WUWT readers may recall that my posting in July 2008 on some of the angst going on within APS over a paper from Christopher Monckton ruffled a few feathers. The paper, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, was reviewed by APS and this odd disclaimer then placed on it:
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.
What was odd, is that APS invited Monckton to submit, so to then place a disclaimer was quite unusual. However there is good news; they may be changing their tune on climate change issues. Today we have this from Luboš Motl:
APS is reviewing its statements on climate change
Climate alarmism is a particularly embarrassing attitude for professional institutions that should represent disciplines with very high intellectual standards because climate alarmism is associated with extremely poor intellectual (and ethical) standards, besides other negative characteristics.
The American Physical Society (APS) was therefore embarrassed on November 18th, 2007 when its bodies approved an alarmist statement that was much more constructive and issue-oriented than the statements of many institutions outside physics but it was still a scientists’ variation of the same blinded, biased, irrational hysteria.
It shouldn’t be surprising that members around Will Happer, a renowned Princeton physicist, wrote an
where they mention that the climate has always been changing and warming and trace gases have many positive effects, according to scientific literature. The proposed new statement also discusses the unreliability of the existing climate models and urges the scientists to investigate all these effects objectively, and to study technological options related to the climate that are independent of the cause.
The petition has been signed by
Add your name if you are one, too.
Happily, Nature just published a letter from six members that informs that the APS is currently reviewing its 2007 statement:
Petitioning for a revised statement on climate change
By S. Fred Singer, Hal Lewis, Will Happer, Larry Gould, Roger Cohen & Robert H. Austin
We write in response to your issue discussing “the coming climate crunch”, including the Editorial ‘Time to act‘ (Nature 458, 10771078; 2009). We feel it is alarmist.
We are among more than 50 current and former members of the American Physical Society (APS) who have signed an open letter to the APS Council this month, calling for a reconsideration of its November 2007 policy statement on climate change (see open letter at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u; APS statement at http://tinyurl.com/56zqxr). The letter proposes an alternative statement, which the signatories believe to be a more accurate representation of the current scientific evidence. It requests that an objective scientific process be established, devoid of political or financial agendas, to help prevent subversion of the scientific process and the intolerance towards scientific disagreement that pervades the climate issue.
On 1 May 2009, the APS Council decided to review its current statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. We applaud this decision. It is the first such reappraisal by a major scientific professional society that we are aware of, and we hope it will lead to meaningful change that reflects a more balanced view of climate-change issues
Perry Debell (10:55:10)
“Global warming made it less cool.” Brenda Ekwurzel, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, claimed in a July 24, 2009 letter to the editor in the Washington Post that “2008 was a cooler year, but global warming made it less cool.”
I saw this woman on one of the debates with Michael Crichton, Professor Stott and Richard Lindzen which can be found on You Tube. She didn’t impress me much. (Mind you, neither did her cohorts, one Gavin Scmidt and some bloke called Sullivan if I remember.)
To suggest that it it’s not as cold this year as it should be due to AGW is – well – is there a word for it? I think a heap of snip is all I can come up with.
Jimmy Haigh (21:40:45) : This logic is however not foreign at all to politics-have you heard government officials tell you that “Yeah, unemployment is as bad as we said it wouldn’t get if we intervened, but the situation was even more dire than we thought! Just think how much worse things would be without our actions!”
I kid you not folks, that is not only an argument which has been made, it is made any time a government program fails to achieve it’s stated goals. Faith based economics is surely a strangely irrational approach to such issues. But most of all it is a sign of how deluded people can be about the extent of their knowledge (which is, contrary to their pretensions, quite finite).
Mencken’s opposition to Puritanism was toward its manifestation toward the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, during which time it promoted censorship, prohibition, suppression of birth control information and devices, and suppression of “vice,” primarily in crusades against toleration of red light districts, which had been generally ignored by officialdom until about 1910, and also with laws like the Mann act. Its censoriousness had inhibited fankness among American authors. Here is an entry from Wikipedia on Mencken’s essay on that topic:
A Book of Prefaces is H. L. Mencken’s 1917 collection of essays criticizing American culture, authors, and movements. … the most outspoken essay was entitled “Puritanism as a Literary Force,” during which he alleged that William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain were victims of the Puritan spirit.
“The Puritan’s utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution– these things have put an almost unbearable burden up on the exchange of ideas in the United States.”
Mencken had criticized Puritanism for many years, … but through World War I his criticism became increasingly outspoken, in part due to the rising tide of Prohibition.
I looked on the APS web site for any news that they had chartered a committee to reexamine their position. I was unable to find this. I also was unable to find any news of such a committee, outside of the source quoted on this web site.
If a committed is really reexamining this, why would one believe that this would result in a change. What is new since the publication of Monckton’s article in the Physics and Society Online Journal?
Why would they overturn the consensus of peer reviewed research on Climatology if 97% of researchers accept that AGW is real and a significant factor?
“eric (08:06:31) :
………
Why would they overturn the consensus of peer reviewed research on Climatology if 97% of researchers accept that AGW is real and a significant factor?”
Well maybe because there aren’t even a 70% consensus among the real scholars! Below find a Googletranslated text from SvD 2nd March 2009
“Heading: No consensus on climate alarms
UN climate panel, IPCC, formed in 1988 with the directive to compile research on the human impact on climate. The perspective has made concentrated efforts on a global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
This restriction means that not enough attention of other climatic factors. We believe that the absence of evidence that climate change is not mainly due to natural causes. IPCC scenarios of how you think the climate will be developed based on computer models. The models are designed so as to moderately elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gives rise to a significant warming. With the scenarios that has, since issued, and issue alerts.
Leading alarm lard has gone beyond the IPCC and has successfully managed to bring out the image that their claims are based on scientific consensus – a claim that can easily be display incorrectly. The development is a serious threat to the entire scientific community’s credibility.
Our view is:
• The fact that it could not show a significant causal link between elevated carbon dioxide content and potential climate change.
• The fact that the observed warming during the 1900s does not give cause for concern, whatever the causes.
• That the climate scares based on low forecast value.
• The claim of consensus on the issue do not support.
• That a climate policy based on the IPCC scenarios is likely to lead to a devastating waste of human and financial resources that primarily affects the poor in the world.
Before society makes far-reaching decisions on climate policy, we should ensure to use on a sounder scientific basis than we have today. The Government should therefore initiate a hearing with a broad spectrum of representatives of the scientific community with different views on the climate issue.
Jonny Fagerström, environmental debater
Göran Ahlgren, Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry
Lars Bern, former Director of the Retailer and the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, formerly chairman of The Natural Step environmental research
P-O Eriksson, the former CEO Sandvik
Peter STILBENE, professor of physical chemistry
Maggie Thauersköld, blog The Climate Scam
CG Ribbing, Professor of Solid State Physics
Gösta Walin, professor emeritus of oceanography
Sten Kaijser, professor emeritus of mathematics
Wibjörn Karlén, Professor Emeritus of Physical Geography
All representing the Stockholm Initiative, a political and economic independence network whose aim is to critically examine the climate issue and to highlight its political and economic consequences. ”
Please observe that these scholars are wellrenomed and have so been for many years. ONLY those who tries to make a consensus belived tries to call them charlatans no matter this every Professor here have a better CV than almost all of the so called scholars.
They aren’t alone most scholars today don’t stand behind the so called AWG. Which is understandable considering that the ‘change’ of CO2 are less than the ppm-value for oil in stone salt used to heat up ice during wintertime!
norah4you (08:32:04) :
The people who signed the statement you posted were not Climate Science Researchers. You had some bloggers, and scientists who do not specialize in climate science.
Where do you get you 70% figure?
“Why would they overturn the consensus of peer reviewed research on Climatology if 97% of researchers accept that AGW is real and a significant factor?”
That’s a very unscientific measure of the real understanding of researchers about AGW, Eric. You forget to allow for all tho$e pe$ky detail$ in the $urvey.
“eric (09:19:39) :
norah4you (08:32:04) :
The people who signed the statement you posted were not Climate Science Researchers. You had some bloggers, and scientists who do not specialize in climate science.
Where do you get you 70% figure?”
Eric those scholars have been working with Environmental Questions from their own subjects together with scientists and scholars from ‘Blue side’ = water and air, for many years more than the best of the scholars you on the Climate-threat side been able to put forward!
The first scholars to do a science study regarding the Climate Change published their work in 1931 and that still holds water since every assumed consequence of natural impacts from double the number of factors than anyone every done on your side AND belive it or not – the temperature they presumed would come in 1995 worldwide is almost identical 0,1 degree difference from what you say exist today. So bad luck.
And btw one of the scholars you dismissed Wibjörn Karlén, Professor Emeritus of Physical Geography participated in this work from 1983:
“Abstracts of the Second Nordic Symposium on Climatic Changes and Related Problems : Stockholm (Sweden), May 16-20 1983 / Editors: Knud Frydendahl, Wibjörn Karlén, Nils-Axel Mörner … Nordic Symposium on Climatic Changes and Related Problems (2 : 1983 : Stockholm)
Frydendahl, Knud (utgivare)
Karlén, Wibjörn (utgivare)
Mörner, Nils-Axel, 1938- (utgivare)
København : Det Danske meteorologiske institut, 1983 ”
in 1984:
Climatic changes on a yearly to millennial basis : geological, historical and instrumental records / ed. by N.-A. Mörner and W. Karlén Karlén, Wibjörn, 1937- (utgivare)
Mörner, Nils-Axel, 1938- (utgivare)
ISBN 90-277-1779-6
Dordrecht : D. Reidel Publ. Co., cop. 1984
in 1993
“The earth’s climate : natural variations and human influence / Wibjörn Karlén, Eigil Friis-Christensen, Bengt Dahlström Karlén, Wibjörn, 1937- (författare)
Dahlström, Bengt, 1939- (författare)
Friis-Christensen, Eigil (författare)
Alternativt namn: Christensen, Eigil Friis
Elforsk (medarbetare)
Alternativt namn: Svenska elföretagens forsknings- och utvecklings
Alternativt namn: Engelska: Swedish Electrical Utilities’ R&D Company
Verk som ingår i eller hör samman med denna titel
Karlén, Wibjörn: Jordens klimat. (originaltitel)
Stockholm : Elforsk, 1993 ”
to name a few of his 32 published works…..
the rest aren’t less competent!
eric
Surely you know that 97% of statistics quoted in arguments are invented?
eric, I do not recommend that you view what the average American thinks about global warming: click