A LETTER TO THE BBC

From Prof. John Brignell -- replying to a claim that the current scientific orthodoxy is not biased

Dear Richard Black

I will take your piece at face value and assume that you are not being disingenuous. What on earth makes you believe that we sceptics think that science is against us? We know that science is for us. Science and its methods are essentially sceptical. From the Bacons, through the likes of Locke, Hume and Russell, to the magnificent climax of Popper's statement of the principle of falsifiability, the scientific method was painfully established, only to be abandoned in a few short decades. The method was essentially sceptical, as Thomas Huxley put it:

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."

Scientists of the old school are not just sceptical about global warming, they are sceptical about everything. That is the way we were trained. Fortunately, even in this new era of blind faith, there are an admirable few among the new generation who also adhere to the principles of pure science.

It is not science that is against us, it is the Green establishment -- politics, media and, alas, the major scientific institutions and journals. Consensus had never had a legitimate place in science. As Einstein is reputed to have remarked, when the Nazis published a book in which one hundred German scientists pronounced him wrong, "It only needed one of them to be right." There was indeed a consensus in physics at the start of the twentieth century that "the science is settled", but that was blown apart by Einstein and his contemporaries.

As for the implication that there is no evidence of bias in publication and the award of research grants, that arises from one of the fallacies of the historical method. No one is going to write down the fact that they made a decision through pure bias. People do not leave behind an audit trial of their misdeeds for posterity. To see an example of how it works, you only have to look at the history of the editor of Nature jumping through hoops to prevent publication of valid criticism of the so-called hockey stick; or the authoritative Wegman Report. That theory was a ludicrous contradiction of the findings of history, art, archaeology, entomology and many other disciplines, yet it was strenuously maintained by voluntary censorship.

Take it from one who found it more honourable to take early retirement (and write independently about these and other matters) than conform to the diktats of the Green establishment; for the last decade there has been only one game in town as far as research is concerned. When your university is locked in a struggle for financial survival and is dependent on large chunks of taxpayers' money for politically approved programmes, you do not earn friends by rocking the boat. Thus, with a few notable exceptions, the sceptics (the true scientists) have been weeded out. Would-be researchers are told the fields in which funding is available. They are no longer physics, chemistry, engineering etc. They are new subjects, such as sustainability and pollution.

You create a Catch 22 situation by specifically excluding web sites as sources; for that is where the sceptics are now mainly obliged to operate, some of them very distinguished professors emeriti.

Your final paragraphs: "But if research is being skewed and distorted, we ought to know, because good climate science is the key to good climate policy. If it is not, then the most damaging accusation raised by the sceptical community will have been laid to rest" contain two misunderstandings. The first is one of hubris, that there can be a "climate policy". Human effects are orders of magnitude below natural ones and lost in the noise.

The second is in the way that science works (or, more accurately, used to work). If in any field there were a disagreement, a conference or colloquium would be called. The opponents would carry on a vigorous altercation to resolve the issue. Then they would retire amicably to the bar.

Now there have to be two conferences, one for the traditional scientists, which is largely ignored, the other a lavish media and political jamboree, which receives wide coverage. Furthermore, any sceptic who raises his head above the barricade can be assured of a campaign of calumny and ad hominem attacks from self-appointed guardians of political correctness.





INHOFE SAYS GLOBAL WARMING HEARING EXPOSED MEDIA ALARMISM

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, said today's hearing about the media and climate change revealed that "Scare tactics should not drive public policy." The hearing's purpose was to examine the media's presentation of climate science and featured scientists and media experts.

"As the Democrats rush to pass costly carbon cap legislation in the next Congress, today's hearing showed that the so-called `scientific consensus' does not exist. Leading scientists from the U.S. and Australia denounced much of the media for becoming advocates for alarmism rather than objectivity," Senator James Inhofe said.

"I was particularly interested in testimony by Dr. Daniel Schrag of Harvard University, who believes that manmade emissions are driving global warming. Dr. Schrag said the Kyoto Protocol is not the right approach to take and agreed it would have almost no impact on the climate even if all the nations fully complied," Inhofe added. Currently 13 of the 15 EU nations are failing to meet the requirements of Kyoto.

During his opening remarks, Senator Inhofe stated, "Rather than focus on the hard science of global warming, the media has instead become advocates for hyping scientifically unfounded climate alarmism." Senator Inhofe cited criticism from believers in manmade global warming who have slammed the media for presenting "a quasi-religious register of doom, death [and] judgment" and compared the media's coverage to the "unreality of Hollywood films."

Scientists testifying at the hearing described how much of the media has over-hyped the coverage of global warming and used scare tactics to garner public attention. Paleoclimate researcher Bob Carter of Australia's James Cook University, who has had over 100 papers published refereed scientific journals, noted that "there is huge uncertainly in every aspect of climate change."

"If you look at the ice core records, you will discover that yes, changes in carbon dioxide are accompanied by changes in temperature, but you will also discover that the change in temperature precedes the change in carbon dioxide by several hundred years to a thousand or so years. Reflect on that. And reflect on when you last heard somebody say that they thought lung cancer caused smoking. Because that is what you are arguing if you argue on the glacial time scale that changes in carbon dioxide cause temperature changes. It is the other way around," Carter testified.

Carter also noted that the media promotes "Couldism, mightism and perhapsism, fueled by computer modeling." Carter explained, "If, could, may, might, probably, perhaps, likely, expected, projected ...Wonderful words. So wonderful, in fact, that environmental writers scatter them through their articles on climate change like confetti. The reason is that - in the absence of empirical evidence for damaging human-caused climate change - public attention is best captured by making assertions about "possible" change. And, of course, using the output of computer models in support, virtually any type of climatic hazard can be asserted as a possible future change."

David Deming, a geophysicist from the University of Oklahoma, testified that "Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked [by the media] with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed on this and other environmental issues."

Dan Gainor of the Business & Media Institute noted that reporters are violating their own code of ethics with their one-sided climate coverage. "It also violates the ethical code of the Society of Professional Journalists which urges the media to `Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.' That code calls for reporters to "distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.'" Gainor added.

Source






HURRICANES, HUBRIS AND HERESY

People were worried. Considering the barrage of bad news bombarding them about how global warming was going to rearrange their world, who can blame them? Hurricane after hurricane had battered North America through the late summer and fall of 2005, including the infamous monster that swamped New Orleans and caused billions in damage, Katrina. The causal link between global warming and more hurricanes that Al Gore and other 'environgelicals' pitch to the eager-to-be-believers contains just enough plausibility -- warmer Earth, warmer ocean; warmer ocean, bigger hurricanes -- to raise legitimate concern. And even if one doesn't accept that humans are the primary drivers of climate change, it's indisputable that the Earth is in a warming trend. So, since we all know hurricanes gain their strength from warmer waters, it seemed reasonable to believe that rising temperatures might spur greater storm activity.

'Warm oceans are like fuel to a hurricane,' climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzer, of the U.S. union of concerned scientists' national climate education program, warned last September. 'It's like throwing gasoline onto a fire.' CNN, no doubt trying to be helpful, dumbed it down. Hurricanes, the news network explained, were becoming 'bigger and meaner.' (Makes one pine for the days when storms were 'nice,' huh?) Then, to top it all off, hurricane forecasters were unanimous. 2006 was going to be an another above-average year in the frequency of the terrible wind wraiths.

Of course, the inconvenient truth is that forecasters had totally messed up in the prediction department heading into 2005. Last year, the hurricane seers previously intoned, would be about an average year for named tropical storms, including hurricanes. They forecast perhaps 11 named storms and six hurricanes; instead, there were 28 named storms and 14 hurricanes. Still, what were the chances of them getting it totally wrong again? Pretty good, it turned out.

Their predictions for an above average year for hurricanes in 2006, mean or otherwise, were as off target as their 2005 forecasts for a ho-hum, business-as-usual hurricane season. Despite endorsement from Gore's trendy summer movie, which warned watchers that global warming was going to spawn ever more ferocious wind storms, this year's hurricanes refused to follow the script, appearing in smaller numbers and packing weaker winds than had been widely feared. In other words, a below-average year.

So, what happened? Why, if the planet is slowly cooking on a manmade spit, didn't 2006 follow 2005 (and 2004) and produce more of the kind of mean, monstrous hurricanes that spark impassioned activists and headlines? Simple. The link between global warming and hurricanes is controversial, at best. There's no consensus among scientists about how climate change will affect hurricanes. Some believe warmer temperatures will lead to more storms, others that the result will be a dampening of activity. During most of the last quarter of the 20th century, as the Earth continued to heat up - thanks, according to Kyoto enthusiasts, to humanity's ever-growing spewing of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere - hurricane activity was, on the contrary, decidedly muted. In fact, for the 25 years between 1970 and 1995, fewer hurricanes than the historical average materialized. Hurricanes have been with us since the end of the last Ice Age, increasing in some years, or periods of years, and decreasing in others. Many scientists believe the recent upswing in hurricanes - 2006 excepted - has been nothing more than the normal gyrations of a cyclical phenomenon, swinging to the high side of its frequency range.

To the high priests and priestesses of the Church of Climate Change, however, any natural disaster provides potential kindling for imparting 'the message.' Thus, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes are all opportunities -- despite being naturally-occurring phenomena that have affected the planet for thousands of years -- to preach the impending doom of higher temperatures.

I have no quarrel with the proposition that the Earth is warming; I am, however, skeptical about both the extent of man's impact on that trend and the 'end of days' calamities that supposedly await us in a hotter future. Historically, human hubris has often placed us at the centre of the universe. No surprise, then that, according to the Kyotoites, we're now apparently the biggest reason that the planet -- which has cooled and warmed, to temperatures far above today's, in vast cycles over billions of years - is, gasp, getting warmer.

Those proposing alternate theories - such as, most persuasively, solar activity - are slapped down and derided, much like, well, much like the many former skeptics of the conventional wisdom (later proven inaccurate) throughout history. Man's emissions doubtless have some impact, but there is no hard scientific proof that they are the main driver of global warming. Meanwhile, a warmer Earth will bring new problems, of course, some of which could be catastrophic. But we're not headed for a return to the Stone Age. Man's ingenuity and technology have already solved countless problems once seen as overwhelming. There's no reason to believe we won't tackle new challenges just as energetically as we've done in the past. That's not to say that I am completely sanguine about the future. But neither am I convinced that we're all headed over the falls in a canoe.

Will the great global warming panic of the late 20th and early 21st centuries be one day regarded as an example of humanity's inability to avert disaster, despite being forewarned? Or as an interesting subject for the study into the dynamics of mass beliefs, scientific consensus and political opportunism? Beats me. The answer, no doubt, is blowing in those globally-warmed, 'mean' winds that took 2006 off.

Source




ONE CONSENSUS THAT WON'T SUIT THE GREENIES

Hurricanes and cyclones can NOT be linked to global warming

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has just released two updated statements on the state of science on tropical cyclones and climate change. The statements have been released today through the Instituto Meteorologico Nacional, San Jose, Costa Rica. Anyone referencing this post or the statements, please do acknowledge them as the source.....

The summary statement (PDF) is one page and reflects a consensus among all particpants (125 people from 34 countries) at the just-concluded International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones in Costa Rica. The statement describes its authorship as follows: The global community of tropical cyclone researchers and forecasters as represented at the 6th International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones of the World Meteorological Organization has released a statement on the links between anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change and tropical cyclones, including hurricanes and typhoons.

The ten consensus statements are as follows: Consensus Statements by International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones-VI (IWTC-VI) Participants

1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.

2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.

3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.

4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades, leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.

5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.

6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.

7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.

8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical cyclone numbers in a warmer climate, there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.

9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.

10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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