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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Smokey says:
May 19, 2010 at 5:49 am
mikael pihlström has no clue about how the real world operates, particularly regarding academia and what it takes to get tenured.
LOL. Surely, he must have meant that meanwhile young PNS-trained pseudo-scientists emerge and publish all the time in scientific journals, not because they are interested in the facts but in a politically motivated, career-driven movement which is intellectually not getting anywhere, and which will be defunct within a decade.
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2010 at 1:00 am
Wren;
Of course water affects climate, but the question is how can a fixed supply of water cause long-term warming?>>
Sad thing is I think the question is serious. OK Wren, when the IPCC says that positive feedback from water vapour will triple the warming effects of CO2, what is it that you think the water vapour is made of? You asked a question back there about trends in clouds and how that might be connected to warming. I doubt that we have enough data on clouds for anywhere close to long enough to trend anything about them, but that aside, what is it that you think clouds are made of? When there’s a discussion about shrinking ice caps and albedo changes, what do you suppose the ice is made of?
Frankly, I am inclined to support your position. Water is a fixed supply and so can’t cause warming. Water vapour feedback? Hoax. Cloud feedback? Hoax. Albedo feedback? Hoax. Speaking of hoaxes, have you heard of global warming?
=====
Yes, since the world’s water supply is fixed, changes in the amount of water vapor can’t result from a change in the supply of water. The amount of atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels, however, is not fixed. It is increasing as more fossil fuels are burned, releasing the CO2 that’s trapped in the fuel.
Unlike water vapor, a green house gas that recycles quickly, the CO2 from fossil fuels is a green house gas that stays in the atmosphere for a long time as evidenced by the long-term increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. So you have an upward trend in the CO2 and a supply of water vapor for feedback.
Ref – Paul Daniel Ash says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:45 pm
“Wow. A purer example of pulling-numbers-out-of-one’s-posterior you will not find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_from_Climate_Change_2007:_The_Physical_Science_Basis
“That’s six hundred nineteen scientists. Real scientists, not economists or railway engineers… or weathermen. Working scientists in relevant disciplines. Isn’t it embarrassing to have to just flat make something up to make a point?”
_______________________
You’re half right. It used to be. It isn’t anymore. And one person’s ‘scientist’ is another person’s ‘psyentist’. By the rules of AGW or CC (‘Climate Change’) all is fair, it’s a war, the truth is irrelivent –in fact ‘truth’ is actually non-existant in this argument if you’re one of The Choosen, one of The Saved, one of The Elect, one of Fat Albert’s Faithful. I fear we have been poisoned by some microbe in the water, all 6.8 billion of us. What is truth? What is real? Is this all a bad trip? A mad dream? Isn’t there a guru on a mountain we can all go to and findout what we should believe? Isn’t there something we can snort, sniff, shoot, sip, pop, or whatever, that can help us see the light and know the way and feel good and groovy?
You know? Life’s a real bummer when there’s no one to take you by the hand and spoon feed you and give you whatever you need, whenever you need it.
Smokey says:
May 19, 2010 at 5:49 am
mikael pihlström has no clue about how the real world operates, particularly regarding academia and what it takes to get tenured.
The fact that young scientists don’t turn up at your conferences
has something to do with my clues about anything?
Consensus? …Oh, that!, that is, of course among a few BANKS.
Jimbo says:
May 19, 2010 at 2:57 am
Dear Jumbo:
CO2 follows temperature, not the other way. Open a coke and you´ll see it: The more you have it in your warm hand the more gas will go out when you open it.
CO2 is the transparent gas we all exhale (and Not SUV: That dark is SOOT=Carbon dust) and plants breath with delight, to give us back what they exhale instead= Oxygen we breath in.
CO2 is a TRACE GAS in the atmosphere, it is the 0.038% of it.
There is no such a thing as “greenhouse effect”, “greenhouse gases are gases IN a greenhouse”, where heated gases are trapped and relatively isolated not to lose its heat so rapidly. If greenhouse effect were to be true, as Svante Arrhenius figured it out: CO2 “like the window panes in a greenhouse”, but…the trouble is that those panes would be only 3.8 panes out of 10000, there would be 9996.2 HOLES.
See:
http://www.scribd.com/documents/28018819/Greenhouse-Niels-Bohr
CO2 is a gas essential to life. All carbohydrates are made of it. The sugar you eat, the bread you have eaten in your breakfast this morning, even the jeans you wear (these are made from 100% cotton, a polymer of glucose, made of CO2…you didn´t know it, did you?)
You and I, we are made of CARBON and WATER.
CO2 is heavier than Air, so it can not go up, up and away to cover the earth.
The atmosphere, the air can not hold heat, its volumetric heat capacity, per cubic cemtimeter is 0.00192 joules, while water is 4.186, i.e., 3227 times.
This is the reason why people used hot water bottles to warm their feet and not hot air bottles.
Global Warmers models (a la Hansen) expected a kind of heated CO2 piggy bank to form in the tropical atmosphere, it never happened simply because it can not.
If global warmers were to succeed in achieving their SUPPOSED goal of lowering CO2 level to nothing, life would disappear from the face of the earth.
They KNOW IT, they are not that fool. Their objective is another: To make us the slave workers of a world governed by a few of them, like in Aldous Huxley novel “Brave New World”, so we are destined to be the “Gammas” servants and they the “Alphas” masters.
CRAZY as it is, it is their purpose
Pascvaks says:
May 19, 2010 at 6:35 am
Ref – Paul Daniel Ash says:
May 18, 2010 at 2:45 pm
PS: Ref your link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_from_Climate_Change_2007:_The_Physical_Science_Basis
There is no Chapter regarding “Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level” in the reference you cite. That would seem to be a fairly large chunk of the globe that is missing and an area of great significance to the subject at hand.
Is the water on the earth really a fixed amount?
It seems to be elementary chemistry, that combustion of fossil fuels causes oxygen from the atmosphere to be reacted into the deadly CO2 and wonderful benign H2O.
;-}
How many gigatons?
-Jay
anna v says:
May 19, 2010 at 12:26 am
Wren says:
May 18, 2010 at 10:41 pm
I don’t understand how the long-term warming trend of the past century can be attributed to clouds unless there is a trend in clouds. Has there been a trend to fewer clouds. more clouds, different kinds of clouds? And if there has been a cloud trend, what’s driving it?
Have a look at measured global cloud cover:
http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2006_EOS.pdf
Well, whatever is driving it, it must not be CO2, since it was falling until 2000 and is going up now. CO2 has been merrily rising the nonce.
See also more current albedo measures: http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2008_JGR.pdf
Fig 2.
————–
Thanks for the references. I don’t see evidence of a long-term trend in global cloud cover in the 2006 article’s chart for 1985-2005. The total cloud amount rises for a few years after 1985, falls from the late 1980’s to the late 1990’s, and then rises to 2005. Both low clouds ( a cooling effect) and high clouds(a warming effect) declined from the late 1980’s to the late 1990’s. High clouds, however, account for an increasing proportion of the total cloud amount, and all of the increase after 2000. Perhaps that’s the link with the rise in CO2.
Wren;
Yes, since the world’s water supply is fixed, changes in the amount of water vapor can’t result from a change in the supply of water. The amount of atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels, however, is not fixed. It is increasing as more fossil fuels are burned, releasing the CO2 that’s trapped in the fuel.>>
Wow, a cogent argument from Wren. You’ve been improving of late, I’ll have to be more carefull.
The amount of water is not fixed and there is no CO2 trapped in the fuel. The fuel is composed of chains of C (carbon) and H (hydrogen). When the fuel is burned it combines with O (oxygen) from the atmosphere. The burnt fuel then appears as CO2 and… H2O. Presto! New water! Now you can argue that the amount of water created in this fashion is insignificant compared to the amount already in existance…. and I would agree with you. Its not true that the amount of water is fixed, but the amount released from fossil fuels is insignificant by comparison to what we already have… sorta like CO2.
President Eisenhower warned us of what to fear in his farewell address on January 17, 1961:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
And what Eisenhower warned about has happed.
Who controls the purse strings controls the “consensus”. Toe the line of the ideology of those who controll the purse strings (awarding of government grants and other public funding) or look for work doing something else to make a living.
Just the facts of life. When it becomes a matter of meals or ideals, meals win out every time.
Consensus science has been wrong far more often than it has been right. Read some history of the progression of science and technology through the ages.
Wren;
Yes, since the world’s water supply is fixed, changes in the amount of water vapor can’t result from a change in the supply of water. The amount of atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels, however, is not fixed. It is increasing as more fossil fuels are burned, releasing the CO2 that’s trapped in the fuel.>>
Wow, a cogent argument from Wren. You’ve been improving of late, I’ll have to be more carefull.
The amount of water is not fixed and there is no CO2 trapped in the fuel. The fuel is composed of chains of C (carbon) and H (hydrogen). When the fuel is burned it combines with O (oxygen) from the atmosphere. The burnt fuel then appears as CO2 and… H2O. Presto! New water! Now you can argue that the amount of water created in this fashion is insignificant compared to the amount already in existance…. and I would agree with you. Its not true that the amount of water is fixed, but the amount released from fossil fuels is insignificant by comparison to what we already have… sorta like CO2.
=====
Sure, its the carbon that’s trapped, and the carbon thats trapped is the source of the CO2 . Gimme a break.
First, you agree that the world’s water supply is fixed and now you have changed your mind. Your new “insignificant water” in vapor form recycles quickly like like all that old water. CO2 from burning fossil fuels doesn’t recycle quickly, which is why the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is growing.
Wren;
Sure, its the carbon that’s trapped, and the carbon thats trapped is the source of the CO2 . Gimme a break.
First, you agree that the world’s water supply is fixed and now you have changed your mind. Your new “insignificant water” in vapor form recycles quickly like like all that old water. CO2 from burning fossil fuels doesn’t recycle quickly, which is why the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is growing.>>
You missed my sarcasm and may I point out that YOU started with water is fixed and now you are arguing that it isn’t. Yes CO2 is growing. Let’s do the math per IPCC AR4 and see what happens to CO2 forcing in watts per meter squared as we increase CO2 by 100 ppm over the previous level:
“normal” CO2 = 280 ppm
280 + 100 = 380 (+1.7 w/m2)
380 + 100 = 480 (+1.2 w/m2)
480 + 100 = 580 (+1.0 w/m2)
580 + 100 = 680 (+.85 w/m2)
680 + 100 = 780 (+.63 w/m2)
Are you seeing the problem here?
LarryOldtimer says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:36 am
President Eisenhower warned us ….
To avoid that all your Official Agencies should be privatized, that could be done by gradually transferring its services to private companies, so the goal to achieve would be to get all needed services through outsourcing.
Wren says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:45 am
CO2 from burning fossil fuels doesn’t recycle quickly, which is why the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is growing.
It is patentely time for you to do some more studying, why do you think that CO2 is only increasing at 2ppm/year?
It is because it is being sucked up all over the planet by Plants (It makes them grow and they die without it) and the Oceans, many of the shelled creatures need it to survive.
Wren says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:45 am
Wren;
Yes, since the world’s water supply is fixed
Are you sure?.
During summer time above the poles and due to increased radiation, atmosphere´s oxygen is turned into Ozone (O3), which during winter time and specially when there are proton flares from the sun or increased cosmic rays, as during solar minimums (mainly composed of protons-90%-, which, btw, we must remember are Hydrogen Nucleii), and these react with ozone to produce water 2H+…O3=H2O+O2.
So as far as we receive protons (Hydrogen nucleii) we’ll keep on importing water.
Barefootgirl,
Please do not pretend to have a monopoly on climate knowledge in this forum. Some of us also have advanced degrees in Atmospheric Science (focusing on remote sensing and radiative transfer) and actually understand the limitations of climate monitoring and research…whether through arbitrarily tuned climate models, or MSU/AMSU TLT records. I also attend many conferences and participate in workshops with UAH, RSS and NCDC. I myself even question Spencer/Christy b/c I know the challenge of inter-satellite sensor calibration. I know many at NESDIS, NWS, NASA and from grad school who also are skeptical of modeled feedbacks and are annoyed by alarmism. So what if you claim many climate scientists are also annoyed by alarmism – those at the top in the field are the ones contributing recklessly to the hysteria. Hansen, Mann, Emanuel…I’ve heard Lubchenco speak many times as NOAA admin, and her distressed calls to change the tone and up the rhetoric to convince people CO2 is destroying the earth. How is dropping a piece of chalk into a cup of vinegar, and saying that this is what is happening to shell fish in the ocean, in front of Congress, not unethical or perjurous? That isn’t the media spinning climate science into alarmism, that is direct alarmism.
Pamela, what I am talking about is your preconceived notion of climate scientists. There are very few alarmists out there. So much of the blog posting on here is constantly ripping on climate scientists, but how many of you actually bother to read their papers? Media coverage, press releases are not the same as the actual papers. They are looking for headlines, shocking statements. I also notice how anything folks like Lindzen or Spencer say are blindly accepted without subjecting their analysis to the same rigor as other climate analysis.
And yes, I do know Judy and she too is a believer in anthropogenic climate change. Glad to hear that despite that fact you actually have some respect for her.
barefootgirl, May 18, 2010 at 9:42 pm:
So let me see if I can translate BFG’s comment:
1. Pamela is “hostile” [repeated 3 X]
2. Smokey by implication is hostile too
3. There are “crazy” folks out there
4. BFG has two children who must be protected
5. “Crazy skeptics” [plural] have made multiple death threats against BFG
Is that about the gist of it? OK then, I have a couple of questions:
Did you, BFG, make a police report of the “death threats” purportedly made against you by “crazy skeptics”? I request that you post a scan of the reports so we may view them here. Unless sealed by a court order, they are public information, so it should be no problem. If they are sealed, post a scan of the judge’s order. You can redact your name.
Next, who exactly were these “crazy skeptics”? To make that accusation you must have been aware of their identities, since you didn’t say something to the effect that you assumed they were skeptics. So provide specific identities, please.
Finally, having two children in your custody, you would be remiss in not promptly making a police report upon receiving death threats from crazy skeptics or anyone else. Only a bad mother would blow off a threat like that, increasing the danger to her children.
So in the interest of full disclosure, and because we put a premium on credibility here, please post those scans in this thread. Thanks in advance.
davidmhoffer says:
No…I am just seeing the reason why climate scientists talk about the radiative forcing and climate sensitivity in terms of a doubling of CO2, since it is the fractional increase in concentration that is relevant when the relationship to concentration is approximately logarithmic.
Bruce Cobb says:
May 19, 2010 at 6:32 am
Smokey says:
May 19, 2010 at 5:49 am
“mikael pihlström has no clue about how the real world operates, particularly regarding academia and what it takes to get tenured.”
“LOL. Surely, he must have meant that meanwhile young PNS-trained pseudo-scientists emerge and publish all the time in scientific journals, not because they are interested in the facts but in a politically motivated, career-driven movement which is intellectually not getting anywhere, and which will be defunct within a decade.”
——–
That is a harsh statement on your young generation of scientists-to-be!
Given that there is always some amount of group-thinking, conformism
and calculation, a great number of these youngsters would still be
inquisitive and independent minds. After all, that’s why US science
is excelling in any global comparison. Following a tenure track does
not require any particular stand on AGW – if your topic is e.g. atmospheric
chemistry a young scientist would have a lot of freedom to write and evolve
according to his/her own opinion. So, the original reflection remains:
few young scientists in the sceptic conferences.
Wren says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:45 am
Wren;
Yes, since the world’s water supply is fixed
Are you sure?.
During summer time above the poles and due to increased radiation, atmosphere´s oxygen is turned into Ozone (O3), which during winter time and specially when there are proton flares from the sun or increased cosmic rays, as during solar minimums (mainly composed of protons-90%-, which, btw, we must remember are Hydrogen Nucleii), and these react with ozone to produce water 2H+…O3=H2O+O2.
So as far as we receive protons (Hydrogen nucleii) we’ll keep on importing water.
=====
Are you saying the world’s water supply is increasing over the long-term?
BFG, I have to say that you’re not coming across as credible, you claim to be a climate scientist but don’t put across any credible arguments for your case. (That’s not surprising to us sceptics, but I believe you believe there is a credible case, I just don’t believe you know what it is). Then you come up with the death threats canard, this goes back to my original statement that you’ve been reading the warmist propoganda and believe that scientists are being attacked, when it is quite clear to me, given the vociferous nature of the warmists that they would by now have trumpeted these attacks from the rooftops. There are plenty of AGW supporters who come on this and other sites and I’ve never seen anyone threaten them implicitly or explicitly. So tell Smokey what he wants to know.
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2010 at 9:35 am
Wren;
Sure, its the carbon that’s trapped, and the carbon thats trapped is the source of the CO2 . Gimme a break.
First, you agree that the world’s water supply is fixed and now you have changed your mind. Your new “insignificant water” in vapor form recycles quickly like like all that old water. CO2 from burning fossil fuels doesn’t recycle quickly, which is why the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is growing.>>
You missed my sarcasm and may I point out that YOU started with water is fixed and now you are arguing that it isn’t. Yes CO2 is growing. Let’s do the math per IPCC AR4 and see what happens to CO2 forcing in watts per meter squared as we increase CO2 by 100 ppm over the previous level:
“normal” CO2 = 280 ppm
280 + 100 = 380 (+1.7 w/m2)
380 + 100 = 480 (+1.2 w/m2)
480 + 100 = 580 (+1.0 w/m2)
580 + 100 = 680 (+.85 w/m2)
680 + 100 = 780 (+.63 w/m2)
Are you seeing the problem here?
————————————–
The logarithmic effect has been know for over one-hundred years. Why would you think it hasn’t been taken into consideration?
Now, about this supposed trend to an increased supply of water in the world. How do you know the supply is increasing? Are water levels rising?
Joel Shore, May 18, 2010 at 8:06 pm…
Joel would be advised stick to things he knows something about, which don’t include either the OISM Petition or human nature. Explaining the Petition he says:
Aside from being wrong about my politics [I have always been registered Independent/Decline To State], Joel incorrectly presumes that a voluntary petition is a “Soviet-style election.” That’s an amazing disconnect from reality.
Joel is trying to convince us that more than 31,000 professionals with degrees in the physical sciences, including 9,000 PhD’s, are so brainless that they didn’t understand the meaning of what they were downloading, printing out, signing, stamping, and mailing in.
In other words, according to Joel Shore these highly educated individuals were somehow tricked or hypnotized into signing their names to this statement:
Maybe Joel doesn’t understand what that statement says. But I think the rest of us do.