Today (1 December 2009) Professor Chris Rapley CBE, Director of the Science Museum and Professor of Climate Science at UCL said:
“More work needs to be done to convince people of the reality of human-induced climate change and of the urgency with which we must agree an international solution. Public organisations, like the Science Museum, have a responsibility to lay out the evidence and open up public discussion.”
He added:
“Over the past month the Science Museum has provided a channel for people to engage with the scientific evidence for climate change through a temporary exhibit and accompanying website called ‘Prove It!’. There is currently plenty of debate around climate change research and I believe it is important for the Science Museum to provide a means for people to engage with the issues. Prove It! has created a space for visitors, to the Museum and website, to consider the scientific evidence, come to their own conclusions and express their opinion. The indications from Prove It! are consistent with a recent Pew Centre survey and a 2007 Ipsos Mori poll: a large proportion of people do not believe in the reality of man-made climate change.
Furthermore, Professor Rapley said:
“The Science Museum is uniquely placed to engage with people about climate change, facilitating discussion and decision making based on evidence. I look forward to launching a new dedicated climate change gallery next June as the culmination of our Centenary year.”
The statement was made to coincide with the revealing of the results of a poll carried out by the Science Museum to tie in with the Prove It! project. The poll suggested that a significant number of people are not convinced by the evidence for man-made climate change so do not support strong action by the UK government at the forthcoming Copenhagen conference.
Prove It! remains open until January 2010 and is free to visit.
For further information please contact Andrew Marcus, Science Museum Press Office, on 020 7942 4357 / andrew.marcus@sciencemuseum.org.uk
Kate (02:03:11) :
Many thanks for that link about the Conservatives. As a lifetime Conservative voter, I have been very sad to see that the Conservatives appeared to be just as deluded as the government on climate change. But I’m greatly encouraged by these quotes. I knew of several prominent Conservatives who are sceptical (Lawson and Lilley) but I didn’t realise there was such widespread support in the party for a more sensible and – dare I say it – more sceptical approach.
It just happens that Nick Herbert, the party environment spokesman, is my MP and I have been thinking of emailing him about climate change and energy policy. Now, with Climategate and the knowledge that the party is more sceptical than I realised, I will have a lot to say.
Sadly I won’t be voting Conservative, because Cameron broke his ‘cast-iron’ promise on the referendum. I’ll be voting UKIP, which also happens to be the most sceptical UK party on climate change.
Chris
Brian Johnson uk (02:31:56) :
Hi Brian.
I also sent such an email to Cameron, and another to the Tory Party. Looks like they only react when the media provokes voters into anger, and they’ve been caught with the wrong policies.
marchesarosa (01:56:19) :
The figures have been bouncing up and down all month. Either they have been incredibly sloppy about collating the responses or someone has been fiddling.
An unfortunate side effect of adjusting and homogenizing the raw data on the fly…
The one thing that strikes me about the so-called Prove it! campaign is the complete lack of proof. I’ve read their material which is supposed to prove that the climate is being driven by CO2. There are claims which are simply false. They link hurricanes to climate change, when in fact the ACE measurement (compiled by the NOAA, I believe) shows that hurricanes world-wide have been steadily declining in severity over the past few decades.
They claim that sea level was ‘stable’ until they started to shoot up, presumably only after CO2 was discovered, in other words another hockey stick. In fact research indicates that sea level had been falling during the LIA. Around 1850 sea levels then started to rise and have been rising at a very steady rate ever since.
The material contains lots of claims, some of which are true, and some of which are false. But, as far as I can see, there is not a single piece of scientific evidence to link the warming with CO2. A bit ironic, bearing in mind the Prove it! headline.
Chris
A fat guy can have a hundred doctors tell him cake is bad for his health but only one would be needed to convince him cake is good for his well being.
This would help to explain why the mainstream media are sitting on this story.
They know once it goes viral the climate change scam is boned.
Whatever we say or the others say it is down to the mass of undecided who usually call the shots.
Metaphorically speaking ‘Cake’ should be an easier sell than ‘No cake’ so lets get ahead of the curve. lol
“Public organisations, like the Science Museum, have a responsibility to lay out the evidence and open up public discussion.”
Public organisations, like the Science Museum, Have a responsibility to tell the truth Professor Rapley, The whole truth and nothing but the truth, not your Goverment promoted propaganda!
It is interesting that the graphic at the top of this page says “In the PROVE IT! gallery [i.e. physically in the museum] , 3408 people chose to count in and 626 chose to count out. On the website, 2650 users counted in and 7612 counted out.”
So a majority of people who emitted carbon, to get to the exhibit, asked to be counted as having done something wrong. Is that how they think this is going to work in the Copenhagen world? They won’t have to give anything up as long as they keep a tally?
Good thing AGW is fantastical tosh, or I’d be angry about an attitude like that.
Slightly OT – but like the Science Museum’s dodgy poll it is UK and propaganda related: My other half has pointed out that Mumsnet (probably one of the busiest fora in the UK) are having a live webchat with Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change – this Thurs Dec 3rd, at 1.15 – 2.15pm (GMT). Some UK readers may wish to register with mumsnet and ask him a question or two?
I detect a certain amount of intellectual flailing about going on inside Professor Rapley’s brain. It’s a familiar refrain, isn’t it? “We need to communicate better with the public to get our message across” – 100% absolutely, exactly the same as explaining a “policy”; something our reptilian overlord politicians do all the time (I use the term reptilian in a purely metaphorical sense).
Perhaps the UN has been trying to form alliances with academia (“the science”), business (“big energy”), and interest groups inside countries, across the world, so as to diminish the power of national borders and nation state governments. I remember Al Gore saying as much.
If that is their strategy, it seems to be having some success.
However, it is not so easy to unite the man in the street with the UN.
We pay taxes at a regional level, we pay taxes at a national level, but I’m not so sure we want to start paying taxes at a global level, so that we can have our resources and development managed by a global institution.
And even if such a system were ever to come to pass, there is no telling who would end up controlling it, and what mistakes they may make in the first 1000 years.
The allegiance of various institutions to “climate change” (which is the first form of the great myth that will unite the world, just as in early history, great myths were used to unite disparate tribes), is pretty obvious. Personally I would also be in allegiance to the BBC and academia and the Science Museum and the UN for a global system. I just don’t think we’re capable of running one successfully yet.
On a somewhat related note, the number of signatures on http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/UEACRU is currently 2,245.
Considering the other-than-scientific machinations that have been revealed by the Climategate disclosure, anyone who is entitled to sign up really should. We owe it to science to allow a little of the “disinfectant of sunshine” into the cosy club at CRU. If nothing is revealed, that is fine.
The Right Honorary Christopher Rapley CBE seems to have made a somewhat biased assessment of the publics response to his poll. Slightly inconvenient and bothersome. It seems the public have not been fully brainwashed yet by his chums up at the UEA. You did know he is an honorary professory at UEA.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/People/Honorary+Staff/Christopher+Rapley
His profile on the UEA website sheds further light on the topic:
“He was Director of the British Antarctic Survey from 1998 to 2007; during his time in the Antarctic, he helped Al Gore with the “Live Earth” concert by arranging for the Rothera Research Station’s in-house band, Nunatak, to perform in Antarctica as part of the event.”
No bias there, then. Just an inconvenient truth…….
OT,
Anthony
I have followed news in Brazil stating that the temperature in the Brazilian base “Comandante Ferraz” had record cold sec XXI. This is based on the Antarctic Peninsula, where is “hotter than expected.” Also reports that the cold is more frequent since 2007. Some information about it?
I disagree with Sarah Palin on a lot of things but credit where it is due. She was absolutely right about global warming;
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/18/palin-global-warming-limbaugh/
What is so interesting and comical is to read the comments below the article.
I should have added. The article is dated a few days before Climategate broke.
I used to love the Science Museum and was desperately disappointed by the complete dumbing down when I went there again last year.
It was crammed with ‘interactive displays’ designed for 8yr olds – the Prove It! campaign is just another depressing manifestation of its slide towards the scientific equivalent of daytime TV.
The fact that An Inconvenient Truth is being shown in our schools is simply appalling brainwashing.
Is this a version of Ripley’s believe it or not? have we all emailed the man and our political reps?
…or perhaps most people are now not willing to engage in “debates” where the game is rigged. The Alarmists provide spurious studies supported by nebulous charts and assertions, which in turn were produced by elite scientists that have been proven to be charltans. Who in thier right mind would wish to debate an issue where 6 zillion peer reviewed case studies coincidentally say the same thing? Who in thier right mind wishes to debate inside an echo chamber.
Maybe it is time to hit the now infamous “reset” button and begin again -this time without the IPCC engineered echo chamber.
All it’s proved is that kids are impressionable and easily led (the ‘yes’ voters in the gallery) whilst rational adults who are able to make their own minds up on the matter are highly sceptical.
Allowing an online poll was a tactical error; they should just have gone with the kiddie vote.
As a Scientist and ex-Senior Police Officer I have had a unique exposure to the term ‘evidence’. I do not feel that a series of comments which only give one side of an argument can be dignified with the term, as it has in the Science Museum’s ‘Prove It’ poll.
For a site which is aimed a laymen that approach is misleading and I am all the more surprised at the size of vote doubting AGW.
Brian Johnson uk (02:31:56):
All Global Warming predictions are based on totally inaccurate Computer Models.
That’s not true. I’m quite sure that people in the 19th Century didn’t have computer models and that is when the greenhouse effect was discovered. Arrhenius predicted that doubling or halving CO2 would bring something like a 4°C rise or fall of surface temperature, and that was around 1900.
Here, have a read of this:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
There can be no comparison between the ‘gallery vote’, which may or may not have been a private ballot, and the website vote, which was indeed a private ballot. To meld the two as if they were one and the same thing is the action of a defeated institutional apologist.
It is astonishing that the Copenhagen rejectionists (my preferred term) outnumber the Copenhagen conformists (my preferred term) by a majority of approximately three to one – and this on a website blatantly propagandising only one side of the argument.
As I mentioned in my message to the Science Museum, I am a democratist. I use the term to distinguish myself from so-called ‘Western liberal democracy’ apologists, with this latter concept amounting to ‘liberal’ diktat and dictatorship of the kind we have seen at the CRU and Penn State.
Democratism and democratisation are the instruments that are ideally suited to bring about the defeat of institutional diktat, dictatorship and globalisation, via discussions and private ballots instead of the dreaded public ‘consensus’ model (Hitler’s ‘arm up or else’ Nuremberg rallies come to mind). Even this very flawed example shows what can be achieved. Imagine if this had been conducted honestly, with evidence from the rejectionists countering that of the conformists. The Science Museum obviously did imagine it – and decided against.
Democratism rocks!
As this is a pedestrian poll its an interesting result. People on a day to day basis believe more what they experience than what they are told, whether they are informed of two, indeed several sides of an argument or not.
It is necessary to say that those protagonists of the present consensus of global warming also continue to live their lives as though there were no impending catastrophe, indeed more excessive in their carbon consumptions than the rest of us average Joes. I would nickname Al Gore as Rasputin II for making the worst of the prognostications of future calamities that never happen although as a politician, he avoids those predictions that actually can be verified to be true or false.
in fact, on a personal level, i’m quite fed up with this stable and bountiful climate, as the news isn’t dominated by famines and failures that were so rampant in the 60’s and 70’s, when we could feel awfully sorry for the victims and send them international charity and aid.
Front page news of the Daily Express today about Ian Plimer calling ‘ Human Climate Change’ a fraud.No mention of Climategate but at least it still shows the public that some SCIENTISTS actually dispute the religion.
“Public organisations, like the Science Museum, have a responsibility to lay out the evidence and open up public discussion.”
Sure. So where is the evidence?