Scientists urged to step to plate on climate politics

Dan Vergano in USA Today: Money and politics, the stuff of social science, now drive global warming, and climate science needs to get with it, a National Research Council report suggests. "Demand is growing for credible, understandable and useful information for responding to climate change," says the report, called Restructuring Federal Climate Research to Meet the Challenges of Climate Change. The report, released Thursday, calls for "transformation" of climate science to emphasize the climate's influence on food, economics and public health.

Otherwise, there's lots of evidence that politicians will tackle such practical problems without scientists. In his speech to Congress last week, for example, President Obama asked his audience "to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change." The Senate and House had hearings last week that explored the economics of climate change. And the Center for Public Integrity reported that about 2,340 climate change lobbyists, advocating for everything from more nuclear reactors to money for saving coral reefs, have found employment since 2008.

…A House Ways and Means Committee hearing discussed keeping emissions worldwide below levels needed to trigger a 2-degree rise, which poses "severe risks to natural systems and human health," says climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But Field warns that such an increase already may be locked in this century because of newly recognized effects:

• Forest fires in drying tropical regions will release extra carbon dioxide.
• Melting tundra in the warming Arctic releases methane, a greenhouse gas.
• Warmer oceans are less able to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide....

Michaelangelo's version of David and Goliath, the Sistine Chapel