By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, reporting from Erice, Sicily
ERICE, SICILY – It’s official. The scare is over. The World Federation of Scientists, at its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, has been advised by its own climate monitoring panel that global warming is no longer a planetary emergency.
The President of the Italian Senate, Judge Pietro Grasso, who was the judge in Sicily’s first maxiprocesso, a class-action prosecution of dozens of Mafiosi who were sent to prison for a total of 2600 years, gave the magistral lecture at the opening plenary session of the seminars, which ended this week.
Both Judge Grasso and the President of the Federation, Professor Antonino Zichichi, said that care should be taken to examine carefully the basis for concern about CO2 emissions as well as the relevance and cost-effectiveness of proposed mitigation measures.
Last year’s magistral lecture to the Federation was by Professor Vaclav Klaus, then president of the Czech Republic, whose talk was entitled The manmade contribution to global warming is not a planetary emergency.
President Klaus had said: “Current as well as realistically foreseeable global warming, and especially Man’s contribution to it, is not a planetary emergency which should bother us. … My reading both of the available data and of conflicting scientific arguments and theories allows me to argue that it is not global warming caused by human activity that is threatening us.”
This year Dr. Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario and chairman of the Federation’s permanent monitoring panel on climate, gave the Federation’s closing plenary session his panel’s confirmation that “Climate change in itself is not a planetary emergency.”
Left to right: Christopher Essex, Pietro Grasso, Vaclav Klaus, and Antonino Zichichi.
Professor Essex pointed out that history had shown illegitimate political movements inventing false emergencies to bypass democratic constraints on their quest for absolute power.
The Earth’s climate, he said, is a dynamic and continually-changing system. “Human societies have lived and thriven under every conceivable climate, and modern technology makes adaptation to changing weather conditions entirely routine.”
The increasing fraction of CO2 in the air could be expected to result in some warming, but it had been accepted that “the benefits of food production and the relief of starvation overwhelm concerns about the potential climate changes induced by land-surface modification.” He said the panel thought it essential to ask whether similar reasoning applied to global fossil-energy production.
On behalf of the climate monitoring panel, Professor Essex also spoke up for scientists who have been bullied, threatened or even dismissed for having dared to question the Party Line on climate. He said: “Our greatest concern at present is that the intellectual climate for scientific investigation of these matters has become so hostile and politicized that the necessary research and debate cannot freely take place.
“Political constraints take the form of declaring the underlying science to be settled when it clearly is not; defunding or denigrating research that is perceived to threaten the case for renewable energy; or the use of odious pejoratives like “denialist” to describe dissent from officially-sanctioned views on climate science.”
Professors Bob Carter and Murry Salby, who had questioned the severity of Man’s influence on the climate, were both ejected by their universities this year.
Professor Essex called for “free and open debate on all aspects of climate science, even where hypotheses are put forward for examination that openly contradict the official positions of political entities.”
He said the panel found persuasive indications that climate models systematically understated natural climate variability and significantly exaggerated the impact of CO2 emissions. Accordingly, past, present and proposed policy measures could be shown not to provide net benefits to society regardless of the rate at which the planet might warm. Limited resources would be better devoted to more pressing issues.
================================================================
UPDATE: The WFS is revising their website on the subject, see below:
Source: http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Climate/ClimatePMP.asp
According to the Wayback Machine, this is how it used to read:
Summary of the Emergency
The safety and well-being of human populations are threatened by the variability and change in both the climate and the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Research into these trends is being significantly influenced by a number of factors:
- What was once a relatively easy and low-cost task of obtaining data for studying and predicting these changes, is now becoming expensive, complicated and threatening as data are copyrighted and offered on a ‘for sale’ basis by international co-ordinating bodies.
- Global monitoring of trends requires inter-comparability and continuity of key observations, combined with the recovery of historical information. Unfortunately, observation systems for gathering climatic data are becoming increasingly costly and difficult to maintain. Furthermore, some of the standard systems upon which climate research depends (e.g. the international upper-air sounding system) are being eroded.
- The quality of the information provided to the lay public, industry and governments is critical to the public perception of this issue and the scientists studying it. This, in turn, affects the allocation of limited resources for research and, ultimately, to public well-being. Unfortunately, the quality and reliability of the information is highly variable and is sometimes distorted. Scientists need to do a better job of communicating such information to present an accurate and timely perspective on the significance of their research and its accomplishments.
Priorities in dealing with the Emergency
The priorities in dealing with the emergency are:
- To encourage and support free access to data on climate change
- To monitor the monitoring of the global environment
- To stimulate the education of the public with regard to the causes and effects of climate change.
To monitor:
- The increasing vulnerability of human society to the effects of climate change (e.g. More and more people living on flood plains and in areas threatened by tropical cyclones).
- Climatic extremes (e.g. droughts) to determine the extent of change and variability.
- Ways in which vulnerability to climatic disasters can be reduced (e.g. forecasting drought in order to avoid famine).
- Improved methods of forecasting variability and change (e.g. improved models for predicting El Niño) and the responsible issue of forecast products.
- The adequacy of climate-observing networks in light of the present and continuing deterioration of the current systems.
- Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone).
- The possible effects of natural episodic influences on the climate (e.g. volcanic activity).
- The effects of the commercialisation of national meteorological services on data and information services, observation networks and prediction research.
===============================================================
UPDATE2: 08-31-13
Ross McKitrick writes in comments:
I dislike it when a committee of larger groups like the AGU or the AMS express their personal views on a complex subject like global warming and claim to speak for the entire membership, and I would be no more fond of it when it happens at the WFS. However, that is not what happened here. The Erice Seminar on Planetary Emergencies covers a wide range of topics, such as nuclear power, infectious diseases, terrorism, etc. People are invited based on their involvement in one specific area. They participate in topic panels, as well as the general plenary sessions. One of the plenaries is devoted to reports from the topic panels (called Permanent Monitoring Panels), and Chris gave the summary for the climate panel. However, while he discussed what his summary would say and asked for input ahead of time, he did not presume to speak for the WFS, or even for the climate group, since everyone at such a meeting is capable of speaking for him or herself, and indeed is encouraged to do so. His comments were well-received and I suspect many in the room agreed with all of them, but it’s not correct to say that the WFS took a position.
[Note: Steve McIntyre writes in an email to me that he endorses this comment from Ross:
Monckton wanted the conference to make an official statement but it didn’t. Monckton’s post led many WUWT readers to conclude that the WFS had taken an “official” position, but this is not correct and unfair to WFS members who do not agree.
Dr. Christopher Essex, chairman, Monitoring Panel on Climate,
World Federation of Scientists, also writes:
I support Ross’s comment as a valid clarification.
– Anthony]
I believe Lord Monckton is pulling our leg.
I believe Lord Monckton.
I take it M. Mann was not on the speakers list.
Now how can we pin this message on our media, our politicians and how do we get rid of all the regulations, taxes and money sucking programs? This is important because otherwise the entire circus continues. I want my money back.
The WFS is revising their website on the subject; http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Climate/ClimatePMP.asp
The one thing better than reading Lord Monckton’s texts is listening and watching him as he explains them live.
Well that oughta put somebodies’ knickers in a twist. And could eventually lead to an UNPRECEDENTED retraction of hundreds of papers. Karma bites don’t it.
Heck of a day to be Canadian! Thank you Dr. Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario, and thank you for reporting Lord Monckton!
So what is the next SCARE?
‘They’ want power and money and they won’t just slink off into the night. ‘They’ have had a taste of blood (tax payer money) and killing the Zombie bureaucratic apparatus is not going to be easy. The USA STILL has the bureaucratic apparatus put in place to deal with prohibition it just shifted focus.
Bureaucracies are like parasites. They continue to grow until they finally kill the host. The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years.
I made this comment under another post.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-hottest-temperature-game/#comment-1402015
Nice to know that there is a group that has resisted the corruption.
And then the alcohol wore off and he woke up! (sarc) Hope that we are seeing a change in world views, but don’t hold your breath. Any major papers printing these opinions?
http://www.usda.gov/oce/climate_change/index.htm
I’m sorry, your lordship. In the United States Dept. of Agriculture, alone, we now have so many high paid scientists (38) and bureaucrats (who knows?) in the Climate Change bureaucracy we cannot afford to put that many people out of their government jobs. The Climate must change, no matter what. If it doesn’t, we must cause it to create panic to keep these people, and their whole department, in work.
How sad the hoax has, like ancient religions, become “truth”, even if it’s a lie.
The next scare is going to be water (precious, precious water). They have been building up for it ever since they realized that the warming scare had lost its legs.
before I send this out to my CAGW cult member friends, is this real?
Does anyone have a link to the proceedings?
Kurt in Switzerland
Not one word of press anywhere. Not one….
There is no one in the “climate debate” that I enjoy hearing from more than Lord Monckton (sorry Anthony). He puts the “civilized” back into civilized debate, and for a math whiz, he is pretty funny.
So were there any journalists covering this? Is there a press release? Shouldn’t we be sending it around – although everyone in the sector reads WUWT. Hi Kevin, Mike….
Very, very nice. A major step and one more thing for Gang Green to weep into their pillows over. The MSM had better get its act together – which one of them will lead the way out? There’s been rumblings, now let’s see the mass exodus.
Thank you so much, Christopher Monckton. 😀
I’ve heard all this before, sounds like more preachers preaching to the converted. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere – not that I don’t appreciate your hard work and dedication, but until you get a MSM platform upon which to debate your opponents then you’re just shouting in the wilderness.
The science has turned and the whole thing is looking rather desperate but as much as the public don’t perceive climate change a problem, they don’t care about government policy.
The World Federation of Scientists…
Who?
I’ve never heard of them.
And if I had I would be fighting their inevitable tendency towards consensus-forming, closed-mindedness.
Not that I disagree with them just, so what?
I agree that the Next Big Scare will be over water, aquifers, specifically, and particularly the threat to them caused by the new evil, frac’ing. I don’t see a way yet to monetize it nor to demonize the NBS opponents (Republicans – it’s always Republicans). I’m not deviant enough to see such evil, I guess. Meanwhile, Crazee Barry is still president so I wouldn’t let my guard down.
Not an emergency? It’s not even a problem, and never was. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.
http://www.federationofscientists.org/PlanetaryEmergencies/Seminars/45th/Essex%20PMP.pdf
Ulric Lyons- please note the last entry 😉
“”…there is a clever way to push the discussion to a more pragmatic level: give a prize for actually doing successfully what is in doubt. But is it possible to define an intelligent criterion for what an accurate long-term forecast would be? Perhaps it would involve some climate version of meteorological skill. A substantial prize would be offered to the first person or team able to achieve it. “”
=====================================================================
The animal rights activist have been keeping the “water warning” warm for a couple of decades now. (The amount of water used for “factory farms” etc.)
“The World Federation of Scientists, at its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, has been advised by its own climate monitoring panel that global warming is no longer a planetary emergency.”
========================================================
Somebody pass this on to Al Gore so he can unclench a little. I’m sure he’ll be relieved, right?
M Courtney says: @ August 28, 2013 at 1:44 pm
The World Federation of Scientists…
Who?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The World Federation of Scientists
Both the ‘Summary of the Emergency’ and the ‘Priorities in dealing with the Emergency’ pages are ‘Being revised.’
This ought to make heads explode!
Why, Mann would be incensed if his local dog-catcher’s union came out with this pronouncement.
Eli understands that there is some betting action to be had on your earlier claim that “A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020.”. It is for two bets of $1000 each from John Abraham to Lord Monckton. Given your claims here, you must believe that this would be easy money. John has added a codicil that if you wish the bet can be for benefit of a charity chose by either side, but who knows, maybe you need the money?
Eli is looking perhaps for some smaller side bets on the proposition and what the good Lord’s reaction will be.
Yes, the World Federation of Scientists, aka, the missing 3%. LOL!
Troll posing as Eli Rabett:
re your post at August 28, 2013 at 2:03 pm
Please be assured that nobody cares about the “betting action” of an idiot so deluded that he is unaware of his own name or his own person. Similarly, nobody cares about the “betting action” of even lesser men than the troll (yes, it is hard to believe, but they do exist).
So you need not waste space on WUWT with such nonsense again.
Richard
Reblogged this on Power To The People and commented:
It’s official, there is no “runaway global warming” that “will destroy our civilization” in fact the data shows no signs of increasing heat waves or extreme weather. http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/24/observed-temperature-data-show-no-signs-of-increasing-global-heat-waves-or-extremes/
As to green energy being so great Germany’s experience after spending a trillions of euros is that their coal consumption has gone up and so has CO2 emissions. http://notrickszone.com/2013/02/20/germanys-climate-warming-co2-emissions-rose-in-2012-despite-1-trillion-euro-renewable-energy-transition/
http://notrickszone.com/2013/01/12/germanys-green-energiewende-energy-transition-has-only-led-to-greater-coal-consumption/
Time to stop the AGW scam and spend our limited resources on resolving real problems not imaginary ones.
Gunga Din says: @ August 28, 2013 at 1:49 pm
The animal rights activist have been keeping the “water warning” warm for a couple of decades now. (The amount of water used for “factory farms” etc.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually the person to watch is another Canadian.
This is from a few years ago in response to the much hated HR875, the food takeover bill. (See: Trojan Horse Law: The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009… DeLauro’s own bill includes a broad jurisdictional provision that creates a presumption that home gardens do affect interstate commerce. Section 406 of the bill reads as follows:…. )
I could not understand WHY Organic Consumers Assoc. and Food and Water Watch were in favor of this bill. That is until I did some digging: Maude Barlow a “no dog in this fight” Canadian, is a director of both. She has been handsomely rewarded for selling the US consumer out with an appointment as New Senior Advisor to the UN president on October 21, 2008.
Small world isn’t it when you are talking about our would be masters.
To Larry Butler:
Permit me to quote the inimitable William J Lapetome (fictitious governor in Mel Brookes’ Blazing Saddles:
“Gentlemen! We’ve got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs!”
Off topic.
But l would like to draw your attention to the mid Atlantic. l have spotted something that could be of interest. There is a small risk we could be have the first hurricane of the season. lts to the north of the main band of storms and showers in the mid Atlantic. lts a small group of showers and it looks like they just may spin themselves up into a storm. Because much of the cloud cover is lower to mid height the chances are that it will not amount to much. But they is a risk that it could grow very quickly into something. l think its one to watch just in case.
It’s great to have a mafia-busting judge on board to help save good pubic policy and science from the other thugs out there.
Resourceguy-
“It’s great to have a mafia-busting judge on board to help save good pubic policy and science from the other thugs out there.”
I think everyone on both sides can agree that we all need good pubic policies…..:)
Here’s a video of your quotation, Tom:
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Thanks, Christopher. An excellent post…as usual.
I’m jealous! You get to go to all the nice places like Erice, Sicily:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erice
Thanks, Tom G(ologist) and RockyRoad.
JimS says:
August 28, 2013 at 2:07 pm
Are you that brainwashed, Jim?
Forwarded to Drudge. Things like this need to be disseminated!
With this revelation, can we combine the events in Syria with the developments in the science of global warming and launch Mann, Hansen, et al along with thousands of activist whores at Syria instead of cruise missiles? They’ll rob the Syrian government blind.
Rocky
JomS is being a little facetious – I hope. But there is something in what he says. I’ve never heard of WFS. Call me cynical but I’ve heard these sort of declarations before. Now if the IPCC came out with it then I’d be getting excited.
If, CM, you are still there in Erice … near the gate entrance is THE best almond patisserie. Pause in your presentations and taste a little of heaven.
I spent a good bit of the conference at Erice in the company of Lord Monckton as well as Chris Essex and other climate scientists. The tone there is primarily skeptic, certainly in the climate group.
I would note, however, that those gathered believe that i) the globe has warmed, and ii) it may continue to warm in the future, iii) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and iv) that mankind is contributing some component to recent warming. I would also offer that opinions differed as to whether we know enough about climate systems to be able to definitely declare global warming a non-issue.
However, temperatures have clearly stalled by a number of measures over the last decade to fifteen years, as stories here at WUWT have shown. Many of the Erice climate experts have long believed that climate sensitivity to CO2 was over-stated, and in fact, the data are increasingly supporting that view. It is, I believe, in this sense that global warming has been demoted as a “planetary emergency”.
I think it premature to state that the we can put the whole warming issue behind us (for political reasons, if nothing else), but clearly the experts gathered there were increasingly confident and optimistic that long-held skeptic views would prevail. The climate change issue may not yet have left the hospital, but it is no longer in intensive care, and just as Lord Monckton says, we may begin to assert that it is not a “planetary emergency.”
All I know of Erice is that Steve McIntyre used to go and report each year. Lots of local heroes feature in the reports.
Now how hard was that to post a picture of Vaklav Klaus instead of Fracking Protesteri Anthropos Patheticus?
“””””…..Eli Rabett says:
August 28, 2013 at 2:03 pm
Eli understands that there is some betting action to be had on your earlier claim that “A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020.”. It is for two bets of $1000 each from John Abraham to Lord Monckton. Given your claims here, you must believe that this would be easy money. John has added a codicil that if you wish the bet can be for benefit of a charity chose by either side, but who knows, maybe you need the money?
Eli is looking perhaps for some smaller side bets on the proposition and what the good Lord’s reaction will be……..””””””‘
Well in the talk of betting, I would bet that Lord Monckton, who is a known classics scholar , and referee of correct English, might have something to say about that awkward side chatter going on in the middle, between Eli understanding something ; and Eli looking for something.
I’ll leave it you, Viscount Monckton to figure out who is talking to whom; during Eli’s flight of forgetfulness off into the third person.
There never was a planetary emergency. James Homer Hanson decided it was due to correlation and ‘necessary adjustment’.
UPDATE! 😉
“Summary of the Emergency”
Being revised.There is none.“Priorities in dealing with the Emergency”
Being revised.See above.It never was a planetary emergency, and then it became natural climate change (“natural” was omitted – it’s an inconvenient truth). Then it became severe weather, except that a modicum of weather history research shows current weather not nearly as severe as previous. Through it all the word “unprecedented” has been liberally sprinkled, without adding the caveats that the warming was only unprecedented if you only look back a century, or almost a millennium at most. How moderate warming can be considered an emergency, given the greater good it provides, and the economic and societal progress burning fossil fuels provides can be considered dangerous, is ludicrous. The alternative, global cooling leading into another glacial period, can be easily demonstrated to be a magnitude greater in terms of human catastrophes than warming could ever. For the past million years, 100,000-year glacial periods have alternated with 10,000-year interglacials. It’s no accident that humanity made more progress in the 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age than in the 100,000 years that preceded it. It won’t be long (in geological terms) before Chicago is back under a mile-thick ice sheet, and San Franciscans have to travel west 26 miles to get to the cruise ship berths. Dante was wise when he made ice the inner circle of Hell. A “Slushball” Earth is a planetary emergency to truly fear.
Thanks, O wonderful geologists Rocky Road and Frac’ing 🙂 Tom above for the great quote/vid, lol.
The Berlin wall of the global warmists has been cracking and teetering. Perhaps this cannon ball will finally bring it down. If only it crushes in its fall the scoundrels who have used it for financial gain. This means you Al Gore.
Hola, Viejecita. Glad to see you post again! Take care, charming lady of Spain.
I have messaged Lord Deben (John Gummer) this excellent news. Although his delight at the Earth being saved may be tempered by his day job becoming less important. He is Chairman of the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change. He also chairs the sustainability consultancy Sancroft International, recycler Valpak, GLOBE International – the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, the Association of Professional Financial Advisers and Veolia Water UK.
Emergency over? Now, if we can only figure out how to turn off all the -bleeping- sirens!
STAN STENDERA! Hi! #(:)) Are those little birds on the railing still avid fans of WUWT? You offer first class dining, there.
Nice Berlin wall analogy, I think, though, the CAGW wall will hurt no one as it falls to earth with a sigh……. it was only made of cobwebs and moonbeams, don’t you know……. once the greedy, fat-fisted, little leprechauns holding it up let go of the corners (and they are running away as we speak — no more gold = no more leprechauns), it will silently slip down into the bracken to be trampled into oblivion by Rat and Mole (who knew better all the time — Toad, not so much).
No problem, Caleb! Those are WINDMILL-POWERED sirens, lol.
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton.
The World Federation of Scientists rethinks Man-made global warming. This is a good thing to do for scientists: think and rethink, then think again knowing it is so easy to be wrong.
Iggy Slanter says:
August 28, 2013 at 1:28 pm
The next scare is going to be water (precious, precious water). They have been building up for it ever since they realized that the warming scare had lost its legs.
And
Gail Combs says:
August 28, 2013 at 2:14 pm
Gunga Din says: @ August 28, 2013 at 1:49 pm
The animal rights activist have been keeping the “water warning” warm for a couple of decades now. (The amount of water used for “factory farms” etc.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually the person to watch is another Canadian.
—
Agenda 21 Chapter 18 is next – EPA have already been trying to stop farmers using fields claiming that they are ‘wetlands’ http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/24/us/for-farmers-wetlands-mean-a-legal-quagmire.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. They also tried (and failed) to force Virginia to regulate storm water runoff http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/03/virginia-judge-rules-epa-overstepped-authority-trying-to-regulate-water-as/ — and of course ‘Fracking’ – the EPA bureaucracy has already started on water. Expect the communitarian Common Purpose to lead with water sustainability in times of shortage.
Is there really a “pot o’ gold” at the end of this snowbow ?
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/18.jpg
Janice why am I not surprised you know “The Wind in the Willows”. It has been my practice for many years to give a copy of that wonderful book to each child born within my family. You insult leprechauns. Shame!
Is this a bona fide organisation?
More importantly, is it a bona fide organisation with sufficient credibility that anyone in a position to influence climate policy would listen to?
I have never heard of them before. Can someone provide a link to a credible website that describes their activities and status in an objective manner?
tonyb
Unfortunately, the “global warming emergency” has morphed into the even more dangerous planetary emergencies of climate change/disruption/chaos/extreme weather, a melting arctic ice cap, and now, the most fearsome danger of all, “hotspots”. Whereas before, the earth simply had a fever, now it appears it has the measles or mumps, all because of our evil fossil fuel-burning ways. Have no fear though, the ipcc is working on how to “fix” the problem. What would we do without them?
Christopher is right. It IS over. The world as a whole is onto the shenanigans pulled by these AGW climatologists.
Janice
Good to see your appreciation of Ratty et al.
For many years I lived very close to the last home of the Grahames and one of the tributaries of the Thames ran through my garden where we often saw ratty’s ancestors swimming in the river.
http://www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/pangbourne.html
Curiously we now live very close to Dartmouth where Christopher Robin (yes, that one) owned a bookshop until his death in recent years.
tonyb
Hi, Stan, re: “Janice why am I not surprised you know “The Wind in the Willows”… .”
That is because you realize that I am just a 10 year old girl in a very good disguise (better every year!). Thinking it over, I realized that it was Badger who was never fooled. Rat and Mole were always skeptical, but lacked the knowledge to back up their logical inferences, until five (just arbitrary) years ago.
Oh, and re: leprechauns, ask any Irishperson and she or he will tell you that leprechauns are NOT nice people. They are only called the “good people” to avoid raising their ire. Faerie are spiteful and usually wicked. (my source for this inside information is author C. S. Lewis, born and raised just outside Belfast)
another glimmer of hope.it matters not what happens in my lifetime,but the future will be hard enough for my children without facing increasing fuel bills laden with taxes.let us hope this will encourage others that may have been harbouring serious doubt about the “settled science” to feel free to air those doubts without persecution and ostracisation.
the only problem i can see with 0.5c of cooling eli would like to gamble on is if 0.10c per DECADE of warming was seen as catastrophic,what in gods name will the alarmists come up with for 0.5c of cooling in 7 years ? surely that would be catastrophic global cooling requiring the production of more co2 ? possibly by burning all the windmills that are currently contributing not a lot to the national grid 🙂
Well, Tony B., the WFS has “… sufficient credibility that (Christopher Monckton, and implicitly via his posting Monckton’s report above, A-th-y W) would listen to…. ” them.
What was wrong with the source Gail Combs provided us above? http://federationofscientists.org/WFSHist.asp
I’m not Catholic, but, Pope John Paul seemed to have a good head on his shoulders (and I don’t think he’d risk the R.C.’s reputation for integrity by endorsing a bunch of quacks) and he liked the WFS:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1999/march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19990327_world-federation-scientists_en.html
Well, I’d to more research for you, Mr. B., but that is your specialty. No doubt, by now, you’ve already found out all the facts you want to know about WFS.
in spite of the fear-mongering:
27 Aug: Bloomberg: Cass R. Sunstein: People Don’t Fear Climate Change Enough
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/people-don-t-fear-climate-change-enough.html
Yee-HAWW!!!!!!!
I have a dream . . .Free at last!! (In honor of Martin Luther King, 50 years ago)
@stan stendera, Janice Moore -The Wind in the Willow was one of my favorites when I was a nipper.
And yes, the Badger did have a way of setting wayward minds straight.
Now, if only, as so many folks here are hoping, the politicians would get the TRUE [religion] (i.e., catastrophic global warming is a non-happening)
[Well, reallogic would be okay too. Too hard for a politician though. Mod]
Tony B.!
Here we were writing to each other at the same time. So Christopher Robin became a bookseller when he grew up? Oh, that is just lovely. A. A. Milne is one of the best writers ever. Remember this one (from memory, only): “Promise you won’t forget about me ever, not even when I’m a hundred.” C.R. to W. the P. Forget him!? Never.
What a delightful country is yours. I hope that you revel in it every day (even when it is raining).
Ta ta for now (there’s a regular commenter on here called “ttfn” — smile),
Janice
“CAGW wall will hurt no one as it falls to earth with a sigh……. it was only made of cobwebs and moonbeams, don’t you know……. once the greedy, fat-fisted, little leprechauns holding it up let go of the corners … ”
Beautifully written…and so true.
François
Hi, Chad — so nice to finally have you “talk” to me. LOL, I STILL love reading Wind in the Willows and the Pooh stories and…, well, I guess I just never really grew up. #(:))
Hope all is well (writing, composing, 23 years!!!).
My, Francois (forgive my incorrect “c”, please), that was a very generous compliment! Thank you, so much.
Janice
http://www.pbase.com/wabarletta/image/127642955
photo of monckton at the meeting in 2011. Noticed that Lindzen also attended
This says the meetings have attracted over 125 nobel laureaes over the years. There are photos of a previous pope and Kruschev receiving the group
http://www.everettassociates.net/article/3604-dr-lorne-everett-to-chair-panel-on-pollution-at-the-planetary-emergencies-meetings-of-the-world-federation-of-scientists-in-erice-italy
Ok, looks authentic, but we do need to check these things out. Its called being a sceptic. Well gone midnight here so will check in tomorrow to see if any one else has posted information.
Still not sure what influence this group has with decision makers
tonyb
“important paper” says it’s worse!
28 Aug: Scientific American blog: Ashutosh Jogalekar: East Antarctic glaciers could be much more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought.
Now an important paper in Nature from Durham University and the University of Zurich has examined a large number of satellite observations of the East Antarctic ice sheet over the last forty years. The authors find that although there is considerable variability in individual glacier advance and retreat, there is a clear overall trend of advance and retreat that tracks well with warming and cooling periods between 1974 and 2010. Glacier movement is thus much more sensitive to climate trends than previously thought. The work casts serious doubt on reassurances about the stability of the East Antarctic ice sheet…
thus, whatever humans are doing to the climate is likely to have potentially huge impacts on the melting of this ice sheet and a corresponding change in sea levels. We are mucking around with these massive wonders of ice at our own peril…
About the Author: Ashutosh (Ash) Jogalekar is a chemist interested in the history and philosophy of science. He considers science to be a seamless and all-encompassing part of the human experience.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/08/28/east-antarctic-glaciers-could-be-much-more-vulnerable-to-climate-change-than-previously-thought/
To reassure some commenters, the World Federation of Scientists most certainly exists. It was founded by Professor Antonino Zichichi, Italy’s most eminent scientist, half a century ago, and its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, which attract the finest scientific minds from around the globe, take place in Erice, Sicily, towards the end of August every year.
Professor Zichichi still heads the organization he founded, and his long-standing deputy is Dr. Richard Garwin (inventor of the typewriter golf-ball). The Federation, which is sponsored by many entities including the Italian Government and is headquartered at CERN in Geneva, with a study center in Erice, offers some 40 week-long advanced scientific courses each year on a wide variety of subjects, but concentrating chiefly on particle physics, which is Professor Zichichi’s subject. He discovered and isolated a form of antimatter 40 years before the Large Hadron Collapser did. The week-long annual seminars on planetary emergencies are in their 46th year, and the Annual Proceedings is one of the most prestigious scientific journals worldwide.
I am delighted that Steven Kopits has contributed a note to this thread. He has usefully confirmed that, as Professor Essex said, some warming is to be expected, but that – though we should not altogether let our guard down – global warming cannot really be described as a planetary emergency any more.
One Rabett says someone wants to take a bet with me about whether the world will cool by 0.5 K before 2020 is out. However, it was not I but another who forecast that. In an earlier posting I merely reported the forecast, which is one of a growing number that find cooling more likely than warming in the short to medium term. To make any such bet symmetrical, there would be no payout if the temperature fluctuated by less than 0.5 K in either direction by 2020 compared with today. The bedwetters would win if the temperature rose by 0.5 K; the army of light and truth would win if it fell by 0.5 K.
However, the creature seeking cheap publicity by offering the bet has, I discover, been part of an organized (and probably paid) campaign to prevent skeptics such as me from being allowed to speak at various universities around the world to which we are from time to time invited. Evidence is being gathered, since in Scotland tampering with the right of academic freedom in this characteristically furtive way, particularly with the wildly malicious claims the perpetrator and his little chums have apparently been making, would be held to constitute a grave libel.
I had hoped to sue the defalcating nitwit in the U.S for an earlier malicious attempt by him to assert that I take a skeptical line because I am paid to do so (if only …). However, the lawyers whom I consulted, after having a good look at the case, concluded that, though what this inconsequential little creep had said was unquestionably libelous, as well as displaying an exceptionally poor grasp of elementary science and even of arithmetic, I did not have title to sue because, in the US, I am counted at law as a “public figure” and the jerklet is not. If he were a public figure, I could sue him. If I were not a public figure, I could sue him. But, since I am a public figure and he is not, I cannot sue him. Not in the U.S., at any rate. I visited the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday …
28 Aug: PhysOrg: Wildfires projected to worsen with climate change
Research by environmental scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) brings bad news to the western United States, where firefighters are currently battling dozens of fires in at least 11 states.
The Harvard team’s study suggests wildfire seasons by 2050 will be about three weeks longer, up to twice as smoky, and will burn a wider area in the western states. The findings are based on a set of internationally recognized climate scenarios, decades of historical meteorological data, and records of past fire activity.
The results will be published in the October 2013 issue of Atmospheric Environment and are available in advance online…
“Wildfires are triggered by one set of influences—mainly human activity and lightning—but they grow and spread according to a completely different range of influences that are heavily dependent on the weather,” says lead author Xu Yue. “Of course, when all the factors come together just right—whoosh, there’s a big fire.”…
By running the IPCC’s climate data for the year 2050 through their own fire prediction models, the Harvard team was able to calculate the area burned for each ecoregion at midcentury…
http://phys.org/news/2013-08-wildfires-worsen-climate.html
Fred Allen says: @ August 28, 2013 at 2:36 pm
With this revelation, can we combine the events in Syria with the developments in the science of global warming and launch Mann, Hansen, et al along with thousands of activist whores at Syria instead of cruise missiles? They’ll rob the Syrian government blind.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Just do an exchange for the Christians they want to kill. We will even give them a Two fer deal. Two activist for one Christian. When we run out of activists we can start, at the top, with the bureaucrats. (I am an Agnostic BTW)
climatereason says:
August 28, 2013 at 4:05 pm
…. Can someone provide a link to a credible website that describes their activities and status in an objective manner?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I already did but [here] it is again http://www.federationofscientists.org/WFSHist.asp
Janice Moore says:
August 28, 2013 at 4:23 pm
See Terry Practchett’s Lords and Ladies from his Diskworld series. The faeries therein are more than equal than his most fearful antagonists.
It is doing an injustice to Richard Garwin to reduce him to ‘The man who invented the golf ball typewriter’.
First of all it is not true, see the actual story here:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/selectric/
Richard actually has been the preeminent US defense scientist since the A-bomb days. His contributions are legion, beginning with the design of the first working hydrogen bomb early in the 1950s. He still chairs the Jasons, the Governments go to team when they need a critical appraisal of a system or a solution to a really intractable problem. In Japan a man such as he would be honored as a Living National Treasure. He is not a household name in the US, but in the applied physics space, he is a heavyweight.
Janice Moore, on the 3% chance you do not already know this, C.S. Lewis learned pretty much everything he knew about fairies and Faerie from George MacDonald, another too-obscure Brit-lit genius. BTW, I had the deep and distinct (for a Yank) pleasure of having coffee with the Scholar In Residence in the parlor of C.S. and Warnie–and, for a too-brief time, Joy– Lewis on the morning of New Year’s Day this year. You must make the pilgrimage sometime.
etudiant says: @ August 28, 2013 at 5:41 pm
…. In Japan a man such as he would be honored as a Living National Treasure.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately in the USA ‘Youth’ is honored instead. We even had to pass a (mostly useless) law to keep corporations from discriminating against those over 45.
Dear Pat, (have you anything, me lad, to add about leprechauns, BTW? lol)
Were you joking when you posted the above (excerpt following) at 5:08pm this evening?: “The results will be published in the October 2013 issue of Atmospheric Environment … By running the IPCC’s climate data for the year 2050… .”
Only God knows what the data will be for 2050 at this point.
NOTE TO SELF: Don’t ever bother to read “Atmospheric Environment”.
Hoping I simply misunderstood what you were trying to tell us,
Janice
****************************************
Hi, R. A. Cook (lol, until recently, I thought “R.A.” was Rear Admiral),
Not having yet viewed your cited source, I’m not sure if you are disagreeing with me by asserting that Faerie are kindly but strong or agreeing with qualification that Faerie are simply strong (but not often malevolent). Well, WHO CARES ANYWAY, laugh-out-loud. Just fun.
*******************************************
Hi, Don,
Best cup of coffee you’d ever had, no doubt. Glad you had that opportunity. I’m unlikely to ever have the chance, but I’ll keep your kindly advice in mind. And, no, while I do know much of George MacDonald’s influence on C. S. Lewis (as per his book Surprised by Joy and his collected letters), I mistakenly thought (again, from his letters) his main source for Faerie lore was talking with the local Irish among whom he lived and, later, visited. Writing to a friend about a recent holiday in County Down, he told how the local Irish would happily take him to a house where a ghost was supposed to live, viewing ghosts as essentially benign, but refused to go near a house allegedly haunted by “the good people” who are not “good” at all.
C. S. Lewis is the best wordsmith of the English language who ever lived. And, of course, the content of his works is pure gold (uh oh, I think I hear a leprechaun’s tiny feet pattering up my drivew –……….ssh……… YES! — gotta go
If I don’t post agina send helpk!!!
Janice Moore –
merely pointing to yet another CAGW absurdity. here’s another. if the religiously-funded WDM can get their methodology accepted – LOL – the CAGW-promoting banks will back off the alarmism asap:
29 Aug: Scotsman: Julia Horton: RBS’ carbon footprint up
FINANCING “dirty” energy around the world could make the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) responsible for almost a billion tonnes of carbon emissions last year, according to a damning new report published today.
Research by the World Development Movement calculated that including emissions from all the coal, oil and gas companies which RBS lent money to in 2012 would bring the bank’s annual carbon footprint to up to 911 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is 18 times greater than Scotland’s total annual emissions and 1.6 times the level of greenhouse gases produced by the entire UK in 2012…
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/rbs-carbon-footprint-up-1-3064169
Thanks for the clarification, Pat (and, forgive me if it should have been, “Patricia, me lass”). Your dry writing style was too subtle for me.
Mr Lynn says:
August 28, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Somewhat off-topic: A friend sent me an overly-cute column in the NY Times of 22Aug2013 (p. A23) by one Gail Collins on the question before Congress of NASA capturing an asteroid versus returning to the Moon. (I don’t see much point in either, unless they are integral parts of a larger program, of which we have no hint in this faux-austerity era. Or was the $800 billion ‘stimulus’ of 2009 taken out of subsequent budgets? Forgive me if I suspect not.) Unfortunately that piece was accompanied on the same page with a tendentious screed by an astronomer named Adam Frank, entitled “Welcome to the Age of Denial,” which though I tried to avert my eyes, I ended up reading.
Prof. Frank glibly equates Creationism, refusal to immunize, and ‘denial’ of anthropogenic global warming as equally anti-scientific, a dismaying rejection of the non-political tradition of western science. In this of course he has things completely back-to-front, as it is establishment Climatism that has become a monolithic cult akin to Soviet Lysenkoism. But it is doubtful that Prof. Frank has spent any time actually looking at the ‘settled science’ of AGW; he is simply repeating the PC mantra. It would be funny, if it were not so typically uninformed. And this fellow is supposed to be a ‘scientist’.
I wonder if the pronouncement by The World Federation of Scientists might cause him to actually look at the facts.
/Mr Lynn
Oops—cross-posted (with revisions) from Tips and Notes; forgot to delete the author/date heading from that comment. Moderators, can you do so? /Mr L
Henry Galt says:
August 28, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Thanks, I definitely have the crown jewels for the job, and I would say it’s pretty urgent that they take a look at what I am seeing for 2016 and 2017.
Christopher Monckton said:
This year Dr. Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario and chairman of the Federation’s permanent monitoring panel on climate, gave the Federation’s closing plenary session his panel’s confirmation that “Climate change in itself is not a planetary emergency.”
I’m curious, how many people are on the permanent monitoring panel on climate? According to WFS’ web site, the panel consists of only Dr. Essex:
http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Climate/ClimatePMP.asp
Chris – and your point is? At least Dr. Essex is both a scientist and an honest person, so better him than, for example, Mann, that 360.org creep or other kook-ade-spewing alarmists.
PAT @ 5:08
Thank you. New use [psciencey]
for the ancient onomatopoesy:
whoosh, to wit,
“… says lead author Xu Yue. “Of course,
when all the factors {fudge} just right—whoosh, …”
mrmethane,
My point is that a panel should be more than 1 person. If it’s just one person, then the conclusions should not be presented as those of a panel – it’s misleading. Dr. Essex is perfectly entitled to present his opinions as an individual. If there was an actual panel, then the members should be listed, either on the WFS web site or conference proceedings.
I’m not going to bother to look it up, but I remember that the WFS is structured that way: there is only one person noted for each panel, and the choice rotates, although I cant remember when, for how long, or under what conditions (vote or otherwise). That person then works with all the other scientists around the world studying the subject.
They didn’t get around to doing it yet. Check the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110719173325/http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Climate/ClimatePMP.asp
I’m not going to bother to look it up, but I remember that the WFS is structured that way: there is only one person noted for each panel, and the choice rotates, although I cant remember when, for how long, or under what conditions (vote or otherwise). That person then works with all the other scientists around the world studying the subject.
Perhaps they’ve changed their structure. As recently as 2011, the climatology panel had 1 chairman, 5 members and 11 associate members:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110726051913/http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Climate/ClimatePMP.asp
Chris, here’s another one that only has a chairman and a coordinator listed:
http://federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Floods/Floods.asp
Two years ago when I looked into it, there were some panels that only listed a chairman’s name. If you click around their panels, you will see that the styles and info used in the description of each planetary topic vary (statement of purpose, emails, etc). It’s possible that each panel is responsible for that page, and the results are different as a result.
Policycritic, sure, that’s understandable, though you’d expect it to be updated at some point in time, if for no other reason than to give credit to the panelists for their time and efforts. There don’t seem to be any conference proceedings online, so it’s not possible to see the panel list there.
Now some, not Eli to be sure, thought that it would be most pleasing if the good Monckton of Brenchley made John Abraham put up, but Sadly No.
Instead, as the Bunny proposed but a few days ago, we are treated to an entertaining essay in avoidance. To watch Lord Monckton as his mind works at an astonishingly furious pace, whinging about the ills done to him, the difficulty of confronting his tormentors, and the cruel law which forbid him to pounce upon them, but, of course he could if he really wanted to and they should be more cautious, when shunning a chance to do same, is indeed a show Eli feels privileged to have played a minor part in.
Such humor is found only in our pale memories except for YouTube. We have Chris.
@Monckton
But, since I am a public figure and he is not, I cannot sue him. Not in the U.S., at any rate. I visited the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday …
“Run Rabett Run” — 1970’s James Cann movie
I think the new “climate change/global warming” will be toxins (or “poison” as the Greens like to call it). No matter what you think about the great bee decimation or which direction the papers about that point, they got it all figured out that Big Chemical is to blame. Next up are herbicides since the greens want every farmer to go sustainable and thus lower his crop yield, which according the greens is “simply not true according paper/study by Greenpeace et al blabla”. City councils are at the moment already being pestered about the use of herbicides on weeds, the greens making claims (which they can do ’cause they never have to proof anything sitting on their moral high horse) that it causes cancer and genetic defects if you use Roundup a herbicide which has been used for years. Apart from the fact that we will have a backlog of 15-20 years of Earth Hour, taxation based upon assumptions, scares about the supposed oil and gas supply shortage and fracking scares to water aquifers.
They meet in Erice Sicly every year? I’m ready to join that organization but have no scientific credentials. Are there exceptions….loopholes to membership? For instance, I have LOTS of scientific theories and use of practical applications (part Cherokee) but no credentials. Just looking for any excuse to get back to Europe. And CS Lewis was raised in Belfast? I’d forgotten that. Though I did know about McDonald! My idea is that if a working knowledge of Wind in the Willows is sufficient to give me some basis for application…to ultimately be a WF of S member….Then “next year in Sicily.”
http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/global-warming-natural-says-expert
The above link shows that the president of the fedeation has held this view for some years.
Gail Combs,
Thank you for your answer. This organisation does sound like a legitimate and respected group.
Then this is the first time that a significant scientific organisation has expressed doubt about the application of the Precautionary Principle with respect to Climate Change.
Big news.
Uhh…doesn’t that mean it never was an emergency?
Chris:
At August 28, 2013 at 9:06 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/global-warming-is-no-longer-a-planetary-emergency/#comment-1402515
You say
OK. But your point is germane to every organisation which has made a statement on climate change; i.e. RS, AGU, etc. Indeed, the scientific institutions have been usurped by a handful of activists who make pronouncements which they assert as being official policy statements.
Lindzen details how this usurpation has been achieved in a shocking and very readable paper which ‘names names’. It can be read here
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/lindzen-on-climate-science-2010.pdf
Richard
That Idiot Driver
I think they let you in if you have a degree in Classics too
Margaret
Rather than spending billions on saving man from the weather, which apparently over the ages we have been so vulnerable and ever increasingly so, maybe redirect to saving man from politicians and politically driven climate science.
Whew! Sure dodged a bullet there.
“They didn’t get around to doing it yet. Check the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110719173325/http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Climate/ClimatePMP.asp”
How does that help? Different time, different chairman. Perhaps nobody credible wants to work with Dr Essex, and he really is “the panel”. Certainly the Nobel prize winning Mario Molina, who appears in that old list, is hardly going to agree with Essex:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2012/august/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-cites-evidence-of-link-between-extreme-weather-global-warming.html
Christopher Monckton,
Have you considered attending the AGU’s annual fall meeting in San Francisco this December?
John
The WFS position leads me to think that major climate science funding shifts will occur towards more skeptical balance and dry up the biased alarming researcher’s funds.
There is no more effective means to make a biased alarming climate researcher skeptical than to fund scientists exhibiting normal skepticism.
John
JPeden says:
@Monckton
But, since I am a public figure and he is not, I cannot sue him. Not in the U.S., at any rate. I visited the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday …
“Run Rabett Run” — 1970′s James Cann movie
Yes, more droppings along the bunny trail.
Lord Monckton, allow me to go off-topic.
[Yes, it is off-topic.
Very far off-topic.
No, don’t go there with this blatant baiting tactic.
Mod]
A bet to consider would be on the % change in per capita income in the next 5 years of current scientists who uncritically endorse all significant warming biases in the forthcoming the IPCC AR5.
I think their income will drop by at least 50%.
John
To answer a few questions from commenters: yes, the World Federation of Scientists exists (it has existed for half a century); yes, its climate monitoring panel consists of a dozen eminent scientists from all parts of the globe; and yes, the chairman of that panel announced to the closing plenary that global warming is not, in itself, a planetary emergency; and no, the world’s mainstream media will do their utmost not to report that conclusion, because it does not accord with the Party Line.
The troll named “Rabett” is snide about my not taking an asymmetric bet. Well, I’m not going to give the joke figure who offered the bet any publicity: indeed, it would be improper for me to have a bet with him at present, given the likelihood that he will face court action once the trail of evidence is complete. Interesting how the trolls will talk about just about everything except the science, on which events are proving them to have been so spectacularly wrong.
Christopher Monckton,
Troll? No, I think he has rather more insignificance.
More like:
TrollA habitual illeist with an inept mercenary style.: )
John
Why then is Obama appointing: Obama to Name Top Climate-Change Regulator
http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/obama-to-name-top-climate-change-regulator-20130828
@Janice Moore 3:26 pm
UPDATE! 😉
“Summary of the Emergency”
Being revised. There is none.🙂 “…Never mind….”Redsox04 says:
August 29, 2013 at 9:27 am
Why then is Obama appointing: Obama to Name Top Climate-Change Regulator
http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/obama-to-name-top-climate-change-regulator-20130828
****************************************************************
Because he looks to Europe and sees all those lucrative CO2 taxes that are getting raked in and he wants a taste.
Also wouldn’t be supprised hes following his parties / election major donators requests
Would Mr Gore be one ?
Next up! The new alien scare! What for it in a propaganda media source near you!
Hmm. If I were confident that the warming pattern over the next decade was going to be strongly asymmetric, then I’d gladly take an asymmetric bet.
If model predictions are to be believed, we should see a ~0.1 C increase by the end of the decade, while Lord Monckton’s source is predicting a 0.5 C drop. Can we meet in the middle, and place even odds at -0.3 C?
I am not confident of what temperatures will do, because they are stochastic. A fair bet (if I were a betting man, which I am not) would take zero change as the baseline.
– – – – – – – –
A gauntlet thrown down by the WFS that the environment /climate correspondents of MSM cannot pick up because they are told what storyline to report. Those correspondent’s intellectual leaders support 100% the storyline of the warming biased assessment that is the AR4 /AR5.
However, the WFS position is being told in spite of the MSM’s unspoken code of silence on the significant problems in the IPCC’s position of alarming anthropogenic climate change.
The IPCC has lost the pretext of scientific authority now. There are giggles in the scientific community about their absurd processes that are unscientific. The MSM is losing business in not reporting it.
John
To Redsox04:
You ask, “Why then is Obama appointing: Obama to Name Top
Climate-Change Regulator…”
Need you ask? President Obama sees the issue of climate change,
or whatever neologism it’s currently named, as a means of increasing
the scope and reach of the Federal government’s power.
Also, a means for raising yet more tax revenue–do a Google
search on the term “social cost of carbon”. This is clearly an
initial salvo in the effort to implement a so-called “carbon tax”.
The correctness, or not, of the science underlying climate
change has always been irrelevant to the politicians and activists
who are the foremost pushers of the theory. For example,
former Senator Tim Wirth, who also served at the UN, has been
quoted as saying:
Note the irrelevance of the correctness of the science to the desired
secondary effect.
Eli Rabett says:
Eli is looking perhaps for some smaller side bets on the proposition and what the good Lord’s reaction will be.
Just curious – is Eli related to Elmo? They seem to speak similarly. Elmo seems a bit less challenged, however.
@ Tony G
I couldn’t agree more as from the inanity of the prose the rabett person appears to less resemble a rabbit and more and more to resemble a complete pratt.
@ Stephen Rasey (9:55am today) — Thank for the update! lol
*********************
That Idiot Driver!!!!! I was behind you AAAAALLLL THE WAY into town this afternoon. Why did you not pull over when I flashed my lights? Why were you going 35mph in a 45??!! Thank you, though, for MAKING the green light you were slowing down for (grrrr) when I honked my horn.
LOL, seriously, fun name, TID and I enjoyed reading your fun post. Yes, Eire was never far from C. S. Lewis’ mind. It was home.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
August 29, 2013 at 12:58 pm
“I am not confident of what temperatures will do,”
I can give you weekly-monthly deviations from normals for the UK for the next 10 years, with very high certainty for timing, and a good idea of intensity, with around 90% deterministic. From that I can tell where the dry or wet periods are. I’ll be pleased to show you how this is achieved of course.
Waster of BlogSpace and OurTime-Yawn. The readers of this blog do their own homework and rarely view people inclined to use hyperbole and logical fallacies as bearers of “truth”.
Aphan,
“Waster of BlogSpace and OurTime”
LOL.
Precisely.
A Fan,
Janice #(:))
Lord Monckton,
Thank you for the write up. That step just may signal the beginning-of-the-end for the climate gravy train. Of course it will still take several decades to slowly fade into obscurity, but, I’m sure it will.
The WFS website ‘Climate’ page isn’t the only one that needs updating. I don’t know if it is important at this stage but the Summary of the Emergency section on the ‘Energy’ page of the website states: “.. Lastly, the burning of fossil fuels is the primary anthropogenic contributor to increased greenhouse gas concentrations. ” And, I would imagine such references are scattered throughout the site.
A lot of people like to claim that “Mr Monckton” claimed that he “created cures for multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes as well as reducing the viral load of an HIV”, and yet I can find no proof that Lord Monckton ever actually made such a claim. Which makes me skeptical about it.
Do you have an issue with Michael Mann claiming that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? (Seems like someone else was skeptical about that and did some homework)
http://www.examiner.com/article/professor-mann-claims-to-win-nobel-prize-nobel-committee-says-he-has-not
Best comment after that article is “Mann made global nobeling”
Christopher Essex
Well there goes the vast majority of climate change commentary on all sides of the debate.
Waster of Space and Time (coined by Aphan) provides an example of Algorizing (coined by JM) at 6:16pm.
[snip -off topic – mod]
I dislike it when a committee of larger groups like the AGU or the AMS express their personal views on a complex subject like global warming and claim to speak for the entire membership, and I would be no more fond of it when it happens at the WFS. However, that is not what happened here. The Erice Seminar on Planetary Emergencies covers a wide range of topics, such as nuclear power, infectious diseases, terrorism, etc. People are invited based on their involvement in one specific area. They participate in topic panels, as well as the general plenary sessions. One of the plenaries is devoted to reports from the topic panels (called Permanent Monitoring Panels), and Chris gave the summary for the climate panel. However, while he discussed what his summary would say and asked for input ahead of time, he did not presume to speak for the WFS, or even for the climate group, since everyone at such a meeting is capable of speaking for him or herself, and indeed is encouraged to do so. His comments were well-received and I suspect many in the room agreed with all of them, but it’s not correct to say that the WFS took a position.
Ros is correct that personal opinions have no place in science. However, the head posting did not state or imply the World Federation of Scientists had taken a position. It did, however, fairly, accurately and contemporaneously name four individual speakers – one from last year, three from this year – who had described global warming as not being a planetary emergency, and had done so at public sessions of the Federation at which journalists had been present. The journalists had chosen not to report what was being said, so I wrote up this surely blameless report for WUWT, which often carries news that the once-mainstream media sullenly refuse to report. I hope that readers enjoyed the news.
– – – – – – – – –
I really thank Steven Kopits wholeheartedly for his comprehensive comment that tries to over view the WFS meeting in the session on climate.
NOTE: The following is not intended to imply criticism per se of the WFS panel’s deliberation nor of Steven Kopits’ much appreciated efforts in overviewing.
I would like to make a few generic observations on a certain category of lists which is like the list of four (4) points he provided. I have highlighted his specific list in bold in his comment above.
First, these kinds of lists with very similar climate focused statements are common here on both WUWT and many blogs. One finds similar lists on profoundly pro CAGW sites and on profoundly con ones and on blogs committed to openness with well moderated mixed discussion of pro / con (and ‘luker’).
Second, such lists are often presented as having some sort of a logical progression of thought down through the items such that, when taken as a whole, they are either explicitly or implicitly assessed to be more significant than the individual statements themselves. A conclusion from the list is often assessed to exist. Often a conclusion is unmerited when viewed with formal logic.
Third, the context in which such lists are presented is sometimes defensive in the sense that the authors are showing that they do not deny some level of ‘orthodoxy’ in climate science. And sometimes when the context of making such lists is an attempt to demonstrate how the IPCC has purposefully understated its uncertainties and how the IPCC assessment teams manipulated the exclusion of skeptical research, then in that context we see questions about the possibility of a insignificant or non-detectable anthropogenic effect on climate. Also, when the context of such lists is to show that pseudo-science is involved in them then we get a discussion that goes to the most fundamental underpinnings of the Western Tradition in physical science and the philosophy of reason/science.
Fourth, the lists are profoundly incomplete in offering any reasonable treatment of the Earth-Atmospheric System’s: complexities; orders of magnitudes of many (some unknown) factors; lack of sufficient data; etc; etc . As a shorthand place marker in a blog dialog there may be limited justification for the lists. But I think the lists are more misleading than they are useful.
Fifth, the lists do not contain even rudimentary statements of essential premises nor basic relevant additional statements or corollaries; ones that even a reasonable brief presentation of our climate situation can offer.
John
I also attended the WFS Erice conference and agree 100% with Ross McKitrick’s comments (Ross two comments above). Despite the opening sentence in the above post (“It’s official”), no such position was officially taken by the WFS. Indeed, many participants in the conference hold diametrically opposite views.
What’s a magic gasser to do without there being any evidence there’s a “heating component” to the refrigerant, in a phase change refrigerated, gas bath?
Quibble over semantics.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
August 30, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Ros is correct that personal opinions have no place in science. However, the head posting did not state or imply the World Federation of Scientists had taken a position. It did, however, fairly, accurately and contemporaneously name four individual speakers – one from last year, three from this year – who had described global warming as not being a planetary emergency, and had done so at public sessions of the Federation at which journalists had been present. The journalists had chosen not to report what was being said, so I wrote up this surely blameless report for WUWT, which often carries news that the once-mainstream media sullenly refuse to report. I hope that readers enjoyed the news.
The head posting implied that the climate monitoring panel had come to this conclusion, and in a later posting Monckton stated ” yes, its climate monitoring panel consists of a dozen eminent scientists from all parts of the globe.” Where is the list of the dozen eminent scientists? Surely the chances of this announcement receiving coverage would be increased if the conclusion was associated with a dozen eminent scientists.
Regarding the lack of press coverage, unless I missed it, the WFS site contains no mention of the recent conference. There are no press releases online publicizing the event, no conference proceedings, no press releases highlighting conference presentations – nothing. If the WFS can’t be bothered to promote their own conference, is it any wonder it received scant to no coverage by journalists?