Well, their paragraph on Climate Science is a rather astonishing take on the APS Workshop. Their paragraph on Climate Change seems to come from the Guardian. Their statement on Climate Action reiterates their rather crazy statement in 2007
Apart from the issue that no one on the POPA seems to understand any of these issues beyond a superficial level (after Koonin and Rosner departed from the POPA), and that their statements are naive and unprofessional, here is my real problem with this. This is an egregious misuse of the expertise of the APS. Their alleged understanding of issues like spectroscopy and fluid dynamics are not of any direct relevance to the issues they write about in this statement. The statement is an embarrassment to the APS.
Either reform is required, or an alternate organization.
What almost everyone one gets wrong about California’s water “problem.” But as is almost always the case, it also completely misses the point that there is no market for water here; it is allocated almost completely by politics.
[Update late morning]
Fight the drought: End recycling?
I agree that Ron is a smart guy, but I do think there’s some of this going on:
I hate to impute motives, but I really have to wonder if he is succumbing to peer pressure, since believing anything that smacks of denial-ism is really frowned upon in the intellectual circles I’m sure Ron is part of.
I think it’s compounded by the fact that it’s hard enough to change your mind once. It would be kind of embarrassing to revert back to skepticism. The key point, of course, is that Ron doesn’t necessarily believe that the problem demands any particular policy solution.