Governmental Policy

Abstract

Scientific meetings are not casual affairs. They don’t just “happen,” in the manner of planning a small dinner party with a few friends, most of which can be taken care of within a week or two of the planned event. Scientific meetings are usually big deals. Many such gatherings are planned in anticipation of a special event, such as the experiment in July and August of 1985, when more than 60 scientists converged on the Amazon basin to study the atmospheric chemistry above it. Well before the actual experiment began, planning was also begun for a meeting in December 1985 in San Francisco, to discuss the preliminary results from the experiment. Nearly 200 scientists from the atmospheric sciences community attended these special meetings, which were part of a larger gathering, the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The scientists heard over 30 presentations describing the most extensive set of measurements ever taken over the Amazon.