Statement of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Regarding Personal Attacks on Climate Scientists
Approved by the AAAS Board of Directors, 28 June 2011
We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems.
AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions. The progress of science and protection of its integrity depend on both full transparency about the details of scientific methodology and the freedom to follow the pursuit of knowledge. The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists. The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse.
Scientists and policymakers may disagree over the scientific conclusions on climate change and other policy-relevant topics. But the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results. Science advances
through a self-correcting system in which research results are shared and critically evaluated by peers and experiments are repeated when necessary. Disagreements about the interpretation of data, the methodology, and findings are part of daily scientific discourse. Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial. Most scientific disagreements are unrelated to any kind of fraud and are considered a legitimate and normal part of the scientific process. The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise.
While we fully understand that policymakers must integrate the best available scientific data with other factors when developing policies, we think it would be unfortunate if policymakers
became the arbiters of scientific information and circumvented the peer-review process. Moreover, we are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the
professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions.
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2011/media/0629board_statement.pdf
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Water vapor intrusions into the High Arctic during winter by J. G. Doyle et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 38 (2011)
Geophysical Research Letters, 38 (2011) L12806; doi: 10.1029/2011GL047493
Water vapor intrusions into the High Arctic during winter
Key Points
- Water vapor intrusions into the High Arctic are frequent in the winter
- Intrusions have a complicated vertical structure which can reach the surface
- Intrusions have a significant surface radiative impact
Abstract
The meridional transport of water vapor into the High Arctic, accompanied by dry enthalpy and clouds, impacts the surface radiative forcing. The evolution of one such moist intrusion over 9–11 February 2010 is presented. The event is analyzed using a unique blend of measurements including a new pan-Arctic retrieval of column water vapor from the Microwave Humidity Sounders, water vapor profiles from a Raman lidar and a ground-based microwave radiometer at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), in Eureka (80° N, 86° W), on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic. A radiation model reveals the intrusion is associated with a 17 W m−2 average increase in downwelling longwave irradiance. Optically thin clouds, as observed by the lidar, contribute a further 20 W m−2 to the downwelling long-wave irradiance at their peak. Intrusion events are shown to be a regular occurrence in the Arctic winter with implications for the understanding of the mechanisms driving Arctic Amplification.
Figure 1 of 4
Received 18 March 2011; accepted 12 May 2011; published 29 June 2011.
Citation: (2011), Water vapor intrusions into the High Arctic during winter, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L12806, doi:10.1029/2011GL047493.
Human activities emit roughly 135 times as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as volcanoes each year
HUMANS DWARF VOLCANOES FOR CO2 EMISSIONS
Human activities generate more of the greenhouse gas in under three days than volcanoes do in a year.
- Human activities emit roughly 135 times as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as volcanoes each year.
- Volcanoes emit less than cars and trucks, and less, even, than cement production.
- Climate change skeptics have claimed the opposite.
The eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano on May 23, 2011 above Iceland. Click to enlarge this image.
NordicPhotos /Getty Images
NordicPhotos /Getty Images
Colossal, mind-bogglingly hot and capable of spewing billowing clouds of flight-grounding smoke and searing, molten lava, volcanoes are spectacular displays of the massive forces at work inside our planet. Yet they are dwarfed by humans in at least one respect: their carbon dioxide emissions.
Despite statements made by climate change deniers, volcanoes release a tiny fraction of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by human activities every year.
In fact, humans release roughly 135 times more carbon dioxide annually than volcanoes do, on average, according a new analysis. Put another way, humans emit in under three days the amount that volcanoes typically release in a year, according to the best estimates of volcanic emissions.
"The question of whether or not volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activity is one I get more than any question in my email from the general public.' said Terrence Gerlach, a retired volcanologist, formerly with the Cascades Volcano Observatory, part of the US Geological Survey in Vancouver, Wash. Even earth scientists who work in other areas often pose him the question, he said.
To lay out a clear answer, Gerlach compiled the available estimates of CO2 emissions from all global volcanic activity on land and undersea and compared them with estimates for human emissions. He published the compilation in Eos, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Researchers estimate the amounts of carbon dioxide released by terrestrial volcanic eruptions by methods including remote sensing or flying through clouds of erupting volcanic gas, and by measuring certain isotope concentrations near undersea volcanoes. Carbon dioxide is dissolved in magma at great depths and is released as the magma rises to the surface.
"A lot of climate skeptics claim that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans do," Gerlach said. "They never give any numbers, but the fact is you will never be able to find the volcanic gas scientist that will agree to that," he said.
One example of these skeptics' claims is the 2009 book, "Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science" by Ian Plimer of the University of Adelaide, who did not respond to Discovery News' requests for comment.
"The main reason, I think, that this myth persists," Gerlach said: "First of all, the emissions are extremely spectacular. When people see volcanic eruptions on television and it's awesome, and it's very easy for people to imagine that huge amounts of CO2 are being emitted to the atmosphere."
"However, these spectacular volcanic explosions that are so stunning on TV last only a few hours," he added. "They are ephemeral. In contrast, the sources of anthropogenic CO2 (smokestacks, exhaust pipes, etc) are comparatively unspectacular, commonplace, and familiar, and in addition they are ubiquitous, ceaseless, and relentless. They emit CO2 24/7."
While there is uncertainty in the measurements--researchers estimate between 0.13 and 0.44 billion metric tons per year, with their best estimates between 0.15 and 0.26 billion tons -- even the highest end of the range is dwarfed by anthropogenic emissions of 35 billion metric tons in 2010.
Gerlach noted that human land-use changes alone, which include deforestation, release 3.5 billion metric tons per year. Cars and light-duty trucks produce 2 billion metric tons; even cement production produces 1.5 billion tons. Any of these by itself is still several times higher than the annual emissions of all of the world's volcanoes .
Pakistan or Kazakhstan each produce about the amount of CO2 as volcanoes do each year, Gerlach noted in the article.
In yet another comparison, Gerlach reported that in order for volcanic emissions to match those made by humans, the May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens eruption would need to happen every 2.5 hours. The June 15, 1991, Mount Pinatubo eruption would need to occur every 12.5 hours.
"There is no way you can escape the fact that volcanoes are releasing a tiny amount of emissions right now," said Bernard Marty of the Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques in Nancy, France. "There is no doubt about this."
"Even if you do the reverse and you compute how much volcanism should happen to match atmospheric levels, you end up with completely unrealistic eruption rates," he said.
Marie Edmonds, a volcanologist at Cambridge University agreed. While volcanoes are the most important natural source of atmospheric CO2, she noted, "The results show clearly that the amount is 100-150 times less than anthropogenic amounts."
American climate skeptic Willie Soon received more than $1 million in funding in recent years from large energy companies and an oil industry group
American climate skeptic Soon funded by oil, coal firms
by Timothy Gardner, Reuters, Washington, DC, June 28, 2011
(Reuters) - Willie Soon, a U.S. climate change skeptic who has also discounted the health risks of mercury emissions from coal, has received more than $1 million in funding in recent years from large energy companies and an oil industry group, according to Greenpeace.
Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has also gotten funding from scientific sources including NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But starting early in the last decade, Soon began receiving more funding from the energy companies, Greenpeace reported.
Last year, the foundation of Charles Koch, chairman and CEO of privately held Koch Industries, gave Soon $65,000 to study how variations in the Sun are related to climate change.
Koch is co-owned by David Koch, founder of Americans for Prosperity, a group aligned with the Tea Party movement, which opposes new air pollution regulations.
Beginning in 2002, Soon's funding mostly came from oil companies, including Southern Co, one of the largest coal burners in the United States, and the American Petroleum Institute, according to documents uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request by Greenpeace and seen by Reuters.
"A campaign of climate change denial has been waged for over twenty years by Big Oil and Big Coal," said Kert Davies, a research director at Greenpeace US.
"Scientists like Dr. Soon who take fossil fuel money and pretend to be independent scientists are pawns."
Soon was criticized by many climate scientists for a 2003 paper he co-wrote, concluding that 20th century warming was not unusual compared to that of centuries past. About 5 percent of the study's funding, or $53,000, came from the API, they said.
Soon, who says global warming is mostly caused by changes in the Sun, not emissions from burning oil, gas and coal, has written some peer-reviewed studies on global climate change.
More recently, he has written non-peer reviewed papers. In 2007 he co-wrote a paper that concluded polar bears are not threatened by human-caused climate change, which was also funded partially by grants from the oil industry.
While corporate funding of science is not new, the focus on the ethics of such aid is growing as state and federal science grants are reduced amid budget cuts.
MYTH OF KILLER MERCURY
Soon co-wrote a May 25 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal called "The Myth of Killer Mercury." In the piece, Soon was identified as a natural scientist from Harvard, but the newspaper did not disclose that he receives most of his funding from the energy industry. The Journal did not return a request for comment.
Soon wrote that the EPA, which is under court order to finalize rules on the pollution from power plants, wants to discipline the energy industry. "To build its case against mercury, the EPA systematically ignored evidence and clinical studies that contradict its regulatory agenda, which is to punish hydrocarbon use," the piece said.
Most scientists say children exposed to mercury from mother's milk or from certain types of fish are at risk of learning and developmental problems.
Southern gave Soon $120,000 starting in 2008 to study the Sun's relation to climate change, according to the FOIA documents. Spokeswoman Stephanie Kirijan said Southern has spent about $500 million on environmental research and development and funding and did not fund Soon last year.
Southern funded Soon for studies of solar variability but not to deny that mercury emissions are dangerous, she said.
Soon also got $131,000 from oil major Exxon Mobil Corp in 2007 and 2008 received grants to study the Sun's role in climate change and global warming in the Arctic, Greenpeace said.
In 2008, Exxon said it would stop funding groups that divert attention from finding new sources of clean energy.
Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said this week the company did not fund Soon last year and that it funds hundreds of organizations to do research on climate and the environment.
"Greenpeace needs to get into the 21st century; they're still fighting a war to try to make a villain here, when there's a very serious issue about how you deal with emissions and energy needs that go with growing economies around the world," said Jeffers.
Soon agreed he had received funding from all of the groups and companies, but denied any group would have influenced his studies. "I have never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research," he said.
"I would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research," he added.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Todd Eastham)
Ted Turner visits Norway and Svalbard: "Climate Change Humanity's Most Serious Problem"
Ted Turner: Climate Change Humanity's Most Serious Problem
SVALBARD, Norway, June 23, 2011 (ENS) - Today, on a warm day very close to the Arctic Circle, board members of the UN Foundation, including Founder and Chairman Ted Turner, got a close look at what effects climate change is having on the Arctic.After their annual Board of Directors meeting in Oslo, several directors traveled to Svalbard, the world's northernmost community. They journeyed up a fjord to the foot of a receding glacier with scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute.
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Northern Polar Institute Research Director Kim Holmen, left, with UN Foundation Board Chairman Ted Turner and President Timothy Wirth, June 23, 2011 (photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UN Foundation). |
Turner told reporters on a teleconference today, "They pointed out to us while looking at the glacier that it is receding every year due to global climate change. The temperature here at the high latitudes changes more rapidly than it does in the temperate zones."
Based on observations to date, the scientists projected that this year the extent of Arctic sea ice will be smaller than it has ever been, even smaller than in the previous record low year of 2007.
Among the board members visiting Svalbard was Gro Harlem Brundtland, a physician who served three terms as Prime Minister of Norway in the 1980s and 1990s, and then became director general of the World Health Organization.
As chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development in the 1980s, Brundtland created the concept of sustainable development and provided the momentum for the UN's 1992 Earth Summit. She now serves as a Special Envoy on Climate Change for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Brundtland told reporters on the call that the scientists informed the group that ocean waters have heated up over the past decade at least 1 °C to a depth of 1,000 meters. "This is a dramatic change in a short period of time due to the changes humanity is causing by how we are acting," Brundtland said.
Asked what can be done to convince and persuade climate skeptics and deniers to recognize what so many scientists know and are trying to communicate so urgently, Turner said, "That's a very good question. If we knew the answer to it, we'd already have an energy policy in this country," he said, referring to his home country of the United States. [Too bad he sold CNN -- they are one of the worst as far as climate change coverage and even fired their entire science journalist staff when they began to talk about it.]
"We just have to keep working as we're doing now to get as much publicity as we can for the facts," said Turner. "The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing climate change."
"This is the most serious and complex problem humanity has ever faced, so it's easy to see how some people don't get it," said Turner. "We have to do all we can to convince and persuade the public of what the scientists tell us."
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Gro Harlem Brundtland addresses the New Africa Connections conference. (Photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UNF) |
Brundtland said, "It is clear that action has been too slow, unbelievably slow - because you can take action."
"In 1991 we introduced a carbon tax on oil and gas production from the Norwegian continental shelf. We were warned that it would kill the oil and gas industry, but we showed the world. Our industry is fine," Brundtland said. "They improved the technology to cut the level of pollution per ton of oil extraction."
"I have difficulty understanding why the system has been so slow to move," she said. "We must continue to work with the private sector, not just with governments. The most progressive people in the private sector can help us to move forward. The UN Foundation is trying to promote this cooperation."
Timothy Wirth, the former U.S. senator from Colorado who now serves as president of the UN Foundation, said the impacts of climate change being felt across the United States this year will convince many people.
"While you can't predict exactly from the climate models what will happen, there has been an increase in drought, fires and flooding happening in the United States," Wirth said. "The dramatic climate impact is with us already. Slowly but surely people are going to connect the dots."
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Members of the Norwegian royal family, Crown Princess Mette-Merit, left, Queen Sonja, center left, and Crown Prince Haakon, right, join board members of the UN Foundation, including Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, center right, and UNF Founder and Chairman Ted Turner, center 2nd-row, Oslo, Norway, June 20, 2011 (Photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UNF) |
"Happily," said Wirth, "there are people like weather forecasters that have come together in a group to decide how they will explain climate change when talking about the weather. That will be extremely important. And we have to do a better job of helping the scientific community to get their facts out. We must mount an agressive program to go after the deniers, countering their untruths."
On Friday, the board members will join Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, for a visit to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The UN Foundation helped establish the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an effort supported by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, to establish a universal repository of the world's crop seeds.
The vault, which officially opened in February 2008, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the world. It was created to ensure access to crops should species be lost to climate change or new plant diseases, to help meet the needs of an expanding population, and to provide a back-up library of seeds should any of the world's seed collections be depleted.
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Kofi Annan addresses the New African Connections conference (Photo by Stuart Ramson courtesy UNF) |
The UN Foundation Board of Directors participated in New African Connections, a high-level conference in Oslo June 21-22 that explored creative solutions and partnerships in the areas of health care, finance and new technologies to advance development in Africa. Brundtland and Turner and fellow board member Kofi Annan of Ghana, who served as UN secretary-general from 1997 through 2006, were featured speakers on a keynote panel focusing on public-private partnerships and innovation in health.
"We've got to match 21st century innovation with smart partnerships if we are going to successfully address poverty, climate change and global health," said Wirth. "This week's meetings in Norway confirm not only how far we've come but how much we can do to harness the power of innovation."
The United Nations Foundation is committed to addressing the problem of climate change due to human activity by reducing its own carbon emissions and offsetting the emissions that cannot be eliminated.
Every year the foundation calculates its cumulative carbon dioxide emissions at our Washington, DC, and New York City offices and purchases an equivalent amount of carbon offsets from a reforestation project in the Sierra Gorda Mountains of Mexico.
The UN Foundation, a public charity, originated in 1998 when Turner, founder of the cable news network CNN, gave an historic $1 billion gift to support UN causes and activities and created the United Nations Foundation to administer the gift.
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