APS Editor Reverses Position on Global Warming- cites "Considerable presence" of skeptics

The head of the IPCC implied last year that there are only about a dozen skeptics left and compared them to “flat earthers.”
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-2935586_ITM
Is it possible that the highly esteemed Dr. Pachauri may not have been telling the truth?
REPLY: Many of these people live in microcosms and know little of the world outside their area of expertise.

Mr Monckton has been decried in places on this post because he ‘only’ has qualifications in the classics and Journalism and is not a scientist of any kind. In the acknowlegments section of his paper he mentions that he has received much advice from people who he names (and are scientists) and that he was allowed (invited) to ‘present a seminar on some of his ideas to a challenging audience in the Physics Faculty at Rochester University, New York’. What more do these decriers want? Everybody on these posts are putting forward their points of view (In most cases without declaring their qualifications except by the content of what they post!) so why cannot Mr Monckton have a say out there? He is not appearing before congress (at the moment!).

I have never witnessed so many people grasping at so many straws.

Boris, here’s Monckton showing Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate that his science is wrong: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton_papers/chuck_it_schmidt_a_science_commentary_on_web_posts_at_realclimate.html. Now this was surely Schmidt’s real big chance to rubbish the skeptics if ever there was one – because this is the scientific heart of the AGW issue. But having examined the RealClimate index, I find no trace of a reply. My conclusion from this and several other pieces by Monckton is that he does know what he’s talking about.
Celebrations: wow! but as some say, the APS hasn’t yet changed official policy… but wow! TWO aussie major posts the same day!…
Anthony and others –
I’ve long longed for a proper science wiki – you know, one not controlled by the likes of William Connolley – a real wiki for real scientists, which as posters here point out, has to do with open attitude and thoroughness, not with degrees or peer reviews. We could do with a decent Online Climate Science Primer, you know, so ordinary people can understand, part of a good future safeguarding against monopolies and other scam in science as crucial as this.
If this really is the beginning of the end regarding AGW, perhaps people can start thinking about redirecting the incredible array of real ability here. I mean, the floor here is strewn with diamonds of good science, bright ideas, courtesy (and the learning thereof), etc…
REPLY: Nice idea, we could revel in our wikiness. 😉

But even if that particular aspect of theory is wrong, it would not mean that AGW is wrong at all.
–Boris
Uh Boris, if this aspect is wrong, then the whole interlocking GCM nest of assumptions is wrong, and it is time to hold off on spending trillions of dollars recreating an energy system that we already have and which is working fine. You know that the whole argument is about CS, and if this aspect is wrong, estimates of CS are probably wrong too. If they are right, they are right by chance alone. And your argument that the data is so bad, and lapses in coverage apply perhaps to the radiosondes, but not to the satellite data. Odd how the two agree with each other, yet can be discarded out of hand because they disagree with a model that performs remarkably poorly. And which only correlates with Hansen’s data set to any significant degree, and Hansen’s data set is shown to correlate highly with UHI.
To use an analogy, if you are living in a perfectly good house, and you tear it down and discard it, and build a new one that is basically the same, you are a lot poorer than you otherwise would be. If the first house had termites, then, well you are still poorer, but justified. But before I tore down my house, I would wan’t proof of termites, and if the “theory that I had termites” was shown to have “incorrect aspects”, I think I would put off tearing it down until I knew more. No matter how many scare tactics used.

Just a thouhgt about the IPCC and their devotion to models. Perhaps they should take over the Olympics. Surely by now every participant in the upcoming Olympics has a clear record of their performance over the last year or two. They could feed that data into their models, adjust for the different locations the events have taken place, adjust for altitude, weather, conditions of the surface used, etc etc. They could then spit out the winner and mail them the gold medals. Cetainly with all that data the concensus would agree with to whom the medals were awarded.

Please: APS Editor
Call;
Dr. James E. Hansen
Columbia University Columbia University
750 Armstrong Hall 750 Armstrong Hall
2880 Broadway 2880 Broadway
New York, NY 10025 USA New York, NY 10025 E.U.A.
Phone: (212) 678-5500 Telefone: (212) 678-5500
I Love…..www.surfacestations.org project
hasta la vista baby.

The following article appeared in the national newspaper the Australian today (18 th July). Another brick falls from the wall
No smoking hot spotFont Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print David Evans | July 18, 2008
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you’d believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the “urban heat island” effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician’s assertion.
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don’t you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.
Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

Alan, I agree, the APS has not reversed their Policy, and Marque did not provide his view nor did his comment claim that any member of the APS has either. What is relevant, and what I think Anthony meant to show by posting this, is the admission that there is not a consensus among scientists, and a willingness, at least for some in APS, to hear both sides. The “position on global warming” is that the debate is over, and that there is a consensus. That is hogwash.

Boris:

“Stratospheric cooling is a fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect…”

Translation: cooling = warming.
And as Patrick Henry noted:

The head of the IPCC implied last year that there are only about a dozen skeptics left and compared them to “flat earthers.”

Dr. Pachauri could possibly be that ignorant. More likely, lacking the science to support the AGW disaster scenario, he may be trying to denigrate the skeptical point of view by his ad hominem attack conflating skeptics with flat earthers. I think the latter.
Mr. Henry also cites a link to Goliath, which states:

US President George W. Bush formally announced in April 2001 that the USA would not ratify Kyoto.

That statement is disingenuous. When Vice President Al Gore presided over the Senate, the United States Senate voted 95 – 0 to reject Kyoto. By implying that President Bush singlehandedly rejected Kyoto, Goliath forfeits credibility.
Finally, it should again be pointed out that organizations such as the APS have not allowed rank-and-file members to cast a secret ballot to determine the organization’s position regarding the AGW disaster hypothesis [and make no mistake, AGW is a disaster/planetary catastrophe hypothesis. If it were not an imminent disaster hypothesis, then AGW would be only a scientific footnote of little or no consequence].
In fact, the executive committee of the APS has unilaterally determined the position that the APS has previously taken on AGW/global warming/planetary catastrophe, not the dues-paying membership. The fact that an APS spokesperson has now been forced to backpeddle, and to tacitly acknowledge that there is no consensus, is a major admission that the APS is out of step with its rank-and-file membership.
When rank-and-file scientist/members of organizations such as the APS are free to voice their opinions in either a secret ballot, or in an anonymous poll by a reputable polling organization, their true positions are revealed: click

Alan J,
This quote which Anthony linked to above, is from the APS web site. Obviously Anthony has been there recently.
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 the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.
Anthony,
I think you are too forgiving of someone who is head of an “Intergovernmental Panel” and is calling for a radical overhaul of the world’s socioeconomic system. He is legally and ethically responsible for his public remarks, and ignorance is not a legitimate defense. He is not just some nutty professor making off-the-wall murmurings in his office.

Boris, one other thing.
From what I understand greenhouse effect = 80% from carbon dioxide and about 20% from water vapor in stratosphere. If the stratosphere is cooling, then CO2 is not doing a very good job.