Five members of the ASA’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy joined 30 scientists from other disciplines to participate in the first Climate Science Day (CSD) on February 17. Sponsored by the ASA, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, and others, the scientists formed multidisciplinary teams to meet with members of Congress or their staffs about climate science and offer their help in answering questions relating to climate science.
It was interesting to learn about the interactions between policy and science, but I think the bigger message that I brought home was that new member offices were receptive to us as sources of climate science information.
Targeting freshman offices, the teams visited nearly 100 and emphasized potential regional effects of climate change. They also shared the executive summaries of the 2009 U.S. Global Change Research Program report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, and the 2010 National Academies’ report Advancing the Science, as well as a 2009 letter signed by 18 science organization heads—including 2009 ASA President Sally Morton—stating a shared common view that climate change is occurring and greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.
To help prepare for the day of visits, participants attended “Congress 101,” a day of sessions teaching CSD objectives and how to have a successful Hill visit and communicate about climate change. There was also a panel with four Congressional Committee staffers and a Republican and Democrat from both the House and Senate.
Three of the ASA’s participants, who were teamed with crop/soils scientists and geoscientists, had positive comments about CSD and their reception. Murali Haran of Penn State said, “By having our focus be on local concerns at the start, we helped make the staffers much more receptive to what we had to say about climate science later on. It also really helped to have someone with me who could speak directly to agronomy and soil science issues.”
Peter Craigmile commented, “It was interesting to learn about the interactions between policy and science, but I think the bigger message that I brought home was that new member offices were receptive to us as sources of climate science information.”
Based on feedback from the offices visited, the scientists involved, and the society staff, the groups have agreed to start planning for 2012 Climate Science Day. The society staffs also are discussing how to support the goals of Climate Science Day through other activities.
Other ASA participants were Mark Berliner of The Ohio State University, Leonard Smith of the London School of Economics, and Richard Smith of The University of North Carolina/SAMSI. Additionally, the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment helped support the ASA’s involvement.
I cannot believe I acually read the following statement in a magazine devoted to the science of statistics, “…a 2009 letter signed by 18 science organization heads—including 2009 ASA President Sally Morton—stating a shared common view that climate change is occurring and greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver). Since when does the scientific method involve collecting signatures of prominent scientists on a letter that purports to close off any academic debate about a scientific theory? Aren’t statisticians (of all scientists) the most likely to advocate for evidence-based research and eschew politically charged controversies? What possible good could have come from Ms. Morton signing her name to this document?
I’m preaching to the choir here, but the basis for the apocalyptic climate scenarios are the outputs of large scale discrete-event simulation models of the world’s climate. We do not even ascribe certainty to meteorological models of the next week’s weather patterns; how could we possibly ascribe near certainty to the output of a model that purports to model the climate decades or centuries from now?? For a statistician to take such a deterministic position on something so sensitive to multiple forcing functions makes me suspect that this is political rather than scientific.
A very sad day, indeed.