Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
international research effort at organizations like UNEP and the WMO.
Revelle and his advisory group— including prominent members of the
climate science community such as former NOAA chief Robert White,
NCAR's William Kellogg, Eugene Bierly of the NSF's Climate Dynam-
ics Research Section, and Congressman Brown and his staff director and
science advisor, Tom Moss— proposed that the AAAS serve as a link
between these various organizations. They hoped the AAAS could build,
in White's words, “the bridge between the complexities of the science and
the general public and the policy-makers.”
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The AAAS committee emphasized the importance of international
cooperation and interdisciplinary communication. “It would be hard to
find a problem in science that has such global characteristics,” White con-
tended.
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Data collection and analysis required input from scientists study-
ing disparate subjects across the globe, and subsequent discussions about
the policy implications of climatic research would necessarily include a
diverse community of nations, including many from the developing world.
Revelle's advisory group went out of its way not only to frame climate
in terms of resources but also to define climate science itself as a potential
resource for less developed countries.
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The AAAS saw climate science
as an environmental management tool, much like the sciences of forestry
or agronomy. “Climatology is a peculiarly applied science in that its rai-
son d'être is its relation to human welfare,” the group noted. “You have to
find out those things about climate that mean something to somebody.”
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The committee believed that disseminating climatic information would
help developing countries to better exploit favorable conditions when they
existed and to protect themselves against anomalies when they occurred.
Managing climate and climatic information required participation not
only from governments and organizations but also from individuals
responsible for managing and utilizing resources at the local level. With a
U.N.-sponsored World Climate Conference upcoming in 1979, the AAAS
hoped to establish better channels of communication between the World
Meteorological Organization and the farmers and water resource managers
most affected by the potential impacts of climatic variability.
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White and Revelle understood that political solutions to the global
problems associated with climate change would require buy-in from the
developing world, and this in turn would require an unusual degree of
scientific certainty. Without discussing specific mitigation policies, the
