Climate corruption causes caustic commentary in a school textbook displaying moral turpitude, rotten attitude, and downright 'stupitude'.

Andrew Bolt describes a school geography textbook as ‘sludge’.  For some reason, best known to the authors, and perhaps not unconnected with the widespread CO2 Alarm virus that is now endemic in left-wing circles in particular, they chose to denigrate him and some other commentators in a somewhat unimpressive coverage of climate politics in their book.  I think their approach, while it would not be unexpected in any conversation with agitated climate alarm believers, is wholly out of place in a school textbook.  It is due, I suspect, to a corruption of climate science that has been widely propagated by such as the IPCC.  I divide my concerns into three headings below, and follow that with some extracts from the offending passages in the book as provided by Australian Climate Madness.



Moral turpitude.  The loaded use of words like ‘denial’ and ‘denying’ is a hideous abuse not only of good people who happen to have views contrary to the establishment’s, but also and more importantly to the memory and the message of the Holocaust itself.  But further, to take the good intentions of such as the IPCC at face value is to make a profound error.  Good intentions seized upon with enthusiasm and faith in the wisdom of ideologically-driven elites in the 20^th century led to horrendous tragedies.  In the climate area, the most dramatic of late has been in the imposition of bio-fuels  – not just adding to energy costs in the rich world, but bringing further, totally avoidable, misery and starvation to the poor one.  The longer-term harm will flow from the accretion of power and wealth by new ‘elites’ using CO2 fear-driven legislation and taxes, while the associated suppressed development, known as ‘sustainable development’, will impoverish most people in both rich and poor countries.

Rotten attitude. Aggressive, politically-loaded one-sided misrepresentation of those who are speaking out against the corruption of both science and politics does not reflect what I imagine most parents would want to see in a teacher, or in a textbook.  No pupil would realise, from this material, that very distingusihed, very experience scientists have taken issue with climate alarmism, as have many very well-informed, logical, coherent, and civil commentators.  The scarcity of admirable role models on the climate alarmist side is quite stark, and is not alluded to.  You can hardly look into any area of climate alarmism without finding matters of great concern, often revealing low levels of integrity in science, in politics, or in journalism.  Now a teacher of science or of geography might reasonably wish to protect his pupils from this rather confusing turmoil in order to teach them something of his or her subject matter.  Instead, in this textbook, we see propaganda – a one-sided denigration by innuendo of good citizens, freely and reasonably deploying their own minds and finding serious grounds for opposing the headlong rush to legislate and spread fear, ostensibly in the cause of CO2 reduction.
  
Downright 'stupitude':  The poor quality and global coverage of so much climate data is such that to describe the evidence for global warming as ‘overwhelming’ is not a very intelligent thing to say, especially when the context implies that by ‘global warming’ is meant something quite dramatic and scary.  There is indeed some evidence, most notably through estimates of that rather hard to define concept of global mean temperature.  This is not actually an observed temperature.  Many real observations of temperature show no particularly sustained trend in the 20^th century for example, some show cooling, some show periods of warming and cooling, and some show warming.  Large areas of the earth’s surface have no surface weather stations in their vicinity.  The satellite data available for the past 30 years or so, show no clear warming signals.  Even the widely accepted global mean temperatures only show a modest overall rise in the 20^th century, and furthermore show no evidence of a rise in the 21^st.  The case against acute, or even any strong alarm about rising CO2 levels is actually a very strong one, and so far it has been well-supported by Mother Nature herself.  So many alarmist predictions capable of being put to the test by contemporary data have failed that test that it is rather stupid to pretend that the arguments are over, and we face disaster if the Jeremiahs are ignored.  The scientists who are promote acute alarm about rising levels of CO2 are actually very few – perhaps a few dozen or so in my estimation, with their impact amplified by the leadership of scientific institutions and others.  The numbers who promote appeals for a more calm, considered discussion of the science are far greater, probably in the hundreds or even thousands if some petitions are to be taken at face value.  Finally, picking on such as Andrew Bolt, a highly articulate, well-informed man with a very sharp wit (not to mention newspaper columns a radio slot, a tv show, and a great many enthusiastic followers) is both inappropriate for a school textbook, and a little, shall we say, ill-advised.  I suspect he knows far more about the climate debate that the authors of this sorry book.

Some extracts from the book, with comments.

 Extract 1: 'Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the planet is warming, there are still people who deny that is a result of human activity. The most vocal of these deniers are conservative political think tanks and the right-wing radio 'shock jocks'.'
 This is a straw man, there to allow the authors to vent theirs spleen at what they no doubt sees as 'the enemy'.  After a brief CYA sentence including 'there is a range of views', they develop the above theme.  Yet what is the reality?
The planet has not been warming for the past 15 years or so by the usual measure of estimated global mean temperatures.  When it was warming in the late 20th century. it was at a similar rate and magnitude to the warming of the early 20th century - a rise not attributed by anyone to CO2.  Furthermore, many distinguished scientists and other sceptics are perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of a human contribution to warming via CO2.  They do not dispute that, they merely observe that the expected and the observed effect are both rather small, and not of much, if any, concern.  For a recent illustration of such an approach, I would direct my readers to item 1 and item 2 in the Wall Street Journal.

Extract 2 ‘Shaping the nature of the public debate about the issue is an important focus for those groups opposed to any program designed to reduce CO2 emissions.  In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that a conservative American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was offering scientists and economists US$10,000 each to ‘undermine a major climate change report’ from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’

$10,000 dollars will sound like a life-changing amount to a schoolchild, and being paid to ‘undermine’ something does sound very dubious indeed.  Yet let us look at some facts:

1.     The AEI request was for ‘essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs’.  The sender of the request noted ‘Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy.’  Doesn’t sound too sinister to me.

2.     $10,000 dollars does not actually buy you a lot of specialist consultancy.  Maybe 1 or 2 days of a leading expert’s time, maybe 10 to 20 days of a relative newcomer’s. A decent amount of money to be sure, and I’d guess it is a sum not out of line with what even The Guardian newspaper will pay for a piece by a distinguished commentator.  I suspect they might well pay $10,000 for a few thousand words by a specialist commissioned to write for them.  [see footnote (1)]

That Guardian article by the way, came complete with this picture of a polar bear.  Such bears might well become symbols of the shallow opportunism of some climate alarmists since many bear populations have been growing despite being held up to us, and to children in particular, as already being harmed by the awful warming underway.



Extract 3. ‘Many large fossil fuel-based industries have also tried to discredit the work of scientists.  Exxon Mobil, the giant American Oil Company, has, for example, spent millions supporting conservative (right-wing) organizations that cast doubt on the science on which the warnings about a warming climate have been based.’
Some people really have it in for Big Oil in general, and Exxon in particular.  Yet these companies are noticeable by their low profile on the sceptic side of the debate, and their prominence on the warming side with their campaigns, investments, and support for the global warming worldview that ‘something must be done’.  The recent theft and publication of Heartland Institute documents is informative here I think.  This is an example of what the authors refer to as a ‘conservative think tank’. First of all for the insight into the ethics of climate alarmed scientist-activists and their supporters in the mass media, but also for the remarkable absence of millions in funding by Big Oil or other fossil-fuel based industries (how much of modern industry, or indeed living, is not fossil-fuel based, by the way?).  For more insight into the far larger sums flowing into the climate alarm industry, see this post by Jo Nova.

Extract 4:  'In Australia, journalists such as the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt, the Sydney Morning Herald's Miranda Devine, the Telegraph's Piers Akerman and the radio 'shock jocks' Alan Jones and Ray Hadley dismiss the science underpinning warnings about global warming.'  
This, remember, is in a school textbook on geography aimed at 13 and 14 year olds.   I am not familiar with the output of all on that list, only some of Bolt's work and a little of Alan Jones'.  If it is typical of this lumped together group, then a more accurate focus would be 'scientific speculations underpinning warnings about global warming'.  And a more accurate term than 'dismiss' might be 'examine' or even 'draw attention to criticisms of'.  'Dismiss' does imply an attempt to ignore or downplay, but both Bolt and Jones seem to go out of their way to draw attention to them (thank goodness).   For example, on 17^th March, 2011, Bolt wrote this:

'Once again, Julia Gillard tells an untruth in her speech last night on her carbon dioxide tax:

Ms Gillard said human-induced climate change was real and opinion polls could not change that. ‘’I ask, who would I rather have on my side?’’ she said. ‘’Alan Jones, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt?

‘’Or the CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science, the Bureau of Meteorology, NASA, the US National Atmospheric Administration, and every reputable climate scientist in the world?’’

“Every”?

Here are just some of the climate scientists who’d object to Gillard including them in her list of supporters:'

[there follows an annotated list of some of the most distinguished scientists who do not take Ms Gillard's alarmist view of the climate system - no dismissal of science there, I'd say]

Or you might prefer to listen to Andrew Bolt interviewing a hapless EU apparatchik called Jill Duggan, who was in Australia to promote the EU's carbon policy without having a clue about what it might achieve.

Or watch him on TV.

In all three cases, he seems to me to be taking climate science very seriously indeed.  He is far from dismissing it. The TV slot also includes an interview with Prof Lindzen who is a known believer in anthropogenic global warming.  He just doesn't think it amounts to much. 



Extract 5 ‘Fortunately, a new generation of world leaders is taking global warming seriously.  In the United States of America, President Barack Obama is working to reduce America’s reliance on fossil fuels and is providing leadership in international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.’
This is so misleading.  President Obama may be noted for some things, but providing such leadership is demonstrably not one of them.  And why the ‘fortunately’ when so much harm is coming from political decisions driven by alarmist posturing?

In Bolt's own words, in reaction to this book:

This is not education, but propaganda. It is pure melodrama, short on facts and long on fancy.

Few “deniers” - an offensive term meant to evoke Holocaust denial - dispute that man’s emissions have a tendency to warm the planet. That is not where the main debate is at.

The dispute is about the extent of any warming, the danger of it, the likelihood of it being overwhelmed by natural influences, the true sensitivity of the climate to our gases, and the cost-benefit of trying to “stop” the warming we’ve seen - which actually halted 15 years ago.

These “deniers” include many reputable scientists, including some of the world’s leading climate scientists. To suggest they’ve been bribed to say what they do is a vile smear. If money does corrupt debate, it should be noted that the vast bulk of money goes to the alarmists.

As for those leaders who “fortunately” take “global warming seriously”, Obama is not doing anything seriously about it and Rudd was dumped after backing off his own plans.

There’s much more to say about this sludge. What is depressing is that it is taught as fact in our schools. 

Note.  My rough draft of this post went to 15 pages.  I have cut out most of the material, and many of the references to save some time and spare the reader from ramblings (found lots of good stuff though).  I plan to come back and add links to add back up to some points made above, as well as correct the typos that must be there.

Footnote (1) added 25 Feb 2012. A supporter of the UK's absurd Climate Change Act gets c. $30.000 a day for consulting, and an average of $25,000 for each of 8 speeches last year.  

 Socialist greenies - you've to hand it to them - they know how to look after themselves! 


More here: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-is-wrong.html


Will this get into the next (heaven forbid) edition of this textbook?

EU funds climate-coaching to get pupils on one side of a political debate - but their MPs may not like it

Anyone wonder where all the climate activists have gone?  Why they are so silent and withdrawn when it comes to public debate?  Well, some of them are busy in our schools, following Chairman Mao's tips on getting the young engaged as activists for the cause.  For example, in the City of Norwich, home of the University of East Anglia, famous for its emails, data management practices, climate studies, and carbon consultancies, the EU is funding visits and workshops to help get the pupils thinkng the right thoughts about energy and climate.

In the Norwich Advertiser on 13 Feb

Monday, February 13, 2012         
10:19 AM

The ‘children will learn how to campaign on climate issues’.  At least in part by the promotion of expensive and unreliable energy sources, subsidised by rich and poor alike in their electricity bills and taxes.  This is a very political issue, and there seems little doubt as to which side this EU-funded, UEA supported, campaign will be taking.

This will interest, and possibly horrify, the author of the following words with regard to climate education in schools:

‘I think most parents would be horrified to learn of an organisation that is attempting to influence their children’s education to promote its own agenda.’

These are attributed by the ScienceMedia Centre in New Zealand (as reported on here at Bishop Hill),  to a Bob Ward who works for a wealthy financier called Jeremy Grantham.  Bob handles the PR for one of Jeremy’s organisations.  This is one of two organisations set up by Jeremy in order to influence public affairs in the UK, including education.  Jeremy has quite strong views about climate, and his agenda on it is quite clear on his site.

Holt Hall, mentioned in the clipping, has featured in a previous post on this blog: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-holt-for-tee-transnational-energy.html

Meanwhile in the same English city, on the same day, in a different newspaper, the Evening News, we read that Norfolk MPs are not too happy with the windfarm subsidies. Since these subsidies are crucial for the windfarms, this is going to bring them into head-on conflict with any pupils from that Norwich Sixth Form who were convinced by the EU/UEA team, and even now may be preparing their first 'campaign on climate issues'.

Now these MPs were raising issues with other adults, and not coaching school pupils to be activists for their side of this public debate. I wonder if those MPs might be able to get Bob Ward's assistance to make their points, given his dismay about organisations seeking school children to promote an opposing agenda.

I wonder also if those MPs might also get warning notices issued to all schools within 100 miles of such initiatives (and Norfolk seems particualry blighted in this respect) –  in order to warn them to be on their guard about possible political indoctrination of their pupils.  They might call it Norfolk’s Law, and it could be used for the neighbourhoods of all universities where the pursuit of knowledge amongst adults has been appreciably displaced by the pursuit of influence over children.

Mao said

'The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking. This is especially so in the era of socialism. We hope that the local Party organizations in various places will help and work with the Youth League organizations and go into the question of bringing into full play the energy of our youth in particular. The Party organizations should not treat them in the same way as everybody else and ignore their special characteristics. Of course, the young people should learn from the old and other adults, and should strive as much as possible to engage in all sorts of useful activities with their agreement.'
Ro said

'There is a real risk of raising levels of anxiety amongst children that will not only cause distress in the immediate term but will in the long term lead to those children turning against the environmental causes we hoped they might espouse.’
‘But the deeper question is – why are adults so keen to focus on children? Why concentrate on the weakest, least influential members of society and ask them to act?''

More on 'socialist geography' and on raising activists in schools here:  http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/classroom-climate-conditioning-at-work.html

and here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/03/canadian-climate-campaigners-how-to.html

(hat-tip for the cuttings: Dave W.)

Hey Teachers! Heads, we win, Tails, you lose - climate propagandists cover their backs

On the one hand, here is our advisory note  in which we tell you: 'climate change was a complicated topic many found "daunting and confusing" and could be controversial, leading to many different opinions.'

On the other hand, here are our teaching materials which tell you: 'a single conclusion, that carbon dioxide was virtually solely responsible for driving climate change and presented a range of "apocalyptic scenarios".'.

The text italicised in quotes is based on the reported words of a Senator in South Australia - hat-tip Greenie Watch.  Here are more details of the position taken by this senator, Cory Bernardi, in a hearing with the CSIRO:
"Yet the information that is produced and distributed to schoolchildren appears only to present a single opinion about what is driving climate change," he said.
"How can you explain that given that the explanatory note for teachers says it leads to many different opinions?"

And the answer from the propagandists' friends, the CSIRO?  Not exactly impressive:

'The CSIRO's deputy chief executive for operations Mike Whelan said he had not personally seen the material, but envisaged that the program would be consistent with comments made to teachers.  He told the senate committee the program had only become his responsibility three weeks ago, but he would examine the material.'

I wonder if they are beginning, at long last, to realise that the alarm about CO2 is overblown, based on a flimsy theory of how the climate system works, and all but devoid of observational evidence to support its predictions. 

As Mother Nature continues to refute the alarmist conjectures one by by one, the propagandists do of course change the spin.  They abandoned 'Global Warming' when it become clear that it wasn't much.  They backed away a bit from 'Climate Change' when it became clear than the climate was displaying business as usual.  Then they had a feeble shot at 'Climate Disruption', but those pesky hurricanes and floods and icecaps and polar bears just refused to play along and do their part.  Now, as evidenced by a briefing paper for the UK Parliament (h/t Bishop Hill), they are going for 'Hidden Threat' as in 'natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK's climate over the next few decades'.

What?  Whatever happened to that hockey stick plot, the dizzying rise in temperatures underway, the children who won't know what snow is, the desperate urgency of a Prince Charles or Gordon Brown with their X months left to save the world so better change those lightbulbs quick?  Better scientists than the propagandists choose to quote, had said from the start of the scare that the effect of CO2 would be hard to detect against the variations due to other factors.  They were classed, offensively, as 'deniers'.  Now their wisdom is getting some indirect recognition - the flattery of imitation, but lacking the justice and the courtesy of a climb down by those who did not hesitate to try to scare us, and our children, to further their own ends.

The scientific side of the scaremongering has always had large uncertainties, often glossed over or ignored by such as the IPCC and others who feared that sharing them would inhibit political actions.  They were right, I guess.  Now we are burdened with the monstrous idiocy of the Climate Change Act, and the monstrous cruelty of teaching materials designed to scare children out of their wits.

Ah, but no worries.  We did tell the teachers 'climate change was a complicated topic many found "daunting and confusing" and could be controversial, leading to many different opinions.'  And we did tell the politicians 'natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK's climate over the next few decades'.  We just, kind of , you know, left it a bit late.

Exhibit 1 (2011)

 

Exhibit 2 (2009)

 

Note added 16 Feb 2012 The Australian Climate Madness site has a relevant posting from 14 Feb about government-funded climate propaganda on a TV network : http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/02/governments-climate-indoctrination-exposed-again/

Three New Books for the Climate Classroom - and maybe even for the Staffroom if you dare

(1)  The Delinquent Teenager, by Donna Laframboise

(2) How to Get Expelled from School, by Ian Plimer

(3) Don't Sell Your Coat, by Harold Ambler

      (1) The Delinquent Teenager 

An investigative journalist digging behind the fancy PR and slick politics of the climate alarm industry is a very rare beast indeed.  In the UK, environment and science correspondents have proliferated in print and broadcast media, but they have proliferated, and behave, in the way that missionaries might have done in an era of religious excitement and evangelism, one coupled with generous funding for their work and for the faith which sustains them.  In other words, they do not ‘investigate’ so much as ‘pontificate’, and they do not, and in some cases, dare not since it is against their bosses’ explicit guidance, venture out of line.  Donna Laframboise is not one of them.  She is free and fearless.  Her faith is in the power of daylight, of examination of the facts, of publicising the bigger picture and the details overlooked by others in their haste to be part of the crowd and push the new doom-laden religion which has scientists and computer programmers as the high priests, the IPCC as writer and keeper of the gospels, and such as the Royal Society as one of many Bishoprics in search of power not enjoyed by ecclesiasticals since the Middle Ages.

Her focus in this book is on the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  She is not primarily concerned with the science.  She is concerned with mismatches between what the leaders of the IPCC say, what they do, and what they have failed to do in terms of taking valid opinions and expertise into account.  The organisation presents itself as worthy of trust, but it is not worthy of trust.  It presents itself as an aggregator and reviewer of all relevant science, but it is not – it is a purveyor of a narrow view, a suppressor of debate, and a means by which dissenting voices are ignored.  It tells us it is policy-neutral, to which one can only comment ‘aye, right’ – a double positive which in Scotland conveys a very negative view of the veracity of some assertion.

Why does this matter for schools?  It matters because some materials aimed at children justify their stance by reference to the IPCC.  Consensus.  The UN.  Leading scientists.  Deep research.  Good data.  Great integrity.  Aye, right.  This book is a very useful expose of corruption, conniving, hypocrisy, and deceit.  'But we want to save the planet! So give us a break!'  I don’t think they deserve one, and if you read this book, you won’t either, and in particular, any materials which include the phrase ‘the IPCC says’ will be held by you on the end of tongs while you check them out yourself using more independent sources.  I have helped buy a couple of hundred copies of this book in pdf to email to all the MPs, MSPs, and MEPs in Scotland.

  

(2)  How to Get Expelled from School

A muscular piece of writing from a professor clearly exasperated by the antics and influence of climate alarmists in education and in the media.  I think it perhaps too intense, too sustained and unrelenting to be a hit with most school pupils.  But Plimer has done the heavy lifting here, and provides structure, focus and core content for perhaps as many as 30 to 40 shorter, more heavily illustrated school-level books at various levels.  I hope teachers with a writing bent will pick up from here, and write those lighter books.  They will be needed as part of the long clearing-up operation we face in our schools long after the political foolishness and superficial science of climate alarm has been well and truly consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history.  New books will be required.  In the meantime, and this meantime may last a year or a decade, pupils and parents have to cope as best they can with modern dogma about climate change.  Plimer clearly has his sights on the ‘activist teacher’, and often guides the reader to questions that might expose their real agendas, which are not the education of the young so much as the recruitment of them for ‘the cause’.  I have bought two copies, thanks to a relative carrying them over from Australia – the shipping cost for even a single book being a bit off-putting for me.  This is one for the sympathetic teacher, a reference work for class projects, and a succinct overview of many topics for the keenest of pupils in senior classes.  However, I hope that a great many more books will flow from it, or be inspired by it.  And in that 'meantime', climate realists everywhere could find this book a handy reference.  It is also now available as a pdf, and one group in Australia bought 300 copies to make available to schools there free of charge. [edit 28 Feb - I was wrong about there being a pdf version]
Note added 07 May 2012.

The Australian government has issued a rejoinder to Plimer's book.  As Delingpole has observed, you get most flak when you are over the target.  This looks like an attempted barrage; pdf available here: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/response-to-prof-plimer.aspx  Commentary on it here: http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/07/dept-of-climate-change-rebuts-plimers-book-for-sceptic-kids/

(3)  Don’t Sell Your Coat

‘As I’ve explained already, I was predisposed by birth

and upbringing to concede the high moral ground to

Al Gore and anybody else who told me that they were

fighting on behalf of Mother Earth.

I was wrong.’

This is a beautiful book in many ways.  First of all, in terms of attracting the attention of whoever may pick it up, it is beautifully laid out, typeset, and illustrated.  You might well buy the Kindle version, but I’ll bet you’ll soon come to wish you had something more tangible for the coffee table.  Second, it is extremely well written.  Friendly, fluent, flowing prose, and although dealing with very contentious issues, civil and coherent throughout.  Third, it provides candid glimpses into the life and the intellectual and political development of boy, youth, and grown man, one who is alive to the world of nature and to the world of ideas, and who thought on both deeply enough to shake off the left-wing (= ‘liberal’ in US-speak) conditioning all around him about climate change, and to think through his own thoughts and seek out data himself.  All of this is edifying, and very helpful and informative.  He does not ignore charts and numbers, but he slips them in so that your number-phobe won’t mind much if at all.  Overall, the book is mostly text, with some superb black and white pictures.  I am going to buy a good few copies to send to my friends and family, hoping this will help them see me and my similar views in a better light.  I tell them I am not the one with radical, controversial views ill-supported by theory and observations – that’s the other ‘side’.  I think this book could ensure that they’ll not sell their coats.  And maybe more of them will keep their hats on when the topic of climate comes up!

Testing the Sagacity of the Royal Society: more grist for pupil projects on climate variation

In November last year, a couple of multi-year projects were suggested: monitoring reports of sea level changes, and reports about the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps.  To add extra interest, these reports and regularly updated charts on the classroom wall, would be considered against the heartfelt, but now tempered, claims of the Royal Society in each of these areas.  These would mostly be relevant to geography classes, although science teachers could also make use of them to help motivative their pupils by linking to topical issues.  Now we have the possibility of extending the appeal to include classes in modern studies, wherever political wheeling and dealing and the interface with science is on the curriculum.

Source: NoFrakkingConsensus

  A new report by Andrew Montford called Nullius in Verba describes how a series of presidents of the Royal Society used their positions to promote a speculative theory of impending climate doom.  This theory is so poorly supported, and often contradicted, by observations of the climate system that it is forced to lean heavily on the more readily manipulated virtual world of computer models to gain some credence - at least among the gullible or among those who see advantage in taking the theory as incontrovertible fact.



Another fine resource for both teacher and pupil interested in the Royal Society has just been posted on Bishop Hill.  The Royal Society is often quoted, along with the IPCC, as an authoritative body we should trust.  Donna Laframboise's book has revealed the IPCC as being far from trustworthy, Andrew Montford's pamphlet has revealed the Royal Society in the hands of irresponsible politically-motivated alarmists, and now we have the words of a Fellow of that Society courteously demolishing any residual respect a naive observer might have clinged to out of deference to such a body.  Here is a small extract, put in italics and partly emboldened by me for display here:

'Although I am not a climate scientist, I am sufficiently conversant with the climate science literature to be able to assess the issues accurately. My conclusion is that the case for catastrophic warming induced by man-made CO2 emissions is extremely weak ...

The case for catastrophic warming rests solely on the sign and magnitude of the feedbacks. As has been often said, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence”. The potential of catastrophic AGW is an extraordinary claim, but is without compelling supporting evidence. Because of the way that the AGW issue has been politicized together with the behavior of certain climate scientists, the reputation of science and the institutions that support it have suffered. Further, were catastrophic AGW to join the dreary parade of alarms that have punctuated the recent history of affluent societies, the consequences to science and the Society could be severe. It may take a long time before reputations are restored. It is, therefore, imperative for the Society to stay away from politics and advocacy of AGW or any other science based issue, no matter how beguiling the prospect may seem...'

See the post at Bishop Hill for the rest.  This is a very useful introductory overview of many of the reasons why intemperate alarm over the climate is out of order. Links are provided to back up the letter-writer's concerns.