Dr. Jeffrey Gaffney, chair of UALR’s Department of Chemistry and lead scientist for the Department of Energy Atmospheric Science Program’s Megacity Aerosol Experiment – Mexico City (MAX-Mex), joined a growing list of climate scientists asking the American Farm Bureau to rethink its position on global climate change.

Gaffney joined other scientists with climate change expertise to ask the Farm Bureau for a meeting to discuss the latest science. According to the Farm Bureau, “there is no generally agreed upon scientific assessment on the exact impact or extent of carbon emissions from human activities, their impact on past decades of warming, or how they will affect future climate changes.”

Gaffney said members of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a consortium of citizens and scientists, is urging environmental solutions to global warming and other climate changes. The group issued an open letter to Farm Bureau members asking to discuss the issue.

“The idea is to open a dialogue to discuss the issue,” said Gaffney, whose research focus includes the study of natural system interactions with pollutants in air and groundwater chemistries and health impacts of air toxins and aerosols in the air.

He and his research partner and wife, Dr. Nancy Marley, are currently focused on the role that atmospheric aerosols play in climate – particularly the role of carbonaceous aerosols and black carbon, or soots. Gaffney has been the lead scientist for the DOE’s Atmospheric Science Program’s Megacity Aerosol Experiment – Mexico City (MAX-Mex). The field study was part of a larger collaboration with National Science Foundation, NASA, and Mexican agencies in the Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Observations (MILAGRO).

“The Earth system is dynamic and has constantly changed over its existence,” Gaffney said. “Climate change is happening and may occur at a rate that will lead to unprecedented impacts on agriculture and our environment and is the cause for concern that was stressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We need to address the potential problem and consider solutions for a sustainable energy economy and environment.”

Dinosaurs were at the top of the food chain for hundreds of millions of years, much longer than human beings have been around, but fossil records indicate the climate changed – probably caused by a giant meteor strike that threw tons of dust into the atmosphere or from volcanic activity – followed by their demise. Man’s industrial activity that began more than 100 years ago has led to an increasing combustion of coal and oil for energy for manufacturing, transportation, and all other aspects of modern life. Climate scientists say that activity is not sustainable.

“We’re burning the non-renewable fossil fuels, which took hundreds of millions of years to produce,  in a very short period on geologic time scales,” Gaffney said. He another climate experts said the burning of Earth’s finite resources is unsustainable and is creating changes to our ecosystems and agricultural resources that may put human existence on the planet at risk.

“I have people say all the time, ‘I don’t believe in climate change,’” Gaffney said. “It’s not religion that you can believe in or not. It’s a problem that we need to face.”