Verzoek aan Brits Koninklijk Geologisch Genootschap tot heroverweging positie over klimaat

 

De bemoeienis van academies van wetenschappen en soortgelijke wetenschappelijke instellingen met ‘klimaat’ kent een lange geschiedenis. Het is vooral de Britse KNAW, de ‘Royal Society’, die een voortrekkersrol heeft gespeeld in het propageren van de menselijke broeikashypothese (AGW = ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’). Vele op klimaatgebied gekwalificeerde leden waren daarover verbolgen. Zij hadden tal van bezwaren tegen AGW en waren van mening dat de ‘Royal Society’ het zoeken naar waarheid diende te faciliteren, maar niet een bepaalde hypothese als ultieme en onveranderlijke waarheid ‘vanaf de kansel’ diende te verkondigen.

De ‘Royal Society’ speelde eveneens een voortrekkersrol in de verklaring van een aantal nationale Academies van wetenschappen wereldwijd.

Ook de Russische academie was daarbij. Maar een aantal  Russische klimatologen heeft daar heftig tegen geprotesteerd, zoals blijkt uit het verslag van een wetenschappelijke conferentie in Moskou in 2004, waarvoor ook een aantal sceptische wetenschappers was uitgenodigd. De bijeenkomst werd voorgezeten door de toenmalige economisch adviseur van president Poetin: Andrey Illarionov.

Het optreden van de Britse delegatie aldaar was tenenkrommend. De Britten eisten dat de klimaatsceptische sprekers niet aan het woord mochten komen, konden geen bevredigend antwoord geven op eenvoudige vragen en dreigden de bijeenkomst te verlaten, waardoor zij het programma in de war schopten. Zie hier.

In de jaren daarna is de Britse houding ten aanzien van de klimaat’problematiek’ niet veranderd. Bizar was bijvoorbeeld de uitspraak van Paul Nurse, president van de ‘Royal Society’. Onder de titel, ‘Climate sceptics should be ‘crushed and buried’: Sir Paul Nurse attacks politicians who ‘distort’ facts on global warming’, schreef Ben Spencer in september 2014 voor de ‘Daily Mail’:

Politicians who do not believe in climate change should be ‘crushed and buried’, according to a speech given by Sir Paul Nurse. Sir Paul Nurse, who starts his presidency next week, pledged to ‘take on’ the ‘serial offenders’ who he accused of cherry picking scientific facts to suit their arguments.

Ook onze eigen KNAW heeft een forse (en beschamende) bijdrage geleverd aan het AGW–propagandaoffensief, tot groot verdriet van de Nederlandse klimaatsceptici.

Hoe zat dat ook al weer? Voor een onthullende analyse van het desbetreffende KNAW–rapport, zie hier.

Er is mij overigens ter ore gekomen dat vooraanstaande wetenschappers, waaronder KNAW–leden, thans heroverweging bepleiten van het KNAW–standpunt. Dat dient m.i. te worden toegejuicht ten einde deze smet op haar blazoen weg te poetsen.

De strijd tussen protagonisten en antagonisten van AGW gaat dus onverminderd voort, zeker nu de Amerikaanse regering uit de klimaatovereenkomst van Parijs is getreden en haar klimaatbeleid grondig op de schop heeft genomen. Gisteren rapporteerde ik over de recente discussie in de VS tussen twee voorstanders en twee tegenstanders van AGW.

Maar ook het Verenigd Koninkrijk laat zich niet onbetuigd. Het meest recente voorbeeld is een open brief van 33 leden plus tientallen sympathisanten aan het Britse Koninklijke Geologische Genootschap voor een heropening van de discussie. En passant wezen zij er op dat de positie van het genootschap afweek – want alarmistischer geformuleerd – van die van het VN–klimaatpanel (IPCC).

Onder de titel, ‘Fellows of the Royal Geological Society pushback over climate position’, rapporteerde Antony Watts op WUWT over het betrokken verzoek tot heroverweging van de positie van de organisatie inzake klimaat.

Anthony Watts:

Back in 2010, 43 fellows of the Royal Society wrote to its then president, Paul Nurse, to complain about the unscientific tone of the society’s messages on climate change. A few days ago, a group of 33 current and former fellows of the Geological Society wrote an open letter to their president in similar vein. The text is reproduced below.

The President
Geological Society of London (GSL)

Dear President

We are writing as a group of concerned primarily geoscientists, half of whom are or were Fellows, (names and affiliations listed below). Our concern is that the Society’s position on Climate Change (aka Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW), is outdated and one–sided, and is distracting attention and funding from real issues of pollution such as plastic and other noxious industrial and domestic waste. ….

The GSL position papers state they have been prepared ‘based on analysis of geological evidence, and not on analysis of recent temperature or satellite data, or climate model projections.’ And certainly, a key finding, ‘the only plausible explanation for the rate and extent of temperature increase since 1900, is the exponential rise in CO₂ and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution’, is not in line with the IPCC claim (in AR5 SPM), that ‘Anthropogenic influences have likely affected the global water cycle since 1960’, and that ‘more than half’ of the warming since 1951 is due to AGW. The IPCC also claim that ‘Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the pre-industrial era (variously claimed to be between 1750-1880) have driven large increases in the atmospheric concentrations of … CO₂’, which nobody seriously denies, but they do not claim that this resulted in warming before 1951/60, as the GSL appears to.

The IPCC position matches observations that almost half of the warming that has occurred over the last 150 or so years since industrialisation, had already happened by 1943, well before the rapid rise of industrial CO₂. This difference of opinion is critical, for if CO₂ did not cause the pre-1943 warming, the claimed consensus that Catastrophic AGW is caused by human CO₂ emissions since the Industrial Revolution, which is supported by GSL, must be mistaken.

While there remain other areas of disagreement over the science of Global Warming and Climate Change (which are not the same thing), we can probably all agree that the 2010 position paper and the 2013 addendum need updating. And as this update will be critical in deciding future climate policy world-wide, we propose that any updated paper should come from a full and open discussion of the science, and not just from the ideas of a small group however well qualified. We suggest that such a process could be achieved by adopting methods of review used by other professional societies, particularly the APS, AAPG, and APPEA copies of which are attached.

We also believe the GSL has a responsibility to refute the exaggerated claims that swirl around the fringes of the Climate Change debate, undermining the real science – such as that CO₂ and Climate Change cause:

• more hurricanes, more rain, more drought, more asthma and now, even more terrorism (through drought in Africa),
• the exceptional cold and warm recorded over most of the sub-Arctic, Northern Hemisphere during the past winter and spring are what we should ‘expect’ from Global Warming.

As this letter makes clear, it is not true that 97% of scientists unreservedly accept that AGW theory is fixed, or that carbon and CO₂ are ‘pollutants’ and their production should be penalised; how can the primary nutrient in photosynthesis be a pollutant? We also note that 700 scientists have made submissions to the US Senate expressing dissent from the consensus and 166 climate scientists issued a challenge to Ban Ki Moon on the eve of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009 to provide proof of human induced global warming, which he did not do.

Even once respectable journals like the New Scientist, still uncritically peddle such social media nonsense as the infamous Hockey Stick, that seems to have lost the otherwise well documented Medieval Warm period. ‘Global Warming’ is on everyone’s lips with each month/year claimed to be the ‘hottest ever’ – based on IPCC’s ‘adjusted’ land and marine temperature data; however, the ‘pause’ in average temperatures since the 1998 el Niño, as documented by almost all recent temperature data, suggests global warming is no longer happening. Both claims cannot be correct, and, by saying nothing about these differences, the Society is supporting rather than resolving them.

By restricting the review to the geological evidence, independently of IPCC theory and modelling, the GSL signalled an independent scientific approach. But by excluding an evaluation of the modern climate record, the committee has failed to notice or account for these and other inconsistencies in AGW theory.

The Energy Matters blog was a useful first step in focusing on these issues but, as it is not ‘peer reviewed’[i] in the way that scientific papers generally are, we suggest something more formal is needed, such as a 2-day conference to explore all sides of the issues raised, with a strong neutral moderator.

Topics for such a dialogue could examine the evidence that

1. CO₂ alone as the principle driver of temperature, or climate.
2. Climate Change is largely real, natural, and mostly beyond our control.
3. Manipulation of climate data has been used to support ‘global warming’.[ii]
4. Most climate alarms are little more than scaremongering.
5. CO₂ is mainly beneficial, NOT dangerous but blanket decarbonisation is.
6. Industrial effluents and plastics, deforestation and overfishing are dangerous– and are being side-lined by the focus on CO₂ emissions.

En zo gaat de brief door met argumenten die op dit blog reeds talloze malen de revue zijn gepasseerd.

Zie verder hier.

Laten we hopen dat het zelfreinigend vermogen van de wetenschap voldoende blijkt om ons binnenkort te verlossen van de klimaathysterie en het daarmee verbonden klimaatbeleid van ‘all pain and no gain’.