“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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I’m not a climate sceptic because climate is real and I would be stupid to deny it. Nor am I a climate agnostic (what the heck is one of those when it’s at home?) What I am is a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change sceptic as most of us who read and comment here are. I would think a scientist would be able to distinguish and understand the not very subtle difference. Apparently not…
“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.”
They only emailed their friends, somehow that gives the appearance of conflict to me, and appearance is everything.
At least Lord May, Placeman of the Royal Society is not biased:-
“Although an atheist since age 11, May has stated that religion may help society deal with climate change. While referring to what he believes to be a rigid structure of fundamentalist religion, he stated that the co-operational aspects of non-fundamentalist religion may in fact help with climate change. When asked if religious leaders should be doing more to persuade people to combat climate change, he stated that it was absolutely necessary.”
Ref Wikipaedia.
sky says:
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.
They do understand eg Makarieva et al 2010 a
A critique of some modern applications of the Carnot heat engine concept: the dissipative heat engine cannot exist
In several recent studies, a heat engine operating on the basis of the Carnot cycle is considered, where the mechanical work performed by the engine is dissipated within the engine at the temperature of the warmer isotherm and the resulting heat is added to the engine together with an external heat input. This internal dissipation is supposed to increase the total heat input to the engine and elevate the amount of mechanical work produced by the engine per cycle. Here it is argued that such a dissipative heat engine violates the laws of thermodynamics. The existing physical models employing the dissipative heat engine concept, in particular the heat engine model of hurricane development, need to be revised.
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/466/2119/1893
George E. Smith said ”
“I have never experienced any cloud at any height that warmed up the surface in the shadow zone, when it passes in front of the sun; it ALWAYS cools; no matter what.”
And yet cloudy nights are still a lot warmer than clear ones.
Please can you delete my post as it is factually incorrect Lord May is a Past President.
Please accept my apologies.
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, BBC News
There is debate over “feedback” effects on the climate
That’s it in a nutshell. Feedback has always been the big uncertainty. We can expect the world to be warmer with more CO2 but will it be ‘catastrophically’ warmer or just a bit warmer. In a sense, all the arguments about ocean cycles, solar cycles, etc are largely irrelevant. A cool PDO phase in 2050 might still be warmer than the warm 1910-1940 phase – even though it might be relatively colder than the years immediatelybefore it.
The evidence is looking increasingly as though feedback will be small (not sure it’s negative) so a warming of 1-1.5 deg for CO2 doubling seems about right.
Offtopic, but funny. 🙂
Beyond polar bears? Experts look for a new vision of climate change to combat skepticism
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/w-bpb052710.php
George E. Smith says:
May 27, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Interesting discussion. Will have to think about it.
tarpon says:
May 27, 2010 at 7:07 pm
“The problem is positive feedback. But since the CO2 concentration has been much higher than today, and there was no positive feedback turning earth into Venus, then why isn’t the problem solved … there is no positive feedback.”
The jargon can be confusing if you are just being introduced to the problem. It is more subtle than that. The hypothesis is not that there is overall positive feedback. It is that there is positive feedback embedded in a dominant negative feedback system (at the very least, T^4 radiation is an extremely large negative feedback, which grows rapidly with temperature). You can easily show yourself that such an internal positive feedback tends to amplify the response. And, the CAGW scenario requires that this amplification be large.
They have promised to make the new statement “robust”. I guess that should make it OK then.
“and my fear is that the society may become paralysed on this issue.”
Better paralysed than consensual and wrong.
Even our greatest, most well-educated minds make grievous errors of consensus. Here is the caption from a portrait of Royal Society Fellows London:
John Cooke, R. A., Royal Academy Portrait. In 1915, the partisans of Piltdown Man gathered to celebrate his arrival. On wall: picture of Charles Darwin FRS. Standing (left to right): F. 0. Barlow (British Museum), G. Elliot Smith FRS, C. Dawson, and A. Smith Woodward FRS. Seated: A. S. Underwood, A. Keith FRS, W. P. Pycraft FRS, E. R. Lankester FRS. Royal Geological Society archives.
http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_expose/the_pilt_hoax.html
I find myself nodding vigorously in agreement to some of the excellent postings on this site and wish I could be as eloquent.
I wonder if you would consider giving readers the chance to ‘recommend’ postings which they particularly approve as is done by “The Times” It would also cut down on repetition of views. Just a suggestion.
[I don’t think WordPress supports it. ~dbs, mod]
To understand the Royal Society requires a more than superficial understanding of the class system which still holds sway in the UK. The leaders of the Royal Society generally inhabit a certain position in the British class structure which perceives those who did not attend an Oxbridge university as inferior beings; there is a stronger bond between Oxbridge Political Science grads and hard science grads than there is between science grads from other universities. This bond is most evident in politics in the UK – a head-count of millionaire Oxbridge grads on the front benches of the current UK parliament, then a trawl through the backgrounds of the leaders of various industries and occupations shows a high degree of shared experience and values; there are always exceptions, such as Lord Sugar (formerly Sir Alan Sugar) and Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin everything, both remarkably successful self-made men who became entrepreneurs in their teens without bothering with formal education beyond high school.
The Royal Society has usually reflected the common beliefs of the social class of its leading members. The fiasco in the society’s history of their outright rejection, then grudging acceptance which eventually morphed into full approval of Harrison, the village carpenter and his sons, deemed to be working class in the extreme at the time, who defied the class and education barriers to become brilliantly inventive horologists and invented a new technology embodied in their successively more accurate naval chronometers which solved the age old problem of defining longitude exactly while at sea and out of sight of land.
The Royal Society is a bastion of wealth, priveledge and class; it will eventually accede and recognise scientific method and ethics, but not without defending its position vigorously. Those of us whose antecedents fled the UK to carve out new societies in the New World, be they the Americas or other English-speaking nations such as Australia and New Zealand, tend to see the Royal Society in a different light from our English cousins – it is an anachronism, a piece of history, an artifact of society in the UK but not very important in the modern world beyond the confines of old-world priveledge and upper-class cronyism.
Follow the money. More than two thirds of the RS’s money comes from the government (http://royalsociety.org/How-are-we-funded/). Piper, tune. Less money, fewer RS-funded postdocs. These 43 dissidents are a threat to the staff levels enjoyed by their fellow FRSs.
The only climate change which is dangerous to the Establishment is the decreasing gullibility of Joe Public in swallowing whole the propaganda that they wish to disseminate for the purposes of control.
Shocking implications for rulers if a society were truly able to discern the truth from propaganda, eh?
Julian Flood, 10.10
Don’t throw out the proxy baby with the bathwater, they substantiate the Medieval Warming Period, globally, to an amazing degree. See CO2science.org, and to paraphrase their statement, according to published data by 833 scientists from 466 research institutes in 43 countries there WAS a Medieval Warm Period !
Science is inherently sceptical. It is entirely different from denial unless that denial is of opinions and assertions which are unsupported by evidence.
Scepticism is a noble tradition to which we should all aspire:-
Sceptic via latin Scepticus, disciple of Pyrrho of Elis, from Greek Skeptikos, from skeptesthai, to examine;
Philosophical skepticism (from Greek σκέψις – skepsis meaning “enquiry” – UK spelling, scepticism) is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. … One kind of scientific skepticism refers to the critical analysis of claims lacking empirical evidence.
A scientific (or empirical) skeptic is one who questions the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation. The scientific method details the specific process by which this investigation of reality is conducted.
The Royal Society receives most of its income from the governement or local authorities etc, c. £44m or two thirds of it’s income.
Don’t expect much from this exercise, remember “he who pays the piper calls the tune”.
see: http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/royal-society-of-london-for-improving-natural-knowledge9.php?searchresult=1&sstring=Royal+Society
Move along now, nothing to see here.
Before the Royal Society or any other institution tries to figure out what the actual climate feedback is, it would be wise to actually go back and review the basic assumptions about the Greenhouse Theory itself, which says that the ability for Greenhouse gasses to hold onto some heat emitted from the surface of the earth, makes the earth warmer than the theoretically calculated one using the Stephan-Boltzmann function.
What if there are actually other materials (solid, liquid or gaseous) that actually can hold onto solar heat energy and then emit that heat at a later stage (at night). This is determined by the heat capacity of that material.
An element with a high heat capacity needs more energy to warm by a certain amount (and will thus take longer), than one with a lower capacity. However once the heat source is no longer applied and if the surrounding environment has a lower temperature, the materials will try to lose the heat to come into equilibrium with its environment. The element with the higher capacity has more energy stored and will need to lose more energy than the lower one. It will thus take longer for the higher one to obtain equilibrium.
Water, which covers 70% of the surface of the earth, has a very high heat capacity compared to dry air (also higher than humid air) (See: by Professor Nasif Nahle).
Even on the moon the ability for the regolith, which covers its surface, to hold on to some heat on the night side (= about 13 earth days), makes it 60 deg Celsius warmer than the Stephan-Boltzmann calculations. (It is even 20 degrees cooler on the day side as new analysis of Apollo 14 and 17 data has shown – see Alan Siddons, Martin Hertzberg & Hans Schreuder Source Link: source
The question to ask is which the likely source of the warmer earth is: The greenhouse gasses (only trace gasses in the earth atmosphere), which can hold onto its heat radiation for a fraction of a second only, before re-emitting or the oceans and the materials on the earth land surface, which have the ability to hold onto that heat for far longer.
“The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised…”
Yeah, well enough organised to be the only ones engaged in following the requirements inerrant in the practice of the scientific method, of which ‘sceptical inquiry’ is an essential pre requisite.
If the Alarmists are finding their selective and optional use of ‘scepticism’ and ‘open peer-review’ and ‘consideration of all the empirical evidence’ to be not working for them anymore, then they should feel free to reject their own unscientific confirmation bias and return to proper and full scientific methodology.
Yeas, it would slash their budgets, but it might just reduce their alarmism too.
When the new revised edition of “Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” gets published will it contain a chapter on the Skeptics or Warmists as being the deluded madness of crowds of scientists?
My money is on the AGW folk being the meat and potatoes of that chapter. Why? Because I meet so many airheads who believe that their own little plan will solve this “problem”. People who think that vegetarianism, banning airplanes, living underground, and on and on and on , will make the place cooler. These same people who believe that the climate of 150 years ago was the best climate imaginable for all things on Earth despite the fact that they didn’t live then.
The Royal Society book by Bill Bryson “Seeing Further” ISBN 978-0-00-730256-7 has a chapter on climate change by a very decent sounding chap called Stephen H. Schneider who bases most of what he says on IPCC 4 and some Bayesian stats. Done before the holes in IPCC 4 began to appear. Is he one of the scientists who will be involved in the review?
Bah!
For any of you not be familiar with ” Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds” here is a link to get you started . . .
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mackay/macEx1.html
The opening paragraph should whet your appetite . . .
“THE OBJECT OF THE AUTHOR in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes. “
The whole point is that Global Warming is a political agendum! There is no interest whatsoever in saving the planet other than tokenism & a sop to the genuine greenie eco-stalinists who want to return to the stone age. It’s all about wealth distribution, rich nations tapping the wallet to give to the poor nations, which are run primarily by Marxist Socilaist dictators & or criminals creaming off their share of the aid money doled out to them.
Never in the last 500 million years has CO2 been shown to have driven temperatures on Earth. When CO2 levels were up to 20 times what they are today, no runaway greenhouse effect occurred. So, could somebody on the greenie side please explain “exactly” (no ifs buts or maybes) what mechanism changed all that for a small increase of the current pityfully low level of CO2 in todays atmosphere? Please, I really do want to know like the millions of us out there!
This is Roger Harrabin everyone’s talken about.
a Monbiot sock puppet.
Let’s see what happens, before we start casting the spersions. Societies are just groups of scientists.
Last time I looked, Catastrophists they are doing re education and advertising campaigns.