William Nierenberg - Consulting

Consulting

He served on a large number of prestigious committees, primarily after he returned from NATO. In 1971 he was appointed chairman of the National Academy of Sciences National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere and served on this committee until 1977. Nierenberg served on various panels of the President's Science Advisory Committee. He was a member of the National Science Board from 1972 to 1978 and was appointed for another term from November 1982 to May 1988.

Nierenberg was a consultant to the National Security Agency, and served on many military-related panels. In 1976 he was appointed one of two senior consultants to the then newly formed White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He was a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Advisory Council from 1978 to 1982 and served as its first chairman. He was Chairman of the OSTP Acid Rain Peer Review Panel, whose report "Acid Rain" was published in 1984. The report encouraged the administration to curb acid rain emissions.

By October 1980, during the Carter presidency, an Act of Congress was passed requesting the National Academy of Science to review what was known about climate change. This review was begun speedily and Nierenberg was appointed by the Academy to chair the committee to produce this report on the risks of global warming, which two previous reports for the Carter administration had highlighted as a potential major problem. The scientific facts of the report were largely in line with the previous reports. Its key points were:

• The most probable date of CO₂ "doubling" (to 600 ppm) was 2065 (page 21)
• Global warming due to doubling CO₂ is likely to be between 1-5-4.5 °C, as suggested by the Charney report. Careful review of dissenting inferences suggesting negligible CO₂-induced climate change shows these to be based on misleading analysis (page 28)
• Warming at equilibrium would be 2-3 times as great over the polar regions as over the tropics; and probably greater over the arctic (page 30)
• Sea level might rise 70 cm over a century from thermal expansion, and melting of alpine glaciers. There was great uncertainty of the fate of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; disintegration could lead to sea-level rise of 5 to 6m over several hundred years (page 42)
• CO₂ is a cause for concern but not panic; a program of action without a program for learning would be costly and ineffective (page 61)
• a careful, well-designed program of monitoring and analysis is needed to detect the CO₂ signal on climate (page 76)

He subsequently became a co-founder of the George C. Marshall Institute, and a critic of some of the scientific conclusions of various research papers. A building on the campus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography is named for him and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest has been started. The recipients have been E. O. Wilson, Walter Conkite, Jane Lubchenco, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Craig Venter, Gordon Moore, James E. Hansen and Richard Dawkins.

He was awarded The Delmer S. Fahrney Medal in 1987.