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‘Something rotten’ at the core of climate science
The Institute of Physics has used a parliamentary inquiry to call into question the integrity of the entire field of climate science
The Institute of Physics, which represents 36,000 physicists across Britain and the world, has told a Commons inquiry into Climategate that the controversial emails at the centre of the storm represent "prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions".
In short, the IoP has called into question the integrity of the entire field of climate change.
The Commons science and technology committee is interviewing key climate scientists and global warming sceptics. The standard of the interrogation on the first day was tame and the protagonists merely restated their arguments.
The star witness, Professor Phil Jones - the CRU's head and the sender of most of the hacked emails - was let off particularly lightly, his most damning admission probably being: "I have obviously written some really awful emails."
Far more interesting are the written submissions to the inquiry, including that from the Institute of Physics.
Although it has been made abundantly clear that the inquiry is not about whether global warming is actually happening, the IoP criticises one of the fundamental slices of evidence behind the assertion that we are currently experiencing a period of unprecedented global warming.
In the absence of actual recorded temperatures, scientists have used 'proxy data' – for example, tree rings – to determine average global temperatures over the past 1,000 years. However, in the final few decades of the 20th century, the proxy data has been jettisoned in favour of temperatures recorded on modern instruments. The IoP is critical of this method:
"The [Climategate] emails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions," the IoP states. "For example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC [the United Nations climate panel], of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements."
The IoP also suggests the scope of the Common inquiry should be broadened to include not only the CRU, but also the entire field of climate science.
"Most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC's conclusions on climate change," the submission reads. "In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is [a] need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field."
Other scientific bodies, such as the Met Office, the Royal Statistical Society and Research Councils UK, were broadly supportive of the CRU in their submissions to the inquiry. Only the Institute of Physics stuck their necks out to suggest there was something rotten at the core of climate science.
Why did they do it? Possibly, these purveyors of one of the more unfashionable and esoteric sciences are jealous of the funds lavished on trendy climate science - a science they clearly see as being slapdash and riddled with inaccuracies. Or maybe they really are standing up for the integrity of science. One thing is certain: today, the Institute of Physics is the toast of the, some would say, very unscientific climate sceptics. ·
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IoP should have stated its position publicly long time ago. Then that could have stopped this pseudo-science of anthropogenic global warming.
It's strange that it took some hackers leaking some e-mails to bring this pushers of AGW finally under some public scrutiny though many scientists including Dr Freeman Dyson, one of the founders of quantum field theory and an unquestionable genious, criticised climate modelling and AGW in the strongest terms.
It would have been better had IoP took this stand when copies of Super Scientist Al Gore's dvd were made with public money and distributed to the schools and colleges to brainwash students to believe in AGW.
Students believe what their teachers say because the teachers are supposed to know better and the students are supposed to trust their teachers' knowledge and professional expertise.
Now this AGW scam falling apart, the students will be even more sceptical to what their teachers say even when what the teachers say is right. Great disservice has been done to the general process of understanding of science by the public in general and students in particular.
Climate change is the new bogey man now that the Cold War has finished. The firms making money from the Cold War had to find something else to scare the people, hence the whole climate change thing. Viz had a readers letter back in the summer that said (and I paraphrase), "There's something to this climate change thing. 3 months ago it was bloody cold, now it's quite warm!"
Fair enough as far as it goes - there is a vast slush fund driving the wages, careers, and research grants of the majority of scientists in this area. The governments of the world with socialist leanings want ever-increasing amounts of our carbon taxes, because we are bad and greedy, burning all the fossil fuels. But unlike say, murder or thieving, they don't ban it and prosecute it - they tax it! Like a protection racket. Economists call this strategy a 'sin tax'. You pay tax on your income, then you use your taxed income to buy heavily taxed petrol at the pump, double taxation. Then, if you are doing company mileage, you pay tax again through your tax code for the car expenses! Triple taxation. And the politicians get to crow smugly about 'saving the planet', and all then fly off to another summit in Rio to discuss 'carbon footprints' and 'climate change'. But pols don't take the blame - the scientists have to. They know they have to do the science they are told to do, or they don't get the funds. But the pols just change their tune. And all the time thousands of senior climatologists and physicists have been challenging the manmade CO2 catastrophe scenario and the carbon taxology - but do they get credit? Not yet they don't. Only the true theory of climate change will kill all the wrong ones - check out Henrik Svensmark's cloud theory - he is Danish, as the headline hints. The CO2 theory is fading into history, just like the phlogiston theory of burning, before the discovery of oxygen. That is how advanced the whole climate debate currently is! Our climate ignorance exceeds our ambition to control the climate at present. But the pols still want to tax it.
Oh, and it's not just the Institute of Physics. The Royal Society of Chemistry had this to say: "The apparent resistance of researchers from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) to disclose research data has been widely portrayed as an indication of a lack of integrity in scientific research. The true nature of science dictates that research is transparent and robust enough to survive scrutiny...The dissemination of scientific information is central to progressing scientific developments, as it is based on a sound knowledge of preceding research...It is also imperative that scientific information is made available to the wider community for scrutiny: the validity and essence of research relies upon its ability to stand up to review...The RSC firmly believes that the benefits of scientific data being made available and thus open to scrutiny outweigh the perceived risks. To this end, scientific information should be made available on request as outlined in the Freedom of Information Act."
That's a typical professional way of saying that the CRU has behaved badly without actually saying it. Whereas the IoP were more plain speaking and forthright in stating the conclusion, the RSC leave the reader to draw the obvious deduction from the premises: "this is how all science should be properly done"; evidence shows, and Phil Jones admitted, that this is not what was done: unavoidable conclusion follows by simple logical deduction: CRU didn't do science properly.
Water vapour is the most powerful greenhouse gas. I am struck by the similarity beween advocates of anthropogenic global warming and mediaeval witch hunters. The idea takes hold, develops a strength and momentum of its own, reason goes out of the window, and woe betide anyone who dares to speak against them. Dare I mention Germany in the 1930s too?
Hey, what's all this about "very unscientific climate sceptics"? I read physics at University of Oxford and spent my whole career in science and engineering. I've never believed that rubbish about anthropogenic climate change as it doesn't comply with the principles of physics - at least, the effect is statistically insignificant. I can tell you, many physicists think the climate science community is a heap of junk. No other discipline in science would get away with the rubbish they have produced. They have been propelled from a backwater to having vast sums of money thrown at them to serve a political agenda. While physics and chemistry departments in universities are closing, the government is pouring money into so-called climate science, which follows a 'post-normal' science method, where truth is traded for political influence - as Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at UEA stated "It has been labelled 'post-normal' science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus...on...who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy...The IPCC is a classic example of a post-normal scientific activity." "...self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth-seeking...scientists - and politicians - must trade truth for influence. What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy" "...climate change has become an idea that now travels well beyond its origins in the natural sciences...climate change has become 'the mother of all issues', the key narrative within which all environmental politics...is now framed...Rather than asking "how do we solve climate change?" we need to turn the question around and ask: "how does the idea of climate change alter the way we arrive at and achieve our personal aspirations..?" "We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us". Yea, like line his pockets, and Al Gore's. And help him advance his socialist agenda, which he freely admits. UEA won't be able to rubbish the IoP: Fellows of the Institute of Physics include: Sir Geoffrey Allen, Chancellor of UEA from 1993-2003. Vice-President of the Royal Society from 1991-93; Professor Sir Michael Warwick Thompson, Vice-Chancellor of UEA 1980-86; Professor Norman Edward Cusack (deceased), Pro-Vice-Chancellor of UEA 1981-85. Taught physics at UEA from 1965.