The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 30 September 2010
LONDON, 30 September – The Global Warming Policy Foundation has welcomed the Royal Society’s decision to revise and tone down its position on climate change. Its new climate guide is an improvement on their more alarmist 2007 pamphlet which caused an internal rebellion by more than 40 fellows of the Society and triggered a review and subsequent revisions.
The former publication gave the misleading impression that the ‘science is settled’ – the new guide accepts that important questions remain open and uncertainties unresolved. “The Royal Society now also agrees with the GWPF that the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the Director of the GWPF.
Dr David Whitehouse, the science editor of the GWPF said: “The biggest failing of the new guide is that it dismisses temperature data prior to 1850 as limited and leaves it at that. It would cast a whole new light on today’s warming if the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Bronze Age Warm Period were as warm as today, possiblity even warmer than today. A thorough discussion of the growing empirical evidence for the global existence of the Medieval Warm Period and its implications would have been a valuable addition to the new report.”
In their old guide, the Royal Society demanded that governments should take “urgent steps” to cut CO2 emissions “as much and as fast as possible.” This political activism has now been replaced by a more sober assessment of the scientific evidence and ongoing climate debates.
“If this voice of moderation had been the Royal Society’s position all along, its message to Government would have been more restrained and Britain’s unilateral climate policy would not be out of sync with the rest of the world,” Dr Peiser said.
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The statement and document from the Royal Society follows:
Climate change: A Summary of the Science
The Royal Society, 30 September 2010
Climate change continues to be a subject of intense public and political debate. Because of the level of interest in the topic the Royal Society has produced a new guide to the science of climate change. The guide summarises the current scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers, highlighting the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate, and where substantial uncertainties remain.
The document was prepared by a working group chaired by Professor John Pethica, Vice President of the Royal Society and was approved by the Royal Society Council.
Download the guide here (PDF).
Well they really shouldn’t be making any sort of “policy opinion” statements; and I think that as much as anything ticked off the rebels.
I would too; well I wouldn’t belong in the first place.
They are not a society, they are an affliction. Look at what they’ve done…
It’s called “skepticism lite.”
I would be a little bit surprised if it started off to say, “This document completely debunks the so-called ‘science’ behind IPCC alarmism and exposes the fraudulent East Anglia climate analysis activity that was revealed in their own emails.”
“There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human
activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last
half century.”
blablabla!
Kev-in-UK says: “methinks this a kind of temporary device to try and beef up the failing AGW campaign during all the recent hiatus!”
kev-in-UK, this is a rush job forced on them by the humiliation they received during climategate and the humiliation they are going to receive at the end of this year when we get headlines like:
Scientists admit 21st century cooling
A decade of cooling
Where has the warming gone?
Lies, damned lies and climate predictions
Catastrophic 0.5% decline of lesser goat toads is further proof of global warming(Guardian)
etc.
Two thoughts:
1. re par 22:
“When these surface temperatures are averaged over periods of a decade, to remove some of the year-to-year variability, each decade since the 1970s has been clearly warmer (given known uncertainties) than the one immediately preceding it. The decade 2000-2009 was, globally, around 0.15oC warmer than the decade 1990-1999.”
(Note: Holdren made the same point in his Kalvi presentation)
I don’t have access to the data, nor am I very good with a spreadsheet, but I wonder what the impact on the above finding (and implication thereof) of changing the endpoints of the averaging might have.
2. Close reading of paragraphs 37 and 38 (Attribution of Climate Change) suggests that the conclusions drawn therein depend upon the accuracy of the surface temperature record. Paragraph 20 notes that “analyses of these data (surface temperature record),…. TRY to take into account” various factors that introduce error and uncertainty into the surface temperature record, but no where do we have any acknowledgement of the impact of the errors/uncertainty in measurement, adjustment, averaging, gridding, etc. have on these conclusions. If the surfacestation.org project documents potential error in 70% of the “high quality” USHCN sites at > 2 deg. C, how can the estimate of o.8 deg C (+/- 0.2 deg) rise since 1850 have any credibility? If the measured temperature rise is inaccurate, don’t the attributions of climate change suggested in paragraphs 37 and 38 fail?
Prominent sceptics had better start taking full credit for pulling the world back from the brink of a repeat of the Dark Ages before the consensus completes its rehabilitation and becomes the “new” face of science. It wasn’t only climate science that was involved … Physicists, glaciologists, oceanographers, astronomers, botanists, chemists, economists, psychiatrists, sociologists, biologists, agronomists,… (thankfully there were fewer geologists than the average composition of the group and meteorologists too populated sceptical ranks). But in any case there is a big mess to clean up in science and it should be the subject of a formal conference of untainted scientists and those who offer sincere mea culpas. Scientists must adopt an oath of allegiance to honesty, truth and the scientific method and a code of ethics of the same kind that engineers and medical doctors have. It includes passing an exam in ethics. On the agenda should also be a plan to have scientific journals registered and to adopt a code of ethics, independence from undue influence, and a strict adherence to rules regarding archiving of data necessary to replicate research. Peer review must be overhauled to include wider internet review of both scientific work and of the reviewers’ reviews. No longer should reviewers be anonomous. It was a long ago time when a person’s word was his bond or a handshake was a contract (it still is for me and you and you, but I’ll submit to the new requirements).
‘Scientists continue to work to narrow these areas of uncertainty. Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected.’
So no more ‘mistakes’ emphasising the extremist’s view?
jcl says:
September 30, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Hmm, maybe they checked the latest Arctic ice graphs and thought they might want to tone it down a tad??
That would be wise, considering what happened in S. America thier last winter.
A few of the links forging the new chain of reason in climate science:
link 1 – IAC showing the IPCC bias for not including skeptic content and showing lack of scientific rigor.
link 2 – The release of the CRU emails showing manipulation by high level climate scientists to bias the input to the IPCC toward AGW.
link 3 – IPCC chairman Pachari’s ineffective / non-professional behavior and questions about his ethics in the area of financial gains from his AGW policies as IPCC chairman.
link 4 – Conclusion that Mann’s hockey stick is an intentional manipulation of data to show recent industrial era warming is unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
link 5 – MSM’s overselling of catastrophe and urgency. With no balanced reporting and saying the science is settled ad nauseum . . . . people do smell a rat. People know life is not settled . . . . .
link 6 – The unprofessional and biased handling of all major LST datasets. There is mishandling by scientists paid by public money.
link 7 – Open policy advocacy in public by the scientists who are responsible for providing objective scientific products with public money.
link 8 – The curious case of no policy being seriously considered that is predominately capitalistic. The policies seriously being considered are all basically authoritarian gov’t based . . . . a popular term for that is socialist. Wow, given the amount of capitalism in the world versus socialism you would think some of the solutions would be capitalist. Curious, wonder why none are?
link 8 – The erosion of public trust in climate science over the past year or so. The informed consumers aren’t buying those catastrophic/apocalyptic products anymore. The uninformed consumers are becoming, via the blogosphere, informed very quickly that there is reason to be cautious about wild catastrophe claims. Note: I think this is the urgency for supporters of AGW, time is running out for them. Probably already has run out.
link 9 – More and more skeptical papers are getting through the previously biased publication processes. Thanks to the persistence and integrity of those independent thinkers.
link 10 – The politicians sense the change of the wind on climate AGW support. See link 8 above. These guys are professional wind sniffers of the highest level . . . .
link 11 – No statistically significant warming in past ~10 years. Evidence indicates we maybe cooling. The GC models don’t work.
link 12 – Developing nations realizing that they are the ones who are going to get shafted.
link 13 – The middle-of-the-roadists on AGW look like the hindmost ranks defending the main body of the retreating defeated AGW army.
link 14 – The RS shifting toward inclusion of skeptical input and recognizing the uncertainties of the uncertainty.
link 15 – ?
John
You can’t tell the players without a score card. The people financially benefitting from the global warming scare are on the counter-attack.
Zeke Hausfather says:
“The decade 2000-2009 was, globally, around 0.15oC warmer than the decade 1990-1999.”
Zeke changed his screen name link to Lucia’s blog from the Yale Forum where he still posts warmist oriented articles all the time. The Yale Forum is kept financially afloat by payments from a hard-left, cAGW alarmist NGO, the Grantham Foundation. The Yale Forum has a big thank you note on its home page:
That background should be kept in mind when reading the alarming talk of 0.15 degrees warming in only a decade. That’s cherry-picking one 10-year period. But that’s not the real story. Phil Jones himself stated that two recent warming cycles, of 0.15 degrees and 0.16 degrees have happened with the same warming ramping up within a decade. Then the climate cooled, retracing the warming. Phil Jones also admitted that there hasn’t been any statistically meaningful warming for the past fifteen years.
The Royal Society must know that if carbon dioxide had a big effect (a high sensitivity) on temperature then the temperature wouldn’t cycle up and down when co2 was steadily rising, it would closely follow co2. But the temperature has cycled even more extremely when co2 was very low and unchanging for thousands of years. If co2 has a small effect on temperature, or even no effect, then we’d expect to see just what we’re seeing because the same temperature cycles happened over and over before co2 ever started to rise.
Like many other formerly reputable organizations the Royal Society has lost its way. That makes the protest of the 40 FRS members commendable, and very courageous.
RobW says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Surface temperatures are a lousy way of determining if Earth is still absorbing net energy, there’s too much noise to determine if the warming over 10 or 15 years periods is statistically significant (a point Phil Jones made that was widely misrepresented).
Better measures of energy change are Dr Spencer’s tropospheric temperature measurements and sea level change.
While the summary provides only cursory treatment of some issues where confidence is low or knowledge is poor, overall I would say that the report accomplishes some good in that it sets precedence for other science societies to revise their statements and come down off their imminent planet crisis platforms. The language of alarmism has been greatly toned down and uncertainties did gain greater focus in the summary.
Consensus is not changed quickly but is a slow process of realization that what is accepted knowledge may be different from fact (reality). The philosopher Richard Kirkham offered perhaps the most concise definition of knowledge. It is where the “justification for the belief must be infallible.” If any doubt exists or the belief is built on pseudo-evidence, the knowledge cannot be sustained and cannot be held as fact.
There are many doubts that exist in the underpinnings of the theory of AGW which will serve to demand more reasonable judgement as compared to the hand wringing, wailing, and gnashing of teeth fostered by alarmists seeking significance. I see this report as evidence that reality is starting to dawn in prominent science halls although it is an early dawn and not much light is yet shed.
Let’s see how people reflect on the Royal society after another UK winter. Will it be out of touch with reality or right in sync with the real world? At the end of the day, rigging data and claims of models showing warming isn’t going to mean anything if people are skating on the Thames again.
“Zeke Hausfather says:
September 30, 2010 at 11:34 am
I quite like this new report. However, nothing I can see supports Dr. Peiser’s claim that the “warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years”. Quite the opposite, in fact:
“When these surface temperatures are averaged over periods of a decade, to remove some of the year-to-year variability, each decade since the 1970s has been clearly warmer (given known uncertainties) than the one immediately preceding it. The decade 2000-2009 was, globally, around 0.15oC warmer than the decade 1990-1999.”
What the alarmists never mention, even though it is significant when comparing decade upon decade warming, is that Mount Pinatubo erupted in the 1990s. This was the second biggest volcanic eruption of the 20th century and had a significant cooling effect on the global climate for a couple of years.
The 1990-1999 decade would have averaged warmer without this eruption.
When you combine this with the fact that the temperatures at the start of the current decade were obviously high, much higher than the start of the1990s, reflecting the increase over the 1990s, then there has been no warming this decade.
Can’t understand why the Pinatubo volcano is, “the eruption that cannot speak its name”, amongst alarmists!!!!!!!!!!
Alan
Andrew W
That then leads directly to my next question. What is your opinion of the hypothesis put forward by Dr. Spencer that the feed back value is actually negative not positive that is used in virtually all climate models. (see his book for full details of the hypothesis)
Further to the troposphere. I seem to remember recently reading how the unusually low solar activity has resulted in the dramatic change in the height/thickness of the troposphere. With that in mind at what point is the measurements taken and what/how is the average determined?
Well, i just read it and what i see is, Globally “climate change” previsions are corect and the situation is serious BUT we cannot give precise figure :
So the message is We know that the fear is funded believe us and do not expect any confirmation of what we say ! In 100 years you will see that we are right!
So they just ask the people to believe, i do not see in this report anything else!
Of course if they are proved wrong in 100years they will not be prosecued(I guess)
Daniel H says: at 10:50 am
My first thought was: “Why is there a picture of a thresher on the cover?”
The picture doesn’t show the grain coming out of the machine but those of us of a certain age and upbringing are familiar with the operation. Being a very small child I got to hold the sack until it was full, a larger cousin would tie it, and another would drag it to the wagon. On a later model the grain exited backward onto the wagon as both were pulled through the field. That eliminated the need to cut the wheat and bring it in from the field.
The picture shows equipment that predates that used when I was small but still it shows an aluminum ladder leaning against the thresher, a nice touch, but having one of those is something I do not remember!
I’ll guess this is from an “old iron” demonstration.
http://www.oldironheaven.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=372
Jeez, I just read the thing. I have no idea what the GWPF was crowing about since the document completely and w/o question endorses the consensus view. Anthony, please put up a post highlighting where the Royal Society statement differs significantly from the IPCC. My guess is that it will be a very short post. Perhaps it will be non existent.
Phil Jones said “There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. ”
http://www.masterresource.org/2010/03/what-real-scientists-do-global-warming-science-vs-global-whining-scientists/
Myrrh,
The phrase included the term “statistically significant”. This means that the trend (which Jones characterized as about .12C/decade) did not exceed the noise due to natural variability at the 95% level (which is commonly called, by convention, “statistically significant”). The trend over the the time period specified (1996-2009?) was significant at a greater than 90% level. The generally accepted period for assessing climate trends is 30 years, although temperature trends have been shown to be significant over *15* years. Hmm. Why was the period chosen by the reporter to ask about less than that?
Quit acting like a monkey and tossing excrement.
Phil Jones also said:
#Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional.
#The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both.
#This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.
#the logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty.
#the science is not setttled, however unsettling that might be.
#there is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers.
– and the full sentence from which my snip:
#There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2oC per decade.
Seems to me it’s Phil Jones who’s throwing excrement at the AGW hypothesis.
The one I like particularly is his reference to the faulty logic re well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases. IR has been well covered, but there’s not much on the ‘well-mixed’ point, it’s usually dismissed by the simple, and obvious, argument that carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, but I kept getting strange answers from AGWs whenever I asked about this.
On exploring this aspect I had found not simply faulty logic, but a real lack of understanding of the concept of Carbon Dioxide being 1.5 times heavier than air. The objections to my descriptions of what this meant were quite bizarre.
When I finally decided to sort why AGWs couldn’t understanding layering of gases in mines and so on, I found they are being taught to view this ‘well-mixed in the atmosphere’ according to ideal gas laws, and this was also being taught by a PhD physicist convinced this was correct. He couldn’t understand what I was saying when I asked how a pooled amount of CO2 could rise from the ground to mix itself thoroughly in the atmosphere as he claimed it did (all conditions which existed at the pooling remaining the same), did it use a bit of blue tack to stick itself to lighter molecules and using them as a balloon to float up? Etc.
No, according to him, the CO2 would do this by bouncing off the other molecules until they were all thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere.
AGW logic claiming such things as CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds and even thousands of years as I’ve seen stated as if fact, isn’t possible in the real world. CO2 is constantly moving down, sinking through the atmosphere unless it is acted on by another force, such as wind, or is at rest, has reached its ground. Ideal gases don’t exist in the real world, but this is where all the supposed logic for AGW claims about CO2 come from.
Myrrh, I went to the BBC link that your Masterresource gives as the source of the claims it makes, I couldn’t find any of the statements you attribute to Jones. Perhaps you could quote directly from that the BBC article, showing to which answer (A to W) each of those quotes is in response to.
“The one I like particularly is his reference to the faulty logic re well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases.”
CO2 is well mixed through the troposphere, though the concentration does decline slightly with altitude. Stratospheric concentrations are significantly lower that tropospheric concentrations. This has all been measured, how the concentrations vary isn’t based on theory or models.
“showing to which answer (A to W)” should have been: “showing to which question (A to W)”