Everyone loves well-crafted prose, even when the author of it opposes their point of view. So it is with Matt Ridley, well-known author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, in less than a week earning nearly 9000 Google hits on his “Scientific heresy” address to the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh on 31 October, posted at Bishop Hill. Even alarmist Gareth Renowden appreciates Ridley’s wordcraft before scorning his so-called climate science.

Ridley’s given us an admirable piece of work on several levels. His writing is a pleasure to read, he gives good information and clearly sets out his thinking on a tour of the weaknesses in the current alarmist view of the global climate. In doing so he warms the cockles of sceptical hearts everywhere while enraging the alarmists with his “well-known sceptic tropes”. That’s the view according to Renowden. Poor things; claiming emptiness for Ridley’s contentions is a flaccid stand-in for a cogent rebuttal.

Ridley concludes that science “needs heretics” and one can appreciate the radical point that even heretics should be heard. But he leaves unstated his crucial implication that evidence elevates the climate “heretic” above all the cereologists, astrologers and eugenicists in history, while true heretics need no evidence.

Here’s his address, copied from Bishop Hill with appreciation and thanks. I also repost the document Mr Montford prepared, with its helpful diagrams (pdf, 1865KB).

Matt Ridley

Scientific heresy

by Matt Ridley

It is a great honour to be asked to deliver the Angus Millar lecture.

I have no idea whether Angus Millar ever saw himself as a heretic, but I have a soft spot for heresy. One of my ancestral relations, Nicholas Ridley* the Oxford martyr, was burned at the stake for heresy.

My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones.

Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.

Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.

Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.

Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.

Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.

Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

Are you with me so far? Read more… »

Yes, yes, but it’s easy. More severe taxes will make people seriously cut their energy use, we could even move them down here to Antarctica. It’ll soon be warm enough. That will keep the Earth safe and protect it from changing. That’s all we want.

Many people trust the IPCC, that it tells governments around the world the truth about global warming. But their trust is being seriously challenged by accumulating lines of evidence that this is not a good characterisation of the IPCC’s process.

The IPCC is coming under ferocious attack by climate sceptics using documentary evidence of astonishing, widespread disregard of fidelity. Read more… »

The beautiful Arctic.

Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics, announces a new record Arctic ice minimum today.

Ignoring the fact that they actually report 140,000 square kilometres more ice today than in 2007 (the previous record minimum) because of altered methods, the good Georg raises more questions than he answers. Like any good climate scientist. First (though this could be the AFP reporter):

Arctic ice cover plays a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate by reflecting sunlight and keeping the polar region cool.

QUESTION: At the last minimum, in 2007, how much did global temperature rise due to the reduced ice cover? ANSWER: Global temps did not rise in 2007 — they fell about 0.4°C. Any albedo effect reducing global temperatures is likely to be insignificant. Read more… »

Crooked.

Lawrence Solomon: 97% cooked stats

First published in the Financial Post, Jan 3, 2011
(h/t Gary Kerkin)

by Lawrence Solomon

How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2,500 — that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2,500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.

To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered they were mistaken — those 2,500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently. Read more… »

Figuratively, of course, not literally, but this is what happens to scientists being employed in today’s climate (pun perhaps intended). Here’s a stern test of the neutrality of any science organisation, such as NIWA: does any scientist who doesn’t believe in man-made global warming work for them? If such “denialist” scientists are employed by a public science body in New Zealand, let us meet them to discuss the difficulties they face!

Anthony Watts announces what he calls “an important moment in science history.” Professor Harold Lewis reluctantly discards his 67-year membership of the American Physical Society in protest at the global-warming-driven corruption of science (h/t val majkus).

It’s worth reflecting on the significance of this prominent resignation and the reasons he cites for offering it. Here is a sample from his letter:

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. Read more… »

This is an adopted article.

by Ben Webster of The Times
Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 22:09

The Royal Society, bastion of conventional thinking on global warming, is about to announce a change in its thinking! What a glad day. I cannot wait to read their whole statement.     - Richard

Here’s the full story: Read more… »

An adopted article.

by Matt Ridley of The Times
September 04, 2010, 12:00 noon

After years of darkness, there are signs of light returning both to climate science and the mainstream media! What is instinctively unacceptable in one (uncontaminated) scientific realm is at last observed as being practically the rule in the (deeply flawed) realm of climate science. (How NZ climate scientists can continue to pretend that the practice of their science has not been besmirched and remains beyond reproach is a mystery.) In this story we hear that a scientific inquiry actually does its job properly, The Times begins to stir and a real journalist concludes we don’t need a neck tourniquet for a nose bleed. Fascinating!
    - Richard Treadgold

Here’s the full story: Read more… »

Dishonesty may well conceal itself under a cloak such as this.

A grey-haired New Zealand geologist has strong words to say about the practice of science, its abasement by proponents of AGW and the likely consequences for us all. Whether a general dishonesty in climate science is true or not, the fact that scientists themselves are now saying so indicates the extent of the perception of dishonesty. He begins by commenting on yesterday’s Christchurch earthquake.

It would be great if scientists could routinely express the uncertainties, by saying in response to some journalist’s question something like: “Well, we are actually not sure what the cause is, nor the actual depth of the shock, but on the very small amount of data that we have at present, we think that ‘THIS’ is likely. But we also think that there are many other possibilities, such as, blah, blah, etc.”

If only this philosophy could be applied to climate science/AGW as well!

A sad world it would be for science if other scientists, not directly connected to funding for ‘climate change,’ took the same attitude as displayed by the AGW-funded beneficiaries and never fronted up about the uncertainties inherent to their own particular branches of science.

To me as a scientist this is the saddest aspect of the AGW proponents — that they have perhaps shown the way for future pseudo-scientists to get away with all sorts of bias and dishonesty, with no skerrick of independent peer review, cloaked within the once-respectable realm of science.

Any scientist who works to the principle that defendably true knowledge is the prime basis for science should be quaking in his or her shoes. Because there seems to be a whole new generation of AGW-funded types who have neither care nor respect for scientific norms, since they are dependent on AGW funding to perpetuate their work.

Rajendra Pachauri – is science his real concern?

From the New York Post, September 1, 2010.

If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world’s governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium — and to civilisation itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to “save the planet.”

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of “the best scientists and engineers worldwide” (as the group’s own web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give “high-quality advice to international bodies,” has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices — and found them badly wanting.

False claims, no evidence

For example, the IPCC’s much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false — yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming. Read more… »

I couldn’t get to this meeting, but Ross Muir went along and sends us this report. - Richard

Click to go to the original cartoon, in The Skeptics Handbook, by Jo Nova.

Last Thursday night the University of Auckland hosted an evening titled “Global Warming: Why can’t scientists agree?”

As both the title and the list of speakers made obvious, it was very pro-AGW, however I went along to see if there were any dissenters in the large audience and what sort of response they would get.

The speakers were: Prof Glenn McGregor (Director, School of Environment), Prof Roger Davies (Chair in Climate Physics, Physics Dept), Dr Jim Salinger (Hon Research Associate, School of Environment), Dr Anthony Fowler (Snr Lecturer, School of Environment) and Dr Mary Sewell (Snr Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences).

Handouts were made available on the way in. One by Prof Kurt Lambeck, the President of the Australian Academy of Science, on “The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers” and another large one, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change”, co-authored by Anderegg, Prall, Harold and Schneider (American and Canadian Universities). The latter contained graphs comparing the numbers of scientists/researchers and publications between the believer and non-believer camps. The graphs were so vastly different that I seriously doubt their veracity. Read more… »

Nobody is immune from now and again using their mouth to get themselves into trouble. It is a source of constant amusement. Now it’s the turn of our national climate organisation.

Quelle surprise! Network PR have taken down the page proclaiming their work with NIWA on “how to position itself in the climate change debate” (h/t to Andy).

It was here, but now the page of case studies doesn’t even mention NIWA. Here is the Google cache version, just to prove we didn’t imagine this.

When a company ceases to trumpet what they perceive as a good piece of work, you know their hand has been forced. In this case, who but NIWA would be doing any forcing?

Network PR has produced a monumental piece of naïvety in disclosing details of its work with NIWA. Network’s principals knew of their client’s adversaries, for the very purpose of the education campaign they fashioned was to deal with criticism from them, but the desire to trumpet their effectiveness was too strong to resist. It was a wonderful divorce from reality, to fail to imagine the adversaries hearing of this news and making use of it against their client.

So much for Network PR. Good luck to them. Now, through the careless eagerness of their supplier to leverage new business from success, NIWA’s senior managers have had their plainly self-absorbed thinking lit by a dazzling public spotlight and naturally it shames them. There are two threads in their error.

First, the leadership decided to use NIWA’s public funds for other than public purposes. That is, the organisation would not benefit from coaching their staff in how to avoid answering questions, only the individual scientists might be spared the irritation, embarrassment or simply the shame of answering questions exposing their unscientific methods, conclusions and agenda. Read more… »

Spin makes me dizzy. Straight answers wonderfully clear the view.

A scandal is erupting over a PR firm – Network PR – employed by NIWA for months specifically to advise it on how to respond to “attacks” from the NZ Climate Science Coalition and blogs like this one.

Read the self-serving announcement from Network here. Network must have been bamboozled into ignoring the scientific questions, because if they heard how simple they are, they surely would have advised NIWA to just answer them.

NIWA’s difficulties spring directly from refusing to answer these questions. Why won’t they answer? Read more… »

Don’t lie to me.

A CCG reader reported on Nick Smith’s presentation on the ETS last Tuesday (I’m not sure where, as I couldn’t see a Tuesday meeting in his published schedule) and mentioned his use of a combined CO2/temperature graph showing a good correlation (h/t to Bulaman). He mentioned its resemblance to the famous hockey stick graph of late 20th Century global temperatures. It deserves a separate post. He says:

The road show here on Tuesday was well attended and a polite reasoned session. The 2 cops in the back of the room after the Gore fiasco might also have moderated things a bit! The rationale for being in the ETS was effectively the precautionary principle jacked up to cost us $1.5 billion. The evidence was our hockey stick friend with CO2 and temp graphed together.

At the Royal Akarana Yacht Club presentation on Thursday which yours truly attended, the combined graph Smith showed us resembles the Mann hockey stick graph, but it is different. It comes from the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change; you can see it in a brochure at the NZ government Climate Change site. The brochures were handed around at the meeting.

This is the graph: Read more… »

Lies are often dressed up as truth. Yet even with the truth in ruins, we can still get lucky and stumble upon it.

UPDATE 18 July – see end (Royal Society)

This is the second instalment of a review of Professor Sir Peter Gluckman’s speech of 9 June, entitled Integrity in Science: Implications from and for the Climate Change Debate. The first instalment was Gluckman stumbles on the truth.

In using the term “denialist”, our Chief Science Advisor descends to the sludge at the bottom of the barrel of scientific debate. It is a matter of profound regret that the CSA imports this malignant, divisive term to his prestigious office and the hallowed halls of the Royal Society.

Soaked in fallacy

There is no reason for an honest man of science to employ erroneous techniques of observation or debate, for what would it profit him? They would only ensure, first, that his argument fails and, second, that his credibility is damaged, the greater for being the higher in rank. So this is an enormous lapse in judgement by our top scientist and deserves the firmest reproach. Endorsement of Sir Peter’s comments, such as by the Royal Society (see below), is similarly reproachable.

In adopting the technique – or logical fallacy, whichever you prefer – of the ad hominem argument by labelling those who disagree with him as denialist and rejectionist, he engages in the worst scientific conduct. It is no less than poisonous, and that this toxic stuff now emanates from the summit of our scientific pyramid gives it a cachet it should never receive.

Whatever familiarity the term has achieved under relentless repetition, the ad hominem fallacy it is soaked in is undiminished and thus it can never be acceptable among the well-educated. Read more… »

Truth lies in lies and lies lie in truth, so in the climate fiasco, what is the truth, which the lies? Perhaps the truth even lies in ruins, but in searching we can get lucky and stumble on it.

Our quite new Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, addresses scepticism towards global warming. But he stumbles badly while confirming that the rot that masquerades as public climate science now infiltrates the very top of our national scientific hierarchy.

Talk about confusing the public. What chance is there for the man in the street to keep a clear head when even our top scientist gives the impression the world is about to end? Gluckman doesn’t use those words, but he aligns himself inflexibly with those who do.

In a widely-publicised speech at the Victoria University of Wellington on 9 June (312KB), arranged as part of the Institute of Political Studies series on Key Policy Challenges Facing New Zealand, he addressed the topic Integrity in Science: Implications from and for the Climate Change Debate.

Murky carbon schemes

Sir Peter is one of our truly top-drawer scientists, famous for his world-leading work in paediatrics and endocrinology. Scores of our top researchers, from scientists with decades of experience to fresh new PhD candidates, beaver away earnestly in the Liggins Institute which he established a decade ago. He’s the sort of man people instinctively trust and turn to for guidance; public officials and financiers happily entrust millions of dollars to him to spend on cutting-edge medical research. His knowledge is extensive and his judgement what most people would call flawless.

We ought not to criticise him lightly.

But in this noteworthy speech, he muddies the waters of “debate”, insults those who question the science, wrongly characterises the global warming situation and shamefully, in supporting carbon “trading”, supports those who seek their fortune in the murky, uncontrollable carbon schemes.

Though he raises the topic of climate scepticism he addresses only some insubstantial sceptical issues, virtually ignoring the very things they are sceptical of (which are the scientific observations and theories), concentrating instead, like the ad hominem-riddled warmist rabble, on the sceptics themselves, as though they all share the same faults and motives. Read more… »

Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.

Here is a statement issued yesterday by Terry Dunleavy, Hon Secretary of the NZ Climate Science Coalition.

UPDATE 21 June: see end of post

Prime Minister John Key has been asked by a former National Party activist either to rein in his Chief Science Adviser, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, or to change his title to more accurately reflect the professor’s global warming propaganda advocacy activities. Read more… »

Andy Reisinger – powerful global links to climate profits

Dr Andrew Reisinger, Senior Research Fellow, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute (CCRI), sits at the right hand of God. The god, that is, of the IPCC — Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Andy is head of the Technical Support Unit for the Synthesis Report group of the IPCC, and from that exalted position controls what the world’s national leaders get to know about climate change.

For he was responsible to his “core group” co-author Rajendra Pachauri for co-ordinating the drafting of the Synthesis Report for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The SR is “the concluding summary of the IPCC’s most recent assessment of our current knowledge on climate change,” as Andy’s cv puts it.

That sounds like proper influence to me — real, transformative power. For what comes out of the IPCC’s Assessment Report (or more particularly the summary of it) goes straight into the ears of national leaders around the globe and they will act upon it. They don’t read the actual reports, so they won’t spot the differences between them and the summary. Neither will they fault the summary for themselves, because they are not scientists.

So they are necessarily at the mercy of the authors (or manipulators) of the Summary Report. Much has been said elsewhere about the politically-motivated alterations that were made to many of the IPCC reports. The reports are meant to represent the best of current scientific knowledge, but in practice they are watered down, uncertainties are grossly understated, certainty is claimed where it doesn’t exist and what the scientists said has even been reversed — without their approval.

The mother of all conflicts — of interest

Read more… »

This story is datelined London, December 1, and comes from the Australian Associated Press. It was posted on the web site of the Royal Society of New Zealand—behind a paywall. [Full article at the end.]

First: it is frustrating, suspicious and avaricious for our Royal Society to hide its “news” behind a paywall. How widely, really, does it wish the news to spread, when it publishes only to its members?

Second: the level of uninterest evinced by this reporter in the matter he is reporting is quite awe-inspiring. There is not the merest evidence of curiosity, investigation or the most rudimentary checking of facts.

Be a journo — or join our Royal Society

The main assertions in this story are inane, blatantly alarmist, undisguised advocacy and wrong. That the story is promulgated by our once-proud, independent, trustworthy and in particular scientific Royal Society is now a source of shame to all New Zealanders. There is no doubt that our Royal Society has abandoned, in respect of the global warming controversy, any pretence to objective investigation. It has instead adopted such a strong intention to champion the hypothesis of man-made control of the climate that it blinds itself to the necessity of finding evidence.

Their intention moves them to breach their founding principles. Look them up. Their behaviour is a matter of law, so it will give way, given enough pressure, to legal or parliamentary sanction. Swell, public opinion, swell!

Our Royal Society even helps champion, through web site connections, the blatantly alarmist web site Hot Topic, which routinely insults scientific sceptics asking reasonable questions with terms like crank, denialist and worse. We have come to expect that from the likes of Mr Renowden and his bigots, but the support for it from the scientists of the Royal Society is reprehensible. It is scientific misbehaviour.

Here is a sampling of the AAP story’s errors, inadequacies and naked prejudice. Read more… »

A worrying story surfaced recently of yet another proclamation that global warming grows and grows. The headline was “Rate of Sea Level Rise Increasing“.

That’s scary, and it sounds like a new result, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. It raises fears only as a means to raise funds.

It appeared at SciencePoles, the web site of the International Polar Foundation.

It said a new study in Nature announces that global mean sea-level change has increased from a few centimeters per century over recent millennia to a few tens of centimeters per century in recent decades. Moreover, quoting the abstract, they say: “This tenfold increase in the rate of rise can be attributed to climate change through the melting of land ice and the thermal expansion of ocean water.” The mere mention of “climate change” means it’s our fault, and it’s there to alarm us. Read more… »

The Climate Industry: $79 billion so far—trillions to come

Jo Nova has just published a document showing where the money has been coming from and which side in the climate debate is getting the benefit. It’s dynamite. Jo describes it:

For the first time, the numbers from government documents have been compiled in one place. It’s time to start talking of “Monopolistic Science”. It’s time to expose the lie that those who claim “to save the planet” are the underdogs. And it’s time to get serious about auditing science, especially when it comes to pronouncements that are used to justify giant government programs and massive movements of money. Who audits the IPCC?

The Summary

• The US government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
• Despite the billions, “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
• Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for more carbon-trading. And experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion, making carbon the largest single commodity traded.
• Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
• The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into one theory, have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?

Read more… »