Re: [Phys-l] Prof. Hal Lewis resigns from APS

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

So the reality is that climate scientists who predict global warming might
receive budget cuts if Republicans are in power, but increases from the
Democrats.  This makes it look like the Republicans would want to cut off
funding so that there will be no possibility of evidence against their
position.  Predicting catastrophic effects might be a two edged sword which
can cut the researchers.

Now the increase in funding will mainly go for monitoring, which does not
add a penny to the universities.  As I understand they can not take a cut of
money that is spent off campus, only money spent on campus.  The
justification is that they have to provide facilities for the research
associates such as offices...

The extra monitoring it turns out is not just useful for climate research,
but should also be helpful in weather prediction.  Lewis's resignation
letter becomes more unrealistic with more facts.

Apparently a number of the climatologists actually have degrees in
metereology.  Would either of these degrees be in the physics departments,
or more likely in an engineering department or some other department such as
geology?  In other words how many would be considered physicists?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> Here's a link to a recent article on the U.S. climate research budget:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
> dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033104062.html
>
> Our spending on climate research was reduced significantly during the Bush
> Administration.  The new expenditures restore some of that funding, but
> they still are very long way from a "trillion" dollars.  More like a few
> billion over the next five years, and a lot of that is for hardware to
> measure climate variables.