Political Climate
Dec 29, 2014
AAAS called out for disgraceful, politically driven endorsement of CAGW

Dear Alan Leshner,

As an AAAS Fellow since 1994, I am appalled by the AAAS’ decision (neither consulting its membership nor the AAAS Fellows) to issue “a BLANKET ENDORSEMENT of ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming’ (CAGW) by this entire Professional Society”.

Any “REAL scientist” (who has <> knowledge whatsoever about the many climate cycles over deacdes, centuries and thousands of years) knows this field of “human-caused climate change” represents nothing more than consensus science and, more specifically, a POLITICAL AGENDA which has apparently been created to invoke fear and hysteria, and to push for higher taxes and a unified World Government, based on no scientific facts or data.

CAGW has nothing to do with The hypothesis-driven Scientific Method, but instead relies completely on computer-simulation models, and it seems that no one can admit that “prediction by any of these models has been proven (even one time) to be correct”. Yet, more than $20 billion to $30 billion in the U.S. alone has been spent per year since the end of the 1980s...on this bogus science field (to pay for salaries and more research money to “perform further computer simulations"). JUST THINK how much further the health of each American might improve, if this money ($500 billion to $750 billion) could be channeled into true, meaningful basic and clinical scientific research !

In the Science journal, there should be some venue for discourse on this issue...among AAAS Fellows, or all of AAAS, or all scientists of the Western World. If there is no such opportunity, my plans are to resign as an AAAS Fellow and stop subscribing to the Science journal, which unfortunately has become increasingly little more than a political rag these past several years.

Sincerely,

Daniel W Nebert, MD
Professor Emeritus, Dept of Environmental Medicine; Center for Environmental Genetics
Professor Emeritus, Dept of Pediatrics & Molecular Developmental Biology, Division of Human Genetics
University of Cincinnati Medical Center, P.O. Box 670056, Cincinnati OH 45267
Affiliate Faculty, Oregon State University, Corvallis OR 97331
Faculty Consultant, Yale University School of Public Health, New Haven CT 06520

Dear Dan,

BRAVO!

Thanks so much for your efforts on behalf of legitimate science.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has become a disgrace under its present leadership.  It is amazing that they refuse to consult their membership, let alone their most honored members, their Fellows, on matters of great consequence.

It is therefore important for you and the other Fellows of wayward scientific societies to make their objections known.  Thank you very much for doing so.

Gordon

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA

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Keep up the good work, Dan.

I let my membership in AAAS lapse some years ago when the likes of Holdren, Lubchenko and Leshner took over.  I suppose they still count me as a fellow.  Roger Cohen led an attempt to rewrite the American Physicial Society’s statement on climate a few years ago.  The initial effort was crushed with a brutal cynicism any totalitarian state would envy.  But perhaps some good will come of it eventually.

In the mean time, much damage has been done to the reputation of science.

Will Happer
Physics, Princeton
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CO2 data shows nobody’s dead from a little carbon dioxide

Lorraine Yapps Cohen

A little CO2 won’t hurt you. A lot of CO2 won’t hurt you. You breathe out 40,000 ppm with every breath. Do you worry about California banning YOU from breathing out?

I want to clarify my comments. I recently wrote that my CO2 meter said I should be dead in San Diego while exhaling. That was a CO2 spoof, folks. I was having some fun, and I’m still quite alive as I write.

But let me be perfectly clear: I really do have a CO2 meter, and it really did squawk when I blew my exhale into it. Because I’m a CO2 engine, just like you.

Real data

What I’m about to say isn’t a spoof. It’s the result of research and discussions with scientists working in the field. For all of you who need the data, I’ll give them in summary, but you go look up the mountain of references, do some research for yourself, even get a meter if you like. You’ll believe the numbers below better if you discover them on your own. And you won’t need to believe me when I say “I told you so.”

The following summarizes levels of CO2 under various conditions:

40,000 ppm: The exhaled breath of normal, healthy people.

8,000 ppm: CO2 standard for submarines

2,500 ppm: CO2 level in a small hot crowded bar in the city

2,000 ppm: The point at which my CO2 meter squawks by playing Fur Elise

1,000 to 2,000 ppm: Historical norms for the earth’s atmosphere over the past 550 million years

1,000 to 2,000 ppm: The level of CO2 at which plant growers like to keep their greenhouses

1,000 ppm: Average level in a lecture hall filled with students

600 ppm: CO2 level in my office with me and my husband in it

490 ppm: CO2 level in my office working alone

399 ppm: Current average outdoor level of CO2 in the air

280 ppm: Pre-industrial levels in the air, on the edge of “CO2 famine” for plants

150 ppm: The point below which most plants die of CO2 starvation

(all of these data vary a little with size of the space, ventilation, wind, and the like)

What does it mean?

There’s a lot more data out there, but this simple list says it all. Carbon dioxide is present in our outside air at about 400 ppm.

A little less than that and our plants start to suffer.

A little more and there’s little effect on people while plants proliferate.

A lot more and there’s still not much effect on people.

Nowhere in the list of numbers do people get dead. Well, except for those submarines that never surface. You get the point.

Above average is a good thing

Above ambient levels of 390 ppm is where plants start to thrive. Remember your science: it says plants take in CO2 and output O2; people take in O2 and output CO2. We’ve got a good thing going with the plants, not to mention that they grow into what we eat. Having more to eat is a good thing in my book...and in the book of the world where so many people still don’t have enough food.

What happens with less?

But the powers that be namely Gov. Schwarzenegger and the AB32 crew want to lower the levels of CO2 in the air. If those regulations succeed, we will have targeted the plants for destruction. Then what will we eat? Each other?

Leave nature alone

Left on its own, nature has seen much higher levels of CO2 in times when human beings weren’t exhaling in numbers or driving cars. How about we leave well enough alone and let nature and people do their own thing. If that means a little more CO2, we can take it and take it well.

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