“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”
This is a marvellous development.
The propaganda the RoySoc exec has been gushing for so long has been challenged by a grass-roots protest…and the BBC is reporting it in more rounded way giving respectful voice to the sceptics (mention of the crux issue of feedback, quoting Linzen). It’s another step our way for Harrabin and the BBC…and it might be the turning of the tide at RoySoc – and right before the 350 year celebration in November.
The fear that the society may become paralysed on this issue is real, and if it does become paralysed then we will know at least that its heart is still beating as a society for scientific discussion.
As for Lord Rees, make no mistake that this will be difficult for him.
For his brand of cool alarmism try his book Our Final Hour.
The Cicerone-Rees weasel-worded letter to Fin Times is here:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/72e349c8-436e-11df-833f-00144feab49a.html
Or listen to Rees in Oz last month:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2881446.htm
Don’t worry about someone wanting to avoid the skeptic label. Skeptics have mostly been bad for science, with some occasional usefulness. See Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a very friendly reading of skeptical history: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/
And as this learned article observes, most modern skeptics who argue from a position of skepticism don’t wish to be known as such.
Here is something to make you laugh. Algor is a Latin word that means cold or coldness. See Whitaker’s words: http://archives.nd.edu/words.html
algor, algoris N M 3 1 M [XXXCO]
cold, coldness; chilliness; a fit of shivering; cold weather (pl.);
This is so unbelievable that I now believe in supernatural phenomena (and I will also consult other dictionaries to check the source) 🙂
“… 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.”
Why should that be hard to say? The Royal Society should be saying what it believes to be true regardless of the way it will be received by politicians.
For a Fellow to acknowledge that the Society would find it hard to express doubt on a particular scientific topic for fear of the political response is the clearest proof there could be that the RS has abdicated its position as an impartial reporter of current scientific thought and adopted a political role. That was the stance taken by so-called scientific bodies in the Soviet Union and East Germany – they were part of the State machine rather than apolitical observers. For the RS to have sunk to that level is a disgrace.
“do more to question the accuracy of the science on climate feedbacks”
So that would mean they will include language about negative feedbacks?
Are they feeling embarrassed about Spencer’s work on cloud cover? Christy’s, Singer’s, et al work on in inaccurate climate models? Or about Svensmark’s work on cosmic rays? Or on all the work done showing how flawed “manmade global warming” is?
p.s., thank you “Sandy in Derby”
terrybixler says:
May 27, 2010 at 5:06 pm
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 article is dated Thursday, 27 May 2010. I wonder if the results of the Oxford Union debate has something to do with it. I don’t imagine the Royal Society wants to look so bad to the young Oxfords’ over ‘global warming’.
“The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised…”
Gosh, I didn’t know I was well organized with anyone.
p.s., I’m not really a skeptic. You can only be a skeptic of something that could possibly be real. (got that one from Lindzen)
Michael Larkin says:
May 27, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Glory be. The thin end of a wedge of commonsense, reported by the BBC, no less.
I’d say they’re just reading the handwriting on the wall. These dam cold winters can thaw a rock hard frozen political disposition.
Let it be known that these blowhards have been far more wrong than right over the last couple of centuries. As most American and British science, they view their occupation as a means of riches and fame, thus shunning real science unless they manage to hop on the wagon before it leaves the market scare, oops, did I mean square?
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
May 27, 2010 at 9:19 pm
“The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised…”
Gosh, I didn’t know I was well organized with anyone>>
Well golly gee but they might be right. Global warming is causing more hurricanes and less hurricanes, more rain and less rain, more snow and less snow, more unseasonable warm weather and more unseasonable cold weather, more ice and less ice, more sea level rise and less sea level rise. And that was just on Tuesday.
So by comparison, the skeptics are organized.
Do they do this on every subject in science? Do they need to get “consensus” on every idea? This is insane… it’s not science… it’s politics.
I have often wondered why the leaders of the alarmist movement always point blank refuse to publicly debate climate change with sceptics – apart from the obvious fact they would lose the argument.
After all, if you are the purveyor of truth and all that is good, then you need to get people to believe in what you say.
Then I thought of the Holy Inquisition, the Taliban, the Nazis solution to the ‘Jewish Problem’, etc etc. If you are downright wrong, there is no way you want to debate anything, you just want to impose your will on the masses.
I am not comparing the Royal Society to any of the above, but they like most alarmists from Gore to Milliband, are guilty of trying to stifle the debate with statements like ‘the science is settled’. As the general public becomes increasingly sceptic, the alarmist leaders’ statements and demands likewise become increasingly shrill.
At the end of the day, the climate debate comes down to one thing, the concept of ‘forcing’ – an extremely dubious theory not supported by any facts or geological history. If you believe this theory is fact, then you are an alarmist, but if you reject it or doubt its veracity then you are a sceptic.
Panel reports by July? LOL. They’ll need an extension or two. Or three. In fact, if they’re bright, they can just keep on getting three month extensions for a decade or so, watch the data, and when they see which way the trend actually goes, they can issue a report and claim that was what they were going to say all along.
I use the same technique with the lottery. I never get around to buying a ticket and then the day after the draw I can read the winning number and scream “%@ur momisugly@#^%!! that was the number I was going to pick”. Got it right 14 weeks in a row.
“The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised…” They cannot even admit that the earth is shooting their diaphonous theory out of the sky. Reminds me of the line used by someone with a black eye : “You should see the other guy”. They are getting facepalmed and they cannot even see that it is by natural variability of the climate system, not a clever band of skeptic insurgents. If the crops are poor this year, you are gonna see an angry public backlash against the people who tried to convince us to prepare for the wrong eventuality.
I dislike the tone of Harrabin’s piece — it’s got a mean flavour, with his prejudice showing through where he harps on about ‘well organised and funded deniers’. Yes, it’s nearer real science reporting than usual, but he’s not there yet. I have a general purpose letter for climate journos, and a poem. Here’s the letter:
“Are you convinced by any of the arguments for proxy evaluation of temperatures for the last 1000 years? If so, please elaborate — skip the baby talk, skip the ‘polar bears are in trouble’ hand-waving, lay out a numerical argument for your thesis that humanity is warming the planet. Yes, I know, it’s not ‘your’ thesis, but you are a flag-waver for it and, if you’re prepared to wave the flag, the least you can do is defend it with cogent arguments. Which proxy, to your mind, is defensible as a thermometer for the times when we don’t have real glass tubes filled with alcohol or mercury? Not bristlecone pines, surely, evaluated and found wanting. Ababneh’s trees? Briffas? Those before or after the decline? Come now, old chap, is there no remnant of a reporter’s instincts in that indoctrinated and battened-down heart?
There’s a story here, a story of fudge and obfuscation and weasel words. Is there not a twitch from the deep-down nosiness that every reporter needs if he is to be anything other than a mouthpiece for other people’s press releases? Frogs? Remember when it was all the frogs dying which showed global warming but it turned out to be a fungus disease? Don’t you owe it to the frogs to be a real reporter?
.
I was frightened when I saw the first hockey stick. Then I read about it, how it was created, read the Wegman report and felt like fool. You have read the Wegman report, of course. How, as a decent, intelligent man, let alone a reporter, one of the breed known for their resistance to spin, can you look at the attempts to resurrect the stick, that scion of corrupt wishful thinking, as anything other than scandal? I know the temptation to which you are subjected: green advocates are passionate about the needs of nature, our responsibility for the ecosystems on which we depend, the love for the fragile Earth. That love does not absolve you from the necessity of pursuing truth. In the end the science will win, truth will out and one side or the other will be triumphant.
However, if you have been shown as a fudger, if you have swept aside legitimate doubts about the reality behind the claims, you will have done huge damage to the cause you think you are serving and, more important to a man trying to earn a living in what we hope will be a world purged of this hysterical nonsense, you will have made yourself a laughing stock. The hockey-stick farce turned me into a luke-warmer, convinced that the world was warming but unconvinced as to the cause. Can you really, in your heart, treat it as good, unbiased science?
.
The best temperature measuring system in the world, so they say, is in the USA. You will have watched Anthony Watts and his team of volunteers assess that system. The ‘best system in the world’ has about half of its locations measuring to an accuracy of greater than + – 5 degrees. Global warming caused by CO2, at its IPCC -enhanced greatest, is about .7 degrees. You _know _ this. If you have any trace of integrity you’ve read the reports as they come in, the thermometers a few feet away from sewage farms, the air conditioner outlets, the acres of concrete and asphalt, the MIG fighter exhaust pointing straight at the sensor. What are you doing to your mind to see that and still to spout the party line that the world is warming, it’s all CO2 and there’s nothing else it could be?
.
There are those who feel it is acceptable to tell lies that the greater good be served. Read the leaked — leaked, not stolen – emails from the CRU at UEA. Can you really face yourself in the mirror in the morning, can you sincerely describe yourself as a reporter if you don’t follow the story and be damned where it leads?”
.
And here’s the poem:
“You cannot ever bribe or twist
The honest climate journalist.
But when you see what he will do
unbribed
You’ll find you don’t need to.”
Me, I’ve moved from luke-warmer to confused and I want the world to share the causes of my confusion. Call me a dissident, a climate dissident.
JF
That would be the same Royal Society that producd a report claiming that “increased rain and severe weather due to climate change” would result in increased tectonic activity and more volcanic eruptions (report in UK Daily Telegraph days after the Icelandic eruption), talk about jumping on bandwaggons.
Do you know what you call a system where the ELITE agrees on a CONCENSUS, and noone is allowed to go against the CONCENSUS after the fact?
It’s called MARXISM!!!
I hereby urge the whole society to read Dr. Roy Spencers book on the Great Climate blunder. Learn how a whole group of scientists might have misinterpreted data.
@ur momisugly George E. Smith: George, I liked your argument about cloud thermo effects of shadowing. However you may have over looked the very large energy release in cloud formation. Evaporation and condensation in cloud formation is the heat pump that cools the surface and transfers the energy higher up to be radiated into space. Heat energy and temperature are not always the same thing. This is why the climate models are so crappy, too simple minded about cloud effects.
This is why I have little confidence in the Royal Societys’ review as specialists generally can’t see past the end of their noses and accept the postulations of other not-related specialists as fact.
So 43 members of the Royal Society have finally proved they have something between their legs! Whilst it gladdens the heart, it still makes me wonder why they took so long!
perhaps their first and only ‘consensus’ should be:
the Royal Society will never again use the generic ‘climate change’ when referring to the IPCC’s ‘catastrophic anthropogenic climate change’.
if they did just that, and the media was forced to follow suit, we’d be over the biggest hurdle we face.
I do hope the Royal Society will debate the application of the Stefan-Boltzmann’s equations as used in the IPCC reports as against the methods devised by NASA to ensure the safety of the astronauts during the Apollo Moon landings.
– crack –
“The first thing to do is to get away from the idea that you can only be using single-valued metrics like the global temperature.”
Gavin Scmidt 26 May 2010
On attribution (Real climate)
I smell a rat.
First I checked out the Royal Soc site
http://royalsociety.org/
There’s no news of this new reflection there, but there’s news of 44 new fellows
elected to the Royal Soc..
Harrabin’s propoganda states “Lobbyists funded by the fossil fuel industry were fighting to undermine that consensus (…)” – which I suspect is a lie, and
follows with this;
“Climate change doubters among the society’s Fellows say that in their anxiety
to support government action, the academies failed to distinguish between “hired guns” and genuine scientific agnostics wanting to explore other potential causes
of climate change. ”
Now that scenerio has skeptics being understanding and forgiving of abuse
from alarmists, which they understood was really intended for the evil oil
lobbyists.
It looks like a work of fiction to me.
Now, “The panel should report in July and the report is to be published in September” tells me the report is already written, and awaiting some
approval.
So I’m expecting a rehashed alarmist report which expresses doubt about
the importance of ludicrously minor details: say, the albedo of seagulls.
netdr says: 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 ?
It has to be positive and large AND there must be no other larger negative feedback like clouds…
Look at the history of interglacials. There is a hard lid on temperatures just a tiny bit above our present temperatures (and even that may simply be an overshoot before the lid slaps back down to here,,,)
There is a tipping point, but it is only to the downside from here.
ZT says: …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.
Hey! Quit slandering ufology and Feng Shui! Put them in with AGW climatology and you will damage their reputation ! 😉
And, I’d note, the very idea of “scientific consensus” is a broken one. Like most things from the AGW camp, they have the sign backwards. Science only defines the rules we use for the moment as we search for a better set…
If “scientific consensus” mattered, we could stop issuing new Ph.Ds as there would be nothing new to discover so no one could produce a significant advance in the art…
Scepticism about CAGW has come a long way since this ‘cargo cult science’ quote from Lord May, who in his desire to please his master forgot what real science is all about:-
The first “climate agnostic” also said he was angry at previous comments from the previous president Lord May who declared: “The debate on climate change is over.”
Lord May was once quoted as saying: “On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots.”
Now ‘the debate’ really is in full spate and the ‘crackpots’ are winning!