Statement of the Council of the NAS Regarding Global Change Petition



STATEMENT BY THE COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES REGARDING GLOBAL CHANGE PETITION April 20, 1998 The Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is concerned about the confusion caused by a petition being circulated via a letter from a former president of this Academy. This petition criticizes the science underlying the Kyoto treaty on carbon dioxide emissions (the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change), and it asks scientists to recommend rejection of this treaty by the U.S. Senate. The petition was mailed with an op-ed article from The Wall Street Journal and a manuscript in a format that is nearly identical to that of scientific articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy. In particular, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a major consensus study on this issue, entitled Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming (1991,1992). This analysis concluded that " ...even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. ... Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises." In addition, the Committee on Global Change Research of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the NAS and the NAE, will issue a major report later this spring on the research issues that can help to reduce the scientific uncertainties associated with global change phenomena, including climate change. NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES COUNCIL Bruce Alberts (president) National Academy of Sciences Washington, D.C. Jack Halpern (vice president) Louis Block Distinguished Professor Emeritus Department of Chemistry University of Chicago Peter H. Raven (home secretary) Director Missouri Botanical Garden St. Louis F. Sherwood Rowland (foreign secretary) Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science Department of Chemistry University of California Irvine Ronald L. Graham (treasurer) Chief Scientist AT&T Laboratories Florham Park, N.J. Mary Ellen Avery Professor of Pediatrics Harvard Medical School Boston Ralph J. Cicerone Chancellor-Designate Dean, School of Physical Sciences, and Daniel G. Aldrich Professor of Earth System Science Department of Earth System Science University of California Irvine Edward E. David Jr.(1) President EED Inc. Bedminster, N.J. Marye Anne Fox Chancellor-Designate North Carolina State University, and Vice President for Research and M. June and J. Virgil Waggoner Regents Chair in Chemistry Department of Chemistry University of Texas Austin Ralph E. Gomory(2) President Alfred P. Sloan Foundation New York City David M. Kipnis Distinguished University Professor Department of Internal Medicine Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis Daniel E. Koshland Jr. Professor in the Graduate School Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California Berkeley Mary-Lou Pardue Boris Magasanik Professor Department of Biology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge Luis Sequeira J.C. Walker Professor Emeritus Department of Plant Pathology University of Wisconsin Madison I.M. Singer Institute Professor Department of Mathematics Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge Robert H. Wurtz Chief Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research National Eye Institute National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Md. Richard N. Zare Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor Department of Chemistry Stanford University Stanford, Calif. ___________________________________ (1) abstained (2) unable to participate