“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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Very important read;
“Thanks to Siddons and his co-authors of ‘A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon,’ the world now has scientific evidence to show the greenhouse gas theory (GHG) was junk all along.”
here;
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5783&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimaterealistsNewsBlog+%28ClimateRealists+News+Blog%29
I have always maintained that these scientific societies should not be expressing opinions on scientific consensus, whether it be climate science or the heliocentric nature of the solar system. From a post at Bishop Hill, I got this statement that I understand was in the Philosophical Transactions until the 1960’s. This is so apropos and timely that I had to pass it on.
It is likewise necessary on this occasion to remark, that it is an established rule of the Society, to which they will always adhere, never to give their opinion, as a Body, upon any subject, either of Nature or Art, that comes before them. And therefore the thanks, which are frequently proposed from the Chair, to be given to the authors of such papers as are read at their accustomed meetings, or to the persons through whose hands they received them, are to be considered in no other light than as a matter of civility, in return for the respect shown to the Society by those communications. The like also is to be said with regard to the several projects, inventions, and curiosities of various kinds, which are often exhibited to the Society; the authors whereof, or those who exhibit them, frequently take the liberty to report and even to certify in the public newspapers, that they have met with the highest applause and approbation. And therefore it is hoped that no regard will hereafter be paid to such reports and public notices; which in some instances have been too lightly credited, to the dishonour of the Society.
Wow! That says it all.
Robert Austin says:
May 28, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Fabulous! Just what I want to hear from them today. I wonder what changed in the 1960’s to have them change this policy?
There’s more on the Royal Society’s 1960s statement here on Nigel Calder’s blog http://calderup.wordpress.com and here at Bishop Hill (comment #12 from Jonathan).
Go back to the early days of the Royal Society and you will see its history is not great. it was driven by the politics of the day to obtain funding.
They wrote Robert Hooke out of history after depending on him for years.
Thank goodness if there are still some independent minded questioning members – if so the spirit of Hooke lives on
sky says:
May 27, 2010 at 5:17 pm
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.
———–
beautifully put sky
Joel Shore does’nt understand the relationship between feedback and energy conservation. If he is correct (that the SB response can be offset and therefore amplified by positive feedback) he will surely be able to develop his thinking into a demonstration of amplification by temperature resonance (should be possible if he is correct).
But this has never been done – even by the greatest minds that science has seen – and Joel ain’t gonna change that. In fact, any reply from Joel is surely only going to demonstrate how he doesn’t understand what he is talking about.
Maybe someone can explain this to me. The IPCC and others say the the climate is dominated by positive feedbacks. If there are more positive feedbacks than negative then the climate change would eventually become unidirectional. In other words, in the earth past why have there been periods of cooling? If increasing temperature begets more warming there could be no ice ages…unless the external forcing was much greater than internal I guess.
This taxpayer thinks that the Royal Society should be deprived of any further taxpayer money. They are pompous and understand less about climate science than I do. We can no longer afford them. They cost us money and then they expect us to pay up for useless windmills and renewables and pay oil companies who make profits from all these alternative ‘green’ fuels and on and on and on. Off with their heads!! At last I understand how those old ladies knitting by the guillotine felt. Useless aristocratic Royal Society. And I am beginning to think useless BBC and Roger Harrabin as well. End their license fee unless they allow James Delingpole to make a programme on the global warming scam. Now that will be the day.
4 says:
May 28, 2010 at 3:38 pm
See my post at May 28, 2010 at 1:22 am.
George E. Smith says:
May 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“Now Joel, try to keep it simple; we aren’t too bright here or we might become Climatologers too. Where (on the surface of the earth) would fall THE SHADOW ZONE formed by the sun shining on a cloud that is on THE NIGHT SIDE of the planet ?”
I guess Joel is trying to say that the cloud will trap IR on the night side without blocking any incoming sunlight. How he thinks this might add up to a net gain of energy, I really don’t know, but it’s a comfort to learn that, if everything we thought we knew about the life cycle of stars were wrong, and the Sun were to be extinguished tomorrow, the clouds will keep us warm.
maksimovich (12:36am):
Makarieva appears to be that avis rarum in climate science: an academic whose ideas are firmly anchored reality. If those who preach the “climate feedback” gospel attempted to build any physical model of their conceptions, they would soon discover that it doesn’t operate. In computer models this embarrasing flaw is hiodden via programming fiat.
David Ball says:
May 27, 2010 at 10:08 pm
“…They are getting face-palmed 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.”
_________________________________________________________________________
If the crops are poor this year, you are gonna see an angry public backlash Boy you can say that again.
California denied farmers water for irrigation because of a minnow. 2/3 of the state OF California have depended on water for their crops. [Now] The water is turned off here, so none of these farmers can expect to get any water This has caused California’s Man-Made Drought On top of that Florida’s fish farms, citrus and tomato crops have been hard hit and other areas have had trouble getting the seed into the ground.
The USA grows 25% of the World’s grain, and is the leading exporter of corn and soybeans, producing 40 percent of the global corn crop and 38 percent of all soybeans. The grain traders eliminated all the US grain reserves as of 2008. On top of that Congress by law has diverted a lot of our grain into biofuel.
The “House Concurrent Resolution 25″ states “…not later than January 1, 2025, the agricultural, forestry, and working land of the United States should provide from renewable resources not less than 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States…”
Anyone reading WUWT regularly may have noticed comments about crop planting this spring. Some are already forecasting a major food crisis UN envoy: World set for new food crisis in 2010
“..Inaction to halt speculation on agricultural commodities and continued biofuels policies is paving the way for a re-run of the 2008 food price crisis in 2010 or 2011, argues Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food…”
2010 Food Crisis of 2010 USDA vs Reality
Coming food crisis will lead economy into tailspin
“These two realities can’t coexist!
Farmers can’t be going bankrupt across the US thanks to the worst harvest season [2009] ever seen while at the same time producing the USDA’s Biggest Crop Ever! Someone is lying, and evidence supports the farmer’s story.
…All someone needs to do to know the world is headed for a food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA saying.
Secretarial disaster declarations
Presidential disaster declarations
Space down four times to see USDA disaster designations map (2009)
(Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab
“Following the 2008 food and financial crises, World Bank was to play a central role in what was intended to be a massive overhaul in international food policy and a vast improvement to food security in the developing world. Evidence, however, reveals that World Bank Group policies and efforts are doing just the opposite.”
Why am I not surprised to learn this.
Jordan says:
May 28, 2010 at 3:26 pm
sky says:
May 27, 2010 at 5:17 pm
There are real objections to be made about how the climate modelers evaluate and utilize feedback, but this isn’t one. See my post at May 28, 2010 at 1:22 am.
It appears to be some sort of an announcement that the Spirit of Science has now left all Academic institutions and Societies, and is now completely in the hands of those who develop expertise in a subject out of love and self-disciplined devotion, while holding a day job.
🙂
“well, we are still fairly sure that greenhouse gases are changing the climate”
Well I hope they have a good look at the hurricane findings – despite all the scare talk, Knutson et al say in “Tropical cyclones and climate change” Nature Geoscience 3, 157 – 163 (2010): “Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes.”
The people running the Royal Society must surely realise that the authors of this paper, despite all the research, are unable to state categorically that increased CO2 concentrations affect hurricane frequency and intensity. This means that this aspect of the climate scare is unfounded, and the Royal Society’s overarching statement MUST be changed to reflect the weakness of the science.
Same goes for malaria and infectious diseases – see Paul Reiter’s testimony to the House of Lords.
Bart says:
“There are real objections to be made about how the climate modelers evaluate and utilize feedback, but this isn’t one….”
I believe positive feedback is one of the bigger issues Bart. Feedback is not a new concept to me.
Right now, I say that sky’s post was correct – although I am ready to hear other views.
I agree that the problem is the way positive feedback is used in climatology. It gets into all sorts of issues with the fundamental laws of thermodynamics and (IMO) allows the models to call on energy from the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
We can look at feedback loop as a set of components, interacting through “across variables” and “through variables”. Place a voltage across a resistor, current will flow through. With a capacitor, voltage is the integral of the current. At the component level, we have no benefit from using feedback to describe these properties. If we link and combine them in simple RC networks, the combination of different properties starts to justify analysis using feedback principles.
It is also worth saying that the feedback analysis is wholly negative feedback when the components are all passive (energy dissipative). This supports one of the points made by sky, which I agree with.
We can argue the same for extending springs versus combining springs with dampers and mass. And thermal systems.
So how do we view SB? My starting point is that that it should be treated as a property of a passive component. If a body’s temperature is raised (across variable) it will dissipate energy to surrounding components (flow of energy is the through variable). The relationship is non-linear, but I do not think this justifies the use of feedback.
SB is the passive response. I see climate models as – in effect – postulating processes or properties of the system which allow us to modify at least one component’s SB response. The effect is that a body’s temperature can then be raised to a level above the purely passive response.
This must mean that there is more energy in the system than its purely passive response. So where did that extra energy come from?
And that’s why I had a little bit of fun, challenging Joel Shore to produce a passive thermal oscillator. If he is correct, he should be able to come up with a design. I don’t think he’ll come up with anything other than a design for perpetual motion. So sky was right on that point too.
In a way, you are right Bart – I could easily show myself that an internal positive feedback tends to amplify the response. And, the CAGW scenario requires that this amplification be large. But turning that into a real physical system is where the law of thermodynamics will scupper the design.
Pascvaks says:
May 28, 2010 at 8:11 am
“Yet, what has their “Official” position been? All that is knowable on Global Warming and Climate Change is known! Anyone who disagrees is a fool! They, as a Society, are beneath contempt. Their Royal Charter should be burned. The Society should be disbanded.”
Absolutely. The damage to science may well be irreparable, whatever they come up with. Even so, an unconditional mea culpa may be a step in the right direction.
Can the Royal Society please answer the following;
We know that the icore data shows that when the temperature went up, CO2 went up to, but lagging with approx 6-800 years. When the temperature went down , CO2 went down too, but lagging maybe 6-800 years.
How does the RS explain that CO2 couldt cause the rise? 800 years later?
Not to mention; How could the temperature decrease again? And then CO2? Shouldnt it continue to rise?
Please explain.
I have heard people say something like…well, you see, first temperature went up, heating the CO2 (which took 800 years?) , which again was heating water vapour which again heated CO2 which again……
That sounds more like a nuclear reaction to me……
The Royal Society is a registered charity and receives its funding from a variety of sources, by far the greatest of which is a goverment grant.
nuff said
The Royal Society will just fudge it, i.e., produce a fuzzy document permitting anybody to read anything they want (within limits) into it. However, as a skeptic, I am cheered by this development, as the Royal’s support for the alarmist case was important. For me, they lost credibility some time ago: their President used the Hockey Stick graph as a central theme of his lectures, but when the Hockey Stick became questionable (to say the least) shortly afterwards, the Royal simply dropped it from its printed material without any comment. Orwellian!
I heard Roger interview an FRS yesterday: he asked some genuinely searching questions – which has pretty pathetic answers.
The Telegraph also reported it today.
To which I wrote:
Dear Sir,
What a timid bunch of scientists make up the Royal Society. The case for man-made climate change has been dead and buried for a decade, but they are behaving as if they are in the Monty Python ‘dead parrot sketch’.
Yours faithfully,
Calm down people.
If it’s getting warmer this year or decade, or the ice is more or less than some arbitrary time all it means is that things are changing climate wise. It doesn’t mean anything else.
We all know it changes but please don’t behave like those warmistas and attribute every warm related change with their theory de jour as proof any more than our cooling narrative is proof of anything but change.
CO2 isn’t the enemy, nor is change.
Atheist…Agnostic… These are words that describe religious belief. How appropriate that they are no in play in AGW context.
meant to say now in play, not no in play
http://royalsociety.org/Climate-Change/
Have they pulled all their pages on climate change? I cant find them just now.
If so this is big news.