Bishop Hill Geological Society does woo!
Dec 10, 2013 Climate: MWP 
From time to time I have noted the pronouncements issued by the Royal Society, and observed that those at the helm have used and abused the society's good name in order to advance their own political agendas: the fellows are rarely if ever consulted about the policy positions that are taken in their name.
Today the Geological Society has issued an addendum to its position paper on climate science, which appears to have been put together in exactly the same way.
The addendum, which can be seen here, as you might expect is something of a marketing pitch for paleoclimate: both for sensitivity (an area where the IPCC reckons it's so uncertain as to be virtually useless) as well as surface temperatures:
According to one recent study, it is likely that the area-weighted global average temperature for the 30 year period from 1970 to 2000 was higher than at any time in nearly 1,400 years. Tree ring data confirm that recent warming is unprecedented in central Europe over the past 2,500 years, and in eastern Europe over the past 1,000 years.
2500 years? Yessiree, that's the Marcott paper that's being cited! Put simply, the powers that be at the Geological Society have decided to turn the organisation into a laughing stock.
[Update - O Bothe tells me that they do cite Marcott, but it's not this statement that is supported]
Reader Comments (14)
Yet the fellows don't appear to be deserting the societies in significant numbers. Why not?
Not surprising really when you remember that the Presidents/Central Committees of these learned societies are all on the look-out for a "gong" at the end of their illustrious careers :-)
Of which there will be no possibility if they have the temerity to suggest that "the Emperor has no clothes".
Sorry but I have a reflex action to post this graph whenever I see Marcott mentioned and then double up laughing.
Are they seriously quoting that?
Yes they cite the Marcott paper. But it's not the Marcott paper in your blockquote.
I choose a different location in the addendumg:
25 and 26 are the references
25 Büntgen, U., Tegel, W., Nicolussi, K., McCormick, M., et al., 2011, 2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility. Science, 331, 578-582.
26 Büntgen, U., Kyncl, T., Ginzler, C., Jacks, D.S., et al., 2013, Filling the Eastern European Gap in Millennium-Long Temperature Reconstructions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (5), 1773-1778.
The quote of the Marcott paper is (as far as I can see):
11-13 are
11 Wanner, H., Beer, J., Bütikofer, J., Crowley, T.J., et al., 2008, Mid-to Late Holocene Climate Change; an Overview. Quaternary Science Reviews, 27, 1791-1828.
12 Marcott, S.A., Shakun, J.D., Clark, P.U., and Mix, A.C., 2013, A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years. Science, 339, 1198-1201.
13 Vinther, B.M., Buchardt, S.L., Clausen, H.B., Dahl-Jensen, D., et al., 2009, Holocene Thinning of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Nature, 461, 385-388.
When we see the same methods employed by science societies throughout the world who can doubt it's global power politics at play. The malign influence of the UN has much to answer for...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/16/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/
"the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs....It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist"
It seems the 'money flood' is simply irresistable and has washed away any vestiges of integrity amongst the senior members of these societies. For shame!!
Does any Geological process do .. well, much of anything in 2,500 years?
Harrabon cited Marcott a while back, on the BBC News website. Hockey Stick graph the centre of the article. I pointed out to them that the paper noted that the "hockey stick" portion of the graph was stated, in the paper, "not to be robust". This of course was not noted in the Harrabin article.
BBC response? "The paper has been peer-reviewed".
God help us.
The Bishop's earlier thread dissecting the Ted Neald Telegraph article in November attracted several fellows' comments giving good insight to the current controlling clique in the Geological Society versus the attitude of the general fellowship to AGW. Particularly a comment by 'Mushroom', here
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/11/19/ted-nield-gets-it-wrong.html#comment20557022
Henry Galt said:
Does any Geological process do .. well, much of anything in 2,500 years?
Volcanic eruptions? Despite those, I would have thought that asking geologists for information about the last 2,500 years would be a bit like asking historians for information about what happened this morning.
The reason for provision of tenure to academics was to ensure that they were not 'punished' for their views and could speak without fear; thus removing the stick. It would appear that what is also needed is for tenure to prevent the carrot of venal advatage from stating views as ethics seems to be trumped by funding a little too easily.
The 'letters published' is the most informative part of the Geol. Soc's website. There has been a steady to and fro of letters from the membership on this fractious subject ever since the society created their 'position statement'.
This is the most recent letter published, but I am sure it won't be the last.
Climate Change and the Society's stance 16 October 2013
Received 16 OCTOBER 2013
Published 16 OCTOBER 2013
From Stephen W Foster
Sir, I write in response to the letters of J G Gahan (21. 8. 13) and C Summerhayes' response (24. 9. 13). I wish to add my voice to that of J G Gahan: the Society and the IPCC do not reflect the views of all members of the Society or of all, or even a majority, of meteorologists, climatologists and physicists. I also found parts of Summerhayes’ letter to be condescending: those who disagree with the IPCC and its supporters do not use textbooks to learn about the current status of scientific research because we are fully aware of the biased and unreliable nature of such sources. Instead we use original scientific reports, albeit different ones from those used and quoted by Summerhayes and his colleagues. A central presupposition of Summerhayes' letter, and that of the GSL statement on climate change, that CO2 concentrations are a direct cause of temperature change has not been proved by any of the statements in this or any other of his letters or IPCC reports, or by any research data. It may be true that "we can see from the past that the climate warms when CO2 goes up", but it is equally valid to state that "as temperatures rise, so too do CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere". Correlation is not the same as cause.
I therefore ask that Prof Summerhayes consider and respond to the following criticisms with hard data rather than opinion disguised as fact.
Why has the IPCC in its latest report:
1.failed to explain its twenty three year long track record of proven inability to accurately predict climate change?
2.not publicly and fully disclosed inherent flaws in its methodology that have been repeatedly pointe out by its critics?
3.kept silent on other climate theories and models that are far superior to those used by the UN-IPCC?
In addition he needs to explain why all global temperature indices from the primary US government and UN sources of global temperature data and trends show that there has been no effective growth in the Earth’s temperatures for sixteen years. (Ad hoc arguments about thermal transfer from the ocean surface to the depths (again unsupported by any substantial data), will not do). Two global climate parameters, atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, have been in steep decline for seven and ten years, respectively, yet Summerhayes does not mention this anywhere. The criticism do not stop there. The AR5 Summary (of the most recent IPCC report) fails to account for the fact that this Summary and all previous UN- IPCC reports and associated global climate models (GCM) have failed by a wide margin to accurately predict climate change.
Why is this so if the underlying assumptions of CO2 levels forcing climate change are true? In a recent report by the Space and Science Research Corporation (an independent body which has no links with any political bodies), 19 claims or climate predictions in the IPCC Summary were evaluated. Five of these claims were found to be misleading and 14 were found to be false or highly unlikely. None were found to be accurate. These are serious and extremely worrying observations which call into question the integrity of the science which is being used to justify the claims of the IPCC and its supporters, and the statement of the GSL on climate change, and these cannot be ignored, yet they continue to be so. Many meteorologists and climatologists have therefore come to the very reasonable conclusion that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere may be a response to, and not a cause of, temperature change, and have anyway long since recognised that simplistic, linear, single causes of complex processes are a product of a naive and outmoded approach to scientific problems.
I am very aware that this subject has long since moved from being one where contrary opinions can be held and debated in relatively balanced manner and that it has become politicised to such a degree that it is now almost impossible to hold a reasoned debate. Instead we are being presented with spurious statements about "95% probabilities" of certainty which deliberately ignore contrary data and the considered opinions of many well informed individuals from a wide variety of relevant disciplines. Science is not a democracy - we do not vote on the data, nor is an idea correct just because an influential group supports it. It is a method whereby we try to better understand our material world and how it works, and this inevitably means that contrary opinions will be held and need to be assessed against all of the relevant data. Only when contrary opinions are respected and refuted with relevant data can we hope to return to a sensible debate and perhaps gain a better understanding of the complexity of the Earth's climate.
In the meantime the wider public are being deceived by a series of pseudoscientific reports largely driven by the politics of academic science. The very real danger here is that science in general, and this Society in particular, will suffer from a collapse of confidence by the general public when the political machinations that lie behind the alarmist and unrealistic claims and predictions of the IPCC and its supporters are revealed as the Earth's climate cools over the next decades. Those who cry wolf need to consider the longer term consequences of their foolhardiness and think more carefully about how they present their case.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/~/link.aspx?_id=CA77B67B-C9A5-443E-B032-A6C4061FAB72&_z=z
Great letter, Pharos.
Well said, Stephen Foster.
Silence will be the response from the Geol. Soc. ruling clique.
Pharos: re: Stephen Foster’s letter:
Colin Summerhayes gave a good response, but seemed determined on insisting that CO2 was the cause of global warming (while still insisting on referring to it as climate change – perhaps I am wrong, and “climatometers” do exist), while not even attempting to explain why, with the levels of CO2 continuing to rise, the temperatures have not.
Martin Lack’s subsequent attempt to “fill the vacuum” left little but a bad taste of political name-calling:
Left-wing or not, we are being over-taxed and over-regulated; if there is a great deal of evidence of the right-wing conspiracy, please cite at least some of it!Which displays either a charming naïveté or wilful blindness; but which?I look forward to the same level of disparagement of geology degrees as we witness from denizens of this site against PPE, Economics and Psychology. - for the braindead, you can read PPe at Oxford without dong very much economics at all.