Roger Caiazza
Just when I think that the climate-related madness cannot get any shoddier something comes up even worse. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) Council adopted a special statement on 8 July 2022 in response to the Supreme Court decision West Virginia vs. EPA that takes the level of climate change hysteria to a whole new level.
Special Statement of the American Meteorological Society
The AMS is deeply concerned by the United States’ inadequate response to climate change and the dangers it poses to the nation and all life. This inadequacy is illustrated most recently–but by no means only–through the Supreme Court decision West Virginia v. EPA.
Climate change is a highly solvable problem and the available solutions offer tremendous opportunity for societal advancement and climate protection. We applaud the many people throughout the country who are working constructively to tackle climate change, including many government officials, politicians, members of the public, scientists, and members of the business community.
All people should know that:
1. Climate change is extraordinarily dangerous to humanity and all life
- Climate is a basic life-support system for people and all life.
- Global climate changes occurring now are larger and faster than any humanity is known to have endured since our societal transition to agriculture.
- The physical characteristics of the planet, biological systems and the resources they provide, and social institutions we have created all depend heavily on climate, are central to human well-being, and are sensitive to climate change.
2. People are changing climate
- Multiple independent lines of scientific evidence confirm that people bear responsibility.
- The warming effect of our greenhouse gas emissions is demonstrated through laboratory experiments, evidence from past changes in climate on Earth, and the role of greenhouse gasses on other planets.
- The patterns of climate change occurring now match the characteristics we expect from our greenhouse gasses and not the other potential drivers of change: the sun, volcanoes, aerosols, changes in land-use, or natural variability.
3. The scientific conclusions summarized here result from decades of intensive research and examination
- The scientific evidence has been assessed comprehensively by independent scientific institutions and independent experts that consider all evidence.
- Accuracy is central to credibility for scientific institutions such as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, all of which have assessed climate science.
- No broadly contradictory assessments from credible scientific organizations exist.
4. Solutions are available and highly promising–a serious reason for optimism.
- Greenhouse gas emissions are an economically harmful market failure. Those who emit pollution to the atmosphere shift the costs of climate damage onto everyone, including future generations. Making emitters pay for all the costs of their use of our atmosphere would help correct this failure and thereby improve economic well-being.
- Regulatory approaches can speed the adoption of best practices, require broadly beneficial technologies, promote public interest, and enhance equity and fairness.
- As a result, reducing greenhouse gas emissions can increase climate security, national security, the well-being of biological systems, and economic vitality.
- Existing and emerging technologies such as roof-top solar, electric vehicles, and electric heat pumps can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality in our homes and cities, and often provide superior products or services.
- Building our resilience to climate impacts (adaptation) makes communities stronger and better able to deal with both existing vulnerabilities and emerging threats.
People are changing climate and it poses serious risks to humanity. There are a wide range of response options that are well understood, many of which would be broadly beneficial. We will need to work together to harness human ingenuity to address climate change. Therein lies an even greater opportunity for humanity. If we can address our climate problem, we will have a new template for the wide range of challenges and opportunities facing us at this point in the 21st century.
Discussion
Tony Heller writing at Real Climate Science eviscerated the “Climate change is extraordinarily dangerous to humanity and all life” statement. He showed that natural disasters are decreasing and life expectancy has doubled since fossil fuel use has become widespread across the globe. Willis Eschenbach’s post Where is the Climate Emergency is a more comprehensive rebuttal to this statement.
I stopped being a member of the AMS in 2012 when the organization ranked advocacy above science. The arguments supporting the “People are changing climate” statement appear to be talking points for the public. Near the end of the Trump Administration a series of short, easily understandable brochures that support the general view that there is no climate crisis or climate emergency, and pointing out the widespread misinformation being promoted by alarmists through the media were prepared. The following brochures address the other side of these arguments:
- Introduction (Dr. David Legates)
- The Sun Climate Connection (Drs. Michael Connolly, Ronan Connolly, Willie Soon)
- Systematic Problems in the Four National Assessments of Climate Change Impacts on the US (Dr. Patrick Michaels)
- Record Temperatures in the United States (Dr. John Christy)
- Radiation Transfer (Dr. William Happer)
- Is There a Climate Emergency (Dr. Ross McKitrick)
- Hurricanes and Climate Change (Dr. Ryan Maue)
- Climate, Climate Change, and the General Circulation (Dr. Anthony Lupo)
- Can Computer Models Predict Climate (Dr. Christopher Essex)
- The Faith-Based Nature of Human-Caused Global Warming (Dr. Roy Spencer)
The section “The scientific conclusions summarized here result from decades of intensive research and examination” is a direct appeal to authority. The recent Global Warming Golden Goose article summarizes the follow the money trail that suggests that the scientific institutions we are supposed to trust are not necessarily interested in only scientific truth and enlightenment.
The next section “Solutions are available and highly promising” shows an amazing lack of self-awareness. The point of the previous section was that you should trust only the “experts”. Why in the world would anyone expect that the American Meteorological Society has expertise in energy solutions. The vague, content-free arguments are a joke to anyone who has spent any time looking at the tremendous technological difficulties associated with running today’s society using intermittent and diffuse wind and solar or even follows today’s energy issues. My feed of followed websites had articles on copper shortages that will preclude the net zero by 2050 transition, the amount of solar panels needed for the transition, the German net-zero transition is running out of energy, and the current Texas heat wave is straining power supplies so much that electric car owners are being asked to charge off-peak. All of these issues invalidate the claim that the climate threat is “easily solvable”.
Once upon a time I was proud to be a member of the American Meteorological Society. This policy statement is so embarrassing I don’t want to admit I was associated with a scientific organization that could publish something this far detached from reality.
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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
Seems to me that the “professional” groups in our society are intent on destroying themselves and their credibility in their fields of supposed expertise.
AMS, AMA, etc. seem to have taken up with the current administration and decided to play along with the lefties. For profit and power, probably.
The regular folks who still have common sense and logical thinking abilities do see what is going on, and are laughing regularly at all of them.
The trust in “science” is slip slidin’ further and further away. Witch doctors and illusionists are starting to make a comeback. Should be entertaining, for a while.
It’s telling that the alarmists always blame the producers of fossil fuel for “pollution” and never the users. After all the easiest way to stop the process is for the consumer to stop buying the product. By doing this they imply the path forward is easy. It’s always somebody else that needs to do the heavy lifting. The public seems to be finally waking up to realize it each one of them that’s in the target hairs. It’s going to be interesting.
What a load of horse buckey!
ie: road apples
Organic sparrow food.
re: “The section ‘The scientific conclusions summarized here result from decades of intensive research and examination’ is a direct appeal to authority.”
Ridiculously false, as is most all of this essay. It is a direct appeal to decades of research data.
Meanwhile you ignored the main point of the post of which you will never understand.
Data is just data, until it is interpreted.
Among his many other mental shortcomings, MGC does not know what an appeal to authority is.
PS: The data shows a slow irregular warming since around 1850, which was 100 years before CO2 levels started increasing dramatically.
The data also doesn’t show what caused the warming.
The data also shows 4 or 5 warming intervals since the end of the Holocene Optimum.
The data also shows that all of the warming intervals and the Holocene Optimum were warmer than it is today.
Uh, no, it is MarkW (and the author of this piece) who do not understand what an appeal to authority is.
An appeal to authority is to merely accept the opinion of an expert without regard to any supporting data. In this case, there is a plethora of supporting data.
re: “The data also doesn’t show what caused the warming.”
False. As usual. There are many pieces of data pointing to increasing greenhouse gas effect as the cause of the current warming while also demonstrating why other influences cannot be the cause.
For example, more warming at night than during the day demonstrates that an increase of solar irradiance is not the cause.
The fact that the oceans are warming along with the air demonstrates that it is not a net release of heat from the oceans that is warming the air.
On the other hand, the fact that the lower atmosphere is warming but the stratosphere is cooling is a clear fingerprint of greenhouse gas influence.
The fact that there is more warming at night than during the day is also a clear fingerprint of greenhouse gas influence.
The fact that there is more warming at higher arctic latitudes than at the equator is another clear fingerprint of greenhouse gas influence (in fact, it was predicted 125 years ago that this would occur due to greenhouse gas warming).
Data: No significant CO2 increases and rising global temperatures in the early 20th Century. Rising CO2 and global temperatures in the late 20th Century. Rising CO2 and insignificant temperature increases in the 21st Century. Explain the data, MGC.
Another typical “focus on the noise, miss the forest for the trees” type of observation.
For a more rational perspective, see attached. Not to mention that the claim “Rising CO2 and insignificant temperature increases in the 21st Century” is, of course, false.
These kinds of ankle biting “objections” posted here by Dave Fair are why so-called “skeptics” are not taken seriously by the worldwide scientific community,
If you don’t see trees then how do you know there is a forest to see?
You didn’t answer the question, MGC. And correlation doesn’t prove causation.
“The American Meteorological Society (AMS) Council adopted a special statement on 8 July 2022 in response to the Supreme Court decision West Virginia vs. EPA”
I think both the AMS and Mr.Caiazza missed the real issue in W.Va. v. EPA. Whether or not any of the scientific statements or the supposed policy responses in the AMS statement are correct, SCOTUS did not rule on any of them.
What the Court said is that the EPA, being an arm of the Executive branch of the Federal government, has only the authority delegated to it by Congress. The Court further held that the EPA had over steeped its authority in promulgating its regulatory plan, and that it was up to Congress to authorize such a plan, not the EPA or the President.
Folks: the case was about who and how not what nor why.
The hysterics should breathe into a paper bag for a awhile. They should than gather their arguments and make them to Congress and the American people.
Note to the AMS: Because I said so is only a winning tactic when debating toddlers. Using it on adults invites derision, not acceptance.
I don’t disagree with you at all about the decision. My beef was with AMS ignoring that EPA never had the authority to regulate CO2 as they did and then went on to expound arguments that deserve derision.
As a classic example of fear porn it is much to be admired; clearly aimed at the untutored masses.
I have a question about heat pumps. The UK government are attempting to get everyone to get rid of their gas boilers and move to Heat Pumps (or the perpetual fuel of the future-hydrogen).
They want all old houses fitted with a heat pump pumping warm water round a radiator system.
Do any of you know if this has been successfully implemented on a large scale?
Generally I associate heat pumps with ducted air or underfloor heating.
Thanks.
‘Do any of you know if this has been successfully implemented on a large scale?’
No chance, I’m afraid, Beagle. If these things had been demonstrated to work effectively on even a small community-wide scale anywhere in the world, I think it is certain we would all have heard about it by now. In fact, I think we would all be having such undeniable real-world proof of the viability of the idea thrust into our faces night and day by the lefty-green MSM, so as to make a success of the Net Zero project as swiftly as possible. But all that can be heard about it from the normally-voluble green lobby inside and outside the British government is a deafening silence.
They work great until you really need them and then not so much. They are efficient because they move energy around and when it is really cold there is no heat to move. So you either have to have supplement resistance type heating with your heat pump or you have to upgrade the building shell with more insulation, eliminating of air leaks, install an air exchanger because you eliminated the leaks, and improve your window treatments. Proponents claim that they are cheaper and safer but don’t mention that the data in the US don’t show that they are cheaper than a high-efficiency gas furnace or explain what is supposed to happen when the power goes out. I addressed these points in my comments on the NY climate act plan here https://seam.ly/y4MHcsCy
Weather guessers still often can’t say if it will rain tomorrow, or not. They just say it’s a 50% chance (for instance) – which is useless for most purposes.
The AMS should realize that weather is made up of highly chaotic processes that Man has little to no influence over, and that climate has varied over time in ways we still do not completely understand. The AMS claims to rely on science, but they push the climate scam – shame on them!
“As a result, reducing greenhouse gas emissions can increase climate security, national security, the well-being of biological systems, and economic vitality.”
I’d sure love to find out how eliminating fossil fuels can increase national security. I imagine the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard would as well.
As for the AMS, it looks like Robert Conquest’s Second Law strikes again, i.e., Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
Regaining the energy independence we had under Trump would increase national security, but none of the alarmists are willing to listen to that argument.
“Global climate changes occurring now are larger and faster than any humanity is known to have endured since our societal transition to agriculture.”
Talk about a non-sequitur. Just because we transitioned to agriculture, an extremely short time geologically, no climate anywhere should ever change again?
Another group of socialists are upset that the Supreme Court follows the constitution rather than the latest bleatings of scientific illiterates.
Other than getting the words spelled right, there was nothing accurate in any of the claims made by the AMS.
Perhaps since the invention of agriculture, but not larger or faster than humanity has known, since humans were around at the end of the last glaciation. What we are experiencing is just a continuation of what started more than 12,000 years ago.
On June 30, at the invitation of the AMS, I sent the AMS a short article for its CCM newsletter (since I am an AMS CCM). Here’s what I wrote:
My December 2021 publication, The Impact of human CO2 on atmospheric CO2, uses IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) data to calculate the level of human CO2 in the atmosphere today is about 33 ppm and the level of natural CO2 is about 380 ppm, making human CO2 about 8% and natural CO2 about 92% of today’s atmospheric CO2.
Yet, the IPCC says natural CO2 stayed constant at about 280 ppm after 1750 and human CO2 caused all the CO2 increase above 280 ppm, making human CO2 about 32% of the CO2 in the atmosphere today.
Here is the AMS official reply:
From: Papa, Brian xxxx@ametsoc.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 6, 2022, 1:15 PM
To: Edwin Berry xx@xxxx.com
Cc: Savoie, Kelly xxxx@ametsoc.org
Subject: Re: CCM newsletter
Dr. Berry,
Kelly shared your request with me and other senior AMS staff. Following guidance from AMS Council and referencing AMS’s statement on climate change, it would not be appropriate to feature your article in the CCM newsletter.
Regards,
Brian
Brian Papa, PMP
Associate Executive Director
American Meteorological Society
617.226.xxxx
So, the AMS does not recognize and will not let its CCM’s discuss with each other any peer-reviewed professional publication that CONFLICTS with the AMS Statement on Climate Change.
The AMS, once upon a time a scientific organization, now prevents any communication that contradicts its Statement on Climate Change.
Ed
[personal emails and phone numbers removed -mod]
They can’t stand the truth.
I used to be a CCM too. This is another example why they deserve derision,
Was the membership polled concerning this statement purporting to be the sentiment of the membership as a whole? The Society as a whole is not the administrators/politicians running the day-to-day functioning of the business of the Society, separate from the science as practiced by the membership.
The AMS did not poll its membership on its climate policy. In fact, I can’t remember any occasion where AMS polled all its membership.
One more group I can add to those I don’t pay attention to. Nothing more than bumper sticker slogans and utopian pipe dreams. No science, no evidence and more importantly nothing of substance. Yawn, next story.
The problem is that far too many DO pay attention and take them seriously.
No mention of nuclear in their “easy solution”.
What is easily solvable is that whoever wrote this has an IQ lower than their shoe size.
And a coefficient of honesty even less.
When good people with integrity abandon professional societies, these societies can claim consensus. Challenge within evaporates. The AMS is but one example of this happening. And corrupt agencies like the EPA relish having the authority of these societies to prop up their agenda, in the case of the EPA, the Endangerment Finding. We need fighters within.
The death of a science due to politicization is analogous to a caterpillar being parasitized by the injected eggs of an ichneumon wasp. The eggs hatch into larvae which eat the caterpillar from the inside, hollowing it out. Eventually only the dead husk of the caterpillar remains but the multiple offspring of the ichneumon hatch forth into the world.
Thus what was once climate science now only has the appearance of a science from the outside; but it is full of larvae of political activists which are busy destroying the functional and living elements of the science. Essential foundations such as climate records, and even logical structures such as falsifiability and the null hypothesis, are being destroyed. Geological climate reconstructions are being magicked into conformity with pre-ordained CO2 dogma. Soon all that will be left are the names and logos of scientific societies and journals and universities, but no science, only activists.
And this has not happened only to climate science. It happened previously to radiation biology when it was decreed that the science must serve the political function of shutting down the nuclear industry. This was to be achieved by inflating the dangers of ionizing radiation and birthing the corrosive fiction of the linear no-threshold radiation carcinogenesis (or mutagenesis) hypothesis-fact. This burdens the nuclear industry with needless and costly regulations and redundant measures, renders politically impossible the disposal of nuclear waste and allows activists to say with affected innocence “nuclear is interesting – but way too expensive”.
Now this ichneumon parasitization is being injected into another science – biological evolution. Ironically the arguments of creationism are being turned against classical Darwinian evolution not by bible-belt evangelicals, but by (equally religious) scientists concerned about the political correctness of evolution. The language and paradigm of life from natural selection and sexual reproduction are an awkward fit with current emerging political narratives, particularly that concerning gender, trans-gender and sexual orientation. The question for instance of what – if anything – is a woman, or a man?
So the new synthesis brings in a crowded and confused narrative of apparently new (but generally not new) ideas and mechanisms, such as epigenetics and statistical models of group selection. By the familiar smoke-and-mirrors wave of a wand, these new arguments sufficiently confuse the evolutionary and selective basis of living organisms to allow activists to effectively deny the need to acknowledge biology in political decisions, definitions and power structures.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_evolutionary_synthesis
So science after science is being hollowed out by the ichneumon larvae of political activism. Any science that causes any kind of obstruction to the advancement of the progressive political empire must be wasp-injected in this manner. More and more, science is servile to politics. As Russell Brand puts it so well – “don’t follow the science because the science only follows the money”. Science must be shaped to serve and not oppose new political mandates. And they’ve now got an efficient mechanism of changing science from the inside. Ironically it borrows from the same nature whose truths it so fears – the subversive, deadly genius of the ichneumon wasp.
“Multiple independent lines of scientific evidence confirm that people bear responsibility.”
For 40 years I’ve heard these charlatans always spew out that the evidence is overwhelming. But I’m still awaiting the very first time they ever provide any of this evidence. Apparently, leftists think that just the act of claiming something is all the evidence required.
Prophets with the claim: “Repent! The end is near!” have been with us throughout recorded history and probably before. Their predictions have yet to come to fruition.
spren says: “I’m still awaiting the very first time they ever provide any of this evidence”
Obviously you’ve never looked. “Skeptics” like spren think that if they don’t look, the evidence “doesn’t exist”.