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
THe House select Committee on Energy Independence is about to start a heaing on the State of Climate Science. From the link below is a link to the Webcast of the Hearing.
http://globalwarming.house.gov/pubs?id=0014
Dr. Holdren is the main guest of Honor.
😀
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/12/from-university-of-east-anglia-archives.html
This chap has an audience of about 25k a day – media and political savvy types.
It would be interesting to compare the output of such a poll with a hypothetical question like:
“Do you think that humankind might be wiped off the face of the earth by an impact with an asteroid and do you feel we should invest in a solution to such a problem?”
It would be interesting because it would separate out those that don’t want to spend their tax dollars on crisis evasion from those that simply have come to the conclusion that AGW theory is a fraud.
On a seperate, though associated subject, I have just had a response from the UK Advertising Standards Agency.
These are the people you complain to if you believe an advert is wrong in some way. I was complaining about the Times’ advert indicating that the North East passage had been opened by Global Warming.
The response was completely unacceptable, of course, but I was intrigued by the last sentence, which required me to keep the letter ‘confidential’.
This is the first that I have heard of a requirement to keep ASA findings secret. Has anyone out there got any comments or advice as to what to do next?
@Michael R.
I think you have made a few mistakes in your comments. Greenhouse effect originally had nothing to with “global warming” at all – it only referred to the insulating effect of having an atmosphere which results in the earth’s daytime temperatures being lower than the moons daytime temperatures whilst the earth’s nightime temperatures are warmer than the moon’s nightime temperatures.
Tyndalls first did experiments on gas concentrations and their effect on the “greenhouse” insulating properties of the atmosphere and his experiments suggested that CO2 had almost no effect on the insulating properties of the atmosphere but water vapur did – which we know because nights with heavy cloud cover are actually much warmer than those with no cloud cover because the water vapour keeps the heat in (but then again cloudy days are much cooler than cloudless days for the opposing reason).
Arrhenius was the first to suggest that CO2 could cause global warming but was immediately shot down by fellow scientist Knut Angstrom who insisted he had got his data on CO2 absorbtion wrong (sound familiar?).
Inrestingly “global warming” has been linked to the well-known atmospheric “greenhouse effect” but in fact the two things are quite separate. Atmospheric “greenhouse effect” smooths out temperature variations over a 24 hour period – it is not directly related to global warming theory.
You might like to read some more about Arrhenius. He was a good scientist but also a complete nutcase whose other work was the basis of Nazi eugenics theories.
Yesterday, I sent this email to the PR of the Science Museum, (and I am holding my breath for the response …. as my way of helping to reduce anthropic CO2 emissions, you understand. )
Dear Andrew,
I wonder if you could pass this comment to Professor Rapley. He says:
“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.”
That the climate is changing is not in doubt, because it always has, and is continuing to do so. It is also clear that scientists do not yet understand these processes of change. It is also clear that the role of anthropic CO2 is also not understood. But it IS clear that the proposed international carbon-tax and related economic measures WILL damage the ecosystem.
And in his position as Director of the Science Museum, why is Professor Rapley not laying out that fact? And if he really is a proponent of the scientific process, why is he not calling for more science to be done, rather than calling for more propagandising? Rather, it appears that the result of his public initiative has been to damage the reputation of the scientific process itself.
Yours, etc.
RAPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT ?
Perhaps I’m giving away my age.
Dear Plato,
Perhaps I was not very clear I am an open minded sceptic of AGW (or any hypothesis).
Hang on maybe that not a term of abuse but the definition of a Scientist.
Those who visited the Science museum, and who took part in the vote, may well have been largely children, who no doubt were “swayed” by adults on hand to do just that. You also have to consider that the museum caters for parties and groups, so if school groups attended, no doubt their guide (or teacher) influenced their vote.
NatureNews: Australia rejects carbon trading
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091202/full/news.2009.1119.html
Egg on faces maybe.
“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.”
How incredible! I believe it is precisely this sort of indoctrination that has turned the public off and made them more sceptical as some converted new posters have stated recently on WUWT. They simply can’t believe that the world is about to end soon and look for alternative explanations. They soon find out that its actually a con trick.
Copy of letter to:
Prof Chris Rapley CBE, Director & Andrew Marcus
Science Museum Press Office,
020 7942 4357
andrew.marcus@sciencemuseum.org.uk
Prof. Rapley and Mr. Marcus
Re: Uphold SCIENCE – Show ALL sides of evidence on climate – not advocate anthropogenic warming
Is the Science Museum to provide objective science information?
OR is it’s mission to advocate a particular political position?
The ClimateGate emails and documents from CRU are exposing major corruption at the heart of climate science.
As and engineer and scientist, I find your PROVE IT campaign to be highly partisan. You appear to be pushing a similar agenda to Phil Jones et al. as shown by the CRU ClimateGate emails. Per the results of your online poll, you have already lost much of your credibility by your partisan stance.
I strongly encourage the Science Museum to return to its duty to provide OBJECTIVE information for the public to evaluate.
Provide links to BOTH the IPCC documents AND to the NIPCC documents. See
Climate Change Reconsidered, the 880 page 2009 report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.
http://www.nipccreport.org
This documents a wide range of scientific evidence that was ignored by the IPCC and comes to the opposite conclusions.
Provide links to CO2Science.org which is specifically providing the whole range of scientific evidence on CO2
and climate, especially for students. e.g. it provides extensive documentation on the benefits to agriculture of higher CO2. It also provides extensive scientific evidence on the Medieval Warm Period, which the CRU “Team” sought to hide.
Please provide links to WattsUpWithThat.com which was voted the number one science blog for 2008, and is rated by Technorati to be in the top 100 overall blogs as well as the top 100 Green and top 100 Science blogs.
It provides evidence on both sides of the climate argument and allow readers from all persuasions to post. It has about twice the traffic of RealClimate.org which highly sensors postings to just anthropogenic advocacy.
Again I appeal to you to uphold objective science with ALL the evidence, not just ultra liberal partisan politics.
Yours sincerely
David L. Hagen, PhD
cc BBC Feedback
Why do people insist on starting sentences with conjunctions?
I love satire and I love the Daily Show particularly, so obviously I couldn’t resist posting this clip I cribbed from ClimateDepot.
I think Mann is the whistleblower, he suddenly developed a consciounce
I had this exchange with the science museum it does not sound to me like their minds are open for any discussion
To feedback@nmsi.ac.uk
I attempted to respond to your question and was told my e-mail address was not valid which of course is total rubbish as is your so called proof. Perhaps by invalidating the no responses you can “prove” support for your position.
You of course are pathetically short of actual facts as is most of the propaganda items being published to try and implement this tax swindle.
One number you mention is the amount of anthropogenic carbon released, you claim 500 gigatonnes IPCC 4AR page 515 puts this number at 244 with 100 gigatonnes already sequestered in the ocean, Then they claim there is 169 gigatonnes in the air the logic of this calculation totally escapes me, clearly this is new IPCC math.
Just try to get any engineer to do a mass balance calculation on fig 7.3 page 515 4AR and you will begin to see some of the nonsense in the “peer reviewed” IPCC reports.
The IPCC case is based solely on statistics there is not one word of scientific proof by calculation or application of the laws of physics in the entire 1000 pages. If you wish to read a scientific study I recommend “Climate change ” by Dr.John Nicol Professor Emeritus of Physics James Cook University. Then ask yourself why such a verification of the IPCC hypothesis does not appear in any of their reports.
The function of CO2 relative to the surface temperature of the world is a matter of Physics not statistics which can be selected and falsified at will to shown any predetermined result.
If the trend of CO2 and temperature were to correlate, which they do not, does CO2 drive temperature or temperature drive CO2. This can not be proven by statistics alone.
Barry Moore P.Eng.
Calgary Canada
From: Scm Respond View Contact
To: barrymca2000@yahoo.ca
Dear Mr Moore
Thank you for your comment about the Science Museum ’s PROVE IT! exhibit and website.
At the Science Museum we have examined the scientific evidence and concluded that climate change is happening and that human activities are a significant cause. There is now a strong scientific consensus on this, as indicated by the most recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Based on this evidence, we believe that urgent action is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
I am sorry to hear that you were unable participate in the poll. I do not know why that was, but can I suggest you try again. If you’re email address still does not go through, please get back in touch and we will investigate further.
Vicky Carroll
Science Museum
Morningstar: US Lawmakers Seek To Unseal Records In Climate Fraud Case
http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet/ViewNews.aspx?article=/DJ/200911251628DOWJONESDJONLINE000568_univ.xml
Are you QUESTIONING the SCIENCE?
Those who wish to communicate with Prof R, might like to try chris.rapley@sciencemuseum.org.uk
Morningstar: US Lawmakers Seek To Unseal Records In Climate Fraud Case
http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet/ViewNews.aspx?article=/DJ/200911251628DOWJONESDJONLINE000568_univ.xml
Doggy Geezer (07:11:11) :
Aren’t you usually “dodgy geezer”? Must be another result of global warming.
As far as the letter goes…. post the whole thing here. The Northeast and Northwest passages have both been open long before this. Just what is it they wanted kept “confidential”? That they are not doing their job of investigating erroneous and out-right false claims in the media?
@REP
“..Aren’t you usually “dodgy geezer”? Must be another result of global warming.
As far as the letter goes…. post the whole thing here…”
Ah, yes – I must apologise for my sudden canine attack – full moon, you know…
I will not post the letter yet – as an ex-Whitehall civil servant I suspect there is more mileage in my complying with their requirement and very publicly asking what the reason is for it. It is a strange requirement, and one which is not usually put in writing, so I would like to know:
– if any other complainers have received such a ‘gagging order’
– if there is any legal justification for it (the current UK government has produced so many laws over the last couple of years there may indeed be some catch-all requirement for UK subjects to remain silent when ordered)
– if there is any reasonable justification involving politeness or good manners for this. I can’t think of one, but I would like to consider the issue before going further….
The following or something similar should be sent to The Science Museum and to the University of East Anglia:
“Based on Prof. Rapely’s own comments regarding the Prove-It! poll, along with his resume that explains that he “helped Al Gore”, and his emails to people who have questioned him on Climate Change (in which he only presents an appeal to the politically-biased IPCC authority), it is clear that he is too politically invested in Climate Change to provide a dispassionate scientific viewpoint.
Since such a viewpoint is essential for any presentation of science to the public, I hereby request that Prof. Rapely immediately be removed from his position as Director of the Science Museum.”
All UK government funded institutions such as the Science Museum subscribe to AGW. Whether its because they dont know any science (physics) is a moot point; but its probably because they will all be fired if they dont.
I suspect that the online poll was being attacked again by script kiddies, although at a slower rate than originally. The web staff probably simply noted the forms of false voting, and waited until the poll closed before reverting the fraudulent votes. That way the fraudsters weren’t alerted and couldn’t try other methods.
The Museum is being silly in trying to use IPCC evidence. The IPCC is required to study human-caused change, so their reports of course ignore natural change.
I agree that this exhibit’s evidence is full of errors, and for a science museum is far too shallow. I’d prefer for them to not waste space on a climate change gallery as all that’s needed is a display about how climate research is progressing. It should include a display of recent research to show how much is still being discovered.