The statement of the American Geophysical Union may be read at http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change.html . I was
unaware that the AAPT had endorsed it, however. I received my
"Announcer" in the Monday morning mail. In this case the
executive ofthe AAPT does not speak for all of its members.
While the AGU statement makes clear the marginal nature of the
current scientific basis for prediction, it does come down very
clearly on the side of those opposing inaction. If I said that in
a convoluted way, it is merely a reflection of the statement
itself. In my opinion the AGU (and the AAPT) could both have done
much better by keeping silent. (That narrow statement pretending
to define science is so transparently targeted against the cretin
science people that it would be much more honest to denounce them
out of hand. We have here *two* good examples of unsatisfactory
results of committee compromise on matters of principle.)
Jack Uretsky points to the problem when he asks "And do we, who
sporadically claim numeracy, exemplify logical discourse?"
My answer to this question is "certainly not", and the AGU
statement is a very clear example of what we should not be doing
as scientists and role models for our students. I would like to
see a much stronger acknowledgement of what I feel is a terribly
incomplete state of knowledge in the realm of quantitative
understanding of climate change and the factors which influence
it. While the IPCC has come down with a strong position, one
should always "consider the source". Those guy's jobs depend
upon the existence of a problem, a solution to which can be
approached by governmental action. They are strongly motivated to
accept a position of knowledge, and to reject acknowledgement of
any degree of ignorance.
The first canon of science should be "Always be honest". The AGU
in its weasly way has tried to do that, but it has failed.
Instead of, for example, stating the consensus facts with their
attendant uncertainties the AGU has made it appear that science
has perfectly definite answers. They *could have said* that from
analysis of global temperature data taken over the last x
years it is likely that the global temperature has risen by y
degrees celsius in that time, and by extrapolation, can be
expected to increase by another z degrees celsius over the next
w years. This latter predicted increase is uncertain by a factor
of v (actually about 2, I believe) and is based on the assumption
that what is being seen now is a long term trend. The statement
should go on to say that both increases and decreases in global
temperature of greater magnitude are known to have occured during
the last ten thousand years (during which time there have been no
large scale glaciations, when the excursions were even greater).
It would have been scientific to present their opinions in this
way.
But they didn't. "Uncertain" and "assumption" are words which
apparently cannot appear in such important position documents
received from advisory bodies, and numbers? We've already seen
that Joe Sixpack (and Senator Hillary Sixpack) have no sympathy
for numerical arguments. (I can't imagine any more success being
achieved by pointing to *post hoc ergo propter hoc* arguments in
the history of this particular bicker, either.)
It does bother me that, in the interest of being seen to give
guidance from a position of knowledge, the AGU (and, earlier,
the IPCC) sacrificed the first canon of science.