The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society’s 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming. The Council’s vote came after it received a report from a committee of eminent scientists who reviewed the existing statement in response to a petition submitted by a group of APS members.
The petition had requested that APS remove and replace the Society’s current statement. The committee recommended that the Council reject the petition. The committee also recommended that the current APS statement be allowed to stand, but it requested that the Society’s Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) examine the statement for possible improvements in clarity and tone. POPA regularly reviews all APS statements to ensure that they are relevant and up-to-date regarding new scientific findings.
Appointed by APS President Cherry Murray and chaired by MIT Physicist Daniel Kleppner, the committee examined the statement during the past four months. Dr. Kleppner’s committee reached its conclusion based upon a serious review of existing compilations of scientific research. APS members were also given an opportunity to advise the Council on the matter. On Nov. 8, the Council voted, accepting the committee’s recommendation to reject the proposed statement and refer the original statement to POPA for review. As a membership organization of more than 47,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous scientific standards in developing its statements. The Society is always open to review of its statements when significant numbers of its members request it to do so.
7 Comments
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/icing-the-hype has some interesting commentary from Roger Cohen (one of the petition “organizers”.)
In particular, he says that
“Rather it was the petitioners themselves who directly contacted more than 10,000 members, and hundreds of them commented to the APS Council before the meeting, with more than 1/3 supporting our Open Letter or a substantial moderation or withdrawal of the existing statement.”
Can anyone shed any light on that 10,000 claim?
Is there a way to o that without using the APS Directory, i.e., can one rent mailing lists?
Note: Happer is quoted assaying it was a great victory. Somewhat to my surprise, Tawanda is quoted in rebuttal.
Could someone clarify for me who voted on this? Was it the membership or just the Council?
The Council voted for it.
In any case, for someone who wants to see my best of all this, with all the gory details I could find, the odd demographics, underlying social network, and raft of folks involved with SEPP, George C. Marshall, Heartland, and CATO, the hitory of past campaigns like this, and person-by-person analysis, there’s a big PDF (V.3.0)over at:
http://www.desmogblog.com/another-silly-climate-petition-exposed
John Mashey,
I agree with you. The recent letter that the group sent to the Senate ( http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/Letter_to_Senate.html ) was certainly strong evidence of the sort of political strategy that you describe.
I think another aspect of their strategy may have been to adopt such an extreme position in the hopes that the APS council, in order to appease them, would change the statement to move only a small fraction in the direction of the proposed statement and this would already be a big victory for them. Sort of staking out a negotiating position.
I would guess that the petition organizers would have been a bit surprised had their version been accepted, but the *point* of all this was more likely to have been to generate doubt and confusion on the part of the public, as fodder for more “open letters”. For example, on August 19, Fred Singer gave talk to the Minnesota Free Market Institute, that claimed:
Breatkthru: APS to Modify Climate Statement (2nd page)
and later (p.30) there’s a whole slide on APS:
“American Physical Society (APS)
Statement on Climate Change
• Double Breakthrough: This is the first time a
professional scientific society has agreed to
reconsider an alarmist policy statement on
climate change. Nature magazine published
our Letter announcing this fact.
• Our Letter to Congress
• Open Letter to APS Council
• Our Letter to Nature”
This is at:
http://mnfreemarketinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Fred-Singer.pdf , an the symposium was: http://www.mnfmi.org/climate/ .
Again, I doubt they expected APS to change, but that let them generate those other things.
Excellent news! I think the current APS statement is an accurate representation of the science and I am glad that the committee headed by Dr. Kleppner reached a similar conclusion.
By contrast, the new version of the statement proposed by the petitioners would have been an embarrassment for our society. In fact, to see how extreme it really was, one need only compare it to the current statement on climate change from ExxonMobil ( http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_views.aspx ). That proposed APS statement would have made ExxonMobil look like an organization of tree-hugging environmental radicals by comparison! (And, no, I am not exaggerating…Just read the two side by side!) I am surprised that the petitioners had the gall to propose such a ridiculous alternative statement!
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