It all started with a report by Roger Harrabin of all people. On Wednesday, under the headline ‘Society to review climate message’, the BBC website broke the news that the Royal Society was to review its public statements on global warming, and that this had been brought about by what appears to be an uprising within its ranks.
Disquiet led forty-three fellows of the Society to demand that the governing council should conduct a review in order to establish what is widely agreed on climate science, and what is not fully understood. At the heart of the rebel’s concerns is lack of objectivity about uncertainties and derogatory remarks about climate sceptics.
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of what is happening. The Royal Society occupies a very special place in the scientific firmament, not just in the UK, but worldwide. The impact of its very partisan outpourings about climate change is thought to have been crucial not only to the last government’s decision to put global warming at the top of the political agenda, but also in persuading national academies of science almost everywhere to throw their weight behind the warmist cause. The ructions behind the grand facade of 6-9, Carlton House Terrace will be watched closely by scientists everywhere, and there can be little doubt that if fellows of he Royal Society are prepared to stick there heads above the parapet, then others will follow their lead.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about this news is that no less than three panels at the Society are now considering the problem, and at leas two of them include a number of fellows who have doubts about the current state of climate science. Reaching an agreement will not be easy, and one fellow told Harrabin that it is by no means certain that reaching a consensus will be possible. The message that this would send to the rest of the scientific world would be even more potent than an admission that the evidence has been exaggerated. For years, the orthodox line has been that expounded by Lord May of Oxford when he was the society’s president: the debate is over and the science is settled. It will be very difficult to explain why the fellows of the worlds oldest and most highly respected scientific institution cannot even agree what the situation is among themselves, let alone why they have been misleading other scientists, politicians and the public for several years about the degree of consensus on this subject.
Since the BBC report appeared, the society has put out a statement on its web site claiming that the review has been planned for a long time. This reminds me of the response I received from the BBC Trust recently to a letter about their review of the impartiality of science coverage, and particularly climate change, which is taking place this year. They told me that this has nothing to do with the Climategate scandal or criticisms of the IPCC, it is a purely routine exercise that would have taken place anyway. Such claims do not enhance the credibility of institutions that make them.
Looking at the coverage of this story in the rest of the MSM, it would seem that the Royal Society has only spoken to the BBC, and other reports are based on Harrabin’s original story together with what little information is available on the Royal Society web site. This seems to have been hastily posted in response to the demands of the forty-three fellows. One, headlined, ‘Royal Society to publish new guide to the science of climate change‘ quotes the president, Lord Rees, saying:
Climate change is a hugely important issue but the public debate has all too often been clouded by exaggeration and misleading information. We aim to provide the public with a clear indication of what is known about the climate system, what we think we know about it and, just as importantly, the aspects we still do not understand very well.
His statement raises some questions. Has he just discovered that the debate has been ‘clouded by exaggerated and misleading information? If he has known all along, then where was he while that was happening, and why has he remained silent until now?
He also says:
Lots of people are asking questions, indeed even within the Fellowship of the Society there are differing views. Our guide will be based on expert views backed up by sound scientific evidence.
He appears to be horrified that:
It has been suggested that the Society holds the view that anyone challenging the consensus on climate change is malicious – this is ridiculous.
Those of us who can remember the Society’s antics when Bob Ward was its press officer, vigorously attempting to cut off funding from sceptics, will not be impressed.
In a report at The Times, Ben Webster identifies 72 year old Sir Alan Rudge as one of the leaders of the rebellion. Apparently the dissidents did not conduct a full poll of the 1400 odd fellows, but just contacted their friends, of whom a third were unwilling to sign the petition. Rudge told The Times:
“I think the Royal Society should be more neutral and welcome credible contributions from both sceptics and alarmists alike. There is a lot of science to be done before we can be certain about climate change and before we impose upon ourselves the huge economic burden of cutting emissions.”
He refused to name the other signatories but admitted that few of them had worked directly in climate science and many were retired.
“One of the reasons people like myself are willing to put our heads above the parapet is that our careers are not at risk from being labelled a denier or flat-Earther because we say the science is not settled. The bullying of people into silence has unfortunately been effective.”
Sir Alan is also a member of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation.
The article ends with a quote from Bob Ward, demanding that the dissident fellows should reveal themselves, presumably so that the warmist PR machine can start the process of character assassination that is their usual response to those who do not toe the party line.
Louise Grey, in The Telegraph, tells much the same tale. She has also spoken to Bob Ward:
But Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Institute of Climate Change, feared the public could misinterpret the new guide as reflecting doubt about man made global warming.
He called on the Royal Society fellows who question the science to come forward with their doubts publicly.
“This could end in public confusion if people think as a result of this the Royal Society is somehow wrong or reassessing the evidence because there is no justification for that,” he said.
Is Mr Ward really blissfully unaware that the Royal Society actually is engaged in reassessing the evidence, and that is because a section of its membership feel strongly enough about the Society’s public position to confront the Governing Council? The statements on the Society’s web site makes this quite clear; it is Bob Ward who is trying to create public confusion about what is happening.
I have posted about the genesis of the Grantham Research Institute here, and it is worth taking a glance at this as it shows just where Bob Ward is coming from, and I will be coming back to this and a rather strange series of interconnections between Ward, the Grantham Institute and the Royal Society, which bodes ill for the peace and calm of that august body in the coming months.
For a totally different perspective on the gathering storm, the obvious place to look is The Guardian, which has given Ward a whole page in which to spread confusion, but under the unintentionally ironic headline, ‘UK Royal Society revives confusion as US concludes climate change certainty’. Ward hammers home his supposedly killer argument about the sceptics within the Royal Society making themselves known:
But now, 43 of the society’s 1,489 fellows have written to complain about some of its statements about climate change published over the last few years. It is not clear exactly what the 43 have concerns about.
And because their identities have not been made public, we do not know whether any of them are climate researchers.
He is certainly on safe ground with his demand. No one in their right mind who is actively engaged in mainstream climate researche would own up to such heresy, for the moment at least. To do so would be an act of professional suicide, but if the Royal Society is forced to admit that there are vast uncertainties associated with global warming then that could change very quickly. Reputable scientists might not have to worry what the likes of Mr Ward say any more.
An editorial in Nature follows the same line of attack with the headline, ‘ Nameless fellows attack Royal Society’s climate stance’, but – another irony – the article is not signed. It concludes:
A new public document is being drawn up, but if the BBC report is right, then several sceptics are on the panel, which is making it tough to get anything done. Nevertheless, the society says the new guide will be released later this summer.
Am I alone in feeling that Nature’s reference to sceptics making it difficult to ‘get anything done’ is yet more confirmation that this once revered learned journal has left the days of objective coverage of science far behind, and strayed far into the murky realms of activism?
There is some fairly predicable arm waving from Sir John Beddington in another Guardian article headed, ‘Government chief scientific adviser hits out at sceptics’, which would suggest that his political antennae are far less well tuned than Lord Rees’s. In view of some of the things he has said about his faith in climate science, particularly to the House of Commons Science and Technology inquiry into Climategate, now would not seem to be a very smart time for him attack sceptics. If the Royal Society fails to endorse the level of certainty that he has been promoting when they revise their publications, or fails even to agree an official position because of divisions of opinion among the fellows, Sir John could find that the ground has been cut out from under him in much the same way as the chairman of the IPCC. And If the Royal Society is divided, what price the warmist’s mainstay in the climate debate: the claim that there is scientific consensus on global warming.
On Saturday, Roger Harrabin returned to the fray on his blog, but in a way that will surprise many who have become used to the BBC Environment Analyst’s usual line on climate matters. Here are a couple of excerpts:
After years of accusing the fossil fuel lobby of using anti-scientific arguments to undermine climate policy, scientists are now themselves accused of being un-scientific.
There are signs in the Royal Society’s current review of its climate communications that they are beginning to understand the seriousness of their predicament and have included some “climate agnostics” on the panels.
But it seems that message has not seeped through to all quarters. And one Fellow of the Royal Society said there’s the whiff of “end of empire” in the air as establishments strive to protect their authority as it ebbs away into the blogosphere.
Do I hear the desperate splash of oars as someone else who has become very vulnerable to changing circumstances rows desperately back towards the shore? This is not at all the kind of reporting that we have come to expect from Harrabin but then the BBC is having a ‘routine’ review of their science coverage.
Later in the post, he has something to say that is relevant to both the present crisis at the Royal Society and to the fiasco that is known as the Oxburgh Inquiry:
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, the Royal Society’s lead on climate change, told me he wouldn’t look outside the realms of the Royal Society for input into the framing of a society review into the UEA affair.
This reveals a very interesting series of relationships. Evidently Hoskins is the Royal Society’s big hitter on climate change, and he is also Director of the Grantham Institute, Professor of Meteorology at Reading University, a leading light in the IPCC ,and a contributor to the Climategate emails. Bob Ward was the press officer for the Royal Society during Lord May’s presidency, which was marked by claims about the science of global warming that went well beyond anything that the evidence would stand and has resulted in the present crisis.
It would seem unlikely that tranquillity will return to the Society’s imposing home in Carlton House Terrace anytime soon.
So let’s give the last word to that doughty seeker after truth, and conveyor of certainty where confusion exists, Bob Ward.
In an interview on the BBC’s Friday PM news programme, Roger Harrabin asked him whether he thought that the Royal Society’s guide to climate change was a reliable guide to the science. This is how he started his reply:
I’m sorry, but the reliable guide is the fact that the projections show that the earth is going to continue to warm in the future …
I think that it is safe to say that far more than forty-three fellows of the Royal Society would be likely to find that response either stupid, ignorant, or intentionally misleading, depending on the level of knowledge of the speaker.
The Royal Society story has not received much coverage in the MSM – yet. It may be that it will not do so directly, but within academic circles it is a convulsion of seismic proportions that may severely test the foundations that the whole edifice of global warming rests on. At the moment we can only wait, and watch the shock waves spread.
Geoff, thanks – yes, I do like my SF! Re the “get rid of the MWP” quote, I think this has been attributed to geoscience professor Jonathan Overpeck, but he appears not to have used those words in the way some people have been assuming – here’s a thread on Climate Audit which goes into what he did and didn’t say, might have said, could have meant etc., … It might be a case of reading between the lines, and “cave lector”, as it were.
PeterM
Yawn!
The papers I cited are being rejected by expert, Peter Martin, because the journals publishing them do not meet his personal approval or are not among those controlled by the so-called “mainstream” scientists.
Get serious, Peter. If you have something substantial to say about these studies, please do so. But leave out the silly rambling and side-stepping.
BTW the Wyant et al. paper came out after the “IPCC deadline”. It shows that by incorporating an improved modeling technique (superparameterization) a more accurate estimate of the cloud feedback with warming can be obtained than with the more crude models cited by IPCC. This improved method shows that the net cloud feedback is negative (rather than positive, as assumed by the more crude IPCC models), thereby agreeing with the physical observations made by Spencer et al.
So your statement
is false. You have to read the paper, Peter; then it will become “immediately apparent just how it supports” my case.
Max
PeterM
You wrote (and possibly actually believed what you wrote):
What basis do you have for your belief?
Please try to be specific.
Max
geoffchambers
You asked who said:
Ask Professor Deming who (like “Deep Throat” of Nixon days) is keeping mum on the source.
But Steve McIntyre over at CA has written recently:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/08/dealing-a-mortal-blow-to-the-mwp/
According to the report:
Those “fake emails” are almost as incriminating as those “fake tapes” were back in Nixon’s day.
Max
Alex Cull
Looks like our posts (Overpeck, Climate Audit) crossed.
Two great minds…?
Max
Thanks Alex and Max for your prompt answers. Clearly, I’m the only one who needs to organise his quote arsenal. As to “cave lector”, can I borrow that Alex? The perfect name for a troll’s blog, if I ever get round to creating a website.
Max: agreed! Geoff: you’re welcome!
Another recent take on the Royal Society’s “about face”.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/05/31/and-then-there-were-three-britain%E2%80%99s-royal-society-rejects-alarmism/
Max
Tony N,
You say “For years, the orthodox line has been that expounded by Lord May of Oxford when he was the society’s president: the debate is over and the science is settled.”
The guys at Realclimate are pretty orthodox and they question this line too saying that the science isn’t settled.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
I’m not sure about Lord May but certainly this phrase has been commonly used. The problem for us honest folk is that our words get twisted and spun by PR types. If we say that the science isn’t totally settled but is sufficiently settled to know that we should be cutting back on CO2 emissions, this will be reported as “scientists express doubts on the science of global warming!”
The public are being presented with a false dichotomy. Either science knows everything or it knows nothing. Of course when we say that of course we don’t know everything the inference is that therefore we …..
PeterM
You bring up a good point (34) when you write:
This is what happened to the words of the “scientists” (from IPCC A4) when the IPCC political “PR types” started their spinning and twisting to produce SPM 2007.
And then the media (in this case the New York Times on 2 February 2007) carried it a step further, changing the sentence:
to
So you are 100% right about words getting “twisted and spun by PR types”.
Max
PeterM
It is true (as you wrote) that “not knowing everything” does not equal “knowing nothing”.
For example, we “know” that it has gotten warmer over the past 150 year record (in 30-year “spurts”, with 30-year slight cooling “spurts” in between),
BUT
we “don’t know” WHY.
Max
Max,
What kind of knowledge are you seeking? If its absolute, then you are effectively asking for proof which we have all agreed isn’t possible. The knowledge which we do have points to human emissions of GH gases as being the likely cause of the warming.
You say that you ‘know’ that the world has warmed. However, as you say on the other thread, all scientists are a bunch of crooks who will do anything, say anything, write anything to squeeze an extra dollar out of the taxpayer so you can’t know that or anything else they tell us either! You have , by your own argument, pretty much nothing else to say on the subject!
I was reminded at the weekend, by one of my son’s aircraft books, that the RS has form. Lord Kelvin, then its president, asserted that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”, suggesting that (as now) the RS wasn’t very outward-looking, since various pioneers, such as George Cayley and Otto Lilienthal, had already made functional gliders.
More famously, Lord K also went on to say that “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
Plus ça change…
PeterM
You ask what kind of knowledge I am seeking that would provide scientific support for the dangerous AGW premise.
I am not looking for “absolute proof” as you seem to think despite the fact that I have told you this repeatedly.
I am simply looking for empirical data based on physical observations which provide scientific validation for the dangerous AGW hypothesis.
To get back on topic here, the RS should obviously be looking for the same if they want to claim the mantle of an objective scientific body, rather than that of a politically motivated AGW activist organization.
All scientists are certainly not a “bunch of crooks”, as you have written. Just a few bad ones and some overzealous political IPCC editors, authors and officers have given IPCC (and “climate science”) a bad name.
RS does not have this “bad name”; it’s just that some of its membership wants to ensure that its official stand on AGW meets the organization’s stated requirement of scientific objectivity.
Hope this clears it up for you.
Max
Max,
Robin seems to think that the sort of evidence which you are “simply looking for” is actually impossible to provide. And for once I do agree with him.
If its not proof which you are asking for, then the impossible standard of evidence is so close to it as to make no difference.
Maybe you’d like to explain the rationale of asking the scientific community a question on AGW and demanding an impossible standard for one of two possible answers. Suppose it was the other way around. For example, it has often been suggested that water is a more potent GHG than any other. However, science isn’t suggesting that fountains and humidifiers should be banned. The water vapour just doesn’t stay long enough in the atmosphere for it to be a problem. So, suppose we demanded the same impossible standard to justify that decision too. It just wouldn’t make any sense would it?
PeterM
Robin may believe it is impossible for YOU to provide (i.e. empirical evidence based on actual physical observations to support the dangerous AGW hypothesis), because IT DOES NOT EXIST.
That is what I think (because otherwise you, or someone else, would have provided it in order to provide scientific support for the hypothesis).
Ask Robin exactly what he means rather than simply guessing.
Max
PeterM
(As a physicist you know all this already, but maybe you forgot).
Galileo provided “empirical data based on actual physical observations” (the “leaning tower of Pisa experiment”) to provide scientific support for his hypothesis that objects of different weight (mass) fell at the same rate of acceleration.
With this empirical data his hypothesis was validated.
Very simple, right?
Max
In “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” (which Mrs P was watching this afternoon), a frustrated Sherlock Holmes is asked for his theory on the subject. He declares “I don’t have enough facts to form a theory!”
If only the warmists could learn similar restraint.
PeterM/Max:
I see the matter of my view on empirical evidence and impossibility has been referred to here as well as on the Hockey Stick thread. I think it may help to put the matter into context, quoting what I actually said. In March of this year (on the NS thread), we were, yet again (yawn), discussing AGW and empirical evidence. In his post 54 (25 March), Max outlined what he meant when he asked for empirical evidence supporting the dangerous AGW hypothesis, concluding by saying, “any empirical data that meets the definition will do”. Then, in post 55, I added a postscript that contained the words being mentioned. It may help to quote that post in full:
So you see, I didn’t say that it was impossible for empirical evidence for dangerous AGW ever to be identified. No, I said that I suspected that (unlike Herschel’s theory in the eighteenth century and unlike particle physicists’ expectation re their Higgs boson theory today) that may be the case now. That is still my view.
What is significant, however, is that Peter goes further stating that such evidence “is actually impossible to provide”. In so doing, he has completely undermined his own position: as I say above, “a hypothesis that’s unsupported by empirical evidence continues to be no more than a hypothesis”. That was true re the nature of nebulae, it’s true re the Higgs boson and it’s true re dangerous AGW.
An interesting development.
Robin,
Yes there is evidence that is impossible to provide, unless we test the earth to destruction to obtain it that is. I’ve said that many times. Nothing new there.
No amount of waffle can hide the simple truth that , by your own admission, you’ve been repeatedly insisting that science should provide something you consider to be impossible!
Where is the sense in that? On any rational basis there can’t be any. Your earlier comment that my request for clarification was “pathetic” shows you aren’t interested in rational discussion. No scientist would ever reply in such terms.
PeterM:
As promised, this my comment on your #45 (above) and your #169 and #172 on the Hockey Stick thread. (Where Max has done an excellent job at #173.)
For a long time, Max and I have been asking you to refer us to empirical evidence verifying the dangerous AGW hypothesis. That is standard practice for all scientific disciplines and has been since the Enlightenment: #44 gives two examples. There is no reason why climate science should be any different.
Essentially, empirical evidence is needed to substantiate two key claims: (i) that man’s GHG emissions, and not natural influences, were the principal cause of late twentieth century warming; and (ii) that, if such emissions are not reduced, the consequence will be dangerous climate change. The first relates to something that happened very recently and has been measured, examined and recorded in great detail. So, if the evidence exists, it should be possible to identify it. Yet you say that the production of such evidence is “impossible”. If that’s true, that must be for one of two reasons: (1) it isn’t possible to determine a method of identifying whether it exists or not; or (2) the evidence doesn’t exist.
Whichever it is, the evidence cannot be produced and dangerous AGW continues, therefore, to be no more than an interesting, but unverified, hypothesis – as we’ve been saying all along.
But you try to go further. As well as the expected (and pathetic) name calling, you seem to be saying that, despite your total failure to produce any relevant empirical evidence, you’re nonetheless sure that such evidence exists and (bizarrely) assert that it could be identified if we tested the earth to destruction. But (you go on), as that’s impossible (quelle surprise!), we must take it on trust.
That sounds like religion to me, Peter.
PeterM
Further to Robin’s 46, here is a link to a book, which describes the visit from “a distant star” of super-intelligent extraterrestrials to our planet in prehistorical times.
http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?Book=178383
It castigates the human race as non-civilized beings who are destroying their planet:
No empirical evidence is provided to support this hypothesis, but we should take it on trust and “change our destructive ways” before we “destroy one other”.
Sound familiar?
Max
Max:
Of course – you’ve put your finger on something I foolishly missed. I see it now: Peter is one of those super-intelligent extraterrestrials. That explains everything.
Max, Robin
You display all the characteristics of deniers. So to call you that isn’t name calling. Yes of course it is possible to obtain empirical evidence. There is plenty of it. The only question that matters is how much more CO2, and other GH gases, it is safe to add to the atmosphere.
Like the engineers at Chernobyl whose safety checks, ironically, caused the meltdown, one way to obtain even more evidence is to push the system further and further into the potential danger zone. I, for one, would rather do without this sort of evidence!
Can you now answer my question of why you think it is “impossible to define ” a means of obtaining the evidence you say we should have?
“super-intelligent extraterrestrial(s)” ??
I was going to say that yes I am from your planet! But on second thoughts, I must admit I’m not sure. Maybe I should be asking which planet you are on?
But two out of three isn’t bad :-)