The US government and global environmental change research: Ideas and agendas

Technical Report · Tue Aug 10 04:00:00 EDT 1993

OSTI ID:10172115

As issues like global warming, ozone depletion, and deforestation -- collectively called ``global change`` -- rose to scientific prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, scientists began to imagine research programs so ambitious that the workings of the planet itself would be brought within reach of understanding and prediction. Global change posed the scientific challenge of understanding the earth as a fantastically complicated dynamic system, with each part -- climate, weather, atmosphere, oceans, the solid earth, plants and animals, human activities, and more -- potentially affecting each part. New Ideas and new technology held out hope that such a grand view might be possible; new problems, global warming chief among them made attempting it seem imperative, on both scientific and policy grounds. By the mid-1980s, ideas for global change research programs, several of them floated by agencies of the US government, had become well advanced. This report discusses the history to and formation of the committee on earth sciences. The charter is included.

• Research Organization: National Inst. for Global Environmental Change, Davis, CA (United States); California Univ., Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); National Science Foundation, Washington, DC (United States); National Inst. for Global Environmental Change, Davis, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 10172115
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/61010--T7; ON: UN93018779; CNN: Grant SES-9011503
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290300
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540110
540210
540310
AIR-BIOSPHERE INTERACTIONS
AIR-WATER INTERACTIONS
BASIC STUDIES
CLIMATIC CHANGE
COORDINATED RESEARCH PROGRAMS
CRYOSPHERE
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
EARTH PLANET
ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH, AND SAFETY
GLOBAL ASPECTS
INTERGOVERNMENTAL COOPERATION
NASA
US DOE
US NOAA