A letter to Paul Nurse

I am reproducing this letter with the permission of Professor Brice Bosnich, a retired chemist and a fellow of the Royal Society. He sent it to Paul Nurse on his election as president of the society in 2010. Nurse did not reply.

Dear Professor Nurse

I am a retired professor of chemistry in The University of Chicago. I also am a Fellow of the Royal Society. First, allow me to congratulate you on becoming president of the Society. You are about to live in interesting times, I am sure.

Click to read more ...

Two more reactions to Nullius

Two more reactions to the Nullius in Verba report have come from Donna Laframboise

To be a climate skeptic is to find oneself in an awkward spot. Eminent science organizations have publicly declared that human beings are causing dangerous climate change. Among these are the US National Academy of Sciences, the Science Council of Japan, the Académie des Sciences in France, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

How can rational, intelligent people not take their word for it? How can someone such as myself – who lacks any scientific training whatsoever – imagine that my own misgivings deserve to be taken seriously when such esteemed bodies have spoken?

and Hilary Ostrov

If you are new to the “climate wars” (as I still consider myself to be, even after more than two years on the battlefield), Montford’s chronology provides considerable context and background which, although specific to the RS, is echoed in the pre- (and post-) Climategate activities of other high profile and supposedly “independent” organizations.

Chivers on cosmoclimatology

Tom Chivers says he enjoyed his foray into climate a couple of days ago and has returned to the subject with a piece about Svensmark's cosmoclimatology theory.

...it's an interesting piece of research which adds to our understanding of atmospheric behaviour. As always, it's been leapt upon by "sceptics" who think all climate scientists are charlatans until those scientists say something they agree with, whereupon they're modern-day Galileos being placed under house arrest for heresy by the Church of AGW.

Click to read more ...

Nullius at Climate etc

Judith Curry has also written about my GWPF report.

In my recent presentation to the IAC, discussed on the thread Questions on Research Integrity and Scientific Responsibility,  I stated that I felt that issues of institutional integrity and responsibility were arguably issues of greater concern than the ethics and behavior of individual scientists.  Montford has lucidly described the “what.”  I am trying to understand the “why.”  I have an idea why individual and groups of climate scientists have been behaving this way (see my previous essay reversing the positive feedback loop), but why  the Royal Society?

I encountered Lord May at the Royal Society Uncertainty Workshop, and I liked his presentation Science as Organized Skepticism.  However at the end, or in the questions, he dismissed climate change skepticism.  Lord May is a biologist, where does his conviction on climate change science come from?  I am trying to understand this.

The "why" is a really, really difficult question, and I think there is no simple answer.

Nullius in the Financial Post

Canada's Financial Post has picked up my GWPF report, Nullius in Verba.

When Lord Robert May — a distinguished British population biologist — told a journalist: “I am the president of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over,” he was risking the reputation of the venerable institution he headed.

Presidents of national science academies are not meant to engage in ex cathedra statements, but to promote objective research. However, according to a devastating report this week from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Royal Society — former home to Newton and Darwin — has adopted a stance of intolerant infallibility over climate science and, even less appropriately, over policy.

The report, Nullius in Verba: The Royal Society and Climate Change, by Andrew Montford, is important to Canada not merely because of the continued threat of climate alarmism, but because the Royal Society of Canada has twice attached its name to intensely political statements from its British counterpart.

Quote of the month - Josh 147

With recent news  that wind farms have been paid a secret £13 million compensation to shut down over the last few months it is no wonder all those in the industry are hearing the clink of cash above the roar of the turbines.

Cartoons by Josh

Dellers on the GWPF report

James Delingpole has a blog post up on my GWPF report.

I've written about this several times before but because I was once the victim of a nasty stitch-up by the Royal Society's current president Sir Paul Nurse there's always a danger of it looking like sour grapes.

That's why I'm so heartened by the magisterially damning report on the Royal Society produced by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

We all have different roles to play in the great climate wars and Montford's, unlike mine, is to write with cool restraint. But though he doesn't title his report quite as provocatively as "The Royal Society is a joke" – that, essentially, his conclusion.

Ouch.

Is Tom Chivers serious?

Updated on Feb 10, 2012 by Bishop Hill

The news that Himalayan glaciers are not melting at all, let alone being set to disappear by 2035 has been exercising all and sundry today. Tom Chivers at the Telegraph has a somewhat snide piece setting out the facts.

Well, some of the facts.

The particular aspect that I want to look at is that ideaa that the glaciers will have disappeared by 2035. The story has been set out in great detail by EU Referendum. We know

Click to read more ...

HSI in Counterpunch

Another Hockey Stick Illusion sighting, this time in political newsletter, Counterpunch.

Anyone who believes groupthink is not a problem in the insular self-righteous climate science community, should read the Hockey Stick Illusion or wade through just a few of the infamous emails hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.)

Embarrassed science - Josh 146

IPCC head man Rajendra Pachauri famously dismissed criticism of the Himalaya's supposedly rapid ice melt as "Voodoo science". I think it has come back to haunt him.

Cartoons by Josh

Traces of Hockey Stick Illusion

Jim Sillars is an influential Scottish political commentator and a former UK MP. His latest article in the Scotsman shows signs of having read the Hockey Stick Illusion:

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched its infamous 2001 report, its chairman did so in front of a huge blown-up poster of the hockey stick. It got six mentions in the text. It was hailed as proof of the link between CO2 emissions and higher temperatures.

The “stick” was garbage. The long handle supposedly showing no significant temperature movement over 1000 years, missed out the Medieval warming period, and the little ice age. Those who proved it garbage were subjected to vicious attacks.

He also uses the Atte Korhola quote that appears as the epigraph to Chapter 17.

Nullius in verba

This has just been released:

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is calling on the Royal Society to restore a culture of open-mindedness and balanced assessment of climate science and climate policy.

In a new GWPF report, written by science author Andrew Montford, the Royal Society is urged to ensure that genuine controversies are reflected in its public debates and reports and that the full range of reputable scientific views are being considered.

“As the Society’s independence has disappeared, so has its former adherence to hard-nosed empirical science and a sober detachment from the political process. Gone are the doubts and uncertainties that afflict any real scientist, to be replaced with the dull certainties of the politician and the public relations man,” said Andrew Montford, author of the new report.

In his report, Andrew Montford describes the development of the Royal Society’s role in the climate debates since the 1980s. He shows the Society’s gradual closing of critical scrutiny and scientific impartiality and the emergence of an almost dogmatic confidence that climate science is all but settled.

In recent years, the Society has issued a series of highly political statements demanding drastic action on energy and climate policies from policy makers and governments. On the issue of climate change, it has adopted an increasingly political rather than scientific tone. Instead of being an open forum for informed scientific debate, the Society is at risk of turning into a quasi-political campaign group.

The GWPF report criticises the Society for being too narrow minded in its assessment of climate change and for failing to take into account views of eminent scientists and policy experts that do not accord with its own position.

In his foreword to the report, Professor Richard Lindzen (MIT), one of the world's most eminent atmospheric scientists, warns that "the legitimate role of science as a powerful mode of inquiry has been replaced by the pretence of science to a position of political authority."

 The report itself is here.

Lindzen in London update

Philip Foster emails that the Lindzen talk has moved to a bigger venue: Wembley arena Committee Room 10.

Committee Room 10 (bigger!) but, as always, still could be changed again. Trace it at Westminster itself by looking for room booked by Sammy Wilson MP.

St Stephens Entrance for security, then head for main lobby and ask at desks for directions for the room number.

Update on Feb 8, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Regarding more places: could folk now email Fay Tuncay:
faykellytun roundthingy gmail dottything com

Please could people bear with us as the main aim is to get MPs and/or their researchers to come plus the Press (Leo Hickman of the Guardian already coming!). There are still only a total of 120 places for the room, though some standing room is presumably possible also.

We are getting a trickle of acceptances from MPs which could increase as the week goes by (they go on half term break next week so they could be bearded in their constituencies). So if people could also go to or write to their MP and urge them to come that would be a great help.

Would indeed we could have Wembley!! Or even the main chamber of the Commons!

Don't sell your coat

Harold Ambler's Don't Sell Your Coat is a general introduction to global warming from the perspective of a card-carrying liberal who has had his eyes opened to all the problems with the AGW hypothesis.

This is one for the non-technical friend who needs a primer, an antidote to the propaganda that still seems to be all-pervasive. It's written with a lovely lightness of touch which should make it accessible to just about anyone. It has also been rather beautifully put together, with some very nice photos to pep up the inevitable graphs.

Here (with permission) is a chapter so you can see what I mean.

Buy it here.

Lawson in the FT

A nice letter from Nigel Lawson in the FT.

From Lord Lawson.

Sir, I would like, as a former energy secretary, to wish Ed Davey, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, the best of luck in his new job. He has the opportunity to enter the history books as the only minister to use his position to abolish it for the wider public good. The yoking together of energy and climate change has given this country the worst energy policy for a generation – bad for the economy, bad for industry, bad for the taxpayer and bad for the consumer. The time has come to put responsibility for climate change policy back into the environment department, where it properly belongs, and to put energy policy into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills from where Mr Davey has just emerged.

Nigel Lawson, House of Lords

Well, one can hope, I suppose.