Ben Webster in The Times writes:
Alarmist claims about the impact of global warming are contributing to a loss of trust in climate scientists, an inquiry has found.
Apocalyptic language has been used about greenhouse gas emissions as “a deliberate strategy by some to engage public interest”. However, trying to make people reduce emissions by frightening them has “harmful consequences” because they often respond suspiciously or decide the issue is “too scary to think about”.
The inquiry, by a team of senior scientists from a range of disciplines, was commissioned by University College London to find better ways of informing the public about climate science.
Public interest in climate change has fallen sharply in the past few years, according to a survey last month which found the number of Google searches for the phrase “global warming” had fallen by 84 per cent since the peak in 2007.
Confidence in climate science was undermined in 2010 by the revelation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN scientific body which advises governments, had falsely claimed that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.
Scientists have also been accused of exaggerating the rate of loss of Arctic sea ice by claiming the North Pole could be ice-free in summer by 2020. Other scientists say this is unlikely before 2050.
Claims were made a decade ago, and later retracted, that the snows of Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, could disappear by 2015.
The inquiry, led by Professor Chris Rapley, former director of the Science Museum, concludes: “Alarmist messages that fail to materialise contribute to the loss of trust in the science community.”
The report says climate scientists have difficulty “delivering messages that are alarming without slipping into alarmism”.
It says the media is partly to blame for seeking “a striking headline”.
However, the report says there was also a “preconception that communicating threatening information is a necessary and effective catalyst for individual behaviour change”.
It says the “climate science community” is quick to challenge those who downplay climate change but less willing to question “alarmist misrepresentations” of climate research.
Doom-laden reports may make people feel anxious but their concern does not last.
“Over time this worry changes to numbness, desensitisation and disengagement from the issue altogether.
“The failure of specific predictions of climate change to materialise creates the impression that the climate science community as a whole resorts to raising false alarms. When apparent failures are not adequately explained, future threats become less believable.”
The report says the 30,000 climate scientists worldwide are at the centre of an intense public debate about key questions, such as how we should obtain our energy, but are “ill-prepared” to engage in it.
It adds that this difficulty in communicating their work is “proving unhelpful to evidence-based policy formulation, and is damaging their public standing”.
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The Australian Bureau of Meteorology have just announced, that warmer temps will continue into spring, because of the El Nino. Now yesterday and the day before a cold front came through and delivered unusual snow falls, electricity black outs in Victoria. The sky fields in NSW and Victoria had a really good dump, and temps there went to minus 20 C. The cold wind and temps are still down and actually I think they must all live in the NT or North Queensland!
CRS, DrPH says:
June 24, 2014 at 9:04 am
Good, let’s shake out the amateurs & rascals and get down to business. I’m a former consultant to BOC Gases (now Linde) . . . .
Thanks for the link CRS. I’ve added this to the comprehensive list of anthropogenic ways of manufacturing CO2 – from yeast fermentation (in global bread production) to human cremation.
And it all still accounts for just 3.225% of all CO2 (96.775% of CO2 being naturally occuring).
“Climate burnout is fast approaching”, . It really is. I am so tired of hearing all the BS everywhere I am even not coming to WUWT site as much as I used to. We have just had one of the coolest June and springs I have recorded but every one just brushes it of.
When did the Union of Climate Scientists and the Sci-Fi Screen Writers Guild merge? Was it 1984? Can someone do a Wiki search?
Terry Oldberg says:
June 24, 2014 at 8:22 am
“In Chapter 11 of the report of Working Group 1 in IPCC Assessment Report 5, the IPCC breaks new ground by presenting model predictions and comparing the predicted to the observed relative frequencies of the associated events. It follows that a portion of the claims made by these models are falsifiable. Are these models falsified by the evidence? This is a scientifically interesting question..”
Too little too late. Warmism is populated to 90% by NGO apparatchiks and every sociologist/ethicist/philosopher there is anyway. Western science has become one big parasite bent on sucking the system dry. The parasites will not allow any modeler to suddenly come clean. Look what happened to them in Oz. They will fight to their death to keep the juice flowing.
Which will be very amusing to watch as we go into the death of the Petrodollar.
rabbit says:
June 24, 2014 at 8:07 am
When “An Inconvenient Truth” came out, climatologists should have been lined up denouncing the movie as alarmist and inaccurate. Instead they seemed to take the view that lying for a good cause is excusable.
Along that line, an interesting poll was released recently describing the priorities of six different political groupings: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals.
Of the six, only Liberals put “Climate Change” ahead of “Morals” on their scale of importance. Very telling, I thought.
CRS, DrPH says: June 24, 2014 at 9:04 am
We harvest carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to use in beverage carbonation. Carbon dioxide is a very valuable substance. The plants will be gasping for CO2, we’ll pull so much out of the air.
______________________________
And I … hic … will be putting … hic … it all back in the atmosphere … hic … with each gin and tonic … hic … and gin and tonic. And did i mention … hic … with each gin and tonic??
Rod Everson says:
June 25, 2014 at 7:50 am
“…an interesting poll was released recently describing the priorities of six different political groupings: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals.”
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Please provide a link to the results of that poll.
Reap, sow, etc. Back to work!
For years, I was silent on the issue but I am a meteorologist and I owe it to my science to speak what I see as the truth. And what I see is that climate change, by 2007, had become the most over-rated environmental problem of all time.
The problem with this is that Atmospheric Science and science and environmentalism in general will lose a great deal of credibility. The next time, no one will listen.
If I look ahead to the year 2025, what do I see? IF the warming “hiatus” ends, (big ‘if’) and the 50 year trends resume immediately, then in the year 2025, we have this to talk about…
The first quarter of the century will have 0.1 deg C warming
The first quarter of the century will have 2″ sea level rise
The first quarter of the century will have no increase in extreme weather.
So, will the public and the politicians still care? Can those kinds of numbers in a quarter century possibly keep the interest…and the grant money…flowing? Will we still believe than deep ocean heat and methane bubbles could explode at any moment and push us past the tipping point ? Will we still fear that Miami and Tuvalu are goners ?
I suspect we are in the dying stages of the great global warming scare.
Perhaps I’m wrong and new data emerges and the issue persists. But I think the whole think is already dying a slow death.
To M. Brown… if you read some of the statements by supporters of AGW, humanity is a curse on the planet and the death of many millions will come as great joy to them. The result is the same whether this debate ended favorable for them or not. In addition, because this issue was debated by more than just experts, it has thrown the order of how things are done in science into chaos. This is a big issue with big consequences. So it is true if the warming starts again in a few years AND co2 is the cause, there will be so much doubt no one will listen. Then again they wanted that treaty so bad, I don’t think they were bluffing. Many people don’t know a treaty can not be overturned, Obama issuing edicts, and even congress passing laws, can be overturned.
By the way, among other failed predictions… the Artic was suppose to be completely ice free this past winter, not 2020 as they are saying now. Soon or not, depending, el Niño will come washing up and change the weather. I suppose the great hope among AGW is that it is huge. Hopefully it will occur, but be moderate, California needs the rain, but not too much. I don’t wish ill even at the expense of an argument.
An argument that would be believable to me is one that explains the recent past (last 1000 years) and makes fairly accurate predictions based on that about the future. AGW hasn’t done that. And from what I’ve seen of the science from the IPCC, they can’t.
Actually, I was trying to think of ONE prediction the Warmists have made thar came true. I can’t think of one.
Can someone, in one of these studies give, us a list of where they were right? Without back “adjusting” the data that is. Come to think of it even having adjusted the data, they’re still not right.
Shona:
Prior to the publication of AR5, the IPCC avoided making falsifiable claims (ones that have the property of being true or false) through the use of its climate models. Through use of polysemic terms (terms having more than one meaning) such as “predict,” the IPCC constructed arguments of the form that a philosopher calls an “equivocation.” Being neither true nor false, the conclusion of an equivocation is non-falsifiable. Being unaware of the existence of the related “equivocation fallacy,” most observers didn’t see through this deception thus reaching the logically faulty conclusion that a portion of the IPCC’s equivocations were falsified by the evidence.
In AR5, a portion of the claims that are made by the IPCC climate models are potentially falsifiable; they can be found in Chapter 11 of the report of Working Group 1. However, though each such claim is either true or false and though observed events are available by which the truth or falsity of each such claim can potentially be determined, the authors of AR5 do not tell their readers which of these claims are true and which are false. Thus, from the standpoint of a reader of AR5, all of the claims of IPCC climate models are effectively non-falsifiable. A non-falsifiable claim is unscientific.
In the wake of the publication of AR5 there continues to be no scientific basis for regulation of CO2 emissions. This is not, as commonly assumed, because a portion of the conclusions of the IPCC are false but rather is because these conclusions are neither true nor false. The makers of governmental policy on CO2 emissions have been deceived by the equivocations of IPCC-affiliated climatologists..
As I said elsewhere before:
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You might also try http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/eating-sun-fourth-estatelondon-2009.html to see what happens when taking the IPCC predicted temperature rise as ‘gospel’. After all, ‘temperature’ is another measure of ‘energy’ when bound to matter….
Our government is so desperate over this warming hoax they’ve decided to start the Cold War with Russia again.
” I suppose the great hope among AGW is that it (el nino) is huge. ”
Why do these people hope for disaster? The climate has changed shockingly little this century in the face of unprecedented CO2 release. This is cause for great joy and a hope that this trend holds for the good of mankind.
Apparently, the recent data suggests, we can have our cake and eat it too. Why such grumpy CAGW folks in the face of such good news ?