WUWT readers may recall that my posting in July 2008 on some of the angst going on within APS over a paper from Christopher Monckton ruffled a few feathers. The paper, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, was reviewed by APS and this odd disclaimer then placed on it:
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.
What was odd, is that APS invited Monckton to submit, so to then place a disclaimer was quite unusual. However there is good news; they may be changing their tune on climate change issues. Today we have this from Luboš Motl:
APS is reviewing its statements on climate change
Climate alarmism is a particularly embarrassing attitude for professional institutions that should represent disciplines with very high intellectual standards because climate alarmism is associated with extremely poor intellectual (and ethical) standards, besides other negative characteristics.
The American Physical Society (APS) was therefore embarrassed on November 18th, 2007 when its bodies approved an alarmist statement that was much more constructive and issue-oriented than the statements of many institutions outside physics but it was still a scientists’ variation of the same blinded, biased, irrational hysteria.
It shouldn’t be surprising that members around Will Happer, a renowned Princeton physicist, wrote an
where they mention that the climate has always been changing and warming and trace gases have many positive effects, according to scientific literature. The proposed new statement also discusses the unreliability of the existing climate models and urges the scientists to investigate all these effects objectively, and to study technological options related to the climate that are independent of the cause.
The petition has been signed by
Add your name if you are one, too.
Happily, Nature just published a letter from six members that informs that the APS is currently reviewing its 2007 statement:
Petitioning for a revised statement on climate change
By S. Fred Singer, Hal Lewis, Will Happer, Larry Gould, Roger Cohen & Robert H. Austin
We write in response to your issue discussing “the coming climate crunch”, including the Editorial ‘Time to act‘ (Nature 458, 10771078; 2009). We feel it is alarmist.
We are among more than 50 current and former members of the American Physical Society (APS) who have signed an open letter to the APS Council this month, calling for a reconsideration of its November 2007 policy statement on climate change (see open letter at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u; APS statement at http://tinyurl.com/56zqxr). The letter proposes an alternative statement, which the signatories believe to be a more accurate representation of the current scientific evidence. It requests that an objective scientific process be established, devoid of political or financial agendas, to help prevent subversion of the scientific process and the intolerance towards scientific disagreement that pervades the climate issue.
On 1 May 2009, the APS Council decided to review its current statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. We applaud this decision. It is the first such reappraisal by a major scientific professional society that we are aware of, and we hope it will lead to meaningful change that reflects a more balanced view of climate-change issues
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Ah, wonderful news.
Interesting. There’s a lot of CYA going on at the moment isn’t there.
It is good to see that there are some that can see that the science is not settled. We learn from study of properly collected data. We must always strive to collect new data to increase our understanding of the system called climate.
Bill Derryberry
I found it funny that advocates of AGW tried to act like Fred Singer did not have decades of experience studying the climate. Just pretending that all has nothing to do with what was being discussed. Glad he has not gone quietly into the night , but further into the breach.
How about scientific organizations be forbidden from advocating for policies of any kind? Regardless of AGW’s validity, I don’t want APS lobbying for energy rationing-is that to much to ask?
I am glad I poked in here for one last read. This article calms my mind a great deal. As I have said before, it is inevitable that the AGW sham will be exposed. Bit by logical bit.
I am a patient guy.
Statement from the APS as it currently stands:
Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
This cannot come too soon. When the alarmsim has died down, good senses regained, the climate data that is being relentlessly harmed in pursuit of agenda may be lost. We may find ourselves wishing for critical information and not be able to find it.
Provenance is everything.
Nature has abandoned all pretext of rational inquiry in favor of setting it’s hair on fire in the public square. The mag used to have scientific scruples but no longer has any use for such, preferring to cast aside science and adopt a hysterical, a-scientific tone.
And that’s sad. Sad for science, sad for a once great institution, sad for all of us.
However if scientists are now adopting the mindset of Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, in the UK; they are “post-normal” $cientists who no longer believe in requirements of true science: skepticism, disinterestedness, etc. Post normal $cientists and their formerly $cientific organizations are merely puddy in the hands of politicians.
Just a question:
Currently, I’m a member of the APS. The petition is for being signed only by US residents or also by those who are living out of the US?
REPLY: As I understand it it is open to all APS members. – A
A small analogy wrt the recent AGW Hub-Bub…
“Well, I went out yesterday and it was quite cool, and then today it was much warmer, so I said to myself – well that’s a trend isn’t it. It’s just going to like – get so much hotter!
So I picked up my hand saw and chopped my left leg off, because I figured that I just had to do something about it…”
(Parody, in response to how the alarmists seem to me).
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm
“The evidence is incontrovertible.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incontrovertible_evidence
“Incontrovertible evidence is a colloquial term for evidence introduced to prove a fact that is supposed to be so conclusive that there can be no other truth as to the matter; evidence so strong it overpowers contrary evidence, directing a fact-finder to a specific and certain conclusion.”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:incontrovertible&ei=kpJuSq3_BI_IMNebrOMI&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
“impossible to deny or disprove”
“Not capable of being denied, challenged, or disputed; closed to questioning”
“the quality of being undeniable and not worth arguing about”
“not being debatable; incontestability”
APS leadership needs to get other jobs, say at McDonalds. This regard for inference and theory to be taken as “fact” and “truth” weakens science.
Even real facts, which are “the world’s data”, recorded observations as opposed to inferences and explanations, are not incontrovertible, as many facts have been shown to be wrong.
Folks, there is hope and there is reality.
Call me pessimist/paranoid, but the current political environment
is just not flexible enough to sense/respond to a wind change.
It’s impossible for the speaker of the house and the ruling party and BHO
to change course. They’re tyed to the mast…
The question is the do they take everybody with them or just their boat?
I am doing something similar with respect to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, which is Australia’s peak body for mining professionals. The AusIMM put out a pro-AGW document last December: http://www.ausimm.com.au/Content/docs/carbon_pollution_reduction_scheme.pdf
The carbon tax here will shut down at least one third of the mining industry, let alone all the other damage. Right at the moment, three AusIMM directorships are up for election, so I have nominated. I encourage all other AusIMM members to do similar beofre 6th August.
The 80,000 strong Australian Institute of Engineers also has a pro-AGW stand.
We have to refresh the boards of these organisations so that they take more notice of science than religion in their deliberations.
Let’s hope that this shift in attitude by the APS isn’t stillborn. Let’s hope they have the courage to admit that they got it wrong about AGW.
Moderator “A” (Anthony?)… Done! I hope my signature will pass. Thanks a lot! 🙂
[Reply: Yes, “A” is Anthony. ~dbstealey, mod.]
“It requests that an objective scientific process be established, devoid of political or financial agendas, to help prevent subversion of the scientific process and the intolerance towards scientific disagreement that pervades the climate issue.”
This is more important than any of our lives.
We must not lose enlightenment.
noaaprogrammer makes a great observation…
I’m starting to realize there are three:
Science,
science, and
$cience.
Science is what we revere, the things that work, the laws: Gravity, Thermodynamics, Conservation of Energy, Physics, Chemistry, Nuclear Physics, Quantum Physics, etc.
science is what we watch on Discovery (mostly), science is the space program, ISS, Shuttles, Ares, HDTV, iPods, cell phones, laptops, computers, microwave ovens, etc.
$cience is AGW, trans-fat bans, DDT bans, Freon bans, unilateral nuclear disarmament, organic farms, mandatory ethanol content, $cience is what 0bamarama wants to put front and center. $cience always seems to make someone rich, even if they’ve done absolutely nothing.
I would say this has been a most amazing week. Someone from Oklahoma let Senator Inhofe know about this (I don’t have his ear). We not only have someone with access to the UK climate data bringing that forward for scrutiny, we now have the APS considering their stand on the issue.
According to the climate models, the weather we are seeing now with 3000 record lows should be nearly impossible to happen. By now the climate should have warmed so much from 1998 that record highs should be the consistent norm. They aren’t. And satellite data is showing significant cooling, Continental US data from surface measurement is showing significant cooling (8 degrees per century over the past 10 years!) and only data kept by the climate modelers is showing a rise that validates their own models.
The most expensive scam ever to be played on the population of the world is about to be undone. There is a lot at stake for a lot of people, I hope it doesn’t get too nasty but when people have careers and reputations to defend, ethics can quickly go out the window.
UK Sceptic (23:20:25) :
Let’s hope that this shift in attitude by the APS isn’t stillborn. Let’s hope they have the courage to admit that they got it wrong about AGW.
I think it is not just that they got it wrong for the AGW. They are in absolute error because they politicized science. It could have been Eugenics. It could have been “end of oil”, etc. etc. The gatekeepers of scientific bodies should upkeep the scientific method and not get involved in politics. Political bodies exist whose job it is to do that.
The scientific method is independent of consensus or voting, it supports skepticism as a way of life. They, APS as a body, have let all science down by supporting the prostitution of its values and we, as scientists, will be collectively paying the price for years to come whether we are responsible or not.
OT, here in Australia according to the weatherman, we’ve had our warmest July in 4 years, and is also the 8th warmest in 150 years. Hummm…..
Glenn (23:06:06) :
“Do you want fries with that” ?!
How can a scientific association issue this nonsense:
“The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”
That is not in any way a scientific or even logical statement it is pure politics.
For those who haven’t already seen it, a letter to the Royal Society concerning their stance is at http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/Royal%20Society%20Letter.pdf
Politics, Religion, and Global Warming
It’s odd that the two things that shouldn’t be discussed at work are now rolled into one with global warming. These subjects are taboo in mixed company because of the emotional response they invoke, spawning a viral hysteria that has infected our scientific institutions and political system. The worst of the infested have banded together in a small group not unlike a leper colony, isolated, sickly, and without influence in this age of scientific enlightenment, and have called themselves the DeSmog Blog for lack of anything relevant. The DeSmogs originally concealed their fanaticism behind shrill blurbs about funding sources, but now with a burgeoning crowd of scientists who object to the religion of global warming on purely objective grounds, they have retreated to a pattern of personal attacks without logical substance. Shunned and broken, in a year or two they will grow silent, perhaps to integrate themselves into the real world.
“Global Warming as Religion and not Science
John Brignell
June 2007
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Blaise Pascal
Faith is a belief held without evidence. The scientific method, a loose collection of procedures of great variety, is based on precisely the opposite concept, as famously declared by Thomas Henry Huxley:
“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
The global warmers like to use the name of science, but they do not like its methods. They promote slogans such a “The science is settled” when real scientists know that science is never settled. They were not, however, always so wise. In 1900, for example, the great Lord Kelvin famously stated, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Within a few years classical physics was shattered by Einstein and his contemporaries. Since then, in science, the debate is never closed.
No one has bettered Mencken’s definition of Puritanism – the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. It is an unfortunate characteristic of many varieties of religion that this characteristic is to the fore and Global Warming is far from being an exception.
Above all, science represented the triumph of humanity over the primitive superstitions that haunted our ancestors, a creation of pure reason, a monument to that evolutionary (or, if you prefer, God-given) miracle of the human brain. It is too valuable just to be tossed away like a used tissue. But who will speak for science when the barbarian is already inside the gate?”
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm