Bishop Hill Lawson lays down law
Jul 12, 2013 GWPF Royal Society The GWPF has issued a press release about the putative meeting with some climatologists nominated by Paul Nurse.
Lord Lawson, the chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has invited five Fellows of the Royal Society to meet him and his team in the House of Lords to discuss issues surrounding climate science and policy.
The five climate scientists, nominated by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, refused an earlier invitation to meet with the Director of the GWPF, Dr Peiser, and a small group of experts nominated by the GWPF. Although they gave no reason for their unwillingness to engage, the Fellows stated they would be happy to ‘advise’ Lord Lawson personally.
Lord Lawson said he was willing to give the Royal Society a last chance to engage in a genuine dialogue, at which he would be personally present. “If this [invitation] is not acceptable, I can only conclude that, regrettably, you and your colleagues are unwilling to engage in genuine discussion and debate about this important issue.”
At the same time, the Foundation has published the correspondence between the two men, which is well worth a read. My report on the Royal Society is discussed.
See it all here.
Reader Comments (127)
Sort of off-topic but felt the need to post this link.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/florida-hurricanes-occur-half-as-often-as-they-did-in-the-19th-century/
A betterer linky.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html
Schrodinger's cat
a) Examine the whole 130 years of the record. With the degree of short term variation and the slope of the long term trend typical of that record, 15-20 years is the minimum period over which you should expect significant change in temperature. No significan warming in 17 years proves very little, and the Met Office agrees with you.
b) The warmists do not predict a relentless warming. That is one of your straw men. The reality is much more complex.
c) The IR penetrates up to 32,000 molecules into the sea surface, heating (and therefore accelerating) the molecules which absorb it. Half of that energy tends to migrate up and energise evaporation. The rest migrates downward and causes a bulk temperature increase. You should pay more attention to the science and less to what some bloke on a blog tells you.
Try looking in the wayback machine which archives many sites. Maybe you will find it. I don't know.
There you go:-Now try finding someone at the-blog-that-cannot-be-named to help you find posts that have been deleted from warmist sites.
Jul 12, 2013 at 9:20 PM | michael hart
Still no luck.
Am I to understand that because an anonymous blog you dislike removes items, then GWPF should be free to misrepresent reality and then remove the item when it becomes embarassing?
I hope you are the only one here occupying this moral low ground.
Try looking in the wayback machine which archives many sites. Maybe you will find it. I don't know.
There you go:-Now try finding someone at the-blog-that-cannot-be-named to help you find posts that have been deleted from warmist sites.
Jul 12, 2013 at 9:20 PM | michael hart
Still no luck.
Am I to understand that because an anonymous blog you dislike removes items, then GWPF should be free to misrepresent reality and then remove the item when it becomes embarassing?
I hope you are the only one here occupying this moral low ground.
Jul 13, 2013 at 12:48 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic Man
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It's OK, Entropic Man, I wasn't really expecting you to be grateful to me for trying to help you, but I made the effort anyway.
Others who read this thread can draw their own conclusions.
Entropic Man, don't throw around this "moral low ground" guff.
It is you who made an unsubstantiated allegation against GWPF.
It is for you to substantiate it or else to acknowledge that it is unsubstantiated.
Thus far, given the vagueness of the claim, I am unable to believe you.
smiffy: "Dan Kahan, professor of psychology at Yale Law School, has conducted several studies of public views on climate change and finds that the causal mechanisms of the "deficit model" actually work in reverse: people typically "form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values." Our political views shape how we interpret facts. On an issue as complex as climate, there are enough data and interpretations to offer support to almost any political agenda."
I don't know what planet Dan Kahan has been living on but there is clear evidence that people typically form risk perceptions that mythical disasters are going to happen on the flimsiest of evidence. Just off the top of my head, we've had global cooling, nuclear winters, coal running out, peak oil, SARs, bird flu, AIDS, and global warming, that have all been taken as either pandemics, or physical disasters on the flimsiest of evidence, while, Hitler's threat was ignored and British intelligenzia supported Stalin's regime in Europe.
Jul 12, 2013 at 9:02 PM | Unregistered Commenter Entropic Man
I'm sure you intended to say "... main tools are ...";
But that aside ...from everything I've seen of your voluminous contributions here, some might conclude that you have used these "main tools" so frequently with the concomitant required absence of "rational argument" that - by your own definition - you could easily pass for a politician.
How can one be sure that you are not Deben or Yeo, or any number of other ill-informed politicians and/or politician wannabes like Nurse, for example - or even Bob <fast-fingers> Ward whose deficits in the "rational argument" department equal (if not surpass) your own?
In light of such observations, some might arrive at such conclusions and/or ask such questions. But I couldn't possibly comment!
@AlecM
Can I suggest filling the gap in double glazing with the wonder gas as a simple starting point, it should be a winner with the current rocketing energy prices.
Remove tongue from cheek.
[This is a response to a snipped comment. But yes, my sentiments entirely]
AlecM if you want to discuss back radiation etc, why not start a discussion thread rather than derail other threads. Just because 'climate scientists' produce nonsense explanations talking about back radiation heating the surface does not mean the simple greenhouse model can't be analysed using correct principles of physics, the only heating being done by incoming solar radiation.
The common denominator of most comments here is the evident failure of the commentors to digest the document on offer from the RS., one which seems on close inspection thoroughly factual.
Why should Lawson prefer the amatuer science of his son, his son's brother in law and his own hirelings at the the GWPF ?
Sorry Russell but attempts to blind with BS that work so well on SS and RC , don't work here.
The RS are backing out of a fight because they think they will lose , most odd considering the great claims of settled science so often made for 'the cause ' .
The irony is your right in a odd way Lawson does not have great understanding of the science , not that stops AGW prophets like Gore being treated like everyone they spout comes straight from god by AGW supporters. But he does have the types of BS smelling abilities the RS should have but seem to lost .
Russell, I have read the RS document but I have a problem. Let me explain
Now where did that come from?You see my difficulty. Here we are, at para 13, still in the introduction, and the Royal Society (no less) talks about the sun and forcings and the possible effect of these forcings and without blushing slaps the blame fairly and squarely on carbon dioxide concentrations (at least by implication) without even a nod in the direction of water vapour or even the slightest hint that the CO2/temperature relationship appears not to be working all that well.
And my BS meter is pegging again — and I'm still not beyond page 2.
I'm sorry, but the RS paper is simply a regurgitation of the dubious science that we have been fed for the past 30 years.
Score 5½/10.
Comment Must do better.
@Russell
"The common denominator of most comments here is the evident failure of the commentors to digest the document on offer from the RS., one which seems on close inspection thoroughly factual."
I don't think I have failed to digest it - and I agree it is, in the main, thoroughly factual. It is a bit of what I would call "solemn advocacy" - in which a weak case (a case known to be weak) is dressed up for the ill-informed by reference to accurate, but largely irrelevant, facts. Read the document again, and analyse its structure. There is a crucial transition in it between para 15 and para 16 (from what I might call "we need the evidence" to "here is the evidence"). I've written things like this myself and I sympathise with the authors. Now skip to para 36 and read it very carefully.
It is this sort of behavior by the RS folks that keeps raising the question:
Are the AGW hypesters all sincere?
Russel, EM, ZBD etc
The question is rather:
Why would Paul Nurse, with the weight of the RS behind him and his proffered stance on antropogening climate change (and dito policy implications)
1) Offer Lawson and GWPF that he "would be happy to put [them] in touch with people who can offer the Foundation informed scientific advice, should [they] wish" on the matter
2) Even name five 'distinguished climate scientists and RS-fellows' who would offer such advice
3) Then (at least so far) decline multiple offers for arranging such a meeting, and instead
4) Insist that such a meeting should be 'advisning Lawson personally' but seemingly
5) Demand a venue without any audience present and possibly too, without the oportunity to pose counterquestions or to challenge said 'advice'. In short, shun an open and honest debate
Why!? Particularly if he/they feel so confident about their stance.
And (at least in the Occam razor sense) the answers look bleedingly obvious to me:
Nurse and his learned friends do not want to present, argue, and possibly defend their stance and beliefs on a level playing field where others can see both them and the other side, and for themselves judge whose case is best presented, and more importantly what the case is at all ...
Also Paul Nurse's repeated strawmen and goalpost shifting (wrt to cherrypicking starting dates, Monford's report, GWPF's funding and ulterior motives, complaints about tone and pretence of wanting to 'help') indicate that the crux of the matter is something very different:
At the very face of it, he is not willing to live up to his pompous and condescendning 'offer' ...
Probably because he realizes that his position cannot gain from any exposure to its critics and a wider audience.
Geronimo:
May I suggest, if you are not already familiar with it, the late Aaron Wildavsky's "But Is It True? I believe it inspired Michael Crichton.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences seems a bit more open minded than the Royal Society. In the Chinese body there seems to be some sort of debate taking place. Our Royal Society presents a completely united front, rather like the unsmiling Politbureau surveying a May Day parade from the walls of the Kremlin during the Cold War. Ex-trots should understand the analogy.
China Questions Climate Consensus
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/07/china_questions_climate_consensus.html
From Gerbrand Komen " [Climate] models can simulate some aspects of the observed past evolution, but they have been tuned". I agree.
Roger Pielke Snr
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/vortragsankundigung-nacht-des-wissens.html?showComment=1373723329648#c5687171019354478585
I translate that as Climate science prediction of the future is complete nonsense.
Anyone who engages in drivel about climate sensitivity is playing for the other side. That includes lawson, Ridley, Monckton et al.
Good grief Smiffy! I actually agree with your point about climate sensitivity hehe
I suspect that Sir Paul Nurse's five worthies are not well pleased with him having droped them in it !
michal hart
My apologies to you and GWPF. I found the item.
http://www.thegwpf.org/arctic-sea-ice-on-the-rebound/
It's been very hot in Ulster in recent days. Heat makes me crabbed.
eSmiff
Tuning is a normal part of using models. Read thinkingscientist's comments on tuning permeability of rocks in his petroleum geology models.
I thought this was the most telling conclusion from the Royal Society summary of the science of climate change - says it all really.
eSmiff
Regarding tuning. I just read this at Climate etc.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/09/climate-model-tuning/
EM - More reading material on models:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/16/what-are-climate-models-missing/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/11/quote-of-the-week-nature-on-the-failure-of-climate-models/
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Another reason not to bother with the debate is that GWPF is a propoganda site.
GWPF would claim victory regardless of the outcome and you suckers would believe it.
Jul 12, 2013 at 9:27 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic Man
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vs
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michal hart
My apologies to you and GWPF. I found the item.
http://www.thegwpf.org/arctic-sea-ice-on-the-rebound/
It's been very hot in Ulster in recent days. Heat makes me crabbed.
Jul 14, 2013 at 1:46 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic Man
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Take care with that confirmation bias EM - especially when under heat stress.