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 This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.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.
AGW faithful: It may be unfair, but the horses are out of the barn-
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/07/021026.php
What goes around comes around, ‘eh.
Ok, so an editor may or may not have reversed his position, the APS apparently hasn’t changed their position. What about the other statement, “”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.” Is he making this up? Are there or are there not a considerable number of physicists in the APS who disagree with the standard AGW position?
It seems to me that the APS policy statement was written so as to mean all things to all men. It is therefore not inconsistent with the line being taken by the editor of their newsletter. To explain, I’ll quote the statement – interpolated by my comments:
“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”
As it doesn’t specify the degree of change or whether it’s dangerous, that seems reasonable.
“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.”
That is surely a correct statement of fact.
“The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”
Clearly that’s true – about 0.7 deg. C since 1850.
“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.”
That’s OK if you take “mitigation” in its dictionary sense of lessening severity – which might include, for example, building flood defences, improving water use or changing agricultural methods.
“We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”
There are good economic and political reasons for doing just that.
“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.”
A welcome statement of uncertainty both re prediction and the impact of human activity.
“The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.”
No harm in that: again, there are sound economic and political reasons for sensible reduction.
Although it may sound tough at first reading, that’s IMHO a mild and essentially uncontroversial statement – especially when you consider the pressures on the APS to maintain good relations with Government agencies re funding etc. Where are the warnings about tipping points and global catastrophe so beloved by the alarmists? As Bill Marsh said yesterday, it’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the IPCC position.
An extremely helpful (and interesting) step now would be for the APS to ballot its members to determine their individual views on the matter.
Boris, you did not complete the caption. You left out the “as simulated by the PCM model” part. According to the simulations, if GHGs were causing the warming, the observations should show a hot spot. The observations don’t show a hot spot. Where is the misinterpretation you keep claiming?
The “debates is back on” is BOGUS. Even Shell the OIL COMPANY agrees that the “debate is over [we are causing global warming]”).
See http://www.dailykos.com/story/20…300/1006/553277 where –
… this guy and the couple other folks quoted are only actually part of 1 of 39 subgroups in the APA. Furthermore, even in this Forum on Physics & Society, the most quoted person, Jeffrey Marque, is just a newsletter editor while a majority of the respondents argue in favor of anthropogenic global warming.
… 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.
… Considerable presence? And yet the “paper present” is written by a business consultant journalist sans physics Ph.D.
Once again, with just a little fact-checking it’s clear that Drudge, some in the APA Forum on Physics & Society, the Daily Tech and the parroting media in “the-science-is-out-land” are lying about the climate of the scientific community on global warming.
Department of other opinions:
Ole Humlum
“The focus on climate research over the last 15-20 years have resulted in an increased awareness that climate is not as constant as it may have appeared previously. In this context, even the most extreme and divergent forecasts of future climate may have done some good. This is, however, a situation that should not continue much longer, as it confuse and disillusionate political decision-makers and the general public about the value of so-called ‘climate experts’. In addition, the initial humble scientific attempts of modelling the future climate have now developed into a large-scale example of groupthink with its own dynamics, tending to hinder any unbiased political approach to the climate issue.
The difficulty of recognition of a new climatic trend or a lasting change is real and constitutes an important difficulty for both scientist and policy-makers. The immediate need for climate scientists is to improve empirical knowledge on climate change, past and present, and to understand the limitations of the different types of approach to forecasting climate. For the decision-makers the lesson presumably is to allow wider margins for future climatic change; cooler as well as warmer, wetter as well as drier, windier as well as less windy, etc. Preparing for warming only may not be entirely prudent. Climate science remains a highly complex issue where simplification tends to lead to confusion, and where understanding requires knowledge, openness to new hypotheses, thought and effort. Reason and critical thinking should now as always have first priority.”
Positions:
Professor of Physical Geography at the Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, since 2003.
Adjunct Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), since 2003.
Professional Experience:
1976-1980: Research fellow, Ph.D. student, Institute of Geography, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
1980-1982: Research fellow, Post.Doc, Institute of Geography, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
1982-1983: Post.Doc., Danish Science Research Councils, Denmark .
1983-1986: Scientific Director, Arctic Station, Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn), Greenland.
1986-1996: Associate professor, Arctic Geomorphology, Institute of Geography., University of Copenhagen .
1995-1999: Pedagogical Mentor, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark .
1996-1997: Special Consultant, GeoBasis Programme, Zackenberg, NE Greenland, Danish Polar Center (DPC), Copenhagen .
1997-1998: Visiting Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St. Andrews, Scotland .
1998: Visiting Associate Professor, Faroese Natural Museum, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands .
1998-1999: Associate professor, Arctic Geomorphology, Institute of Geography, University of Copenhagen .
1999-2003: Full Professor of Physical Geography, The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), 2001-2003: Head of the Geological Department, The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Norway.
http://www.climate4you.com/
I believe the English errors are due to the fact that English is not Dr. Humlum’s first language.
Tuukka Simonen (03:10:18) :
Bill Marsh, first of all, it’s “Tuukka”.
Anyway, Dr. Hansen publishes several peer reviewed scientific articles every year about climate science. If you have a Ph.D in physics and you study climate you are a climate scientist (if you do it so well that you have published several peer reviewed articles of it).
If I published a set of accounts for a major corporation and asked an internal accounts collegue to do the official auditing, I would have another ENRON on my hands. This is why it is legal requirment to have external, non-baised, auditors. Asking a scientist to peer review your paper who is within the same clique is exactly the same ENRON scenario. For the peer review to stand up in practice, it must be done by an external, non-affiliated (either via organisation or personal) peer review process. Also, anyone can have a paper peer reviewed, but until the theory within is proven by experimentation or observation, then it’s still just a piece of paper with the theory that someone has looked at and said, “Yep, looks fine to me”
The contrary argument is entirely double dutch to me – anybody
that can see through this ??
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
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.”
Read full APS Climate Change Statement ( http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm ) (http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm).
“We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”
There are good economic and political reasons for doing just that. That is poppycock, Rob. Attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will not only be hugely expensive, but since our greenhouse gas emissions are doing very little to affect climate to begin with, those huge expenditures will accomplish nothing except wreak an unnecessary economic hardship, particularly on the poor and middle class. It will be especially hard on those in developing countries.
I don’t know what you mean by “political reasons”, but whatever they are, they certainly can not justify causing human suffering.
Department of other opinions:
Dr. Ivar Giaever
“Now we have gotten into global warming, (global warming) has become a new religion. You are not supposed to be against global warming, you have basically no choice, and they tell you how many scientists support that, but the number of scientists is not important. The only thing that is important is scientists who are correct. That is the important part.”
The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Lindau, Germany, June 29 – July 4, 2008
Ivar Giaever (originally spelled Giæver) (born April 5, 1929 in Bergen, Norway) is a physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian David Josephson for related work in solid-state physics. His role was specifically in electron tunneling phenomena in superconductors. Giaever is an institute professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, and the president of Applied Biophysics.
Ivar Giaever earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1952 and emigrated from Norway to Canada in 1954, where he was employed by the Canadian division of General Electric and transferred to the United States. He has lived in Niskayuna, New York since then. While working for General Electric, Giaever earned a Ph.D. from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1964. In 1969, he researched biophysics for a year at Cambridge University, England.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, he has also been awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize by the American Physical Society in 1965, and the Zworykin Award by the National Academy of Engineering in 1974.
Talk about a weak affirmation. The APS site merely says: “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”
Well duh. And of course, that is, by itself, a true statement. Not a particularly meaningful statement in any way, but a true one.
The engineer (10:29:24) :
The contrary argument is entirely double dutch to me – anybody
that can see through this ??
” (IPCC) has projected a likely temperature rise of 3 oC (2 to 4.5 oC) from a doubled CO2 of 560 ppm in this century.[i] Many believe that a rise of 2–2.5 oC will cause a “dangerous anthropogenic interference with climate.” Earth has already had a rise of 0.8 oC in less than one-half century, and it is projected to rise another 0.6 oC as the planet adjusts to the present level of CO2. ”
0.7 deg + 0.8 deg = 3 deg, yep, with that so far…
“can explain the observed global temperature rises with the observed increases in greenhouse gases. ”
except that it’s not…
Good job I’m not a climate scientist, I’d be totally stuck!
“Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered
By Christopher Monckton
This 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. ”
So is the APS correct in that they have the pro overwhelming opinion or is the editor correct in that there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion???
“Boris, you did not complete the caption. You left out the “as simulated by the PCM model” part. According to the simulations, if GHGs were causing the warming, the observations should show a hot spot. The observations don’t show a hot spot. Where is the misinterpretation you keep claiming?”
You still haven’t got it yet. Yes, they are model runs, but they show the contribution of warming of the different forcings FOR THE 20TH CENTURY. The solar forcing is smaller than GHG forcing, so the response is weaker. When you run models for equal forcing, you get the same tropospheric pattern, only the stratosphere is different.
Any warming would show a hot spot. A tropical tropospheric hot spot is NOT a fingerprint of GHG warming.
Department of other opinions:
Dr. Freeman Dyson
“All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.
Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.
Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.”
Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism and a proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. he obtained a BA in mathematics from Cambridge University (1945) and was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1946 to 1949. In 1947 he moved to the US, on a fellowship at Cornell University and thence joined the faculty there as a physics professor in 1951 without a PhD. He was elected a FRS in 1952 In 1953, he took up a post at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. In 1957, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.Prof. Dyson is best known for demonstrating in 1949 the equivalence of the formulations of quantum electrodynamics that existed by that time — Richard Feynman’s diagrammatic path integral formulation and the operator method developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. A by-product of that demonstration was the invention of the Dyson series.
Another seminal work by Dyson came in 1966 when, together with A. Lenard and independently of Elliott H. Lieb and Walter Thirring, he proved rigorously that the exclusion principle plays the main role in the stability of bulk matter . Hence, it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between electrons and nuclei that is responsible for two wood blocks that are left on top of each other not coalescing into a single piece, but rather it is the exclusion principle applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical macrosopic normal force. In condensed matter physics, Dyson also did studies in the phase transition of the Ising model in 1 dimension and spin waves. Dyson also did work in a variety of topics in mathematics, such as topology, analysis, number theory and random matrices. From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion. A prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but a treaty which he was involved in and supported, banned the testing of nuclear weapons other than underground, and this caused the project to be abandoned. In 1958 he led the design team for the TRIGA, a small, inherently safe nuclear reactor used throughout the world in hospitals and universities for the production of isotopes. Dyson was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1966 and Max Planck medal in 1969. In the 1984–85 academic year he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen, which resulted in the book Infinite In All Directions. In 1996 he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. In 1998, Dyson joined the board of the Solar Electric Light Fund. In 2000, Dyson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. In 1989, Dyson taught at Duke University as a Fritz London Memorial Lecturer. In the same year, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. As of 2003, Dyson is the president of the Space Studies Institute, the space research organization founded by Gerard K. O’Neill. In 2003, Dyson was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado. Dyson is a long-time member of the JASON defense advisory group.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494
The engineer
“Correlation is not causation” seems to be their explanation for why solar and other influences are moot. Yet correlation is all they have for CO2, and it no longer correlates because other factors are bigger.
Boris
You just don’t have it yet. A desk jockey with a PC plugs in the numbers for the model to make the model correlate with reality, but there is no correlation, and no reality, just WAGs.
“Steve Keohane (11:24:51) :
Boris
You just don’t have it yet. A desk jockey with a PC plugs in the numbers for the model to make the model correlate with reality, but there is no correlation, and no reality, just WAGs. ”
I have to agree with Steve. The way I see the issue is the guys doing the input work has been given a load of data and told to build a model to show XY & Z.
Thats the problem with models, they are built with an end in mind. The rub is, how do you build a model with ALL the data with no pre-conception of what the outcome will be? It’s like being given a tonne of lego blocks and asked to build the model with no instructions or picture on the box to guide you. It’s extremely difficult to come up with what was intended by the original designers. In the case of earth, that designer would be Mother Nature and she’s not going to give us many clues!
Just to elaborate on Paul Shanahan’s post above, a statement has now been added to the article in the newsletter in red type both on the table of context page and on the first page of the article that reads: “This 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.”
Any guess how long it will be before the organization of which Monckton is the Chief Policy Advisor corrects their press release here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/personnel.html If the skptic movement wants to be taken seriously by scientists, the way to do it is not to get something printed in one of the scientific organizations newsletters and then blatantly misrepresent it. It makes it quite clear to many of us that the APS’s Forum on Physics and Society newsletter was simply used as a pawn in a propaganda war…I.e., Monckton was not trying to win over scientists but rather trying to make it look like his article had scientific authority that it does not have. Rather pathetic actually.
Let’s see: appeal to authority, ad-hominem attacks. You can read this in the comments above by the AGW supporters. When I read sonicfrog mention that Freeman Dyson and Lubos Motl are not climatologists, I thought ‘Thank God, they are not so narrowed and blinded by that field but fully understand and reference many aspects of physics.’ And the last I’ve heard is that the climate of the Earth behaves in accord with physical laws and principles. Please correct me if I err here. Also: if the majority of temperature data sets do not show any net or even significant warming (and possible cooling) over the last 2 decades, while C02 has been increased quite significantly, isn’t that the best proof for doubting AGW? Isn’t that just common sense? Maybe climatologists today have developed the unique ability to create tons of C02 models signifying nothing — but impressing the gullible. Sounds all too familiar, no?
Wait a minute! http://www.livescience.com stated that this “reversal” is a rumour and that the APS has not changed its position.
The APS site also states that it agrees with its 2007 statement that CO2 is driving the climate.
What is going on??? I’m very much confused…If this is a rumour , shouldn’t this article be removed or edited?
” Joel Shore (11:56:22) :
Just to elaborate on Paul Shanahan’s post above…”
Yes, should have made my post a little clearer, Joel is 100% correct – Apologies.
Department of other opinions:
Dr. Andrei Kapitsa:
“Global warming as a result of man’s activities does not exist. People who say it does have predicted temperatures would get higher for the past 20 years, but globally this has not happened.”
“I gave a lecture in Cambridge a couple of years ago on the myths of global warming and of the ozone hole, but not one of my opponents would come and discuss the issue with me. It is disappointing, but the facts are against them. I am for discussion not dictatorship in the academic world.”
Dr. Andrei Kapitsa
Faculty of Geography
Moscow State Lomonosov University
Leninskie Gory
Moscow 119899
RUSSIA
Andrei Kapitsa is the son of Nobel laureate (1973 Physics) Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa and Anna Alekseevna Krylova, daughter of A. N. Krylov. Kapitsa has spent the past three decades monitoring environmental change, first leading 7,000 scientists at the Far East Science Center, National Academy of Science, Vladivostok in Siberia, and later at Moscow State University, where he is professor of geography.
Discussion, yes. Lobotomies, no.
Did you see APS’s posting of the Monckton paper? It starts out with this note:
(http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm)
Maybe you’re a bit premature in your champagne cork-popping, Mr. Watts?
REPLY: Maybe you’re a bit premature with saying I’m opening champagne? I provided an excerpt and link to the story on Dailytech, with no commentary in that posting of my own. Where do you get “cork popping” from that?
Paul Shanahan, the editor is correct but you can bet there is a lot of internal wrangling going on, with the paymasters threatening to withold grants, etc.