WUWT Flashback:
Royal Society to review climate consensus position
“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
Today: (Via email press release from the GWPF) Royal Society Bows To Climate Change Sceptics
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.
…
The new guide says: “The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty.”
The Royal Society even appears to criticise scientists who have made predictions about heatwaves and rising sea levels. It now says: “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 working group that produced the new guide took advice from two Royal Society fellows who have links to the climate-sceptic think-tank founded by Lord Lawson of Blaby.
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.
…
Full article at The Times, 30 September 2010
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Not much talk about The Black List anymore?
And where is Gordon Browns Tipping Point?
50 days left wasnt it? A while ago?
Okay, so the RS is not leaders. They are followers. They say what the political leadership expects them to say. The political leadership are followers too. They say what they think is smart to say, based on what gives the most votes.
So sad.
‘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.
That 43 Fellows of the Royal Society have prevailed and brought some level of sanity to the global warming debate is encouraging. I suspect that for each one who signed the petition, there are likely several more who agree, but were not willing to go public. Therein lies the problem.
Fellows of the Royal Society are scientists, engineers and technologists who have “made it”. A Fellowship honors the contributions they have made and is a recognition of their success. In other words, as high an honor as it is, there being only just over 40 new appointees each year, for the bulk of the Fellows, the major parts of their careers are already behind them. They have little to lose in terms of research grants, tenure, or job opportunities as they are nearing or already in retirement in many cases.
That they have the guts to go public is commendable. But the tide won’t turn until the research active youngsters join the grey haired veterans in raising their voices publicly. The funding mechanisms for research make that pretty tough for a lot of the younger crowd, to whom I would offer this observation:
Someone at CRU was so incensed with the manner in which science had been corrupted by the politics of global warming that they risked their career, and possibly their liberty, to expose Climategate to the world. That they remain anonymous to this day is a testament to the fear so many have of speaking out publicly. There were times in our history when admitting you knew how to swim branded you a witch, to be burned at the stake, there were times when the prevailing wisdom of doctors was that the ill had too much blood in them and should be leeched, there were times when women were not allowed to vote and there were times when slavery was an accepted practice.
History books show that these practices and beliefs died a prolonged death, their supporters were entrenched in the status quo because they were the beneficiaries of things that no sane person today would try to defend. The names we remember from those history books are not those who attempted to continue the lies. The history books are written about those who defeated them.
So do you want your name in the history books? Or are you satisfied with being just a footnote that future generations will look on with scorn, though they likely will never learn your name.
I agree with you movielib – something smells.
“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.”
Hmmm. Where is that strong evidence to be found? They always talk about the strong evidence, but never say what it is, or where it is to be found.
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.
Looks like an attempt to throw sceptics a bone while they try to shore up their house of alarmist cards…
“……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….”
They keep saying that.
Putting aside the ‘hockey stick’ fraud and doubts about the accuracy of the instrumental data (and good faith of its custodians), “strong evidence” is all the AGW skeptics are looking for, but all they seem to get from the so-called experts are flawed arguments relying on elementary logical fallacies viz., cum hoc ergo propter hoc; post hoc, ergo propter hoc; argumentum ad ignorantium, ad verecundiam, ad nauseam leavened with lashings of consensus gentium, ad hominem, circulus in demonstrando and petitio principii thrown in for good measure.
As far as I can tell, the strong evidence that warming was caused by human activity is the climate models. We all know that climate models are not evidence.
“There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.”
Professor Ian Plimer wrote a whole book (Heaven + Earth) listing dozens of these factors, explaining how poorly they are understood and providing a couple of thousand references from the literature. The Royal Society is very slow on the uptake…..
Movielib; re the Guardian
one of their columnists may have written the RS statement up in those terms, but it doesn’t even mean that their own readers are going to accept it, let alone that it’s an accurate assessment of what the RS said.
For example; try reading the responses to George Monbiot’s articles, and see how many of them argue directly against him (and allow for all the others which show up only as ‘deleted by moderators’!). The RS aren’t the only ones who are feeling the ground shift under their feet these days.
Though I’m not taking that as a reason to let the pressure up, yet – not by a long shot. There are plenty of people out there with a lot of face to lose over this, as well as the people whose funding and / or career prospects depend on the AGW con being accepted – and they aren’t going to give up without a fight.
As Churchill said;
“This is not the end – nor even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning.”
Don’t believe them – they’re just stringing us along, there’ll be no serious backpedaling there – leopards don’t change their spots overnight. It’s a palliative, a sweetener, it’s on the back burner until they find some other insidious way of pushing their agenda, with the reminder that “it’s still getting warmer, and it’s still out fault” hanging in the air.
The Walls of Jericho are starting to show signs crumbling.
For the first time, tonight on my way home from work, I heard the BBC admit to the fact that anybody on the planet was sceptical about the Great Global Warming Farce.
Richard Lindzen was interviewed and he was just marvellous. Wasn’t sucked in by any wormy questions, and, too my mind, his matter-of-fact replies just seemed to be the epitome of reason and truth.
I just love that man! And that is really saying something, being a bloke.
FYI, I have to access WUWT via unblockandsurf.com because my ISP considers it a threat. Now why would that be, I wonder?
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!
Amen.
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.
Garacka says:
September 29, 2010 at 7:12 pm
“Professor John Pethica, ….. 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.”
“And what were those activities specifically?”
A: Adding .5C to recent temperature records.
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?
Ref: @berniel, 10:36
Rees, having stated that scepticism can be understood by comparison of lack of belief in very well established science like evolution, would appear to be at odds with the (now) stated position of his own society. 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]
You can download the revised RS Guide as a .pdf file at this link:-
http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. (Confucius?)
Yes, movielib, celebration may be premature, but this feels like a nice first step.
Has anyone thought to download the previous statement on climate by the Royal Society, so that we can compare? [How did I fail to think of this until it had gone? aaaaaaaargh!!]
I note that under “Aspects of climate change where there is a wide consensus but continuing debate and discussion” and “Aspects that are not well understood“, there is little indication of what the alternatives might be, so as soon as you have forgotten what the section heading was you will get the impression of much greater certainty than is justified. But having said that, at least there is now a recognition of some uncertainty.
The other thing that I found disappointing – inevitable perhaps but disappointing – is that clouds were still only considered to react to climate change.
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.
movielib says: “I fear all that has happened is that we skeptics have been thrown a little bone.”
Movielib, societies like the Royal Society are like dinosaurs ~=~ kick them hard between the legs and it will be five of more years before the nerve impulse finally makes its way up the spinal cord to the tiny brain.
Climategate was that kick between the legs. That nerve impulse is still making its way to the brain … this report is just a automated nerve twitch and it will be years before this dinosaur even feels the of that eye-watering pain from the kick between the legs let alone responds.
Be patient!
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?
The BBC just reported this story as The Royal Society saying man is largely causing global warming *but there is still a lot we don’t know* instead of the real story which is the RS’s unprecedented climb-down. Hardly suprising.