Calling all UK Skeptics – Free Talk with 97% Bias – plus the ability to ask questions

UPDATE: It’s a double feature, Mann will be there too, see below

From the University of Bristol: Dogma vs. consensus: Letting the evidence speak on climate change

19 September 2014, 6 pm Victoria Rooms, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1SA

In this Cabot Institute public lecture, we are pleased to present John Cook, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland and owner of the Skeptical Science blog, in what promises to be a fascinating talk.

In 2013, John Cook lead the Consensus Project, a crowd-sourced effort to complete the most comprehensive analysis of climate research ever made. They found that among relevant climate papers, 97% endorsed the consensus that humans were causing global warming. When this research was published, it was tweeted by President Obama and received media coverage all over the world, with the paper being awarded the best article published by the journal Environmental Research Letters in 2013. However, the paper has also been relentlessly attacked by climate deniers who reject the scientific consensus. Hundreds of blog posts have criticised the results while newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe have published negative op-eds. Climate denial organisations such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Heartland Institute have published critical reports and the Republican Party organised congressional testimony against the consensus research on Capitol Hill. This sustained campaign is merely the latest episode in over 20 years of attacks on the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. John Cook will discuss his research both on the 97% consensus and on the cognitive psychology of consensus. He will also look at the broader issue of scientific consensus and why it generates such intense focus from climate deniers.

Registration

You must register for this event. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dogma-vs-consensus-letting-the-evidence-speak-on-climate-change-tickets-12288231431?ref=ebtnebregn

This event is free to attend and open to all.  Please contact cabot-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk if you have any accessibility requirements.

The event will run from 6 pm – 7.30 pm.  Please ensure you are seated by 6 pm.

================================================================

Note: I registered since I’ve always wanted to come to England anyway, and this was as good as an excuse as any…plus I have many questions to ask. Note also that while the event is free, there are a limited number of tickets available.

All that is required is an email address and name. The ticket was delivered by email as a printable PDF – Anthony

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UPDATE:  Guess I’ll be staying longer. I just registered for this one too:

Cabot Institute Lecture: The Hockey Stick and the climate wars – the battle continues

23 September 2014, 6 pm The Victoria Rooms, Queen’s Rd, Bristol, BS8 1SA

In this special Cabot Institute lecture, in association with Bristol Festival of Ideas, Michael E Mann will discuss the science, politics, and ethical dimensions of global warming in the context of his own ongoing experiences as a figure in the centre of the debate over human-caused climate change.

Dr. Michael E Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. He is author of more than 160 peer-reviewed and edited publications, and has published books include Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming in 2008 and The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines in 2012. He is also a co-founder and avid contributor to the award-winning science website RealClimate.org.

Registration

This event is free to attend and open to all but you must register to attend.  We expect this event to be very popular so we encourage you to register as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.  If you can no longer attend this event, please email cabot-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk so that we may reallocate your ticket.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/custombutton?eid=12014388359

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thomam
July 16, 2014 6:52 am

How apt that Cook and Mann will be appearing at a location with a “BS” postcode

Chris4692
July 16, 2014 6:53 am

rogerknights says:
July 16, 2014 at 6:36 am

Isn’t that Lew’s Lair too? Why wasn’t he invited to speak as well?

You have to be from over 50 miles away to be an expert.

Steve Keohane
July 16, 2014 6:55 am

Sundance says: July 16, 2014 at 5:44 am
I wasn’t aware that John Cook spent his entire life studying cognitive psychology and was an expert in the field.

Isn’t a life of cognitive dissonance close enough?

latecommer2014
July 16, 2014 7:01 am

Realscience has won an award!!??

Alba
July 16, 2014 7:04 am

Looking forward to the outcome of Anthony’s attendance at this event.
With regard to Godwin’s Law (see comment from Barry Woods) here is another example of this law (if it is a law). That is the inevitability of someone sooner or later describing a view with which they disagree as ‘religious’. It is quite common on this site to find comments referring to AGW as a ‘religion’. Why people have to use the word ‘religion’ in this context is a bit baffling. After all, lots of people would regard Marxism in the same way but it is unlikely that they would call it a religion. And then there are the inevitable, highly misinformed, references to the Inquisition.

July 16, 2014 7:15 am
Taphonomic
July 16, 2014 7:21 am

Will Cook be posing for pictures in his SS uniform?

D.I.
July 16, 2014 7:26 am

It’s no good running around wasting time and money on an event that may be all talk and no answers.Check out how much time will be allowed for questions first.
The link to the organiser is here.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dogma-vs-consensus-letting-the-evidence-speak-on-climate-change-tickets-12288231431?ref=ebtnebregn

D.I.
July 16, 2014 7:29 am

Sorry direct link doesn’t work,use the contact button at bottom of page.

Mickey Reno
July 16, 2014 7:30 am

hot under the collar wrote: Can’t bear the thought of Anthony dressed in a “300″ outfit being run over by “mein fuhrer Cook” in his tank. ; > )

Don’t worry. Anthony’s amazing ‘300’ abs can deflect even armor piercing tank rounds. hahahahaha
But seriously, what really disarms is that Anthony listens and behaves like a reasonable human being, whereas Cook, Mann, Lewandowsky and Nuccitelli come across as angry, smug, intolerant, dogmatic whingers with delusions of grandeur. Get a little of that distinction on the BBC, and boy howdy, things could turn south for the ’cause’ in a hurry.
Remember Gavin Schmidt’s appearance on the Stossel show, wherein he walked off the set to avoid sharing a stage with Dr. Roy Spencer? As bad as it looked, there may have been some perverse cost-benefit self awareness in Gavin’s decision to act like a petulant child on national television. Maybe deep down in his psyche, he didn’t want to be compared with Dr. Spencer, who comes across as a competent, kind, confident and a happy person to boot. The ‘team’ needs to maintain a public narrative of its intellectual superiority over us Neanderthal deniers and it needs the press on board to do this. Gavin might have realized he risked torpedoing that narrative with his own arrogant smugness or even with obvious discomfort at simply hearing a reasoned voice from the other side, in a forum where he had no Bore Hole to flush away offending ideas and words.
Make sure and get video.

RH
July 16, 2014 7:30 am

“This sustained campaign is merely the latest episode in over 20 years of attacks on the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming.”
The latest attack on the consensus being that waged by the Earth itself, and it’s stubborn refusal to actually heat.

LogosWrench
July 16, 2014 7:37 am

There was a 97% consensus the earth flat. There was a 97% consensus that travelling over 35mph would cause one to burst into flames due to friction. Prior to Neils Bohr there was a 97% consensus that a career in physics was waste of time because there was nothing more to know (except for that pesky black body problem but that was probably nothing). I could go on so excuse me if I’m not impressed by consensus.

Bad Apple
July 16, 2014 7:39 am

Just hand out some buttons:
Argumentum ad populum!
2+2=5 !

July 16, 2014 7:47 am

Alba says:
Why people have to use the word ‘religion’ in this context is a bit baffling.
Regarding eco-religion, Crichton nails it:

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die — unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability.
Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people, with the right beliefs, imbibe.

~ Michael Crichton

San Francisco

September 15, 2003

Tilo
July 16, 2014 7:54 am

We have a spotless sun today.

Man Bearpig
July 16, 2014 7:55 am

This is a job for the ‘Dark Lord’ – Has he put himself forward as a potential speaker or debater ?

H.R.
July 16, 2014 8:02 am

auralay says:
July 16, 2014 at 6:21 am
“I have just booked both. Very excited at the thought of seeing a legendary giant of the climate change world. Guess I can put up the presence of Cook and Mann for that!”
==============================================================
Nicely put!
(Take notes. I’ll look for your impressions/observations in comments.)

Russ R.
July 16, 2014 8:08 am

Assuming the reviews conducted by the SkS team are unbiased, it’s fair to say the following about the findings of Cook et al. (2013):
1. Of the 11,944 abstracts reviewed, the majority (7,930 or 66.4%) were found to have no position on the cause of global warming.
2. Of the 4,014 abstracts that were found to hold a position, the reviewers found:
i) a 97.1% implied consensus that humans are a cause of recent global warming;
ii) a 24.6% explicit consensus that humans are a cause of recent global warming;
iii) and a 1.6% explicit consensus that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming.
I frequently cite the 1.6% consensus that humans are the primary cause of global warming.

July 16, 2014 8:18 am

Tom Wysmuller says:
July 16, 2014 at 4:59 am
Of course, there is plenty of time to invite a speaker from the Heartland Institute for this event.
This way there will be true academic discourse available for attendees. But I am told that this doesn’t exist in the UK any more. I hope to be proven wrong by the University of Bristol.
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Sorry, you can forget about that. Bristol employed Lewandowsky, for heaven’s sake.

vigilantfish
July 16, 2014 8:31 am

Just flung a few funds to help out with the trip. Bristol is well worth a visit – enjoy your visit.
I admire your fortitude in planning to spend time with this lot of science perverters. Hopefully you’ll be able to score a few points!
There’s a possibility that I might be passing through — en route to another conference — for a brief visit with relatives that week. It would be really neat to meet up with other skeptics.

July 16, 2014 8:33 am

Careful, now. This could all be a Lewandowsky plot. You could become featured in Recursive Fury 2.

vigilantfish
July 16, 2014 8:39 am

lucia liljegren
Megabus also allows you to books seats on some ordinary train runs from London to Bristol. My husband and I and two sons travelled from Bristol to London for a total of GB 80 pounds (one way – a relative drove us to Bristol from London). Ordinary fares can run higher than that per person one way, so this was a tremendous bargain.

TomRude
July 16, 2014 8:52 am

You all noticed how regardless of facts and science, the AGW train continues, defying all odds of sanity… You read that Obama’s USA influence is waning in a servile media preparing the next wars by charging the White House of indecision and next welcoming Clinton militarist agenda as a “renaissance” of the US… Meanwhile Obama’s administration’s very busy training ISIL in Jordan in 2012, teleguiding Neofascist groups in Kiev and destroying all Europeans economy links with Russia in order to promote their own free trade.
This is no coincidence. This is the globalist agenda at work. More misery, state control will result of this. Watch out…

Steve (Paris)
July 16, 2014 8:53 am

Going to be in Bristol the week before darn it

richardscourtney
July 16, 2014 9:03 am

Anth0ny:
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help your visit to the West Country.
I am amazed at how quickly things have changed.
In 2008 I attended a Climate Event in Bath that was to be addressed by Jonathon Porritt. Prior to the event I asked to be allowed to speak and was told that if I attended I would be allowed to ask a question. Porritt brought an IPCC Author to answer technical questions on his behalf, and his address said nothing. Indeed, the meeting Chairman asked Porritt a pointed question as a method to obtain anything of substance from him. As far as I could ascertain I was the only climate realist who attended.
Now, Climate Events are to be held in nearby Bristol and notable climate realists want to travel from around the world to attend. The info. says tickets are limited so I will not apply for one because my health issues may prevent me from attending in September and I would not want to waste a ticket. But I will do what I can to assist attendees if asked because I think all climate realists need to unite in effective use of the opportunity.
Richard

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