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.
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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]
“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: @ur momisugly 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: @ur momisugly 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 @ur momisugly 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