Tuesday, August 11, 2009

This is gonna be fun

A notice flows into Eli's mailbox
If you are planning to attend the meetings of the American Chemical Society in Washington DC Aug 16-19, be sure to visit the booth of the Heartland Institute and sign up to protest the ACS statement on climate change. If you cannot attend and are a current or former ACS member, contact Dr Peter Bonk at peterjbonk@gmail.com
UPDATE: FWIW, Google be praised, Peter Bonk is Chair of the Small Chemical Businesses Division of ACS if anyone is interested on where this is coming from

Eli plans to stop by and discuss the issue with them. He thinks it would be a good thing to have a petition of support, but bunnies are not very good at organizing things. Now, as they say is the time to step up and let your opinion be known. You can find the ACS statement on climate change here. You can also send letters of support for Rudy Baum, editor of C&E News who is being Moranoed for committing the truth about climate change here
Chemical & Engineering News Letters To The Editor
E-mail address is edit.cen@acs.org.
Fax number is (202) 872-8727.
Or you can send your letter to:
C&EN Editor-in-Chief
1155--16th St., N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

As if this were not enough, we have news of another fun event at the Fall AGU meeting we have

U06:Diverse Views from Galileo's Window: Researching Factors and Processes of Climate Change in the Age of Anthropogenic CO2 Sponsor: Union

Convener: Sultan Hameed
Stony Brook University
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences

Willie Soon
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

David R Legates
University of Delaware

Description: Understanding the Earth’s climate and its ecological system requires knowledge that spans across an extremely diverse range of expertise in which no single person or organization can master or capture. Synthesizing the myriad of complex inter-relationships that comprise the Earth’s climate system requires an integrated assessment of the vast array of disciplines that affect and, in turn, are affected by, the Earth’s climate. Thus, our proposed session is open to all scientists who are interested in such a master synthesis. Invited speakers will discuss emerging progress in the key areas of atmospheric processes, oceanography, hydrologic variation, paleoclimatic research, biological processes, geological sciences, mathematical and computational sciences, and solar variability. The ultimate goal of this session is to contribute to the scientific discussion for the upcoming UN IPCC’s fifth assessment report which is due 2014. We plan to publish new results from this session.
and
GC07: Solar Variability and its Effect on Climate Change
Sponsor: Global Environmental Change

CoSponsor: Atmospheric Sciences
SPA - Solar and Heliospheric Physics

Convener: Nicola Scafetta
Duke University Dept. of Physics

Richard Willson
ACRIM

Description: Solar variability and its climate change significance are to be explored. We invite papers relevant to solar variability and its effect on climate on all time scales including theoretical and empirical papers dealing with: 1) total solar irradiance observations and proxy reconstructions, solar magnetic activity, solar cosmic ray modulation and solar activity forecasts; 2) solar variation effects on global and local temperature cycles and trends, cloud cover, precipitations, droughts, floods, monsoons and stream flow.
Eli and Ethon will be flying out to enjoy the denial fest. Among other things asking the right question can be .... useful. See you in SF. Remember, it only costs a few bucks to join AGU:)

12 comments:

  1. Who else has a table? A counter-petition seems, unfortunately, necessary.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ex-AGU member11/8/09 5:47 PM

    Bah. After McLean et al. came out I gave AGU a while to mea culpa and when they didn't I told them not to bother sending a membership renewal as I no longer had any confidence in them. I also said I'd stop reviewing for them and would send future papers elsewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It seems to me that these are two different kinds of things.

    1) Arguments about actual solar behavior *could* be real science, and seem a legitimate topic for an AGU meeting ... in theory. Of course, in practice, with the specific individuals, perhaps not.

    Isn't it a fine thing that the US Army (ARO) supports Scafetta's research (and West, of course, works for the Army)?

    The AGU sessions do provide useful context for other efforts :-)

    2) A petition *against* the ACS position seems like something else. Weirdly, I would claim that one might *not* want to discourage people from signing this...

    I've been studying the Singer/Happer et al Open Letter to APS, and it provided a useful list of names in one place. It was especially fun to see that 3 USC AsStronautics folks {Gruntman, Kunc, Rapp} signed, amidst an effort to get more funding for climate science for USC.

    It was also interesting to see that Kunc was the thesis advisor for one W.H. Soon...

    Put another way, people have difficulty getting some people to bet regarding climate change. These petitions are examples of another kind of bet for (most) people:

    "I bet my reputation as a scientist that I know enough about another field to declare it wrong."

    Personally, I think it is worth having such lists for future reference....

    I think ACS could then reply, saying "We take your concerns seriously. Could each of you who signed this please send us a list of your 10 most relevant peer-reviewed publications on climate science?"

    ACS seems as unlikely to weaken its position as APS, but of course, these efforts aren't really intended to accomplish that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Heartland Booth at ACS is right next to the tea party booth. Chemistry is a vital part of tea you know.

    I'm planning on going to the AGU. Might be fun to see these in person. Nothing wrong with a little comedy to spice up the meeting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Membership is certainly cheap, but attendance at these meetings rather less so.

    But anyway, there's always a few presentations like this in the mix. It's a big meeting.

    ReplyDelete
  6. But, the ACS is not a Certified Climatologist Organization and has no Approved High-Impact Peer-Reviewed Journals in Climatology.

    The statement is meaningless.

    And, what qualifies Bruce E. Bursten, Ph.D. to speak on Climatological issues? What are his Peer-Reviewed Papers appearing in the Approved Journals?

    ReplyDelete
  7. John Said:
    "I think ACS could then reply, saying "We take your concerns seriously. Could each of you who signed this please send us a list of your 10 most relevant peer-reviewed publications on climate science?""

    Or maybe even better:

    "We take your concerns seriously. Could each of you who signed this please send us a list of the top 10 most relevant peer-reviewed publications that made you form this opinion?"

    The list would probably be very similar in length of course, but that would be more telling.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The ACS needs only ask one question:

    "Are the petition signatures genuine?"

    Then we can all sit back and watch heads explode.

    -- bi

    ReplyDelete
  9. The International Polar Year results ought to be rolling in by then too:

    December 14 to 18, 2009: AGU Fall Meeting- ... a Union Session on Education and Outreach: U15 - 'Toward Environmental Literacy with Examples from IPY'

    http://ipy.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_k2&id=2259&view=item&Itemid=

    -----

    ReplyDelete
  10. Some unmeasured chlorine atom reaction rates important for stratospheric modeling of atom catalyzed removal of ozone
    Mario J. Molina, F. S. Rowland
    J. Phys. Chem., 1975, 79 (6), pp 667–669
    Publication Date: March 1975 ()
    DOI: 10.1021/j100573a024

    you were saying?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm all for solar fans arguing about attribution in front of an audience of scientists.

    If I were going, I think I'd be very tempted to have quotes of various press releases or interviews to see how they match...

    I'm still wondering why the Army pays for Scafetta & West.

    Speaking of AGU, I see they're going to experiment with "open review".

    (and meanwhile, Eli: PLEASE can't you disable the generic Anonymous? people still don't read your Dear Anon missive.)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Is there a report on what happened at the ACS meeting?

    ReplyDelete

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