Posted by Dee Norris
Mark your calendars.
The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change returns to New York City on March 8th, 2009.
The 2009 International Conference on Climate Change will serve as a platform for scientists and policy analysts from around the world who question the theory of man-made climate change. This year’s theme, “Global Warming Crisis: Cancelled,” calls attention to new research findings that contradict the conclusions of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
Last year’s conference was reported to be a great success and you can access the audio and video recordings of presentations made at the 2008 conference Web site.
Distinguished scholars from the U.S. and around the world have addressed these questions seriously and without institutional bias. Their findings suggest the Modern Warming is moderate and partly or even mostly a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age; that the consequences of moderate warming are positive for humanity and wildlife; that predictions of future warming are wildly unreliable; that the costs of trying to “stop global warming” exceed hypothetical benefits by a factor of 10 or more; and more.
Often, these scholars have been ignored, and often even censored and demonized. They have been labeled “skeptics” and even “global warming deniers,” a mean-spirited attempt to lump them together with Holocaust deniers. The truth of the matter is that these scholars dissent from a false “consensus” put forward by a small but politically powerful clique of government scientists and political allies.
Actual surveys of climate scientists and recent reviews of the scholarly literature both show the so-called “skeptics” may actually be in the majority of the climate science community. They do not lack scholarly credentials or scientific integrity, but a platform from which they can be heard. Their voices have been drowned out by publicity built upon the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an entity with an agenda to build support for the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming.
This year promises double the attendance as in 2008 and the esteemed Anthony Watts is a confirmed speaker.
I plan on attending. Do you?
Confirmed Speakers
| Name | Affiliation |
| Dennis Avery | Hudson Institute |
| Joseph Bast | The Heartland Institute |
| Robert Bradley | Institute for Energy Research |
| Bob Carter | James Cook University (Australia) |
| Frank Clemente | Penn State University |
| John Coleman | KUSI-TV – San Diego |
| Joseph D’Aleo | International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project |
| David Douglass | University of Rochester |
| Myron Ebell | Competitive Enterprise Institute |
| Michelle Foss | University of Texas – Center for Energy Economics |
| Fred Goldberg | Royal School of Technology (Sweden) |
| Laurence Gould | University of Hartford |
| William Gray | Colorado State University |
| Chris Horner | Competitive Enterprise Institute |
| Craig Idso | Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change |
| David Legates | University of Delaware |
| Jay Lehr | The Heartland Institute |
| Marlo Lewis | Competitive Enterprise Institute |
| Richard Lindzen | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Ross McKitrick | University of Guelph |
| Christopher Monckton | Science and Public Policy Institute |
| Jim O’Brien | Florida State University |
| Tim Patterson | Carleton University |
| Benny Peiser | Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom) |
| Paul Reiter | Institut Pasteur (France) |
| Arthur Robinson | Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine |
| Joel Schwartz | American Enterprise Institute |
| S. Fred Singer | Science and Environmental Policy Project |
| Fred Smith | Competitive Enterprise Institute |
| Willie Soon | Science and Public Policy Project |
| Roy Spencer | University of Alabama at Huntsville |
| James M. Taylor | The Heartland Institute |
| Anthony Watts | Surfacestations.org |
Perhaps we can get Al Gore to speak so we are assured of cold weather.
Just an afterthought: As many of you know, Anthony does not receive funding for his work at www.surfacestations.org or here at WUWT. The funds to attend this conference will most likely come out of his pocket. Look to your right and you will see at little yellow Donate button under the SHAMELESS PLUG heading. WUWT gets over 10,000 views a day and if just 0.5% of this traffic contributes ten dollars apiece, we can entirely fund Anthony’s conference expenses. How about it? Do we walk the walk or just talk?
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Jeff Alberts (15:45:19) :
So MBH98 indirectly invalidates AGW, IMHO.
That must be why Michael Mann is on the list…
if any of there work shows that AGW might not be man-made then their names should be on the list
I think the scientists concerned are best positioned to decide whether their work has been misrepresented, surely?
Let us speak plainly, there is next to nothing in the scientific literature that contradicts the proposition that manmade greenhouse gases are warming the planet. Avery’s rather desparate manouverings and misrepresentations just serve to underline this simple fact. Of at least 20,000 practicing climate scientists, apparently only around 8 are willing to attend a conference disputing this concensus. Of these, at least one, Singer, is a demonstrable liar.
Much is made of the refusal of Gore or Hansen to attend or debate. But what would be the point? When was the last time a scientific question was decided in a televised debate? How would non-scientist Gore debating non-scientist Monckton advance understanding? A rather more apposite challenge was thrown out by Gavin Schmidt:
the fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the AGU or EGU meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists (not the famous ones, the ones at your local university or federal lab). I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts at the Fall meeting . [of the AGU] (the biggest conference in the US on this topic) that support your view – you won’t be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can’t credibly argue it doesn’t exist
So, this conference is not about advancing or even explaining the science, on behalf of those vested interests who believe they have something to lose, it is designed to raise doubts in the media and the public consciousness about the existence of a scientific concensus. One wishes them more success in that forum than they enjoyed than last year.
JP
John Philip
“Let us speak plainly”
Who is the “us” John?
You seem awfully sure of things in your world.
Some of you might find this of interest.
http://www.ajeuk.org/papers/2008_09_12%20AJE%20Alex%20Lockwood.pdf
MartingGatkins
The writer of that article
http://www.ajeuk.org/papers/2008_09_12%20AJE%20Alex%20Lockwood.pdf
Seems scared about the effect of blogs.
Good.
No doubt we all make a difference. I also get the feeling that the writer would wish i could totally silence the bloggers?
The thing is:
If the sceptic blog-message is wrong, the alarmists are “SOO MANY” and has “SUCH A GOOD CASE” in defending their CO2 hypothesis, that it should be no problem at all for them to quickly just join the blogs and come up with some real PRO CO2 – arguments if they existed.
But fact is: If the Alarmists (of scientists etc) where so many, and their arguments so good, then they needed not worry about blogs.
So we can conclude that THE ALARMISTS SCIENTISTS ar not that many and/or their arguments are not that strong.
Long live freedom to speak.
marek (21:42:38) :
Calm down. Not always a non smoker can escape the second hand smoke.
————–
Someone has you tied down and is blowing smoke in your face?
Of course, second hand smoke is always avoidable. The problem is that to avoid it sometimes involves choices that you would rather not make. So you turn to govt to force someone else to make those undesireable choices, rather than yourself.
JP: So, this conference is not about advancing or even explaining the science, on behalf of those vested interests who believe they have something to lose, it is designed to raise doubts in the media and the public consciousness about the existence of a scientific concensus. One wishes them more success in that forum than they enjoyed than last year.
Yeah, nice try there, John. It is primarily about advancing and explaining the science. True science doesn’t need to hide behind some “concensus”, whether real or mythical. Gavin Schmuck knows this, and is simply being political in your above quote.
There are countless so-called “scientists” suckling at the AGW teat. Follow the money, John. You seem hooked on your AGW pseudoscientific ideology. Perhaps you feel comfortable with that, and would be more comfortable with the pablum over at RC instead.
MartinGAtkins (00:50:41) :
Please include a a small description instead of just posting a link without context. E.g. these quotes:
John Philip (18:32:24) :
Your literally incredible claim of ‘consensus’ deliberately avoids the co-signing by over 31,000 physical scientists [in the U.S. alone] of the OISM petition, stating that an increase in carbon dioxide is not harmful, but is, in fact, very beneficial. The eminent scientist Freeman Dyson was one of the early signers.
Compare that with your 2,500 signers of the UN’s IPCC propaganda [many of whom have degrees, not in the physical sciences, but in subjects such as English Lit and Sociology]. And most of the IPCC’s signers are in reality government agents, whose job it is to provide taxpayer feed for the public trough.
And to claim that ” there is next to nothing in the scientific literature that contradicts the proposition that manmade greenhouse gases are warming the planet” is disingenuous. Scientists generally agree that CO2 has a very *slight* effect on temperatures. But the effect is so minuscule that just about every other forcing drowns out that extremely minor effect.
But the global warming alarmists still cling to the repeatedly falsified hypothesis that increases in CO2 will shortly lead to runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. As we have seen, however, the planet is cooling, not warming.
Where is your god now?
JP
It should be possible to build a list of reputable research papers that, each by itself, tends to refute AGW – even if the authors personally believe in AGW – and describe the compilation in a way that causes no offence. As your statement stands, it sounds pretty awful – as if Heartland have behaved badly. However, I would never just accept your version without also hearing Heartland’s own take on what you report – scientists upset to be on their list. I shall try to check this one out since you’ve raised what could be a fair issue.
However, also remember that in the current situation, people who are skeptical of AGW are, whether you like this or not, almost always endangering their professional positions if they are seen to be openly supporting AGW. This much comes across loud and clear from the words of the very scientists you quote. Scientists today may even write papers that are intentional evidence for skepticism, but may have to present them as “supporting AGW” in order to get them published. I’ve seen such double-takes but I don’t want to name names and cause people problems. Such is the sorry state of lack of openness in the debate.
“seen to be openly supporting skeptics” I mean!
Ric Werme (05:22:54)
“Please include a a small description instead of just posting a link without context. E.g. these quotes:”
Nup!
It was a small PDF I thought of interest to WUWT users. If you can’t move and click the mouse by yourself I’m not gonna do it for you.
How do I quote from a PDF without wasting time reformating it?
Your literally incredible claim of ‘consensus’ deliberately avoids the co-signing by over 31,000 physical scientists [in the U.S. alone] of the OISM petition,
The ‘Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’ is in fact run out of a barn in Cave Junction. I do not need to ‘avoid’ their petition as it does not damage the concensus in any way whatsoever…
1. It is not restricted to physical scientists, as you state. The majority of signatories actually hold engineering degrees, and it also includes medical doctors, dentists, even veterinarians. Taken in that context 31,000 is a pitifully small fraction of the potential signatories; there are over 2 million engineers in the US. Perhaps you could name just 10 of the 31,000 who have published in climate science? Or indeed 10 peer reviewed papers that challenge the concensus?
2. Why did the organisers include a ‘review paper’ with the mailing, in the font and layout of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but written by Arthur Robinson (who is attending the conference), who has never worked in climate science?. The paper is not peer-reviewed, full of misleading errors and false conclusions, but may have fooled the odd chiropractor or veterinarian. It obliged the real NAS to issue a press release NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.
No reputable polling organisation would attempt to mislead in this way.
3. When Scientific American magazine contacted some of the signatories with climate-related qualifications, it found a significant fraction had never heard of the petition, which kinda damages its credibility.
Whereas on the concensus side, in addition to the IPCC we have the National Science Academies of the G8 + 3, plus position statements from the AGU, AMS and every other relevant professional body.
Scientists generally agree that CO2 has a very *slight* effect on temperatures. But the effect is so minuscule that just about every other forcing drowns out that extremely minor effect.
That is simply false. CO2 is the largest single external forcing by a large margin, and the effect of a doubling in concentrations is estimated to be an increase in equilibrium temperature of around 3C.
I am an aethiest, however the scientific concensus seems to me to be highly robust.
MartinGAtkins (10:37:16) :
How do I quote from a PDF without wasting time reformating it?
Highlight by dragging the mouse the text you want to quote, then copy and paste. You may have to hunt a bit for the copy function [depending on version], but once you figure out where it is, you can place it on the PDF-reader’s toolbar.
Lucy Skywalker says:
Hogwash!! What comes across from the quotes is that scientists don’t like their names and research being abused by people spreading propaganda! The point is that Avery has taken such a wide view of what constitutes evidence disputing AGW that he even includes in his list two or three of the scientists who run RealClimate (including Michael Mann, as I recall). For example, if you publish a paper that suggests that the sun had any important influence on climate change in the past then you are on the list even though this is in the context of showing the high sensitivity of the climate to radiative forcings, such as the known forcing due to CO2.
This is just an excuse to not take scientists at their word but instead to grossly misinterpret and twist their work to fit your own agenda and beliefs.
Lucy
The original Heartland list is here It is a list of studies that Avery claims support his and Fred Singer’s thesis of a natural climatic cycle being responsible for GW. No explanation of quite how they support the claim is provided and at least 45 of those named objected to their research being used in this way. How many did not bother because they regard the musings of an agriculturalist on the Heartland website as a complete irrelevance is not recorded.
Joseph Bast explains why Heartland continues to cite the scientists against their wishes here …
Unedifying.
REPLY: John your complaint is baseless, a list of publications aka bibliography appear in many scientific works, many of these same works are cited elsewhere. and these same researchers don’t ask for it to be removed.
When a publication is made, ANYONE can cite it anyway they choose, as long as the citations are done correctly, they have no quarrel. They particularly have no quarrel when public finds are used to make these papers.
I’m not going to get into another one of your multipaged long winded discussions. Just stop blowing smoke, pick another topic.
Anthony Watts
It is not just my complaint. But I will respect your wishes, and sign off this one,
JP
Your Heartland reference showed me they were not refusing to alter something they could have altered, as you claimed. It was just as Anthony has said, a reference list at the end of a book, about which no scientist can object, so long as we have freedom of speech. The only issue about which the scientists could complain was the title given to the separate publication of that list.
In response to the complaints, The Heartland Institute has changed the headlines that its PR department had chosen for some of the documents related to the lists, from “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” to “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.”
You’ve done what you rightly took me to task for – using outdated information that is misleading…
Joel Shore (11:29:14) Propaganda, hah. Hey what about the propaganda Gore is spreading with $300,000,000 of secretive money? The CO2=AGW exaggeration being spread by the alarmists is the biggest bunch of disinformation and propaganda out there. Why is the globe cooling, while CO2 rises?
======================================
John (12:48:50) Yah, really you are just illustrating how warped peer review and review in general is in such a politicized arena of science.
==================================
Lucy,
Anthony has requested we discontinue this so I’ll be brief then sign off. Reread my post: my point was that in the original release of the document Avery ascribed opinions to scientists who in fact held the opposing view, causing outrage. This is a million miles from the usual scientific citation process. Only after the receipt of complaints and the threat of legal action did Heartland retitle the document as a ‘bibliography’.
I think Lief’s very much misunderstood comment regarding Heartland best reflects the real problem here.
Lief pointed out how sad it was that science is being used in the service of politics. In some cases, questionable and out-right pseudo-science it being accepted an established and proven research simply because it supports a political position.
Like it or not, this applies to BOTH sides of the AGW debate. The debate has become so politicized that some scientists are afraid of career repercussions no matter which side they support in the debate.
For us skeptics, the Heartland conference is the best we have at the moment. Maybe someday we can all fly to Bali using grant money thrown at us by NGOs and governments.
In the meantime, all should lament the loss to objective science research by the politics that have been introduced into the methodology.
MartinGAtkins (10:37:16) :
In general, I do that by “move and click the mouse by [my]self”. I’m using Acroread V7 on Linux, click select, highlight the text, and paste it in. There were a few annoying non-7-bit-ascii characters and a little editing to delete hard returns (emacs has a search and replace function).
Given that there are hundreds of readers of WUTW, I think they all deserve a little extra effort to make wading through the current volume of posting tolerable. That’s why I took the time to do help out.
If you consider helping out your fellow reader “wasting time” I’ll ignore your future posts. We have enough posters already anyway….
John Philip [04:26:09] falsely claims that James Hansen never received $720,000 from George Soros’ foundation.
However, Investor’s Business Daily reported that Hansen was, in fact, funded by Soros. Furthermore, when Hansen claimed the story wasn’t true, IBD refused to retract their published report.
If Hansen was telling the truth, he certainly would have a pretty airtight civil case against IBD. Conclusion: it is Hansen who is lying. QED.
In addition, James Hansen has been showered with payoffs by other far-left organizations, in addition to the $720,000 he got from George Soros.
The [Teresa] Heinz Foundation paid James Hansen $250,000 for his “work on global warming.” [Who is Hansen now beholden to? The taxpayers who pay his salary? Or Soros, Heinz and others?]
Hansen pocketed another $500,000 from the way-left Dan David foundation, again to promote global warming propaganda.
Hansen also received payola from the Gorebot himself. And those payoffs are only the ones that have come to light.
James Hansen is bought and paid for by a cabal of shady anti-science, anti-American groups. Hansen does their bidding. As do the people who defend his corruption.
Quoting the legal case cited above (to show that CO2 is a pollutant) …
“The Supreme Court of the United States decided in
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
MASSACHUSETTS ET AL. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
No. 05–1120. Argued November 29, 2006—Decided April 2, 2007
that CO2 is a pollutant. End of story.
—
No, no true. The US Supreme Court is a bunch of lawyers who decide what the “law” is – according to how THEY decide THEY want to “read” the “law” in question on that particular day. With respect to a legal standing, to taxes, and to how much control Core and Hansen and John Phillips want to have over the rest of humanity, they are relevant. Their decision about CO2 (like their decision to approve of slavery) is wrong. Like their decision about slavery, it was both politically motivated, and dead wrong scientifically.
But CO2 is a fertilizer, a trace gas in the atmosphere, and is NOT a pollutant. Unless you want to tax it.
CO2 cannot be shown to have influenced global temperatures – particularly since CO2 has increased steadily since 1950, and for most of that time, temperatures have either decreased or remained steady. It is only that short 25 year period from 1973 – 1998 that both CO2 and tempertures have increased. And technically, since during the 13 year period from 1995 through 2008 CO2 was increasing while temperatures remained static, JP has even a smaller trend line to base his assumption on.
I would also remind JP and Leif that – at no time in history – has the “consensus” of “reputable science” EVER been correct. In each case, “scientific consensus” has been proved WRONG when challenged by “amateurs” and real data. Malaria and mosquitos, cholera’s link to water supply, yellow fever, magnetism and latitude, chronometers and longitude, Einstein’s theory being challenged by political pressure, movement of the continents, the nucleus of the atom, …. All the way back to Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton.
Scientific “conventional wisdom” – Your precious “consensus” has been wrong. Every time.
And the MORE that heavily funded IPCC “scientists” with their eyes on a convenient (and politically motivated “ignoble” prize strive for recognition and papers by their “peers” criticize/criticise those who have evidence to refute their politics, the more I distrust the financially-motivations (er, politically-motivated, promotions, and politically-well-funded) “conventional wisdom” of Hansen and his crew.