;)
Reader Alex Henney sends a copy of a letter that he has recently sent to Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. It concerns our representative in Paris, Sir David King.
Dear Mr. Hammond,
Professor King and the Paris Conference of Parties
I write to object on several grounds to Professor King being UK climate representative at Paris.
The attached paper “The scientific flaws of the Committee on Climate Change and the expensive consequences” shows there is no need for significant concern about climate change.
Professor King knows very little about climate science and has a track record of naïve alarmism, if not semi hysteria:-
- In March 2004 he warned MPs that the Antarctic had already lost 40% of its ice and that the melting of the polar ice caps could cause a shift in the Gulf Stream which would lower temperatures in Britain and Europe by as much as 10°C. In fact the sea ice in Antarctica is at record extent since satellite assessment started in 1979. The IPCC does not rate the shift of the Gulf Stream as a likely risk
- In July 2004, as Government Chief Scientist, he attended an international seminar organised by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow[1]. He started by claiming that two thirds of the invitees were “undesirable” and should not be allowed to speak. He asked Blair’s office and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw (who was in Moscow) at the time to put pressure on the Russian government that a ban be implemented. Then he threw a tantrum and walked out after being challenged by Paul Reiter[2] about the melting of snow at Kilimanjaro. At the end of the conference Alexander Illarionov, Chief Economic adviser to Putin, gave an angry press conference and laid into King, see attached
- He claimed in evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs[3] that “The science of climate change is a mature subject” (p96) and he then effectively contradicted himself by admitting that the effect of water vapour (which is critical to the assessment of whether clouds create negative or positive feedback) “is very difficult to model” – i.e. we do not know. As Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science observed in a seminar in the Houses of Parliament in 2012, “Climate science is immature. It cannot forecast the past, let alone the future”
- In 2004 he incorrectly claimed that the earth’s temperatures had risen to their highest level for 60 million years”, which is definitely not true - temperatures in the Medieval Warming Period were possibly higher and they were probably higher, for periods 120, 330 and 410 thousand years ago to go back only that far[4]. He went on to suggest that by the end of the twenty-first century “Antarctica was likely to be the only habitable continent left on earth”, which is an absurd statement to say the least
- He gave a presentation at the London School of Economics which I attended. He showed a slide of CO2 levels and global temperatures over many millennia which was supposed to show the effect of higher CO2 levels on increasing temperature. But the temperatures increased before the CO2 levels increased. Cause does not follow effect, see my paper pp3, 4.
The book he co-authored “The Hot Topic” has numerous errors in it which are baseless scares:-
- p2 Gore’s polar bear nonsense – in fact with the ban on hunting they have increased in numbers
- p10 the exhibit of temperature from 1000-2000 is wrong, omitting the Medieval Warming period which the IPCC has now reinstated after the disgraceful pseudo-scientific episode of the hockey stick
- p23 “The ice cores also show that when carbon dioxide goes up, temperature goes up”. In fact what the ice cores show is that temperature precedes CO2 changes, see my paper pp3, 4.
- Despite the expenditure of £bns in research the IPCC has established no link between temperature and CO2, and has resolutely ignored the evidence of the sun’s influence on the climate. King runs this on p25.
- p26 He claims there has been a “dramatic rise in temperature in the last few decades” – not true; the increase in temperature from 1910-40 was similar to that of 1970s to late 1990s. And since then there has been no marked change in global temperature
- p30/ He claims “The final proof that greenhouse gases really are the problem comes from…Global Climate Models. In fact the models generally do a good job of explaining all the changes that have taken place in the twentieth century…” Neither of these claims are true, see my paper pp4, 5.
- p30 We have the scare story of Arctic ice disappearing – Arctic ice has recovered significantly, see my paper p8
- p49 “More Katrinas are likely to be on the way”. In fact he Great Miami hurricane of 1926 was more intense that Katrina. Chris Landsea, Science and Operations Officer of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, resigned from involvement in AR4 stating “There are no known scientific studies which show a conclusive link between global warming and hurricane frequency and intensity.” In a blog of November 2011 “Hurricanes and global warming” he observed that even if there were significant warming “The overall changes that may occur are relatively tiny and are several decades away.”
- p57 We are treated to the sea level scare of increasing rate of rise, which is not true. See my paper pp6, 7 – and scares about erosion and flooding and storm surges to coastal areas with the prospect of affecting billions of people – which we can ignore.
- p95 Under “Now for really bad news” we are told “it’s now almost certainly impossible to restrict warming to 2°C”. King is clearly ignorant of recent empirical research (as opposed to modelling) which shows that estimates of sensitivity have reduced, see Oversensitive: How the IPCC hid the good news on global warming, Nicholas Lewis and Marcel Crok.
Professor King is – or was – supposed to be a scientist. He should therefore be aware of Richard Feynman’s observation:-
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”.
The recently published report “Extreme weather and resilience of the global food system” is a waste of taxpayer’s money. In the foreword King states “we know the climate is changing”, which is a truism, “and weather records are being broken all the time”, which is nonsense. I am not going to waste my time criticising more of this stuff beyond observing that with an increase in population there could well be an increased risk to food supplies, but this is nothing to do with the weather. We have been here before starting with Malthus, on to the Club of Rome and the hysterics of Paul Ehrlich. (That said we should not be complacent).
There is a negligible chance that any agreement will be reached at Paris. The US Energy Information Administration has just published a briefing note on India’s coal plans, attached. Russia has stated it is not going to play, while China will go through a charade of words for the benefit of Obama.
As a citizen and taxpayer I take strong exception to Professor King representing me. His track record shows that he does not know what he is talking about, lacks judgment of reality, and appears to be intolerant of other’s views.
I copy this letter to Mrs. Rudd and to Professor King.
Yours sincerely,
ALEX HENNEY
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Extracts from Illarionov’s press conference on 8/7/2004
“These papers [presented by King and his team] differed dramatically from what is usually offered at international congresses and conferences. Simultaneously, they revealed an absolute – and I stress, absolute – inability to answer questions concerning the alleged professional activities of the authors of these papers. Not only the ten questions that were published nine months ago, but not a single question asked during this two-day seminar by participants in the seminar, both Russian and foreign, were answered…
The British participants insisted on introducing censorship during the holding of this seminar. The chief science adviser to the British government, Mr. King, demanded in the form of an ultimatum at the beginning of yesterday that the program of the seminar be changed and he presented an ultimatum demanding that about two-thirds of the participants not be given the floor…Mr. King spoke about “undesirable” scientists and undesirable participants in the seminar. He declared that if the old program was preserved, he would not take part in the seminar and walk out taking along with him all the other British participants. He has prepared his own program which he proposed, it is available here and my colleagues can simply distribute Mr. King’s hand-written program to change the program prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences…”
“Other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar. At least four times during the course of the seminar ugly scenes were staged that prevented the seminar from proceeding normally. As a result we lost at least four hours of working time in order to try to solve these problems. During these events Mr. King cited his conversations with the office of the British Prime Minister and had got clearance for such actions.
And thirdly, when the more or less normal work of the seminar was restored and when the opportunity for discussion presented itself, where questions on professional topics were asked, and being unable to answer these questions, Mr. King and other members of the delegation, turned to flight, as happened this morning, when Mr. King, in an unprecedented incident, cut short his answer to a question in mid-sentence realising that he was unable to answer it and left the seminar room.
It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government, and the reputation of the title “Sir” has sustained heavy damage.”
The transcript of the press conference was referenced in Booker’s book end note p137.
[1] Source pp114-116 The Real Global Disaster, Christopher Booker.
[2] Professor Reiter is a world leading specialist in mosquito-borne diseases. He resigned from involvement in AR3 because the IPCC insisted on claiming that global warming would encourage the spread of malaria. In AR5 the IPCC backed down stating “The many findings described above make it clear a vast body of scientific examination and research contradict the claim that malaria will expand across the globe and intensify as a result of CO2-induced warming.” Unlike Professor King, Professor Reiter takes care to ensure he knows what he is talking about. I did check with Professor Reiter about this episode and he confirmed it. In a letter to Nature he drew an analogy between the behavior of the “climate establishment and Lysenkoism, an illusion that became accepted as reality despite all contrary evidence, because it was continually affirmed at meetings and by the media.”
[3] Volume 2: Report, HL12-2, 6 July 2005, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12i.pdf
[4] See figure 3 in Carter’s book “Climate: The Counter Consensus”.