American Geophysical Union Releases Revised Position Statement on Climate Change

[LocoAko]

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2013/2013-38.shtml

American Geophysical Union Releases Revised Position Statement on Climate Change

Statement Highlights How Human Activities Are Changing Earth's Climate and the Harmful Impact of that Change on Society

5 August 2013

AGU Release No. 13-38

WASHINGTON, DC—The American Geophysical Union today released a revised version of its position statement on climate change. Titled “Human-induced Climate Change Requires Urgent Action,” the statement declares that “humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years” and that “rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes.” AGU develops position statements to provide scientific expertise on significant policy issues related to Earth and space science. These statements are limited to positions that are within the range of available geophysical data or norms of legitimate scientific debate.

“AGU has a responsibility to help policy makers and the public understand the impacts our science can have on public health and safety, economic stability and growth, and national security,” said Gerald North, chair of AGU’s Climate Change Position Statement Review Panel. “Because our understanding of climate change and its impacts on the world around us has advanced so significantly in the last few years, it was vitally important that AGU update its position statement. The new statement is more reflective of the current state of scientific knowledge. It also calls greater attention to the specific societal impacts we face and actions that can diminish the threat.”

AGU’s position statements are renewed every 4 years. The climate change position statement was first adopted in December 2003. It was then revised and reaffirmed in December 2007, and again in February 2012.

AGU’s Position Statement Task Force reviews each statement to determine if it should be renewed as is, modified, or eliminated. In March 2012, the Task Force determined that the climate change position statement would require updating prior to renewal.

With input from AGU’s Council, relevant section and focus group leadership, the Position Statement Task Force, and staff, a panel of experts was subsequently formed to review the statement and make any necessary modifications. A draft of the updated statement was printed in Eos in November 2012, and all AGU members were encouraged to submit comments. After further revisions by the review panel based on the comments received, the statement was then adopted by the AGU Council in June 2013 and by the AGU Board in August 2013.

The newly approved statement will be reported to the AGU membership in the 20 August 2013 issue of Eos, the source of record for all AGU proceedings.

The 15-person panel that reviewed and updated the position statement included the following:

Amy Clement, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami

John Farrington, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Susan Joy Hassol, Climate Communication

Robert Hirsch, U.S. Geological Survey

Peter Huybers, Harvard University

Peter Lemke, Alfred Wegener Institute

Gerald North, Texas A&M University (panel chair)

Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University

Roger Pielke Sr., Colorado State University

Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Gavin Schmidt, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA

Leonard A. Smith, London School of Economics

Eric Sundquist, U.S. Geological Survey

Pieter Tans, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Learn more about the revised statement, the previous statement, and all AGU position statements.

Notes for Journalists: Carol Finn, AGU president, and/or Margaret Leinen, AGU president-elect, and Gerald North, chair of the Position Statement Review Panel, will be available for comment. Members of the press should contact Joan Buhrman to schedule an interview.

The American Geophysical Union is dedicated to advancing the Earth and space sciences for the benefit of humanity through its scholarly publications, conferences, and outreach programs. AGU is a not-for-profit, professional, scientific organization representing more than 62,000 members in 144 countries. Join our conversation on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media channels.

The full statement can be found here: http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/pdf/position_statements/AGU_Climate_Statement_new.pdf

Some highlights include:

...These changes are broadly consistent with long-understood physics and predictions of how the climate system is expected to respond to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. The changes are inconsistent with explanations of climate change that rely on known natural influences.

Impacts harmful to society, including increased extremes of heat, precipitation, and coastal high water are currently being experienced, and are projected to increase.

While important scientific uncertainties remain as to which particular impacts will be experienced where, no uncertainties are known that could make the impacts of climate change inconsequential. Furthermore, surprise outcomes, such as the unexpectedly rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, may entail even more dramatic changes than anticipated.

Actions that could diminish the threats posed by climate change to society and ecosystems include substantial emissions cuts to reduce the magnitude of climate change, as well as preparing for changes that are now unavoidable. The community of scientists has responsibilities to improve overall understanding of climate change and its impacts.

[LocoAko]

while I agree with the recommendations, of course, the new paid leadership, which knows nothing about science, has been slowly turning the AGU into a lobbying group. it's not a good direction overall for science.

Interesting, I'll admit I wasn't aware of the ongoing leadership changes within the organization. What sort of stuff has been happening?

[Snow_Miser]

Dr. Roger Pielke's response to the AGU Position Statement:

 

"In my view, this means we were tasked to report on the most important aspects of climate change. This was incompletely done in the Statement, where they inaccurately, in my view, discuss a view of climate change that is dominated by the emission of CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases. Indeed, the Committee, under the direction of Jerry North, with the report writing subgroup led by Susan Hassol, was clearly motivated to produce a Statement of this one particular view. Under his leadership, other views were never given an adequate opportunity to be discussed.

 

The Committee leadership already had a course of action in mind even when we were appointed.

 

These climate changes are a result of human and natural climate forcings and feedbacks – the relative role of each in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features, and even the global annual average radiative forcing, however, is still uncertain. We do know that added carbon dioxide is the largest human-caused, and black carbon the second largest positive annual, global-averaged radiative forcing, while sulfates are among the largest human-caused negative annual, global-averaged radiative forcing. The importance of decadal and longer variations in natural annual, global-averaged radiative forcing (e.g. due to solar, and from internal natural climate feedbacks, such as from cloudiness), however, remains uncertain.

 

Climate models, unfortunately, are still unable to provide skillful predictions of changes in regional climate statistics on multi-decadal time scales at the detail desired by the impacts communities.   

 

Even on the global scale, the annual, global-averaged radiative forcing predicted by the models is significantly greater than has been observed based on the accumulation of Joules in the climate system. The summer arctic sea ice extent, in contrast, has been significantly under predicted by the models, while the summer Antarctic sea ice extent increase has been missed by the models. Also attribution of specific extreme weather events to multi-decadal changes in climate has not yet been shown, and is likely not even possible.

 

We recommend a way forward that promotes effective policy decisions even with these uncertainties.  The Statement on Climate Change that was adopted by the majority on the Committee, unfortunately, does not provide an accurate summary of our understanding of climate change issues, and, thus, is not an effective policy framework to reduce risks from the climate system.

 

The effective use of mitigation and adaption to reduce the risk to water resources, food, energy, human health and well-being, and ecosystem function from climate (including changes in the climate system) requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted approach.

 

Attempts to significantly influence climate impacts based on just controlling CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases emissions is an inadequate and incomplete policy for this purpose.The goal should be to seek politically and technologically practical ways (with minimal cost and maximum benefit)  to reduce the vulnerability of the environment and society to the entire spectrum of human-caused and natural risks including those from climate, but also from all other environmental and social threats."