The AMS has a Draft statement on climate change, vn 7.0. I found it via RP Sr, who dislikes it, for the obvious reasons: it fails to reflect his hobbyhorses: which are, as ever, downplaying the role of CO2 in favour of land-use changes, aerosols, etc (of course it does mention them, but naturally enough after GHGs). I find his “I reproduce a summary below of findings that have been reached on the weblog Climate Science (http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/main-conclusions/ ) which should be discussed in the AMS Statement.” quite shameless self-promotion. It will be interesting to see if the AMS is convinced. I am prepared to agree that the linking to weather predictions models isn’t quite as strong as they imply, but thats just trivia.
OTOH there are some oddnesses: “In the last fifty years atmospheric CO2 concentration has been increasing at a rate much faster than any rates observed in the geological record for several thousand years.” Geological record? They mean ice cores. And several thousand? They mean hundred thousand. Unless they think the glacial termination changes are comparable, but I don’t think they are.
And in the sea level section: “Moreover, ice sheet modeling and paleoclimatic observations indicate that the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will likely cause global sea level to rise meters if warming continues at its present rate through the 21st century.” This too seems odd… the last I saw, Greenlands contribution over the next 100y is much less than a meter. Or… is that a carefully constructed true-but-misleading statement? It can, just about, be read as Greenland will cause meters of SLR, at some point in the far future, if T increases through this century. And that version would be true.
