The 4th International Conference on Climate Change – Chicago, Il., USA
Consensus? What consensus?
by Roger Helmer MEP
I’m writing this in the Marriott Hotel in Chicago, where I’m attending the Heartland Institute Climate Conference (and I’ve just done an interview with BBC Environment Correspondent Roger Harrabin).
Ahead of the interview, I thought I’d just check out the Conference Speaker’s list. There are 80 scheduled speakers, including distinguished scientists (like Richard Lindzen of MIT), policy wonks (like my good friend Chris Horner of CEI), enthusiasts and campaigners (like Anthony Watts of the wattsupwiththat.com web-site), and journalists (including our own inimitable James Delingpole).
Of the 80 speakers, I noticed that fully forty-five were qualified scientists from relevant disciplines, and from respected universities around the world — from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Norway, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
All of them have reservations about climate alarmism, ranging from concerns that we are making vastly expensive public policy decisions based on science that is, to say the least, open to question, through to outright rejection of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) model.
Several of these scientists are members or former members of the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But how do 45 sceptical scientists stack up, you may well ask, against the 2500 on the official IPCC panels? But of course there aren’t 2500 relevant scientists on the IPCC panel. Many of them are not strictly scientists at all. Some are merely civil servants or environmental zealots. Some are economists — important to the debate but not experts on the science. Others are scientists in unrelated disciplines. The Chairman of the IPCC Dr. Ravendra Pachuari, is a Railway Engineer.
And of the remaining minority who are indeed scientists in relevant subjects, some (like my good friend Prof Fred Singer) have explicitly rejected the IPCC’s AGW theory. Whittle it down, and you end up with fifty or so true believers, most of whom are part of the “Hockey Team” behind the infamous Hockey Stick graph, perhaps the most discredited artefact in the history of science. This is a small and incestuous group of scientists (including those at the CRU at the University of East Anglia). They work closely together, jealously protecting their source data, and they peer-review each other’s work. This is the “consensus” on which climate hysteria is based.
And there are scarcely more of them than are sceptical scientists at this Heartland Conference in Chicago, where I am blogging today. Never mind the dozens of other scientists here in Chicago, or the thousands who have signed petitions and written to governments opposing climate hysteria. Science is not decided by numbers, but if it were, there is the case to be made that the consensus is now on the sceptical side.
Roger Helmer MEP Follow me on Twitter: rogerhelmerMEP
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Paul Daniel Ash:
It is chapter 9 that concerns people, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change.”
How many scientists contributed to that chapter? Less than 60.
The rest of the scientists are irrelevant because most people believe GW is happening.
Real scientist here as well, AWG is a load of crap, built on crap, and it is shameful it passes as science.
Paul Daniel Ash says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Isn’t it embarrassing to have to just flat make something up to make a point?
Chapters 3 through to 11 are observations of global warming and evaluation of models. They do not address cause.
Chapter 2: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing.
Has 55 authors, not six hundred and nineteen.
Right wing sceptics!!!
I am not a right winger and here are some left-wing skeptics – [click].
Smokey says:
May 18, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Smokey, where do you think the funding comes from for ALL science, including medical science which I’m sure you rely on. Perhaps you don’t understand how science works. When it comes to climate scientists, skeptics are by far the minority. And in fact in my 20 years of science, I have never met one and this is coming from degrees in physics, mathematics, geology, geography, oceanography, atmospheric science, engineering, even paleoclimatology. And what you also fail to understand is that most climate scientists are conservative. They don’t advocate alarmist behavior, or believe that we are on the edge of disaster. They understand the uncertainties in future predictions and work hard to understand the processes at work in our climate system so that we can improve our understanding of future climate change. I for one would rather put my trust in scientists who are not funded by the oil and gas industry or the mineral industry, which means they are likely funded by NASA, NSF, NOAA or DoD grants. The idea that there are only 50 scientists who believe that human activities are influencing our climate is a joke. I can name at least 50 off the top of my head and NONE of them are part of the hockey stick graph. At the annual AGU meeting in San Francisco there are more than 10,000 scientists presenting each year and the majority of them believe in anthropogenic climate change. Time to get your facts straight. If you want to talk about alarmists, then perhaps you have less than 50.
But you should know, just because most of us are not alarmists does not mean we don’t believe in human-induced climate change. At least at our conferences, folks like Roy Spencer and William Gray also speak, whereas at your conference, no other voice is heard. Perhaps the conference organizers should send out emails to climate listservs so that all climate scientists can be invited to present?
Jimbo says:
May 18, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Mike says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:39 pm
You will at least admit that among climate scientists the “skeptics” are in the minority.
Will you admit that the majority of climate scientists care about the next funding tranch? If the AGW hypothesis is shown to be wrong they are out of a job or wil have to quickly shift to another field. Many will have a big problem paying their mortgages. :o(
Not even close. Jimbo, look at the calls that NSF and NASA distribute. Do you see AGW mentioned anywhere? No, government funded science does not call on scientists to find a link between CO2 and other observations. What it does is call for new data analysis, or development of new observing platforms, or process studies, or model development, or hypothesis testing with observational data, etc. etc.
The idea that scientists have invented AGW to stay funded is a joke. I was funded long before many scientists started to believe in AGW, and having more evidence of GHG-induced warming has not changed my funding one bit. BTW–I make a LOT more $ when I consult for the oil and gas industry than I ever could from government funding. If scientists want to get rich, they would work for big business rather than government. Instead scientists work for little $ trying to understand this beautiful planet. (remember a post-doc who has been in college for 9 years only makes 40K).
barefootgirl says she is one of the ones that “believe in human-induced climate change.”
“Believe” is the correct word, since so far there is no measurable, testable evidence showing that human activity controls the climate. If humans have an effect, it is too small to measure.
But maybe Tinkerbell was right, and all that is necessary is to believe. Don’t forget to clap your hands.☺
yeah Smokey, I do believe because I actually work with the observational data whereas you spend your days blogging.
I’m retired.☺
Anyway, show us the “observational data” that quantifies the amount of temperature increase per teragram of CO2. I’d like to see how that was observed…
…since you’re ‘blogging’ about it.
barefootgirl:
Here I am, a skeptical scientist. Call me a heretic.
If you are a climate scientist, clean up your field.
Stop with the crappy models.
Stop with adjusting temperature databases always up.
Stop ignoring that UHI actually exists.
Stop dropping weather stations around the world.
Stop interpolating from a single weather stations to others hundreds of miles away.
Stop using tree rings as a proxy, and defending the hockey stick.
Stop saying that there is a consensus, because science isn’t about consensus and is rarely advanced by consensus.
Start actually looking at other possibilities for GW.
“And of the remaining minority who are indeed scientists in relevant subjects, some (like my good friend Prof Fred Singer) have explicitly rejected the IPCC’s AGW theory. Whittle it down, and you end up with fifty or so true believers, most of whom are part of the “Hockey Team” behind the infamous Hockey Stick graph, perhaps the most discredited artefact in the history of science. This is a small and incestuous group of scientists (including those at the CRU at the University of East Anglia). They work closely together, jealously protecting their source data, and they peer-review each other’s work. This is the “consensus” on which climate hysteria is based.”
====
No scientific society of standing disputes AGW. That’s a lot of incest.
But how do 45 sceptical scientists stack up, you may well ask, against the 2500 on the official IPCC panels? But of course there aren’t 2500 relevant scientists on the IPCC panel. Many of them are not strictly scientists at all. Some are merely civil servants or environmental zealots. Some are economists — important to the debate but not experts on the science. Others are scientists in unrelated disciplines. The Chairman of the IPCC Dr. Ravendra Pachuari, is a Railway Engineer.
I’m always intrigued by the ‘Railway Engineer’ statement, he’s no more a Railway Engineer than I am a bus conductor (a job I did to help pay my way through college).
He actually holds a masters in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Economics.
You have just made Smokey’s point about funding worries. :o) The fact that you have “NEVER MET ONE” is alarming indeed. Science is an adversarial system in which scepticism is applied to any new claims which aim to overturn what is accepted. Do you accept what I have just said?
Please note how alarmist scientist can be click.
barefootgirl, please tell me do you receive funding for climate related research and if yes then let me know if you have doubts about AGW would you come out in the open and say so? Think about your mortgage!!!!
barefootgirl says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:02 pm
—-
REPLY:
Read these.
Dr Roy Spencer, former NASA scientist
“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.
How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.”
Source: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/04/the-great-global-warming-blunder-how-mother-nature-fooled-the-world%e2%80%99s-top-climate-scientists/
—–
Pachauri had ‘no’ conflict of interest?
In 2005, Pachauri helped set up set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.
“He is an internationally recognized figure in energy and sustainable development, having served on numerous boards and committees including Director of the Oil and Natural Gas Company of India; Director of the Indian Oil Corporation Limited;…
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/advisors.htm
“Our chemical lab in Houston is state of the art, custom built for purpose with one goal in mind – to supply the US oil industry with world class biotechnology to increase oil recovery from mature fields.”
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/technology.htm
“Our research facility in India focuses primarily on long term R&D projects such as heavy oil degradation, methane biogeneration from coal beds, and other initiatives.”
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/company.htm
——-
And here’s the big money:
Exxon: “(how about $100 million for Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project, and $600 million for Biofuels research).”
“The US government spent $79 billion on climate research and technology since 1989 – to be sure, this funding paid for things like satellites and studies, but it’s 3,500 times as much as anything offered to sceptics.”
“The $79 billion figure does not include money from other western governments, private industry, and is not adjusted for inflation.”
“According to the World Bank, turnover of carbon trading reached $126 billion in 2008. PointCarbon estimates trading in 2009 was about $130 billion.”
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm
I could go on barefootgirl but what I suggest is that you get your skates on [pun intended] and get up to speed by smelling the coffee and thinking more sceptically. I thought that is what scientists are supposted to do barefoot.
well first off, even your beloved Roy Spencer believes that CO2 in the atmosphere has increased during the last 100 years. And even Roy believes that w/o the natural Greenhouse gas affect, the Earth would be much colder than we are. So the question becomes one of climate sensitivity. Roy argues the climate has little sensitivity while many other studies have reached a sensitivity between 2-4C supported by numerous diverse climate studies (I can give you some references if you like). I don’t do those studies myself but I have read many of the peer-reviewed papers, including ones by Spencer. What interests me more are the temperature trends, not only in the atmosphere, but also at the surface and in the oceans. These all indicate the Earth is storing heat. There are also recent studies showing less outgoing LW emitted back to space (another indication of heat storage).
But like I said before, I’m not an alarmist since I understand the complexities of the climate system and feedbacks may emerge that will offset warming trends. Climate models don’t show this, but then again, they have their limitations. But the more scientists understand about the processes at work and add more complexity to climate models, the better future predictions will be.
“”” Coalsoffire says:
May 18, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I was at a wedding breakfast in Edmonton on the weekend and I found myself across the table from another guest, a friend of the bride, while I was a relative by marriage of the groom. He was from Leeds, England. My wife asked him what he did and he said he was a PhD candidate in Atmospheric Science. “Oh good” she exclaimed, “my husband knows all about climate science, he reads about it two hours a day on the Internet.” (If she only knew.) So I asked him what he was doing his thesis about and he said he was a “cloud” guy and something about sulfur. I asked if he meant geoengineering and he seemed a little embarrassed and sort of mumbled some sort of denial. ( I had used the term idiocy to as a descriptor, I think). So I pressed my advantage, hoping to flatter him a bit about his specialty, and said that I thought clouds were really where it was “at” and that all the fuss over CO2 was misplaced. He bristled and said I was completely wrong. “The water budget never changes,” he said. “It’s all about the increase in CO2. The amount of water is fixed. Fixed. Fixed and so it can’t effect any change in the climate. Only CO2 is changing.” I could see that his mind was fixed, so I went back to my breakfast. There are more koolaid drinkers out there than Charles even imagines. And the universities are producing more every day, it would appear. “””
So check SCIENCE July 7, 2007; Frank Wentz (RSS) et al, “How Much More Rain Will Global Warming Bring ?”
Actual Satellite observational data: a one deg C (1) increase in mean global surface Temperature results in a 7% increase in total global evaporation; a 7% increase in total atmospheric water content; and a 7% increase in total global precipitation. So what was that about the water being fixed ?
In contrast; the GCMs agree with the 7% increase in total atmospheric water content (for a 1 deg C Temp rise) but they claim the total evap/precip (which must be equal) is only 1-3%; ie as much as a 7X error from real observations.
What Wentz et al did not say but which may be conjectured from their result is that their 1 deg C change likely also causes something like a 7% increase in the total global precipitable cloud cover; since it is fashionabler in all the best climatology circles to have clouds with your precipitation. The conjectured 7% (*-/ 3x) could be a combination of increased cloud area, increased cloud water content (andoptical density), and increased cloud persistence time. Wanna bet that cloud increase doesn’t anihilate that 1 deg C Temperature rise ?
So yes clouds is where it is at; and water is far from constant; other than it is a permanent component of the atmosphere in all three phases of ordinary materials. So nuts to your new buddy.
Hmm, alarmists dismiss a list of 31,000 and tout a laughable list of 620? Even when the 620 list has names of people that are skeptical of the alarmism. Perfect example of their logic.
@barefoot girl….that’s a beautiful picture of scientists that you just painted. The poor laborious scientist. Unaffected by the gale winds of politics. Simply trying to understand our world without an ounce of advocacy or self aggrandizement or desire for the fortunes the private sector offers. They’re only in it for the quest of knowledge and to pass the knowledge on in the halls of academia.
Then, I see the likes of Jim Hansen and Mike Mann. It is then I realize,…….you’re not very grounded in reality. I don’t say that to be mean, I say that because you seem sincere. I wish all the world would view their labors in the same manner. Where integrity and focus were the true motivations of all of our souls. It isn’t. Many may disagree, but I believe it is because we forgot the words of a great thinker, Ben Franklin……….”Ultimately, man will be ruled either by God or tyrants.” The world has chosen tyrants.
barefootgirl says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Me thinks you stumbled on this blog and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I could be wrong so please hit me! [with the science of AGW] and its proven predictions with evidence [the ultimate integrity of any theory].
barefootgirl says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:02 pm
“Not even close. Jimbo, look at the calls that NSF and NASA distribute.”
REPLY: Where does NASA get its funds from? If it doesn’t tow the line then what? Are you a naive teenager or what?
Vincent says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Yes, the old consensus myth. As far as I can tell it seems to have bootstrapped itself from the original 50. ….
Groupthink? It’s more like a whirlwind of self-reinforcing delusion feeding on itself – like feedback in a sound system. Sometimes one needs to step back and take a look at just what the heck is going on here.”
_______________________________________________________________________
It’s more like a whirlwind of greed feeding out of the public trough – – Oink Oink
Dang, another heretic to add to the list.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/18/epa-carbon-dioxide-threat-human-welfare/
Jimbo says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:51 pm
barefootgirl says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:02 pm
—-
REPLY:
Read these.
Dr Roy Spencer, former NASA scientist
“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.
How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.”
====
Maybe I don’t understand the cloud theory, but unless there is a cloud trend, how can the global temperature trend be effected?
Mike says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:39 pm
You will at least admit that among climate scientists the “skeptics” are in the minority.
_______________________________________________________________________
Mikey, Here is your list of 700 “skeptics” papers on climate science. I can not be bothered making a list of all the names from each paper and sorting out the duplicates. If you are so concerned about “psuedoscience by majority think” you do it.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
barefootgirl
“What interests me more are the temperature trends, not only in the atmosphere, but also at the surface and in the oceans. These all indicate the Earth is storing heat. ”
—–
How far back do the trends start? Have you looked at it from 1998? If so then what is the trend? Remember, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. You can see all you want with trends, it all depends on how far back you go and you should know that.
barefootgirl, you must understand that people on this blog demand evidence of AGW along with its predictions. Please provide it. Einstein’s theory of relativity made predictions which were later observed. Go on barefootgirl make some predictions so we can observe.
Jimbo says:
May 18, 2010 at 3:10 pm
There was once a consensus that peptic ulcers were mostly caused by food, stress and / or drink. Now it is known that the vast majority are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori
Consensus in science can be a life threatening condition!
=======
But modern science is usually right, and the AGW skeptics don’t have a Helicobacter pylori.
Perhaps someday science will find that a diet heavy in salt actually is beneficial to people who have heart disease. In the mean time, they probably should avoid it.
So, of all the scientists on the IPCC thing, only 45 were actually for it.
Reminds me of that statistical trick. 4 out of 5 Doctors recommend x brand ABC for patients who need ABC.
1 really did prefer x brand, 1 preferred y brand, and 3 would use either brand x or brand y.
Hey, we didn’t lie, we just didn’t bother with explaining the gorey details.