproven" if you will, but the evidence speaks for itself. And I would like to see the hard evidence for the "best explanation" you offer. The whole argument rests on supposition and ignores the long history of climate variation through recorded human history over the past millennium when there were temperature variations, including warming, without the presence of factories and automobiles.
The average global temperature is as meaningful as the average global phone number.
Positive Climate Forcing via CO2 is an "unproven hypotheses". And that is all AGW is based upon.
Positive Climate Forcing via CO2 is an "unproven hypotheses". And that is all AGW is based upon.
You are kidding me! What have scientists got to do to convince you guys! Every single professional science association in the world agrees that climate change is serious and man-made; every single national government; every single climatology institute; etc etc. There comes a time when you must accept that the weight of science is telling you something.
If you want to find out the muck behind the professionalised "scepticism" of the few names who crop again and again as "critics", just have a read the science at the dozens of sites that comprehensively detail the fatuousness of the oponions (for they are nor more than that) involved.
Get real! You can "believe" the world is flat as well, but that doesn't make it so!
Sean,
Take a look at my article "Global warming is a scam and cap-and-trade is a bigger scam" and look at the sources I have links for at the end of the article. Apparently, you have not kept up with some of the latest data on this issue. Furthermore, just because some scientific groups have been politicized to buy into the fantasy of man-made global warming, that doesn't mean they are right. Look at the historical record. We have had periods of warming before, and it was long before we had lots of automobiles and factories. Besides, we have been cooling for several years and many reputable scientists recognize this.
Sean,
Take a look at my article "Global warming is a scam and cap-and-trade is a bigger scam" and look at the sources I have links for at the end of the article. Apparently, you have not kept up with some of the latest data on this issue. Furthermore, just because some scientific groups have been politicized to buy into the fantasy of man-made global warming, that doesn't mean they are right. Look at the historical record. We have had periods of warming before, and it was long before we had lots of automobiles and factories. Besides, we have been cooling for several years and many reputable scientists recognize this.
Jim,
You have consistently mis-represented the positions of the Hadley Centre and other organisations: it is trends they talk about, not annual volatility (that is weather not climate). They are all clearly on the record as saying that global temperature trends have been consistently going up for the past 150 years and what is one of the fastest increases in temperature on the planet in many millions of years. They are also on the record as saying they believe these changes are as a result of human-induced climate change.
The melting of glaciers is happening at an extraordinary rate. There are indeed some glaciers increasing in size, some 1-2%. This seems to relate to increased snow from warmer and moister temperatures in feeder areas; the rest, including (and especially) those that supply regular and vital water supplies to places like Northern India, China, Bolivia and Peru, are retreating at alarming levels.
I'm actually in Austria at the moment looking at a glacier that the locals say is disappearing before their eyes. Even here they are talking about the coming impact on water supplies. I hear this story repeated around the world. Quote the few glaciers that are growing to obfuscate if you will, but that will not help the one billion people who will be affected by disappearing water supplies.
Your article (thanks for the link) doesn't really say anything new from the sceptics camp, and the petition you quote is signed by a lot of people who know nothing about climate science (a PhD on zoology does not qualify). But I digress.
If you were flying a plane and ALL the relevant authorities told you there was a bad storm just ahead, you could look at the sky and say "nah, don't believe it" and fly ahead, probably into a storm, or decide the be cautious at take evasive action. We need to take evasive action around climate change.
Sean Kidney, Of course glaciers are melting. Our planet has just gone through a major warming. This warming commenced about 200 years ago, following the Little Ice Age. That minor ice age followed a global warming (medieval) that followed a global cooling (the one that helped cause the dark age of europe)that came after the Roman warming. You see, our planet goes through these natural phases as much as we go through Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. ITS ALL NATURAL. Glaciers have a time lag of 10 years or more (depending on size, geography etc etc) following a warming or cooling. The last warming has just ended and there fore most glaciers ae still on the melting side of time. Some glaciers have already responded to the end of the warming and the cooling and in fact some glaciers re growing back. Anthropogenic CO2 only makes up 5% of all atmospheric CO2 with a residence time of a few years. Hence, the AGW theory is a total failure. Please read science.
Sorry, 'Alex', anthropogenic CO2 is over 30% of the atmospheric total, and has a half life of 60-100 years.
The 80 gold diggers here have produced a statement consisting of lies and irrelevancies, typical for all denialists. They have no evidence that AGW is not happening - GRACE satellite results now show large decreases in ice mass in the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland all at the same time.
The usual excuses and lies don't cut it any more.
www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/
Historian of science, Naomi Oreskes of UC San Diego, states "Scientific knowledge is the intellectual and social concsensus of affiliated experts based on the weight of available empirical evidence, and evaluated according to accepted methodologies. If we feel that a policy question deserves to be informed by scientific knowledge, then we have no choice but to ask, what is the consensus of experts on this matter." The 2007 IPCC reports are the consensus.
Climate change has been extensively researched and the overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that the observed modern day global warming is unprecedented and is very likely caused by humans. The Website above summarizes some of the key research that has led scientists to their overwhelming consensus while also addressing some of the unfounded claims by
climate change skeptics and denialists.
1st. Climate Change is a scam. How do I know? If those who are the most influential pimping this scheme believed in it. Folks like Al Gore, Obama, Boxer, Palousy, Kennedy’s and Hollywierd would not be in a constant race to see who can burn them most Jet Fuel flying a private Jet in a single day.
Al Gore would not have $17,000 dollar per month electric bills in one of his many homes and John Kerri would down size his boat that eats 100,000 plus gallons of fuel every time he fills it up.
Global Warming/Climate Change is for Government to control the masses just as Health Care is.
So drive a car the size of a coffin if you choose. I could give a rip. Don’t tell me what to drive and call my little kids Dirt Bike a Gross Polluter to promote your scam.
Oh, the Future is Algae Bio-Diesel and NOT wind or expensive solar panels. Gezzz.
Of the folks who have signed this letter, or indeed, anyone who critiques the underlying theory of climate change, I wonder how many have invested the time to read the primary, peer reviewed literature from which the theory has emerged?
I have an engineering degree, and am pretty good in my field, but I would have to invest a lot of time to develop a deep enough understanding of a neigboring subject before I'd be able to competently critique the key foundations of something other experts had spent careers developing.
In this case, I notice that most of the folks who signed the letter are retired. They have time, but I wonder how many of them really understand the collected data, the data analysis and the climate models which have all emerged in the past 20 years and which all provide consistent evidence that supports the theory. This would be interesting to know.
I reviewed your list of the 80 signers of the this petition. I looked at it trying to find expertise in the field. A scientist who works at Exxon was listed. A Colonel was listed. Numerous Geology Scientists. (Geology is a big oil related science. Quite a few physics professors. But I could not find a climatologist listed. The closest I could find was an Aerospace Engineer, tho I suspect his field is more about how to keep planes in the air.
In any case, finding 80 people should be pretty easy on a planet of 6+ billion. But the opposing view, that climate change is indeed anthropomorphic, is held by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of scientists, and by an overwhelming majority of climate scientists.
Thus, if anything, this article displays the LACK of evidence for the opposing view. Thank you for your furthering the proof of the anthropomorphic nature of climate change. I know it was not your intent, but it is the only conclusion a reality based reader can make
While I'm fantastically happy that a bunch of physicists think that global warming isn't happening I'd rather leave it to climatologists and other more qualified professionals, wouldn't you? In fact, they don't list a single journal or division that in any way relates to climate change. And considering that the Department of Energy is their largest fund contributor I would say that their interests lies in attempting to throw doubt on this. Perhaps you should rely on agencies that have the staff and means to actually track climate change, such as NOAA? Nice try though.
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