Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
American Association for the Advancement of Science hoped to extend
these practical domestic applications of climate science to international
development. The AAAS made climate change a central component of
its international advocacy program, and the group worked to establish a
firmer scientific consensus on CO
2
-induced warming to buttress poten-
tial policy recommendations. For advocates of both the National Climate
Program and the AAAS initiative, the immediate concern was to facilitate
more and better research into climate. Their logic resonates like the chorus
of a Greek drama. Better knowledge, climate scientists believed, would
shape good policy.
In the mid-1970s, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released
three reports on climate and resources that emphasized the practical appli-
cations of climate science.
Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for
Action,
published in 1975, called for integration of government-sponsored
climate research across disciplines and institutions in order to foster a
better understanding of atmospheric phenomena and to provide useful
data to policymakers and planners in areas like agriculture and emergency
management.
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The NAS Committee on Climate and Weather Fluctua-
tions and Agricultural Production published
Climate and Food: Climatic
Fluctuation and U.S. Agricultural Production
in 1976.
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And in 1977, the NAS
Panel on Water and Climate within the Geophysics Study Committee pro-
duced a study titled
Climate, Climatic Change, and the Water Supply
.
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The
reports contained technical and research recommendations, and all three
advocated better coordination of climate research to facilitate its practical
incorporation into planning at local, state, and national levels.
The NAS studies were in part prompted by members of Congress who
supported coordinating climate research in the service of natural resource
planning. Congressional Democrats saw the increasingly frequent and
dire— and often contradictory— reports and predictions from climate sci-
entists, along with the lack of national coordination in climatic research, as
an opportunity to take the initiative on federal science policy and undercut
executive control over government science agencies.
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Led in the House by
California representative George Brown, concerned congresspeople noted
that “the present research and data-gathering in the federal government is
scattered, fragmentary, and inadequate compared to the impact of igno-
rance in this area.”
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Brown and his colleagues in the Senate pushed for a
congressionally legislated National Climate Program that would establish
