Royal Society blinks – embraces sceptics and uncertainty

Make sure to include scenarios for intense cold, heavy snows and dropping sea levels.
The last one would be a show-stopper, should it ever occur.
Since warming is unpredictable, so is cooling. Nature is squirrely.

And for the usual spin and Bob the Knob’s distortions …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/30/royal-society-climate-change-guide

Didn’t they get curbed stomped for not towing the AGW line at one of the pseudo enquiries then back track? It will be interesting to see if they keep fluttering in the wind or pick a story and stick with it. Of course fluttering in the wind tells a story all it’s own and it isn’t very, ahem, settling.

The sun is rising. The quotations are:
“There is little confidence in specific projections of future regional climate change, except at continental scales.”
It adds: “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future.
“There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.”
The 43 fellows who demanded this new report have restored science to its rightful place in the Royal Society. There will be “significant modifications in our understanding” of climate. The quotations above accurately describe the state of climate science today. I find this statement totally satisfying. The Great Climate Fraud is finished. Thank God. Thank Science. Thank Anthony.

sanity at last…congrats to all who have played a part.

A little more “Nullius in verba” is just what they needed

“ . . . the Government is planning an exercise to test how England and Wales would cope with severe flooding caused by climate change. Exercise Watermark will take place in March . . .”
In England and Wales severe flooding can be caused by excessive rain or rapid snow melt. Climate change does not have to be invoked. They might want to examine their plans for prolonged cold, and by March find it necessary.
Regarding The Royal Society: When your name includes the term “Royal”, wise behavior ought to be expected. (Wanted to say “inbred” but that’s another story.) They goofed and are paying the price.

This sounds nice but I am skeptical of any firm results that will be truly satisfactory, to me and most of the WUWT readers. The original statement was anything but based on the scientific method. Why should a review, forced on the believers, produce a result that meets its criteria now?
I strongly suspect this is nothing more then window dressing and a publicity stunt. I strongly suspect the Royal Society gets is whitewash from the same supplier as the others.
This is one of those times when I sincerely hope to be in error.

The Times web site has a paywall so I didn’t read the article. However, it is hoped that this shows an increasing trend towards real science and not political consensus.

Their reputation is still damaged. They should have been in the forefront of the science and not admitting this so late in the game.

“Professor Anthony Kelly and Sir Alan Rudge are members of the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. They were among 43 fellows who signed a petition sent to Lord Rees, the society’s president, asking for its statement on climate change to be rewritten to take more account of questions raised by sceptics.”
Just when looked like science would be reduced to poli-sci they take a stand. Good for them!!!
Now lets see if makes any difference. The politicians are set on a course like lemmings to the sea.

Shub says:
September 29, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Where is Oreskes now?
——
She’s in Toronto, scheduled to give a talk about “Merchants of Doubt” early tomorrow afternoon at York University. Still have not made up my mind whether or not to go, as getting to York U is a pain, and my slate is full. I doubt her stance has changed.

“There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.”
Can anyone say “cosmic rays” and “CLOUD”? Actually I’m so glad that this statement is in the text. It’s basically what I have been trying to say for several years. We have no warming since 1997 and the AGW proponents seek to handwave it away with “natural variation”. But they are unable to account for any elements of natural variation that are responsible. Yet every year we get new papers that reveal new information about how the climate system works. The reasonable response is to expect this process to continue rather than to assume that we have all the answers that we need now to model the climate of the future.

It adds: “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future.”
I can’t believe this, they missed it AGAIN! If honest should have read:
“It is not possible to determine if the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future.”

LOL!! I like the title, “Royal Society Bows To Climate Change Sceptics”….
“KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/29/quote-of-the-week-suzuki-a-farce-of-nature/
As long as this nonsense isn’t costing me any serious money, I can laugh at these clowns!!

Citizens READ crucial parts of the document. I suggest the Royal Society new Climate Change document is “Continuing cover of failed science & fraud and a dereliction of duty” See – http://bit.ly/cdeuz3

43 new names added to the climate blacklist.

Encouraging, until this quote:
“Professor John Pethica, the society’s vice-president and chairman of the working group that wrote the document, said the guide stated clearly that there was “strong evidence” that the warming of the Earth over the past half-century had been caused largely by human activity.”
===================
Is this just his opinion?
The excerpts of the new “guide” from the press release by GWPF, never mention “human activity”.
I would say, the new “guide”, needs to be studied?
Maybe it was just written to appeal to both sides?

Patrick Davis says:
September 29, 2010 at 9:16 pm
I pasted a comment and the link to the BBC article here…
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/science-has-spoken-on-climate-its-now-up-to-politicians-20100930-15ydp.html?comments=12#comments
But it has not been posted. The title of the article speaks volumes about how climate disruption is being covered in Australia. Australia is truly forked!!

Patrick, send it to your local Federal politician as well, I did. That is where the real debate will be.
Keith.

David Archibald says:
September 29, 2010 at 9:53 pm
They will get around to that, slowly, so as not to take all of the pie in the face at one time.
Can you imagine what it was like to be taken by the Piltdown Man scam?

This is very significant. The Royal Society has been a cornerstone of the international scientific community since the reign of Charles II (over 300 years!!). It is extremely conservative and cautious about its statements, which is why the extraordinary departure from this tradition – with the previous alarmist statement on climate change – was met with consternation and now dissent from many of its more vocal members. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Royal Society has had a pivotal influence on the credibility of the CAGW predictions. This new statement restores the Royal Society’s position to one that is once more in keeping with its cautious traditions and seems to me to endorse the kind of uncertainties re feedbacks etc which this blog, amongst others, has tried so hard to bring to the public’s attention.
It is also a massive and I believe fatal blow to the CAGW position. The pillar upon which they have for so long built their case, has at last been removed. The “peers” of peer review have removed their endoresement. Now watch the policymakers search for ways to re-explain their views, whilst slowly backing away……
This is significant!!! I’m going out to buy a nice bottle of Champagne as soon as I’ve finished emailing Tony Abbott (The Australian conservative leader and climate sceptic) and everyone else I know who’s as obsessed as I am about this subject.

‘because the climate change arguments are not entirely straightforward, the evidence is not staring us in the face….’
One wouldn’t have known that for all the “proof of global warming” claims being tossed about.
Turned out to be a facade of adjustments and illusions, all of which vaporized faster than Count Dracula caught in the noontime sunlight.

I agree with you movielib – something smells.

Good stuff. Perhaps science can get back to being the pursuit of pure knowledge, instead of being policy validation for suspect political agendas.
However, in Australia the media and political elite still refuse to discuss the science. Our Labor minority government won’t even allow sceptics to have a seat on a carbon tax discussion group arranged by the Prime Minister…. only those with an “open mind” about climate change and a price on carbon are allowed to speak!!?
…..We still have a way’s to go before these Eco-fascists are put in their place.

They may now have got the science broadly right, but they are still basing that science on atrocious temperature readings and are still totally underestimating the uncertainties arising from using a temperature monitoring system which was never set up to measure the kind of minuscule changes they are trying to detect.
Or to put it in simpler terms — a 0.25C difference in temperature amounts to approximately 15mins. 0.1C=6mins. If they are trying to tell me that each and every manual measurement up to the automation which began in the 1970s (as did apparent warming) was done spot on time, and not 10,20 even 30minutes after the nominal time … well basically they are lying if they think people took the temperature at the nominal time of day … unlike automated systems!

It is my understanding that the position of the equivalent U.S. organization, the AAAS, is still “We Shall Overcome” all global warming skepticism and doubt.

Phillip Bratby says: ‘“Professor John Pethica, … said … there was “strong evidence” that the warming of the Earth over the past half-century had been caused largely by human activity.” Hmmm. Where is that strong evidence to be found?’
Phillip, the strong evidence is that during the period of automation of weather stations, we saw a strong upward drift in average temperature. Since 2001 when most temperature stations had been automated, and it was beginning to get difficult to fudge the readings to show an upward trend because the satellite monitoring was also in place …. we have a steady world temperature (actually the 21st century trend is cooling).
Is this not very strong evidence that all the apparent warming is due to human influence?

You can download the revised RS Guide as a .pdf file at this link:-
http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/

If the RS, the most respected scientific and technological body in the UK, casts just a tiny piece of doubt upon the AGW alarmism, and the consensus dogma, then the UK government should take notice and modify its stance. Just recently we heard William Hague promoting the importance of combating man made climate change, absolutely certain of its truth. So far all the leading figures of every political party, other than UKIP have accepted the worst aspects of CAWG, and follow policies affected by the IPCC ‘projections.’
I agree with the many other comments that point out the importance of acknowledging the possibility of a decadal cooling period. There seems to have been no attempt by the UK government to face up to this possibility. This is very worrying, bearing in mind the perilous state of our power generation capability.

It seems to me that the Royal Society’s new guide to climate change looks like a summary that paraphrases much of John Holdren’s slide show.
Of course, it could also be argued that John Holdren’s slide show is based on the Royal Society’s new guide to climate change. For one thing, he argues now just as vocally that to promote the systematic deconstruction of the economies of the developed nations’ economies by means of the phrase “global warming” was a mistake as the Royal Society does.
The basic truth quite possibly is that both of those consumer products for the masses were devised to reflect a common agenda.
It remains to be seen what the EU version of the “new” agenda will look like and what words and slogans it will use.
We have new terminology, a common scope and more or less a common goal that varies little from what it has been so far: globalization through normalizing economic progress down to the lowest common denominator in the name of saving the environment.
Some say regional, other say continental, some say global warming, others say global climate change and others yet say global climate disruption. In the end it is all the same.
Comparable to what Aristotle said when he commented on what was not yet called affirmative action for women by stating “Whether women rule or women rule the rulers, what is the difference?” (Politics), so with political and economic restructuring to achieve globalization.
The end justifies the words and the slogans constructed with them. The slogans change and set the way we think. The way we think makes us sufficiently pliable to adjust our actions to make us achieve the desired goal without complaining too much.
Maybe I am a little too suspicious, but after the global climategate scandal, is it not of the utmost importance to demonstrate that, because varying terminology is used by ostensibly national discourses in what is an international climate science establishment, the illusion is maintained that no international agenda is in existence?

Professor John Pethica, who wrote the report, was interviewed by the BBC this morning. He enphasised that there is strong evidence that human activity is causing global warming… the science remains the same…
The interviewer tried repeatedly to get him to admit that the earlier report did not give sufficient weight to the uncertainties. Each time, Pethica denied this. The interviewer asked, in desperation what was the different between the earlier report and this one. He didn’t answer that, either.
I was quite disappointed that the interview came over as complete waffle apart from the science being settled, move along, nothing has changed. I have not yet seen the report, but comments here are much more optimistic than I would have expected.
I’m left a bit bemused and wonder if others who heard the interview could comment.

The first I heard of this was the BBC TV morning news summary this morning which gave a mention of the Royal Society’s new climate change guide. My casual impression was “no change there, then” – the brief item emphasised the statement that the recent warming was very likely man made, and didn’t at all give me the impression of a major change of opinion. Either the BBC has put their own spin on this (very likely), or celebrations here are premature about the Royal Society’s headlong retreat on the subject (also very likely).

I note however that the BBC Toady programme presented it as just a small concession to sceptics but the overall conclusions unchanged – just a bit less so!
Ah, the BBC. Don’t you just love (to hate) it!

The Stoat and his [/snip] sidekick, Kim Dabelstein Petersen, are probably already working overtime to keep this out of their pet global warming propaganda pages on Wikipedia. In particular, I suspect they will resist every attempt to insert the updated RS statement into this article. At the very least, we can expect them to downplay the significance of it and/or spin it into a strong pro-AGW statement. Such is life in the killing fields of Wikipuchea.

Daniel H says: “The Stoat and his [/snip] sidekick, Kim Dabelstein Petersen,”
[REPLY: Crass descriptors tend to lower the intellectual level of discussion and make the threads less friendly…. bl57~mod]
In the case of Silly Billy, I think Daniel is being very modest. Let’s put it this way: anyone with an ounce of sense who has ever come into contact with silly billy’s antics on wikipedia has come away with a profound sense that something is very wrong with the argument for manmade global warming when such zealots are behind it.
He certainly was directly responsible for turning me from a card waving warmer into a sceptic.

On the BBC television news, about 2 hours ago, all that was reported was the extract:
“……there was “strong evidence” that the warming of the Earth over the past half-century had been caused largely by human activity.” Followed by some wooley statement about there being still some uncertainties.
The BBC still has a long way to go in objective reporting, and it does not look to me as if the RS is backing away from CAGW.

Jack Enright 12:48:
Thanks, Jack, for the link to the RS. I’ve downloaded the report and I’ve just read it. It doesn’t seem like too much of a climbdown to me, but if the door has been opened an inch I suppose it’s a start.

Sir Isaac, a true skeptic if ever there was one, no longer spins in his grave.
Pointman

Hi Anthony,
For any readers trying to chase the ‘times’ link through the paywall, the easiest way is to find a phrase (the title works well) and do a ‘Google News’ search. The google link will usually get through the paywall for places like the times and wsj.com.
Feel free to pass this on to your readers if you think it useful.
Keep up the good work.

Edward Bancroft says:“Well, the RS shift is a welcome start, but I feel that our UK politicians will need a bigger push. For example, Tim Yeo, the Climate Change Minister, recently called for the resignation of Rajendra Pachauri, but he still is giving 100% backing to carbon tax, proposing wind farms in preference to nuclear, has a belief in CO2 as a pollutant, and going along with predictions of dire weather patterns due to increasing CO2.”
Edward, perhaps I can put this in perspective. In the late 1990s I got involved in wind energy and there was a constant frustration at the lack of action from government. At the time the temperature record showed a dramatic and accelerating increase and the only explanation available was manmade warming from CO2 emissions, yet still, in the face of an obvious and overwhelming need to start acting … they did bugger all.
It took time. Policy needs to be developed, civil servants (few of whom know anything of science) need to educated. Options explored, committees formed, but slowly, slowly, very very very slowly, the wheel of government grind and eventually what seems obvious looking from outside becomes ingrained in government action.
Now that the bubble has burst … people like me can look back and see how we over-reacted (in retrospect). We didn’t have the full picture, the coincidental accelerating rise in CO2 and temperature was just that: coincidental. Now that we know more about the “consensus” (aka group-think) of the experts, the huge hidden uncertainties in the temperature record and the vastly over-exaggerated effects … we know the potential problem is much smaller than we were told, the liklihood of that problem is much smaller and indeed the whole thing may just disappear in the face of other problems like fossil fuel shortage.
Quite clearly the bubble has burst. The mainstream media have lost their enthusiasm for the global warming scare story, the world economy has forced people to look at the stark reality of economic facts and not the luxury of beating their breasts about fluffy polar bears.
The world has moved on, even the RS have changed their position … but as I said before, government is like a brontosaurus: you kick it between the legs, but that nerve impulse takes an awful long time to make its way up through the body politic to the head. My estimates are that UK government action lags the real world by around 5 to 10 years.
In 2000 what that meant was that the UK government hadn’t a hope in hell of seriously reducing CO2 emissions within a reasonable time period (and about the only reduction in the UK has been from a transfer of manufacturing of goods bought here to places like China). In 2010, that means that the government are currently accelerating their action on CO2 at a time when the political reality is that the public have lost their appetite for such notions.
That is the nature of the UK civil service/government. They are always 5-10 years behind the rest of us!
And there can be no doubt, that if we entered a period of cooling winters (we had more early snow in Scotland!!!), we will just about be coming out the decade of cooling as the politicians order the first new snowploughs!

Tilo Reber says:
September 29, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Begin quote:
Theo Godwin:
“The 43 fellows who demanded this new report have restored science to its rightful place in the Royal Society.”
Unfortunately, it’s also 43 guys that we won’t be seeing in Nature in the near future. Nevertheless, it does my heart good to see that there are still some heroes in the world.
End Quote
I do not mean to pick on Tilo, many others wrote the same.
I said that the sun is rising. I did not say that it is noon. The 43 have restored standards of science in the debate. So, we have a prestigious organization that has returned to science and published the fact in a guide for laymen. Maybe the 43 will be blackballed, but maybe they will be paid richly to testify in US courts against Lisa Jackson and her minions at the EPA. If so, the 43 will serve the winning side. Ordinary Americans know enough science to judge that the 43 are speaking from within science while Climategaters are speaking from policy concerns and shaping the science to serve those concerns.

Mods: Ref my comment at 12:43 am
I did not intend my term to be perjorative but as a counterpoint to the use by Rees of the term ‘sceptics’ in his comparison to disbelievers of evolution and on which I was commenting. However, you are quite correct & I apologise to WUWT which I hold in high regard.

“The Royal Society is publishing a new document today after a rebellion by more than 40 of its fellows who questioned mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.”
Yeah? Well, my question is just this: WHY the hell did it take THEM so damned long?
You see? So far as I’m concerned, the so-called ‘leadership’ in that organization sure as hell jumped onto the bandwagon with such great zest, zeal, and gusto, as to give any reasoning, thinking, human being pause as to the cause, if you know what I mean.
If their bank demanded that they pay 300% more on a loan than what they’d borrowed, would they have enamored themselves of the idea in the same way as they embraced an entirely corrupt and deceitful proclamation?
Science is ~supposed~ to be critical and NOT political, yet there they were prancing and dancing in the streets like a pack of inebriate pixies, proclaiming doom and gloom.
Hell, even a drunk leprechaun saw through the whole charade!
Well, what the hell happened? Did the money and carbon-come stock options all of a sudden dry up, and now they relent if only because they have egg on their faces and NOTHING to show for it?
Do tell: What is it that weather getting colder all of a sudden causes the charlatans to get a clue?

Lets just hope there not realising more hot air into the atmosphere.

This is good, however it won’t make any difference unless the “Regulators” (EPA, etc. ) are convinced to abandon their current path of regulation of human activity. That will have to be driven by those who have profited by such regulation; either financially, politically or both. They will not voluntarily give that up. Would you?

I regret to say that the Royal Society review has tempered alarmism a bit, but doesn’t [f]all on the side of “neutrality” in any way. It speaks of values of “climate forcing” and “climate sensitivity” as if these values were known and as determinate as the acceleration of gravity.
There’s no mention of the probability that the MWP and Bronze Bronze Age were at least as warm as the modern period, no mention of the variable causes of sea level rise, no mention of snow and ice depletion by sublimation to an atmosphere of low humidity.
The document states that it is “drawn heavily from the IPCC report” and they don’t challenge a thing IPCC says. I’m not happy that there was no mention that there is strong disagreement over IPCC conclusions, including “there is strong evidence human activity has altered the recent climate.”

“para 30, it may be that past CO2 variation was driven by temperature rather than vice versa”
That para alone is worth its weight in gold to me, though with all the evidence the “may” bit seems somewhat grudging! Still, its a start and for the first time in hell knows how long, I will be able to quote the R.S.
Nearly the weekend, lets see what Monbiot comes out with
.

I appreciate Piers Corbyn’s skepticism — and evidence — re the Royal Society’s change of “heart”. This smells to me like repositioning by the same elitists who chose to demolish science and the scientific method. Has there been any political change within the Royal Society suggesting that scientists are now in charge — or is this mere backpeddaling for appearances sake in order to remain “in power”? That’s my yardstick. I want the rule of law which includes punishment (loss of office and affluence) for “demolishing science and the scientific method”.

AllenC says: “I am not sure why everyone is so excited about the new report when one of the concluding paragraphs (67) states: … ”
Allen, you could well have made similar comments on board the Titanic regarding “a bit of ice on the deck”. Like big ships, large organisations take time to change direction (or sink), but once they start changing they keep changing and changing.
The change is almost imperceptible … but because the momentum for change is so massive in large organisations, even a very modest change in direction is very significant because it signals:
1. The end of a period of increasing alarmism by the Royal society
2. The beginning of a period of increasing scientific scepticism.
The global warming boat may only be tilting at an almost imperceptible angle so that all most can see is the ice of the deck, but please bare with us a while even if right now we seem to be overly interested in a few bits of ice scattered around the deck!

simpleseekeraftertruth said: …Warmistas can be understood by comparison to what exactly: piltdown mannism perhaps?
[REPLY: Let us try to avoid terms like “warmista”. Pejorative slurs do little to advance discussion. Try CAGW supporter. … bl57~mod]
—–
What’s wrong with the term “warmista”? It describes a specific subgroup of AGW proponents who are ideologically driven to hijack climate science in order to further their questionable political ends. Hence, the “warmista” label advances the discussion by adding context and clarity to it. If you honestly believe that the term “warmista” is a “pejorative slur” then please take it up with the proprietor of this blog who recently created a thread entitled When warmistas attack.

..can I be the first to make the joke about revenge is best served ‘cold’..?

They’ll reach 180 degrees. It’s just that an august body like the RS can’t be seen to do things too quickly …
Pointman

The new RS guidelines on climate change generally support the “accepted” science of the past decades.
There are a few statements, as pointed out in the lead post, that show some allowance for skepticism in the mix of future “accepted” science.
That is a significant step in the right direction. But just a step toward a more open scientific process . . . . . . we must keep steady on our course toward more open science.
John

“para 30, it may be that past CO2 variation was driven by temperature rather than vice versa”
It is not a Boolean ‘Or’. It is a Boolean ‘And’.
Para 30 “Evidence from ice cores indicates an active role for CO2 in the climate system. This is because the amount of carbon held in oceans, soils and plants depends on temperature and other conditions. In other words, changes in CO2 can lead to climate change and climate change can also alter the concentrations of CO2.”
Or to quote Skeptikal Science “When the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth’s orbit. The warming causes the oceans to give up CO2. The CO2 amplifies the warming and mixes through the atmosphere, spreading warming throughout the planet. So CO2 causes warming AND rising temperature causes CO2 rise”
BTW None of the science in this report is new or changed, it has just been categorised into three degrees of uncertainty, uncertainty being a two-edged sword, of course.

Lawrence Solomon at the National Post has a comment piece on this:
“The UK today has made it official. With the release of its revised guide to climate change by the Royal Society, the nation’s preeminent scientific organization, the UK now formally joins the ranks of the denier nations. The science on climate change is no longer certain, the Society now says.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/09/30/lawrence-solomon-uk-becomes-a-denier-nation/

Best news I’ve heard all week – yes – yes – yes!!
….and this is probably the most venerated science institution in the world!!!!! – not a ‘U’ turn but a change of mind, maybe? – Certainly!
Hansen, Maan, IPCC, CRU, Ed Millepede, et al, take note.

I listened to the BBC interview and the RS rep repeatedly argued that the ‘science’ was solid and it appeared to me in his rather smug way he couldn’t really accept how anyone could doubt what all those ‘top’ scientists were saying. Try looking up the history of the RS and see all the mistakes they have made over the years!!

Not an adequate position statement by the RS. They ignore the historical and recent geological records without which their declaration merely upholds the status quo. Disappointing, but good to know there are at least 40 disinterested scientists there.

DAVID SPURGEON says: “….and this is probably the most venerated science institution in the world!!!!! – not a ‘U’ turn but a change of mind, maybe?”
No, not a U turn, just an angular translation by pi radians.

“Well England is starting to come around, now if we could just get the leadership of the good old USA to follow suit”
I think you will find that the Royal society is a UK institution which includes Scottish, Irish and Welsh input. We in the Celtic countries also have had our doubts for some time!

In my opinion, the Royal Society missed an opportunity by not updating there position without the prompt. They have now compounded the situation by trying not to deviate from their original position, whilst appearing to suggest that they have moved.
As a result, they have managed to further damage their already tarnished reputation.
It’s another sad day for the RS and for science.

Mike says:
September 30, 2010 at 8:04 am
Please explain your accusation and the basis for your “spin” comment that Anthony has supposedly fomented from this article.
———-
“Wednesday, 29 September 2010 22:09 Ben Webster, The Times
Britain’s leading scientific institution has been forced to rewrite its guide to climate change and admit that there is greater uncertainty about future temperature increases than it had previously suggested.
The Royal Society is publishing a new document today after a rebellion by more than 40 of its fellows who questioned mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.”
———-
Yea Mike, and to use the surfer vernacular: some of us are somewhat “stoked” to see this ‘concession’, the action taken by the RS after yielding to 40 of its fellows who are apparently more informed of the facts concerning CO2′ role in “anthropogenic climate disruption”. How many concessions have ever been made to date, and at this level? Not many. We’ll take this one, if maybe with a grain of salt on the side for the very reason you stated.
No substantive changes in their assesment? Ok, so what? Bringing down an a pyramid scheme starts with the ‘capstone’, which I will equate with Mann’s hockey stick deconstruction and subsequent annihilation. Then the thankless job by Anthony, et al (thank you BTW) on the condition of the surface stations ‘stone’. Then the “smoothing” and “adjustments” made by GISS, NASA, etc, etc, exposed by Goddard and many others, another ‘stone’, then the climategate stone…and on, and on.
One stone at a time until the edifice is removed and real science is restored. Ya see Mike, it’s not that we don’t believe…really. What we can’t believe is that (our$/your$) billions are being spent to mitigate/adapt to a problem that MAY not exist at all. We can’t believe that upper level decisions are being made and policies implemented that may well negatively impact the well-being of entire populations (already impoverished populations at that) on such shoddily contrived theories based on corrupted science. All over a trace gas that we contribute to the tune of about 3% to 5%.
No I don’t think ALL of the AGW are bad people, some true scientists I am sure. But some of them are very bad scientists. Are they ALL involved in a global conspiracy to install a global government? No, I don’t think so (at least I hope not), but somebody is. I think John Holdren is: just look at his PPP at the Klavi Symposium. I think as a general rule anyone espousing CAGW might very well be a conspirator.
There are too many contradictions, too many tactics such as Holdren’s ploy to regionalize the effects of a warming planet. How does that work? As mentioned above: now any anomolous/extreme weather events can be blamed on global warming (which, in reality, is already being practised: Russian heat and Pakistani floods for example). Why would somebody do that??? For power, control, and money, period.
I guess after all my rambling (apologies) it boils down to this:

Gaylon writes:
“No I don’t think ALL of the AGW are bad people, some true scientists I am sure. But some of them are very bad scientists. Are they ALL involved in a global conspiracy to install a global government?”
Well, since you raise the question, climate science is dominated by people who are policy advocates first and scientists afterwards. They have the cart before the horse. They are willing to bastardize science to serve their vision of Green Gaia. According to that vision, world government is necessary to exercise the level of control necessary to prevent humanity from causing suffering to Green Gaia. From Gore and Pachauri on the bottom rung, through Oppenheimer and his modellers in the middle, to some unknown actual scientist on the top rung, everyone of them puts policy before science and harms science. The harm they have caused to science education throughout the world is incalculable.

Gaylon says:
“Wednesday, 29 September 2010 22:09 Ben Webster, The Times
Britain’s leading scientific institution has been forced to rewrite its guide to climate change and admit that there is greater uncertainty about future temperature increases than it had previously suggested….”
———-
Yea Mike, and to use the surfer vernacular: some of us are somewhat “stoked” to see this ‘concession’…”
The scare quotes are probably well placed, given that the 2005 Royal Society Guide to Fact and Fictions about Climate Change included this statement:
“The IPCC 2001 report openly acknowledged uncertainties in modelling climate change in the future.”
Any change in the latest Royal Society statement seems to be more a matter of emphasis than concession, but I guess you could interpret it both ways.
More importantly, if sceptics and warmers can agree that this statement is a fair representation of the current state of the science, many areas of disagreement can be laid to rest.

Mike Jonas said:
September 30, 2010 at 1:03 am
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” (Confucius?)
No, this is a quote from Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531 BC)
often quoted by Mao Zedong in reference his long march.