Controversy Over Proof that there is no “Climate Crisis”

MensNewsDaily.com ^ | July 21, 2008 | Roger F. Gay

[RogerFGay]

The current issue of Physics and Society contains a mathematical proof by Christopher Monckton that there is no “climate crisis.” (report) One might expect intense scientific debate to follow. The opening rounds however, have centered on “discourteous” behavior by administrators of the organization behind the publication. It's gotten personal.

Physic and Society is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by The American Physical Society (APS). The Council of the American Physical Society, administrators of APS, added a disclaimer at the top of Monckton's paper, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, highlighted in red.

This article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions.

The opposing article in debate in the same issue, A Tutorial on the Basic Physics of Climate Change, by David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz contains no such statement from The Council regarding peer-review or speculation on the reception it should receive from the “world scientific community.”

Christopher Monckton protests in a letter to APS president Arthur Bienenstock, describing the peer-review process the paper was taken through in some detail. In summary response to the disclaimer, he states: “This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.”

“Having regard to the circumstances,” he adds at the end of the letter, “surely the Council owes me an apology?”

Monckton also requests the name of The Council member or advisor behind the disclaimer as well as details of the disagreement if the "offending red-flag text" is not removed "at once."

Introductory comments by the issue's editor confirm that Monckton's paper was invited and considerably weaken The Council's contention regarding scientific consensus.

The critical scientific question is whether “greenhouse gases,” particularly CO2, have been driving climate change. This is the bitterly contested issue in public debate directly related to the politics of national and international regulation of the use of carbon-based fuel, the environmental benefits of high taxes and gasoline prices, carbon-credit trading, etc. Much of Monckton's paper is dedicated to criticism of views expressed by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading proponent of the view that human activity (“anthropogenic CO2 emissions”) is the primary cause of global warming.

According to the editor:

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

The editor's view is well-supported.

A recent poll among the 51,000 earth scientists and engineers of The Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (Canada), found that only 26 per cent attribute global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels. This follows a significant effort to demonstrate that Al Gore's famous “the debate is over” statement, claiming that there is scientific consensus behind his global warming political agenda, is false. The Oregon Petition gathered signatures from over 30,000 qualified scientists in the US supporting the statement:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The Manhattan Declaration is capturing a broader endorsement from climate experts and other scientists, professional engineers, economists, policy experts, and others in 40 countries. In part:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems. ...

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

I have sent messages to two staff members at the American Physical Society asking for the specific basis for The Council's statement that Christopher Monckton's conclusions are “in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community.” The evidence so far suggests that The Council's definition of “the world scientific community” may be limited to the few controlling authors and editors of the IPCC reports that Christopher Monckton criticizes in his paper. I will be more than happy to publish The Council's response to my inquiry if and when they reply.

[polymuser]

Methinks The Council of the American Physical Society is greatly concerned about grant protection for the AGWists.

[Diogenesis]

Apparently this attack, like others, was led by the demented luddite, APS's own, Robert Park.
Park in his APS column last week invoked that Monckton is a "Denier", and most importantly,
was not trained as a physicist and threfore had no right to discuss
the 'religion' (**) of physics. (** as Park sees it he is the 'Pope' of American science).

PARK "1. GOOD LORD! GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS VANDALIZE APS.
"...on the denier's side was Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who inherited his father's peerage in 2006.
Lord Monckton is not a scientist, his degree is in journalism and he's a reporter for the Evening Standard, an English tabloid.
Whatever it is that Viscounts do, he may do very well, but he doesn't know squat about physics and his journalism suffers from it.
Worse, somebody fed the media the line that Monckton's rubbish meant the APS had changed its position on warming;
of course it has not. Few media outlets took the story seriously."

[sauropod]

I haven’t had a chance to digest the Monckton paper yet, but I have read the Hafemeyer/Schwartz paper.

1) A lot of the cited “facts” in it are not sourced, and

2)There is a lot of polemical language in it.

It is of a piece with Al Gore’s attempt to be JFK this week. Not based in reality. ‘Pod.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

When you state an opinion or present facts which are not in accord with the accepted view, expect some backlash from those that support the official viewpoint. In the military, try to get a message up the chain of command which does not agree with the official view. Ware a flameproof suit and have your farts verified. Look what happened to Galileo.

[ZGuy]

Of the red disclaimer, John Brignell of Number Watch writes:

The first sentence is nothing more or less than a deliberate lie. The second is, to say the least, contentious; while the third is an outrageous example of ultra vires interference by a committee in the proper conduct of scientific debate.

In over forty years of experience of editorial boards, refereeing and adjudicating for learned societies around the world, I never witnessed such gross discourtesy to an invited contributor. That such a statement can be offered without an iota of reasoning or evidence is a sorry indication of what the politicisation of science has brought about. It is the substitution of the Papal Bull for reasoned consideration.

[redangus]

I wonder if Mr. Parks has the same concerns about Gore’s lack of scientific credentials? We sat through a 35 minute love fest on “Meet the Depressed” yesterday. The Goracle was given over half the show to pontificate on his view of GW and was not questioned once on any of his assertions. There was not a single documented, checkable fact or statistic referenced in the whole 35 minutes just his bloviated opinion and a few out and out lies. Tim Russert had to be spinning in his grave. He may have been a Democrat, but he would not have let Gore blabber on uncontested.

I told my wife there’s no question why these people always sound so confident, they know they will never get questioned about anything they say.

[RogerFGay]

I totally agree. I raise the issue of the politicization of science in Norway Should Apologize for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It's part of the process the US has been undergoing to transform it into a Soviet style state. If it goes unchecked, eventually academics and journalists will go to jail for not supporting approved political views. The process of denying funding and firing academics who dare question political orthodoxy is well under way.

[Always Right]

[Always Right]

Lord Monckton is not a scientist

And Al Gore is?

[Foolsgold]

In the year 2121 BC the algorians settled on the planet Mars (called gorebal at that time)They eliminated all greenhouse gases, and that caused the planet to freeze. This would not have had a devastating affect if the planet rotation was not interrupted, however the planet became lopsided or as we call it today an extreme tilt to the left.The end result was a change in the planets pattern around the sun and the sun melted all the ice (sorry I guess it was gore made martian warming) the rest is now being discovered by our technology on the planet.

[Democrat_media]

The Marxist Democrats and the liberal mainstream Marxist media have been lying through their teeth. There is no global warming because the world is cooling rapidly proof: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html . That’s why the evil plotting media has been changing “global warming” to “climate change”.

Climate scientists: it’s time to move on and recognize that humans are a small, very small, factor in climate change, and since the planet is cooling, it’s crazy to worry about putting CO2 into the air because it might warm things up.

“They have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. Coincidence? Some scientists say it was, but many worry that it wasn’t.

Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory also show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He also noted that the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

“This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930,” Dr Chapman noted in The Australian recently.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html

[Diogenesis]

Robert Park and his minions at the APS have attacked well-credentialed scientists,
including behind-the-scenes, when it suits their political/economic interests.

[TigersEye]

The primary evidence that CO2 and the greenhouse effect have anything to do with raising global temperature is missing entirely. It isn't there.

No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)

That is a short and easily understandable article showing the plain truth. The hinge pin that links global temperature to the greenhouse effect is missing. It is easily measurable and hundreds of probes have done so.

[RogerFGay]

Very interesting article.

[TigersEye]

It really cuts to the bottom line doesn't it? Nothing difficult to understand there.

"If greenhouse warming was occurring then "A" would be "A + B." We have measured "A" until we're blue in the face with the most precise instruments ever made and there is no "B" in "A." Therefore, whether the planet is warming or not, there isn't a greenhouse effect involved. If there isn't a greenhouse effect then atmospheric CO2 is meaningless. End of story."

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !