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
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]
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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.
Garacka – building more and better thermometers, then building airplanes that like good weather data, then placing those thermometers at airports, and then improving those grass fields with asphalt – see all of the warming was definately man’s fault.
Well, except for the sun’s part, because a small percentage change in something, regardless of how big and powerful it is can’t matter.
..can I be the first to make the joke about revenge is best served ‘cold’..?
While we can count on change in the earth’s climate, we can hope for change in the political climate. We can also hope that latter change has begun, yet still skeptical.
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
dixonstalbert says: September 30, 2010 at 6:09 am: “Not exactly sure why this is being called a concession to skeptics. Here is the first paragraph of the conclusion:…”
You don’t understand how propaganda works. Anthony knows perfectly well that the R.S. has not made any substantive change in it assessment of climate science. But with the right spin and a fan base that wants to believe AGW is false he can spread a false impression. And if you tell people they have been conned they get even madder.
REPLY: amusing – Anthony
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
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davidmhoffer,
I enjoyed your comment on encouraging us all to step forward.
Your deep perspective add weight.
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.
[REPLY: Let us try to avoid terms like “warmista”. Pejorative slurs do little to advance discussion. Try CAGW supporter. … bl57~mod]
Perhaps Global Warming Believer (G.W.B.) might be good.
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/
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Mike,
Well Mike, I am waiting for you to instruct us deluded masses on how propaganda works. Your comment gave us no clue.
Oh, enlightened Mike, with your politically correct version of propaganda, please guide us toward the light of the true “accepted” science! You know, that “accepted” science that doesn’t look very “accepted” so much anymore . . . . if it was every really “accepted” at all.
You sound a little angry there Mike. Need some anger management counseling?
John
Mike 8.04
I can only assume you have been reading the Guardian or Real Climate edited version of the RS paper when you say we have been conned by Anthony into believing that the RS hasn’t changed its position when you say they haven’t :
Even wearing your darkest blinkers you will be able to note the welcome transition from an advocacy group to something resembling the worlds oldest scientific body.
September 2010 version under
http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/
The previous RS statement (from 2007/8) is here:
http://royalsociety.org/Climate-change-controversies-a-simple-guide/
and an even earlier one (2005) is here
http://royalsociety.org/Facts-and-fictions-about-climate-change/
Here are some of the RS remarks verbatim in case you can spare a few minutes of your time to read what has been written, as opposed to what you WISH had been written.
“Observations are not yet good enough to quantify, with confidence, some aspects of the evolution of either climate forcing or climate change, or for helping to place tight bounds on the climate sensitivity. Observations of surface temperature change before 1850 are also scarce”.
“47 As noted above, projections of climate change are sensitive to the details of the representation of clouds in models. Particles originating from both human activities and natural sources have the potential to strongly influence the properties of clouds, with consequences for estimates of climate forcing. Current scientific understanding of this effect is poor”.
“48 Additional mechanisms that influence climate sensitivity have been identified, including the response of the carbon cycle to climate change, for example the loss of organic carbon currently stored in soils. The net effect of changes in the carbon cycle in all current models is to increase warming, by an amount that varies considerably from model to model because of uncertainties in how to represent the relevant processes.The future strength of the uptake of CO2 by the land and oceans (which together are currently responsible for taking up about half of the emissions from human activity –see paragraph 26) is very poorly understood, particularly because of gaps in our of the response of biological processes to changes in both CO2 concentrations and climate.”
“49 There is currently insufficient understanding of the enhanced melting and retreat of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica to predict exactly how much the rate of sea level rise will increase above that observed in the past century (see paragraph 45) for a given temperature increase. Similarly, the possibility of large changes in the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean cannot be assessed with confidence. The latter limits the ability to predict with confidence what changes in climate will occur in Western Europe.”
“50 The ability of the current generation of models to simulate some aspects of regional climate change is limited, judging from the spread of results from different models;”
“Remaining uncertainties are the subject of ongoing research worldwide. Some uncertainties are unlikely ever to be significantly reduced, because of, for example, the lack of observations of past changes relevant to some aspects of both climate forcing and climate change.”
“56 There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.”
Now Mike and other commentators can bluster all they want but please explain which parts of the RS document you feel we have been conned by and misunderstood. Is it the bit that says;
“current scientific understanding of this is poor:’
or
“is very poorly understood” or
“insufficient understanding”
Or perhaps point 56 in its entirety when at last the Royal Society is living up to its motto’ nobody’s word is final’ in recognising that the science is by no means settled and in some cases very poorly understood.
tonyb
Mike Haseler’s comment reminded me of a Sociology paper I enrolled in many years ago. I know many at WUWT don’t approve of Sociology as some Sociologists such as Paul Erlich strayed beyond the bounds of scientific rationality, but it can provide a dispassionate and structured way of looking back at history.
The topic was ‘Social Lag’ and the paper made clear that history is replete with examples of this, such as the new wave of scientific thinking that swept along the movers and shakers of the Renaissance at the end of the Medieval period in Europe, but left the general populace straggling along behind in their unenlightened and God-centred fashion for as much as three hundred years. Now that communications are almost instantaneous and pretty much world-wide, general changes in understandings and perceptions among educated and moderately prosperous populations rapidly outstrip the speed of change within tradtional organisations embodying notions of ancient prestige such as the Royal Society.
In view of this, I feel that the Royal Society’s view on climate change is changing just about as fast as it can change; maybe the basic problem is that communities such as WUWT, which are a product of the rapid communications of ideas, project unrealistic expectations upon such institutions. Perhaps we need to encourage such organisations by exercising more patience with them.
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.
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?
More to the point; what is this “strong evidence” specifically?
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!!
I’m sorry, but I don’t see this as particularly interesting. The IPCC reports already give a broad range of possible temperature increases for the 21st century (1.7C-7C), so the uncertainty has always been acknowledged. The Royal Society is simply telling us what we have already heard a million times before: Temperatures will continue to rise, forcings are a little uncertain, feedbacks are very uncertain, and the effects can only be predicted on a global or continental scale. Regional effects cannot be determined with current models, but they’re probably not good. Hardly an admission that AGW advocates are barking up the wrong tree.
I would have preferred to see something that recognized that solar activity in the 20th century was remarkably high, and that ocean currents seem to have been in a warming phase as well, so much of the observed temperature increase was probably entirely natural. Perhaps a little note about the differences between datasets, and that even with a global network of sensors, we still can’t assign a definite value to “global temperature”. I pop the champagne when I see a non-skeptic publish ONE graph that presents temperature in Kelvin (the whole graph, not a partial of the top 5 degrees) and makes it clear to the public that we’re talking about tiny changes that are extremely difficult to measure, let alone predict.
This will be just another announcement that R/C will spin into an affirmation of the IPCC’s work. If the Climategate emails can be made into a benign “boys will be boys” thing, this isn’t likely to turn a lot of heads.
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.
Under “Developments in Climate Science,” there is this paragraph:
“Other uncertainties may start to be resolved. For example, satellites now incorporate
improved techniques to measure cloud characteristics across the globe. Using climate
models for day-to-day weather prediction will enable, for example, identification of
errors in the representation of clouds in models; any such errors will lead to errors in
forecasts of maximum and minimum temperatures (which are easily observed). New
high-performance computers will allow climate models to represent some smaller-scale phenomena (including cloud systems and details of tropical storms) directly, and are expected to improve confidence in regional predictions.”
Doesn’t this paragraph imply that modelling of cloud systems is now “seat of the pants” and that satelites will permit collection of data for error correction sometime in the future? Doesn’t that show a humility that is characteristic of science? I believe that this report takes quite a few steps away from policy advocacy and toward science.
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.
Our evidence is worse than we thought!
“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!
Effects at continental scale are not well known either.
Still short of a realistic view but not as bad as it was.
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.