Climate Change Conversations(1)
Commentary from Officials of the American Chemical Society , Science Magazine, April 5, 2013
Submitted by S. Thomas Bond, Professor of Chemistry (Retired), Lewis County, WV.
“Climate change affects everyone, so everyone should understand why the climate is changing and what it means to them, their children, and generations to follow,” they say. They encourage scientists to engage groups they are already a member of, such as neighborhoods, school boards, religious groups, service clubs, political organizations, to “engage in respectful conversations on climate change and on the policies and actions individuals, communities, and nations might take to mitigate and adapt to what is happening to our planet.” This seems good advice for informed non-scientists, too.
The evidence is overwhelming. “The concentrations of greenhouse gases are higher and increasing faster than any time in the past million years. The average temperature of Earth is increasing, ice is melting, oceans are acidifying, and extreme weather events are more frequent. Human activities, principally the combustion of fossil fuels, are a major source of greenhouse gases and a major driver of climate change.”
Some of the U. S. institutions and societies, including the National Academies, Environmental Protection Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the American Institute of Physics have prepared materials that are on the web, useful for the public understanding of these issues.
Last year the American Chemical Society released a toolkit on greenhouse gases atmospheric and planetary warming, and the Earth’s energy balance, among other topics. the toolkit is elementary, but suitable to an introduction to more advanced topics. Implicit in this resource is the message that the world much make adaptations to changes that have already occurred, and that reducing emissions is required to avoid a warmer planet.
The take home for those of us that are not daily engaged in the practice of science is that the overwhelming evidence for climate change cannot be denied. WE need to inform ourselves and discuss it in exactly the same groups the authors of this editorial suggest for scientists – most people never come in contact with working scientists, but take their convictions from those they consider better informed than themselves. Speak up!
(1) Science Vol. 340, April 5, 2013, page 9.
(2) Bassam Z. Shakhashri, Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, Professor in the Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin. President of the American Chemical Society in 2012.
Jerry A. Bell, Emeritus Professor, Department of Chemistry, Simmons College, Boston, MA. Chairman of the ACS Presidential Working Group on Climate Science.
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