“I don’t think they were very pleased. I don’t think this sort of thing has been done before in the history of the society.”
Society to review climate message
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, BBC News
There is debate over “feedback” effects on the climate
The UK’s Royal Society is reviewing its public statements on climate change after 43 Fellows complained that it had oversimplified its messages.
They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood.
The society’s ruling council has responded by setting up a panel to produce a consensus document.
The panel should report in July and the report is to be published in September.
It is chaired by physicist John Pethica, vice-president of the Royal Society.
Its deliberations are reviewed by two critical sub-groups, each believed to comprise seven members.
Each of these groups contains a number of society Fellows who are doubtful in some way about the received view of the risks of rising CO2 levels.
One panel member told me: “The timetable is very tough – one draft has already been rejected as completely inadequate.”
The review member said it might not be possible for the document to be agreed at all. “This is a very serious challenge to the way the society operates,” I was told. “In the past we have been able to give advice to governments as a society without having to seek consensus of all the members.
“There is very clear evidence that governments are right to be very worried about climate change. But in any society like this there will inevitably be people who disagree about anything – and my fear is that the society may become paralysed on this issue.”
Another review member told me: “The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised. It’s not clear to me how we are going to get precise agreement on the wording – we are scientists and we’re being asked to do a job of public communication that is more like journalism.”
But both members said they agreed that some of the previous communications of the organisation in the past were poorly judged.
Question everything
A Royal Society pamphlet Climate Change Controversies is the main focus of the criticism. A version of it is on the organisation’s website. It was written in response to attacks on mainstream science which the Royal Society considered scurrilous.
It reads: “This is not intended to provide exhaustive answers to every contentious argument that has been put forward by those who seek to distort and undermine the science of climate change…”
One Fellow who said he was not absolutely convinced of the dangers of CO2 told me: “This appears to suggest that anyone who questions climate science is malicious. But in science everything is there to be questioned – that should be the very essence of the Royal Society. Some of us were very upset about that.
“I can understand why this has happened – there is so much politically and economically riding on climate science that the society would find it very hard to say ‘well, we are still fairly sure that greenhouse gases are changing the climate’ but the politicians simply wouldn’t accept that level of honest doubt.”
Another society protester said he wanted to be called a climate agnostic rather than a sceptic. He said he wanted the society’s website to “do more to question the accuracy of the science on climate feedbacks” (in which a warming world is believed to make itself warmer still through natural processes).
“We sent an e-mail round our friends, mainly in physical sciences,” he said.
“Then when we had got 43 names we approached the council in January asking for the website entry on climate to be re-written. I don’t think they were very pleased. I don’t think this sort of thing has been done before in the history of the society.
“But we won the day, and the work is underway to re-write it. I am very hopeful that we will find a form of words on which we can agree.
“I know it looks like a tiny fraction of the total membership (1,314) but remember we only emailed our friends – we didn’t raise a general petition.”
much more here at the BBC
h/t to WUWT reader “Sandy in Derby”
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“Another society protester said he wanted to be called a climate agnostic rather than a sceptic.”
Which just goes to show, absurdly, that “skeptic” has actually become a smear when climate change is concerned.
Somebody page the American Physical Society and get them to do the same. Our scientific associations are themselves diminishing the faith of the public in science by their political activism.
“There is very clear evidence that governments are right to be very worried about climate change. But in any society like this there will inevitably be people who disagree about anything – and my fear is that the society may become paralysed on this issue.”
As it clearly should. Is there virtue in plunging blindly into an economic and political abyss, oblivious of both contrary evidence and likely unintended consequences?
The real problem for the climate alarmists is feedback.
If it is zero there is no problem since CO2 is a poor GHG.[1 o C per doubling]
If it is negative there is even less of a problem.
If it is positive but small there is still no problem.
Only if it is positive and large is there a problem and recent studies have shown this is not the case, so where is the problem ?
Prediction: The report will not be finished by July. It will be next year, if ever.
Here’s a thought: Just make everyone’s views available; pro, con, or somewhere in between, sans recommendations, and let the damn politicians stew in their own juices.
In other words, they admit that they were lying all along and have been caught with their knickers down.
So who’s on this board of sorts? Any prominent scientist?
“The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised”
LMAO. Here is how the organisation works for me. I get up at 4:30am while the kids are sleeping. Sometimes an idea pops into my head. If so, I write it up and send it to Anthony. He decides if he wants to publish it. I spend my free time the rest of the day arguing with R Gates and Phil.
Still waiting on the big oil paycheck. I could sure use that for a summer vacation. They must not really care.
“The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised…”
Given that scepticism is one of the key ingredients in all science I really wonder if these plonkers actually hear what they themselves sound like when they make this kind of comment ….
Whats the hell is wrong with scepticism ??
Typically, Harabin spins the line about “Lobbyists funded by the fossil fuel industry” but doesn’t mention Lobbyists funded by the CO2 industry (e.g. Al Gore).
‘…mainly in physical sciences…’
Ah, the sane ones…
…they should set up a counter organization and leave the rump of the ‘Royal Society’ to promulgate their beliefs on climatology, ufology, and Feng Shui.
Glory be. The thin end of a wedge of commonsense, reported by the BBC, no less. There’s hope for us yet, and “agnostic” works just fine for me, so I don’t want to knock it. It has the advantage that it can’t really be denigrated: how can you slag off a bloke who admits he doesn’t know? I hope it catches on as a label – who knows, it might be something that allows more and more doubting scientists to come out of the woodwork.
How about letting each side and maybe the middle also write up their thoughts on the matter. But a requirement would be that proof of any claim would have to be supplied – along with any code and data. 🙂
“They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood.”
woops, well there went that document.
If they leave out the lies, exaggerations, fabrications, and wishful thinking………..
I agree, and I agree that it’s absurd.
I’m not wholly opposed to the transition from “climate sceptic” to “AGW agnostic”. I think it’s important to recognise “AGW belief” as a religious, non-scientific, non-proof-based ideology. The word “agnostic” can also be easily and helpfully juxtaposed with the word “atheist”, and of course there is a broader popular understanding of the meanings of the terms “atheist” and “agnostic”.. and of the familiar term “screaming evangelist nutter”. Climate sceptics are AGW agnostic in the main. The word “agnostic” literally means “without Knowledge” (big K, as in religious Knowledge), or “not known/not knowable”. To quote:
Climate Atheists are an entirely different bunch that can be ignored almost completely. They tend to believe that climate change is all rubbish and that it’s never REALLY changed at all, during the the earth’s entire 4,000 year history. Err…
Well, it’s something to consider anyway.
It is a couple orders of magnitude harder to get a person or entity to “walk back” a long series of statements than it is to get them to not make them in the first place. The more dignity they perceive themselves to have, can add a few “x” on top of that.
Tempest in a teapot. I am sure they are all wondering how foolish they will all look when climate change turns out to be cold and none of them has figured out how to make CO2 the scapegoat. Maybe they should have joined the debate at Oxford Union.
The FRS whom I know best simply disbelieves in the whole Global Warming farrago.
Another FRS whom I know will, I fear, agree to anything likely to lead to career advancement. Sad, innit?
When the purpose of science becomes the need to persuade policymakers, real science is no longer possible.
Actually I think the response should be rather easy and quite simple:
Climate change is real.
Human caused climate change is possible, but hasn’t yet been confirmed.
Consensus on methods and so on is possible. To be a scientists is to be skeptical. It is almost a must. We must always question and re-question everything. Science deals with how things work and nothing more. If we are not totally amoral and do not lack humanity, the information we contribute to humanities knowledge must be just that, information on how things work. As citizens we must contribute our beliefs and faith to that information base. The most difficult part of these two contributions is keeping them separated. If we fail to do so we are little more then well paid and well educated hypocrites. If our organizations and associations can’t do that, then they deserve the lack of public trust that results from hypocrisy.
The basic problem indeed lies in the failure to distinguish between genuine feedback, which requires an auxiliary power-source (positive) or a dissipative mechanism (negative) for physical operation, and mere redistribution or storage of energy in a conservative system. I wonder how many Society members are equipped to understand that critical distinction and come to the realization that the much-venerated climate models posit a perpetuum mobile of the second kind.
I think the Royal Society nd other so called Scientific societies should dig in and hold their ground no matter what new evidence surfaces. They have already ruined their reputation by releasing the first statement based on flawed logic. Now it is time for the real scientists that remain to form real scientific societies and do real science!
Well said, Netdr – The foundation of their fear is FEEDBACK.
Without large positive feedback from cloud formation, etc., there is absolute nothing to worry about. They should admit that actual OBSERVATIONS of feedback so far are inconclusive or in the opposite direction of what AGW predicts. If they put that simple truth in their statement, I, for one, would be very impressed…
Sorry, I misspoke – I would be ROYALLY impressed. 😉
It is really hard for some folks to just say they don’t know, isn’t it?