Viscount Monckton gives a presentation during the 2007 Conference on Climate Change
From Mike Asher at the DailyTech:
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Complete article here
(h/t Fred)
UPDATE: 7/18/08 9PM PST It appears there is some discord at the APS over the issue.
The higher ups at the American Physical Society, apparently do not agree with the editor that made the initial post and reaffirms the statement on human caused global warming, posting this statement on their web site www.aps.org:
The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:
“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”
An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.
There has certainly been a lot of argument and rhetoric surrounding this issue, and I’ve taken a fair amount of criticism for even posting it, with one commenter exclaiming that I was “popping champagne corks” while another said that “I couldn’t wait to talk about it as a major hole in the case for doing something to clean up air pollution.” which is curious, since I never made any comments about “celebrating with champagne”, “air pollution” or “major hole in the case”.
What this story does is demonstrate how politically and emotionally charged the issue has become. And when politics, emotions, and science mix, the outcome is never good.
David L. Hagen (12:05:37) [In re Mockton’s letter]
It very much was a discourtesy. I would be very interested in seeing what the APS considers proper procedure (or if they indeed even have one). I’m also very much interested in how the APS official statement was ratified and by how much. The FPS editor certainly gave the impression is was closer to 50-50 than 99-1.
Also interesting: many of the links come right back to DLH’s post. After approximately only 120 minutes of existence. Wow!
joel Shore
“However, the moist adiabatic lapse rate theory (and the models incorporating it) do a good job of describing the data for temperature fluctuations on monthly to yearly timescales.”
Um, how are you so sure it’s the moist adiabatic lapse rate theory giving the models good fit on short timescales instead of influences from other parameterizations? You certainly aren’t claiming that the temp trends projected by models are due solely to the lapse rate theory are you?
“It is only for the multidecadal trends that, depending on which data set you look at, the observational data deviates from the expectations of the theory.”
Well, gee, the longterm trends ARE THE POINT OF THE WHOLE THEORY. And they’re wrong. If you get the short term right but for the wrong reasons, the LONG TERM WILL BE WRONG.
DAV:”Why do you think infrared can’t pass through glass? My camera is quite good at taking infrared photos with glass lenses and filters. Also, if what you say is true then why are glass houses the hardest to insulate? ”
Your lenses and filters are not made out of ordinary glass are they? Glass can be made that does not change UV or inhibit IR, it’s in the manufacturing. Ordinary glass is a poor insulator as compared to just about everything else you construct a house with. Also, as I stated in my original post, the car analogy to atmospheric warming is not a good one as stated on another thread of this blog, I was just commenting on the suggestion that convection through the roof is what heats up a car.
OK, P&S isn’t a peer-reviewed journal. So why didn’t the accompanying article supporting AGW also have a red-lettered caveat?
Also, why the gratuitous disclaimer that the article’s “conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”?
The short answer is, even if true (which it is not): SO WHAT!!! Freeman Dyson just reminded the AGW “debate deniers” that in science, No one gets the last word. It’s the motto of the 350-year-old Royal Society, fer chrissake!!
Except among followers of the Goracle, who refuse to openly debate anyone. That’s not science, folks, that’s “we are the keepers of correct knowledge, whilst YOU are benighted and unschooled regarding The One True Path.”
We’re dealing with modern-day Stalinoids here, the intellectual heirs of Lysenko, whose crackpot genetics helped to destroy a generation of botanists and agronomists in the USSR.
Only this time, the Stalinoids are trying to take away great swaths of human freedoms.
Let’s hope that Monckton makes enough of a stink that someone will actually try to take him on “on the merits”, instead of via dismissive snot and snark.
Joel Shore
“The point is that neither the satellite data nor the radiosonde (balloon) data was developed with the ability to distinguish long-term trends in mind.”
LOL This is brilliant.
Brilliant bs, that is. The SST’s gathered from ships wasn’t either, doesn’t stop hansen and CRU from using it though.
Please, get yourself a better argument.
Tom in Florida (13:13:27) : Your lenses and filters are not made out of ordinary glass are they?
The lenses I use are standard lenses and are indeed made from ordinary glass — “ordinary” that is as any camera lens glass is. The filter I use is specifically designed to block below 720 nm. I also have to modify the camera by removing the IR filter placed by the manufacturer (the sensor is sensitive to IR and IR is unwanted in a normal photo. FWIW: I have a Sigma SD14). Note: some filters also allow some visible light which gives a rather odd effect — not to mention they are cheaper.
http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:TNnr_T-m9GMJ:www.wrotniak.net/photo/infrared/+infrared+photography+filter&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
If you go to http://www.pbase.com, you can search for IR photos taken with different lenses and filters. I’m not aware of any lenses specifically designed for IR photography (it’s such a small niche) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
as I stated in my original post, the car analogy to atmospheric warming is not a good one as stated on another thread of this blog
It’s not good analogy because the car warming has little to do with UV/IR transmissivity. It’s not clear you understand that.
I was just commenting on the suggestion that convection through the roof is what heats up a car.
Were you? I went back and looked at the thread and you brought up the UV/IR/glass thing before any mention of the roof unless I missed something. I seem to recall another thread where you pretty much said the same thing, as well.
Your heart’s in the right place but if this car analogy is in the forefront of your thinking I believe you will be often be mislead.
I think you guys are mixing up Longwave (indicative of heat transfer or content) with Shortwave (near visible light) IR.
Normal infrared photography uses shortwave, near visible IR, essentially just creating a false color or BW rendition of an image.
FLIR cameras are a completely different animal.
http://www.flir.com/us/
Balloon data has always been known to have biases, scientists have messed with those figures since before satellite, and so far have came up with no *trend* upward. So along comes this, throwing out satellite and balloon temp data, but messing with the other measurements to make a trend appear that conforms to “the models”. I wouldn’t think anyone could get much more obvious than:
“Climate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface. Surprisingly, direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown this expected trend. However, non-climatic biases have been found in such measurements. Here we apply the thermal-wind equation to wind measurements from radiosonde data, which seem to be more stable than the temperature data. We derive estimates of temperature trends for the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere since 1970. Over the period of observations, we find a maximum warming trend of 0.650.47 K per decade near the 200 hPa pressure level, below the tropical tropopause. Warming patterns are consistent with model predictions except for small discrepancies close to the tropopause. Our findings are inconsistent with the trends derived from radiosonde temperature datasets and from NCEP reanalyses of temperature and wind fields. The agreement with models increases confidence in current model-based predictions of future climate change.”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n6/abs/ngeo208.html
Jeez: think you guys are mixing up Longwave (indicative of heat transfer or content) with Shortwave (near visible light) IR.
You’re right to some extent but IR photography doesn’t depend upon reflected IR. It works at night, too. In any case, while Tom’s reasoning using glass attenuation isn’t completely wrong, it’s hardly the major reason for car interiors heating in sunlight.
All things (most anyway) heat in sunlight but the air carries a lot away (convection). Very little is carried away by radiation. The closed windows in a car block that convection.
If you think about it, in the IR range, the photons have less energy than those of say UV, so it should take longer to radiate the heat away than it took to acquire it.
DAV, I was just making the point that there seem to me to be opportunities to quantify the effect of different levels of CO2 on temperature under controlled conditions which could take into account variables such as percentage of water vapor but, so far as I know, none have actually been demonstrated.
I’m not prepared to go back to a hunter/gatherer existence on the basis of models which, as I know from practical experience, may not work in real life. Even actual experiments under laboratory conditions are too often subject to observer bias and not replicable.
DAV says “It very much was a discourtesy” and Anna Keppa says “OK, P&S isn’t a peer-reviewed journal. So why didn’t the accompanying article supporting AGW also have a red-lettered caveat?”
I’ll tell you both what the discourtesy really was and why the red-lettered caveat. When most people submit something to that newsletter, they don’t then go on to issue a press release and drum up some right-wing media coverage making false claims about the paper. I think the APS, probably even those editors of the newsletter, now realize that they have been “used” by Monckton. He pretended to be trying to convince physicists of his point-of-view but his real motive seems more to use APS to lend legitimacy to his arguments that would likely fail to make it into the real peer-reviewed literature. (I say “likely” because peer review is not perfect and there have been some pretty pathetic recent examples of that.)
I must say, one thing that really amuses me about Monckton’s letter is when he prides himself on doing this work on the paper “without having been offered or having requested any honorarium”. Man, this guy is really out-of-touch with reality! If he had actually had his article published in a real peer-reviewed journal, he not only wouldn’t get such a thing but would likely be paying page charges.
What part of “invited” by the newsletter don’t you understand Joel?
Glenn (14:15:50)
Let me get this straight
“Climate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface.
So they found “The Hot Spot” using thermal-wind equation to wind measurements from radiosonde data, which seem to be more stable than the temperature data. Which seems?
And then derive estimates of temperature trends for the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere since 1970. derive estimates = guestimation. When did they stop using weather balloons?
Our findings are inconsistent with the trends derived from radiosonde temperature datasets and from NCEP reanalyses of temperature and wind fields.
And, of course- The agreement with models increases confidence in current model-based predictions of future climate change.” Even though there is no “Hot Spot” in the observed data and we all know the “models” told us about the cooling trend we are having.
By the way, do you want to buy a bridge?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind?
Mr Shore said (18:34:58) :
“I’ll tell you both what the discourtesy really was and why the red-lettered caveat. When most people submit something to that newsletter, they don’t then go on to issue a press release and drum up some right-wing media coverage making false claims about the paper. I think the APS, probably even those editors of the newsletter, now realize that they have been “used” by Monckton. He pretended to be trying to convince physicists of his point-of-view but his real motive seems more to use APS to lend legitimacy to his arguments that would likely fail to make it into the real peer-reviewed literature. (I say “likely” because peer review is not perfect and there have been some pretty pathetic recent examples of that.)”
I find this argument more than a little troubling.
Lord Monckton’s paper is what it is: it might be right in everything it says, it might be wrong in everything it says, it might be a mixture of right and wrong, but it is the same paper today that it was the minute it was published.
Issuing a press release about it does not change a word of the paper and, therefore, cannot be a proper basis for issuing a disclaimer about the substance of the paper when no disclaimer was thought necessary before. And I stress that the disclaimer addressed the substance of Lord Monckton’s conclusions – exactly the same conclusions that were published without the need for a disclaimer.
The suggestion that he “pretended to be trying to convince physicists of his point-of-view but his real motive seems more to use APS to lend legitimacy to his arguments” makes no sense at all. Since Mr Shore is clearly very excited about what he sees as a “right-wing” plot, it’s clear that I must spell out exactly what I mean.
If one is pretending to do “A” but is actually seeking to do “B” it is necessary for “A” and “B” to be mutually inconsistent … I am dressed like this so I can pretend to be a woman, in fact I am a man; I am pretending to be a qualified dentist, in fact I am not a qualified dentist. By definition “pretence” requires one to assert the existence of some fact or matter one knows to be absent. What is it that Mr Shore says was absent? He defines the pretence as “trying to persuade physicists of his point of view”. So, Mr Shore asserts that Lord Monckton was not in fact trying to persuade physicists of his point of view. If that is so, Lord Monckton can have had no genuine belief in the truth of the position he was putting forward, in other words, he was lying when he put forward his arguments and invited people to accept them as correct.
Then we must ask what Mr Shore says Lord Monckton WAS trying to do, because it is the antithesis to the pretence which exposes it as a pretence. He asserts that the true motive was to “use APS to lend legitimacy to his arguments”. In order for Mr Shore to be correct it would be necessary for Lord Monckton to believe that his arguments would be rejected by the physicists but to have been hoping, despite that rejection, to gain support for his arguments simply by having his paper published.
What a very bizarre scenario: “I want to be taken seriously so I will get a paper published in a serious magazine aimed at people specially skilled in the field I am addressing. I know that they will reject my arguments because I am lying and they know what they are talking about, but I will gain a good reputation because I have had a paper published.”
What complete and utter nonsense. The very act of exposing a theory to expert examination defeats the whole object of the deceit which Mr Shore says was being perpetrated.
To compound his error (we can leave it to Lord Monckton to decide whether it is not just error but defamation), Mr Shore seeks to suggest that Lord Monckton, having tried to use APS in a scam, drummed-up “right-wing media coverage making false claims about the paper”. I do not know whether Mr Shore means the headline in this Blog or the various websites that have linked to it, but I am not aware of any evidence that Lord Monckton has had any input into the references that have been made to his paper or the way in which it has been described by others.
So, thus far we have the following accusations against Lord Monckton: (i) he present a deceitful paper, (ii) he used APS as a vehicle for his deceit, (iii) he drummed-up a media campaign and (iv) he supported false claims about his paper.
Quite a nice catalogue of outrageous allegations and quite enough for one day, but not enough for Mr Shore.
He then seeks to dismiss Lord Monckton’s letter of complaint and, in the process, the review of his paper to which he refers in that letter. Mr Shore does this with these words: “his arguments that would likely fail to make it into the real peer-reviewed literature. (I say “likely” because peer review is not perfect and there have been some pretty pathetic recent examples of that.)”
I assume Mr Shore is not seeking to assert that the “real” peer-reviewed literature would reject a paper for any reason other than lack of space or a perceived lack of merit in the paper itself (this is an assumption we must all make because we are fair-minded people who do not engage in wild accusations or defamation). None of us is ever in a position to say that a paper is “likely” to be rejected for lack of space, so it seems fair to infer that Mr Shore is saying the paper would be rejected for lack of merit. So now we should reject Lord Monckton’s paper because it has been published in a second-rate journal and it has only been published there because he was practising a deceit. I know little of the APS but I have no reason to believe it is anything other than a serious organisation and certainly not a repository for second-rate waffle.
And what are we to make of “peer review is not perfect and there have been some pretty pathetic recent examples of that”? Is Mr Shore asserting that the review of Lord Monckton’s paper was not a proper peer review? That is certainly how I interpret it and, if my interpretation is correct, we appear to find the reviewer being criticised as well.
[snip]
I am minded to copy Mr Shore’s comment to Lord Monckton together with these observations of mine, but I must first give Mr Shore an opportunity to respond.
If you want to know about WWII Armor, then I’m your man!
I am a reasonably fair hand at that, actually.
FatBigot: “He asserts that the true motive was to “use APS to lend legitimacy to his arguments”. In order for Mr Shore to be correct it would be necessary for Lord Monckton to believe that his arguments would be rejected by the physicists but to have been hoping, despite that rejection, to gain support for his arguments simply by having his paper published.”
Read the 15 July press release by the Science & Public Policy Institute, which lists Monkton as its chief policy adviser.
[Heading] “Proved: There is No Climate Crisis
WASHINGTON (7-15-08) – Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html
Monkton claims to have “proved” in a “major, peer-reviewed paper” that there is no climate crisis, when his paper is in fact a discussion piece. He claims the publication is a “learned journal”, when in fact Physics & Society is a populist, ginger publication.
Not only is Monkton making some very overblown claims for his discussion paper, he is also implicating the American Physical Society in his blowhards. If I were them, I would be mightily aggrieved at this misuse of the society’s reputation.
As for Monkton’s being found out, scientific rebuttals tend to be highly technical and nuanced. What people remember are the headlines, and it’s crystal clear from the press release that Monkton sees his paper as a major publicity coup.
Fat Bigot,
You have a point: we cant know if Monckton actually believes the nonsense he has published. For instance, I don’t know if Monckton misread figure 9.1 of the IPCC report or if he intentionally misrepresented it. Based on his paper, I’d say he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so the tropical tropospheric hotspot mistake could be “honest.”
It appears that the first editor didn’t realize how bad Monckton’s paper was. It’s good that people at APS with more experience in climate science are stepping in. They don’t want incorrect information to come out under their name.
Notice that they could have removed the article itself–the mistakes in it are worthy of such a response. I would have removed the paper until a proper rebuttal had been written and presented alongside Monckton’s work. But the APS warning is at least a start.
Heh, Evan. I’ll bet you’re like me when you watch a war movie, identifying all the wrong ordnance. Kelly’s Heroes is still my favorite war movie. The Tigers weren’t real, but they did an excellent job mocking up T-34s, I was most impressed when I first saw it in the 70s.
Well, I do try to understand they don’t have too many Konigstigers and Panthers (pick your model) hanging around the studio lots.
Maybe CGI will ultimately deal with the problem.
Especially in 1970. But now there are collectors, like Littlefield in California, who restore them to running condition when possible. They’ve got a running panther, All the panzers I through IV as far as I know, Tiger, no King Tigers though.
They used CG in Enemy at the Gates for the Stukas and Panzer IIIs as I recall.
I reply to Mr Brendan H (03:58:14) and Mr Boris (05:11:24)
If I might say so the comments you both make contain balanced and firmly expressed points about the merits of Lord Monckton’s paper. As you clearly understand, I feel Mr Shore went too far in expressing his views.
Whether we debate the way the IPCC assessed historical data, the way Mr Gore puts his case or the inability of science to explain why a cricket ball swings more in humid conditions, we must always debate with a thick veneer of politeness and mutual respect (even if we take the view that anyone holding an opinion opposed to our own should be taken away to a place of seclusion and given nothing but raffia to entertain them for the rest of their lives).
The substance of any debate is obscured if we engage in gratuitous rudeness, all the more so if our rudeness verges on the defamatory. My response to Mr Shore’s comment was no more, and no less, than the result of my belief that he stepped way across the line.
I make no pretence about my own position. The conclusions of the IPCC and the amplification of those conclusions by Mr Gore are very unwelcome to me. I have read, heard, watched and listened to them and my first reaction was, as it remains today, that they are both fanciful and not what I want to hear. Because of that I will only accept what they say if I am persuaded that (i) the data they use in their analysis, (ii) their methods of assessing those data and (iii) the conclusions they draw from that analysis are unimpeachable. And even then I will need to be persuaded that the solutions Mr Gore advocates are a price worth paying.
Others do not share my approach, and it is quite right that they should not, because we all hold the opinions we do as a result of our own experiences of life and our own tastes, desires and values.
We have all seen those on the sceptical side hurling insults and defamatory comments at their opponents and I regard those insults and defamations in exactly the same way that I view insults and defamatory comments made against sceptics. They are unnecessary, irrelevant and impermissible obstructions to the debate and all they achieve is to show the accuser to be engaging in emotive rather than rational argument. Perhaps we should just ignore them, but I am an old-fashioned sort of chap and feel it necessary to speak out if I feel something has been said which is so far the wrong side of the line that it needs to be challenged.
Having said that, my analysis of Mr Shore’s comments is nothing more than my analysis. I might have misunderstood him, and I hope I have. I hope he did not intend to suggest that Lord Monckton engaged in a deliberate deceit for the purpose of self-aggrandisement because such a suggestion would only weaken Mr Shore’s standing in the debate.
http://thefatbigot.blogspot.com/2008/06/common-sense-anyone.html
FatBigot: “As you clearly understand, I feel Mr Shore went too far in expressing his views.”
Different people have different ways of saying the same thing. I fully agree with Joel Shore’s comment: “I think the APS, probably even those editors of the newsletter, now realize that they have been “used” by Monckton.”
The evidence for this is the press release on behalf of Monkton, which implies that the APS supports his paper. But the press release is, at the least, misleading, and at the worst, intentionally so. The APS clearly does not support Monkton’s paper. That’s why they issued the disclaimer.
[…] what happened? The blogosphere whirled into action. As well as the more opposed and libertarian sites picking up on the story, with headlines such as: ‘Myth of consensus […]
Apparently Joel Shore believes that the APS, by inviting Lord Monckton to submit a paper, and then suggesting changes to the paper, which Monckton complied with — and then reneging on its invitation without any credible explanation, is actually the fault of Lord Monckton! As Mr. Shore states:
Brendan H adds that he is also in agreement with that amazing statement. George Orwell might have added: …and black is white, wrong is right, up is down, and evil is good.
Of course it is preposterous to claim that the arbitrary reneging on the part of the APS management is somehow the fault of the invitee. It shows the desperation of those still clinging to their [repeatedly falsified] belief in catastrophic runaway global warming, and the unethical lengths to which they will go to Shore up their belief system in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.
My hat is off to Fat Bigot, Syl, jeez, Anna Keppa, Bruce Cobb, James, David Hagen, Dodgy Geezer, and the many others above who have effectively demolished the APS apologists’ arguments, far more effectively than I could have done.
Finally, a comment on the undeniable fact that in sunlight a car will substantially heat up, and will retain and re-radiate that heat. When I was growing up in the midwest, a local radio station would routinely fry an egg on the sidewalk on hot days as a P.R. stunt for ratings. The same heat island effect is encountered in temperature stations that have been improperly sited on asphalt or cement pads, or on gravel, or next to cinder block walls. It is not surprising that many stations surveyed indicate a temperature that is more than five degrees C higher than nearby rural stations that have been correctly sited.
C’mon Guys
Does anybody here seriously beleive that the APS, or its governing body: the APS council, has an officially established position regarding what the ‘correct’ varlues of kappa, lambda or f (or the combinded so called ‘climate sensitivity’) are, and what is the proper way to assess them and to evaluate available data indirectley?
I don’t think so!