From the American Chemical Society
WASHINGTON, May 7, 2014 — Yesterday’s release of the third National Climate Assessment (NCA) should serve as a claxon [SIC] call for policymakers and the general public to take action to address and mitigate the observable and documented adverse climate disruption impacts being observed in every region and key economic sector of the United States.
These impacts, which have been observed and measured, are wreaking havoc with our society. This is a not a theoretical assessment; this report cites changes we are all observing and with which we are living. The future climate trends outlined in the report are even more dire. We should all be deeply concerned.
Of the report’s five major findings, the fifth describes the disturbing probable outcome of climate disruption currently being observed:
“Climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways, including through more extreme weather events and wildfire, decreased air quality, and diseases transmitted by insects, food and water.”
ACS has long held the position that climate change is real and serious and that our nation needs strong policies and actions to protect against further adverse impacts, and we need to address the impacts we are already observing.
For 14 years, ACS has held a climate change policy position, which has been strengthened and updated routinely as new scientific analyses became available. The current public policy statement can be found by clicking on this link.
To assist its members, policymakers and the general public understand the science behind our climate, the ACS created an online Climate Science Toolkit of scientific information and resources.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
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Maybe “claxon” is code for “disregard all that follows.”
Klaxon -1908, from Klaxon, trademark, based on Ancient Greek κλάζω (klazō, “roar, make a sharp sound”).
The ACS doesn’t mention the cause of “climate change”.
Essentially, what they are saying is that weather affects all of us.
I knew that.
Pretty bold and silly statement from a warmist organization (apparently) considering they are probably the largest beneficiary of Big Oil and Big Government…
charles the moderator says: May 8, 2014 at 1:01 am “This misuse/spelling of “claxon” is very likely a conflation of clarion and klaxon, i.e. a clarion call. ¶ This kind of mistake in using idiom (in writing) is almost always indicative of a sloppy mind, but in this case we already knew that.”
Close. The conflation is of clarion and tocsin. But sloppy writing is evidence of sloppy thinking. I would not have missed the homophonic alliteration of first syllables of tocsin and toxic.
These impacts, which have been observed and measured, are wreaking havoc with our society. This is a not a theoretical assessment; this report cites changes we are all observing and with which we are living. The future climate trends outlined in the report are even more dire. We should all be deeply concerned.
================================
Yes. And the fact that everyone is out to get me proves that my paranoia is justified.
These impacts, which have been observed and measured, are wreaking havoc with our society. Less than 1°C? Can it get stupider than this? The only havoc is the perverted viewpoint promulgated by statements like this.
This is all grubbing for dollars.
The point of the Obamunist campaign is to mollify billionaire-CAGW nut Tom Steyer, who’s dangled $100 million for Democrats this campaign cycle (November 2014). There’s then a knock-on effect for others to Get Out The True Believing CAGW-Base, which is almost entirely Democrat voting. (It’s an off election year with no Messiah running fo office – time to demonize anyone who’s not ‘D’-approved.)
Steyer is trying to get other wealthy donors on board, in exchange for the Senate doing their all-night AGW talkathon,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-24/steyer-nets-10-050-for-100-million-climate-super-pac.html
and now Obama pulling out the Big Science bureaucrats who dance to the federal money tune.
So, the ACS statement is just more group-therapy support for other bureaucrat scientists that feed from the federal trough or whose projects benefit from its support.
You gotta admire how Obama has revived old city-style machine politics, only at the federal white collar level – at least if you are a student of American history. But will it play in Skokie? John Holdren, Obama’s go to science-guy, thinsk so. I doubt it. The people are numbed by the dumb.
A minor short-lived burst, perhaps. But will this summer suddenly burst into a record busting scorcher? I doubt it. Without that, this $100 million will be wasted.
And good riddance! – bad money after a bad cause! We can laugh about all this come the fall.
Leigh had it right near the top: Why does the ACS position deviate so much from the IPCC position, which again deviates so much from the facts-in-evidence?
Re the quote, “ACS has long held the position that climate change is real and serious and that our nation needs strong policies and actions to protect against further adverse impacts, and we need to address the impacts we are already observing.”
How could they have ‘long held’ a position for which there had yet been no definitive evidence? Even the IPCC is waffling about what is really taking place and surely the ACS is aware there is no fabled ‘hotspot’ of GHG ‘back radiation’? How long has this long-held position been held and on what basis was it clasped to its bosom in the first place? How much longer will this position be held in the face of no warming? Another 17 years, would that be enough? Or is it ‘until the money runs out’?
Does the ACS realize that the US, subject to all these ‘disruptions’ has not only failed to increase its temperate temperatures, there has been a continent-wide slight cooling overall during the past century in non-urban areas. Doesn’t this hint that there is no AGW taking place in the same country where they see so much ‘disruption’?
I may have identified their formula:
aC + aO2 + b! ↔ c$
where b! is beaucoup Alarm! This reaction is reversible, so an input of $ creates a healthy dose of Alarm!
I know nothing about this organization. Ok to assume that its members are actually chemists, i.e., academics who teach and or practice chemistry, or people in industry who do the same? If so, how could they say this? It’s one thing when a nitwit like Barack Obama or Al Gore or Stephen Spielberg declaims on climate change. It’s not their field. I see most commentators here dismissing the ACS; I am tempted to do so myself. But these people are not idiots! How is their position explained? It’s all about getting funded? They know climate change is nothing to get alarmed about, but all the funding comes from alarmist messages, so that’s what they do? This would make them cynics. Ok, I can deal with that. But they really believe in the danger?
The ACS doesn’t seem like a pretend science organization (like the UNIPCC, a body of some 1600 people, some 43 of whom are actually scientists and not bureaucrats). Or is it?
It’s one thing when Gore spouts nonsense. These people can’t, and probably shouldn’t, just be dismissed. If they can, I’d like to know why. What am I missing?
Everyone wants a piece of the federal hog trough.
I am a Ph.D. chemist who was a member of ACS for decades but resigned years ago due to their stands on a number of issues. It was the best move I ever made.
Many chemists are skeptical of the AGW meme and the climate change meme. But the elected leadership is a political body. Just like any politics, it can have profound effects on how things are presented. Green chemistry has been a definite trend for many years. This simply means to try and find experimentally alternate reaction conditions which use fewer solvents that need to be disposed of and also conditions which use less energy through catalysts or microwave heating. Nothing wrong with green chemistry. Also highly fundable and attracts students and allows one to feel like they are doing something for humanity.
The problem is you can get a small group of people who write these statements without consulting anyone else. And their staffers may not be chemists but folks with environmental studies or even English degrees and so they all get caught up in the official story. At some point this may back fire as they may go too far and many people will resign. Or, IF it becomes even more clear that this is mostly alarmism, it will eventually play into the elections. I am an on again/off again member of ACS as I don’t like to spend the $200 a year to renew. However, when I want to attend one of their meetings to present my research I have to join. So I will stay in for a few years and then let it lapse for a few years. But I have never once voted in an ACS election. That is another thing that helps those with agendas get elected. The true believers will vote but many others don’t bother.
The minute they can demonstrate how their proposed actions would have stopped the incidents they are referring to, I’m in.
They misspelled Claxton…Fruitcake.
Paraphrasing: This should bring out all of the fruitcake policymakers and general public.
Yet another political document dressed up as science. The only action this suggests is that of soundly defeating the alarmist rent seeking politicians and their supporters.
After 30 years as an ACS member, I don’t think it is a scientific society anymore. I did not renew my membership this year.
A klaxon that is constantly in an alarm state is useless. It is, however, dangerously distracting and masks new alarms. All klaxons must have a reset function or silence function in order to continue it’s alarm function. Will someone please reset ACS. GK
I’m going with the sloppy English/sloppy mind explanation to explain the claxon(sp)/clarion conflation.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/clarion-call
Definition of clarion call in English:
A strongly expressed demand or request for action:
“he issued a clarion call to young people to join the Party”
Or, maybe organizations such as the ACS are nothing but political machinery at the disposal of the ruling Party?
Nawww.
I, too, dropped my ACS membership after over 30 years a few years ago. This was one reason.
This statement and what has been coming out of this organization over the last 5 years regarding climate change is what has finally forced the professors in the Chemistry Department at NAU to decide to drop all degree affiliations with ACS. I used to be proud of the fact that I hold an ACS certified environmental chemistry degree (from back in the day when it actually meant something), but now I just say a BS and MS in chemistry.
American Chemical Society? That’s ironic, given that all the greens that I am aware of are as ballistic over “man-made cancer causing chemicals in our food and environment” as they are over CO2. Watch out ACS: you are in their sights!
Phil’s Dad says:
May 8, 2014 at 6:41 am
“The minute they can demonstrate how their proposed actions would have stopped the incidents they are referring to, I’m in.”
The incidents that they are referring to are not happening, so any action or non-action will be seemingly effective in stopping something that isn’t happening in the first place.
Allow me to expose the warmist’s arguments with a slightly different subject:
Today I will have a beer and that will reduce the chance of the world exploding. If the rest of you do not want to die in the impending PRE (Planetary Rapid Expansion – acronyms always make things sound more scientific), you better make sure I have plenty of beer in the future. Not buying me beer is tantamount to not loving your children! You do love your children, don’t you? Perhaps you deny that there is an impending PRE, but the science is settled. The signs are everywhere. There are earthquakes and tsunamis. Waves are crashing on beaches. Last night, there was thunder in the distance. Volcanoes are erupting in unprecedented eruptions, the likes of which have not been seen since the last time they were seen. AND there is complete scientific consensus that the world will end (some day). Do you deny the science, like flat-earthers and holocaust deniers? Are you so selfish, homophobic, racist and bigoted that you would not be willing to contribute a small amount for the survival of the planet? I shun you, and will no longer speak to you, but I will come around for my daily beer, and I will bring my gun, if you get my drift.
Ferdberple: Surely you jest! Do away with all chemicals? Do you have a particular definition for “chemical” that differs from mine?
“These impacts, which have been observed and measured, are wreaking havoc.”
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Looking about, I have yet to see havoc in my region…or anywhere else, beyond the normal havoc of normal weather. Seriously, how could a rise of 0.7 or 1 degree over a hundred years (which I’m told is more focused on the poles than the tropics and mid-latitudes) create havoc in the Southeastern United States. All life on earth would be long gone if such a minimal temperature variation were to lead to “havoc” in the biosphere.
Again, you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.