The recent and concerning collapse of the once revered scientific process in large parts of the climate change and medical community is detailed in a highly critical ‘open review’ paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Someday, charge the authors, there will need to be an inquiry into how so many scientific bodies abandoned core principles of scientific integrity, took strong positions on unsettled science, took people’s word for things uncritically, and silenced those who tried to continue the scientific endeavour.
Universities have abandoned their historical role of open and disinterested enquiry on behalf of humanity, and “should be sanctioned for this by revoking their charitable status”. Group-think that maintains prevailing fads and supresses dissent on behalf of alleged ‘consensus’ is the opposite of the central purpose of universities. Mainstream media have long been uncritical receptacles for alarmist ‘clickbait’ political scare stories, and this, it might be added, encourages self-promotion among aggressive publicity-hungry scientists. There are many errors and deceptions and much censorship, state the authors, blighting the complete story being told in an unbiased manner. Singling out the behaviour of state broadcaster the BBC, they note: “Any reasonable observer will wonder whether Ofcom [the state regulator] is asleep at the wheel, not requiring the BBC to correct the errors it has been made aware of by experts, nor return to some form of neutrality.”
The report is mainly written by Professor Michael Kelly, the former Prince Philip Professor of Engineering, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, and Clive Hambler, Science Lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford. There is also economic input from Professor Roger Koppl from Syracuse University. The full GWPF report is due to be published in December and the paper is currently open for review, comments and contributions from other academics. The GWPF notes habitual attacks on its work from activists, and its ‘open review’ policy is explained here.
The realisation that genuine free speech and scientific enquiry is being replaced by strict politicised requirements to adhere to orthodoxy and pre-set narratives grows with every appalling ‘climategate’-style scandal. Regular readers will need little reminding of the recent retraction of the Alimonti et al. paper by Springer Nature following a year-long campaign by a small group of activist scientists and journalists. The paper, whose lead author was Professor of Physics Gianluca Alimonti, reviewed past weather trends and found no data to support the politically-termed ‘climate emergency’. World headlines have also been devoted to the astonishing story of Dr. Patrick Brown of Johns Hopkins University, who blew the whistle on his recent paper published in Nature on California wildfires. He said he wrote it according to the approved script boosting the role of ‘climate change’ and downplaying any natural causes and the horrendous role played by arsonists.
The full publication of the GWPF paper will add to the growing concern and alarm about the science advice given to governments and the media for onward distribution to the public. The corruptions involved in this process are seemingly built into the current system. Trillions of dollars now back the Net Zero collectivisation project across the world, and most scientists, largely paid for by politicians and wealthy green elites, are fully onboard the gravy train.
The GWPF authors aim to push back by maximising the diversity of advice, challenging advice through opposing ‘red’ teams, ensuring a reasonable level of accountability for scientists to discourage hype, and protecting scientists from career damage if they rationally disagree with mainstream views. Institutions should not take official positions on scientific issues, “since this stifles diversity of thought, freedom of speech and the reliability of advice”. Scepticism must be recovered as a respectful term for scientific behaviour from its present position as an insult, “and reinstated as a core duty of universities and learned societies”, demand the authors.
The authors are particularly dismissive of the role of computer models in the recent Covid pandemic and the promotion of climate change alarm. In the U.K., the “gross misuse” of Covid computer models in the absence of robust data to measure them against is noted. Along with a “paucity of challenge” to scientific advice, this may have contributed to “death tolls, economic decline and societal ills”.
On the climate side, the models have produced temperature forecasts two to three times higher than the actual data eventually showed. What is worse is that the results are getting more inaccurate. If the models were actually modelling the evolving climate, the gap would be narrowing. The inaccuracy is a “major embarrassment” and would not be tolerated in any other field of science, and certainly not in engineering. Separation of human-induced warming from natural temperature variation is far more difficult than that portrayed by the UN-funded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC), since experimentation and replication is “simply not possible”. The inability to model significant parts of the atmosphere are “fatal flaws” in any system that is supposed to be predicting future climate change.
Yet, as regular readers will again recall, computer models play a vital part in promoting the unhinged Thermogeddon fantasies of people like the UN Secretary-General Antonio ‘global boiling’ Guterres. The UN-backed IPCC seems addicted to using computer models incorporating a ‘pathway’ of 5°C global warming within less than 80 years. Over 40% of its impact predictions are based on this forecast, despite an admission it is of “low likelihood”. According to a recent Clintel report, over 50% of clickbait climate science papers incorporate this pathway in a seemingly desperate attempt to attract the attention of activists writing in the mainstream media.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic‘s Environment Editor.
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If the so-called scientists involved in computer modelling adopted a little humility and began with the Niels Bohr premise, they might be a little less doom-laden in their prognostications.”Prediction is very difficult. Especially if it’s about the future.”
Scott Adams talked a little bit about models in his videocast a few days ago and explained very clearly how models are for the most part a tool of persuasion.
Basically you can get a model to produce any outcome you want. Literally. And they are primarily used to justify decisions, not inform them. At least that’s the case with models of complex social or business situations.
The business plan is a perfect example of this that many people will have encountered. They. are simulation models of how businesses will evolve. Almost all business plans are designed to show a successful business. And almost all of them actually fail, at least the new ones. Even the ones that succeed don’t end up looking anything like the what the business plan predicts.
What is astonishing is how simulation models have come to be accepted as science. That is perhaps the greatest wizardry behind them.
I work in finance and I have found models useful in showing that an investor’s pet investment trade idea wouldn’t have much of an impact on their total investment portfolio, even though up till that point everybody was keen on the idea.
The analogy would be if a climate model focussed on the outcome of an energy policy on wealth (i.e. what matters), not on global temperature, allowed for all other random variables (e.g. standard weather, solar flares), plus some noise term for ‘unknown unknowns’, and how those might throw the impact of the policy off. Done ‘properly’ modelling would show that UK climate policy, and possibly global climate policy, would have only one certain outcome and that would be a huge reduction in global wealth. You can take that to the bank.
On the other hand I have seen colleagues point to a 0.1% improvement (i.e. very small) in investment returns, and go ‘see, it does make a difference!’
In finance you can use a known start point, it’s the outcome that is unknown/variable.
The problem with climate is there is no default state to use as a start point, so both start and outcome are unknown.
With a dynamic, chaotic, non-linear system with no default, it is impossible to predict outcomes.
Plus the error will increase inversely with the square of the time from start point. That means anything within that widening error margin is meaningless – it could be any one value but there is no way of knowing which it ‘should’ be.
What is astonishing is that no matter that they are always wrong and wide of the mark when compared with observation rather than reducing their acceptance, it reinforces it.
As the man said: it’s policy based science, not science based policy. Tell me what policy you want to promote, and I’ll come up with the pseudo-science and junk-science that supports it.
In effect it’s back to the past: auguries, High Priests, chicken entrails, and blood spatter patterns from slitting throats of doves. We have just updated it to computer ‘entrails’ and credentialed ‘experts’.
Just like lawyers before a jury.
All models are wrong, some are useful. George Box.
If the necessary perimeters needed to construct a model were known, there would be no need for the model. Models are exercises in ‘what if?’, but cannot say which ‘if’ is correct.
Well done Professor Michael Kelly: a ray of sunshine amidst the Stygian gloom of the Whitehall/Westminster socialist fascist cabal; the enablers of so much purblind venal idiocy.
Oh and well done (not) the business secretary who ‘needs China to reach its net zero targets’
When will the ever reliable truthful helpful socialist fascist State of China meet its net zero targets?
Clue for halfwits: that would be never…….
It’s a rum do when the actions of the ever reliable truthful helpful socialist fascist state of China track reality better than the enlightened democracies. Who knows in what other areas they may be more honest that our people?
The whole point of the outlandish numbers produced by models is that when the net zero totalitarians have banned everything useful, they can measure the temperature and say “see, it worked”. It is no more advanced than primitive peoples saying that sacrificing a virgin makes the sun come up every day. See, it works!
But it’s been ‘working’ since the end of last century with no increase in rate of warming and an actual slight decline towards the end of the decade of the new century.
The problem for these liars is there is no correlating decrease in fossil fuel CO2 emissions, in fact an increase. And science says: if there is a causal relationship between two variables, there MUST be correlation. It only needs one instance where there is no correlation, to falsify the hypothesis – we’ve had twenty years worth of no correlation.
Hence the hype about hottest ever… name a month… to keep the lie going that the climate system continues to heat up as predicted.
Correct. They can make the models show whatever they want. And when the economy has been wrecked on the altar of Net Zero and Global Communitarianism has been enforced guess what ….. those “extreme weather events” which are currently used as propaganda to justify their policy will magically disappear …… ie the bought-and-paid-for media will stop reporting them and they will return to just being weather.
I thought Ofcom was mainly ex BBC staff.
Most likely 😳
As long as every BBC weather related news report or article has the cut and paste sentence “Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to generate electricity emits carbon dioxide, which is the main driver of climate change.” and is not challenged our government will continue to squander our taxes on the unattainable and pointless Net Zero nonsense.
The BBC won’t even consider other drivers of possible climate change such as deforestation, construction of 100’s of new heat trapping mega-cities to accommodate out of control population growth or completely natural climate altering causes such as orbital variations or varying levels of heat energy emitted from the Sun. With the BBC it’s ALL beneficial gas CO2’s fault. Pathetic.
And one cannot underestimate this drip-by- drip brainwashing of the next generation as they join their elders watching the so-called “news” from Official Society.
No wonder the Jesuits, Communists, etc., went first for the schools . . .
As the Jesuits say “Give me the boy and I will give you the man”.
“Give me the boy to age seven and I will give you the man”.
You are still pushing anthropogenic global warming and this is complete bollox.
There is NO global warming and climate changes as it always has done and is certainly not influenced by the actions of mankind. Furthermore, there have been many excellent articles here on DS confirming these points – it pays to read them.
Population is not out of control and smacks of a 77 Brigade style narrative. Currently we can feed everyone on the planet properly, the failure to do so is the result of political ill will and deliberate supply failures.
A good starting point for your research would be Michael Schellenberg’s ‘Apocalypse Never.’
“There is NO global warming” ….as long as you cling to something so demonstrably false the “CO2 Will Kill Us All” maniacs can brush you off as a conspiracy theorist extremist. You make it too easy for them. Better to recognise there is SOME climate change, most of it is entirely natural, what little is caused by humans is via. heat trapping mega-cities and mass deforestation, both of which come as a result of….out of control population growth.
“Population is not out of control” …Yeah, keep telling yourself that a doubling of Africa’s population every 27 years is OK for the rest of the world. If you think the channel crossings are out of control now you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. At this rate, in a generation or two Western Europe will be completely overrun.
The resources of the so-called wealthy Western nations are being chucked and wasted on the holy grail of Net Zero in a pathetic attempt to lower CO2 levels. A complete and utter waste of money which, if allowed to continue, will result in the destruction of Western civilization as we currently know it.
Surely Africas population gets self regulated by nature now & again & they don’t all have to come to Europe if our borders were maintained how they used to be ! The money thrown around lately by the traitorous Barstewards in control could have stabilised most poorer countries around the world incentivising people to stay put & make a go of it !
Good luck with that one!
As always there is a mountain of stuff to disagree with here but I will pick on a recent event:
World headlines have also been devoted to the astonishing story of Dr. Patrick Brown of Johns Hopkins University, who blew the whistle on his recent paper published in Nature on California wildfires.
Patrick Brown presented no evidence to support his case – he just asserted it without consulting his fellow authors. Mallen Baker looked for what evidence he could. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZUXQPqY3k&t=14s
Yes, look, MTF – of course there will be details to be queried; I never read these articles without believing that some part of them might be inaccurate. But do you really, really believe that the general direction of travel, via dodgy data from politically motivated institutions, through the minds of a hopelessly propagandised public, is towards anything other than a globally controlled, top-down economy based on privation for the majority and wealth and prosperity for an elite minority? Why trust the ‘establishment’ to such a degree? Why be so frightened of a little climate change? Why believe that mankind is responsible for that change, given the impossibility of proving it, or even measuring it? Sure there are important environmental issues to be faced – pollution (particularly of the seas), the destruction of the rain forests etc etc; these are things are definitely our fault! But a little extra heat? WHAT ARE YOU GUYS SO FRIGHTENED OF???
Clive
Thanks for accepting there may be something odd about Brown’s story.
As I see it you ask two fundamental questions:
But I really, really believe that the general direction of travel ….. is towards anything other than a globally controlled, top-down economy based on privation for the majority and wealth and prosperity for an elite minority?
Yes – I believe it is a lot more complicated than that. What are your information sources for thinking that is the direction of travel?
But a little extra heat? WHAT ARE YOU GUYS SO FRIGHTENED OF???
“Little” is relative word – little relative to what? Surely what matters is the consequences of whatever warming takes place? There are all sorts of consequences but perhaps the most obvious one is a rise in sea levels. This has happened before with dramatic rises in response to changes of a degree or two – for example the early holocene. In the past a rise in sea level was not a disaster but with nearly a billion people living in low elevation coastal zones this is pretty serious.
Oh good grief. Look, I’m hardly going to post link after link when you clearly managed to get to this website all on your own, where there are thousands of links, in thousands of articles, if you look for them. That’s something you can do without any help. As for temperature rises, sea levels rises blah blah, they’ve happened before, they’re happening now, they’ll go down again and then they’ll go up again, and who sodding cares. Nothing much will change. They simply don’t frighten me because I’ve seen them predicted before and nothing’s happened (for instance where sea levels are concerned) to stop people like Obama buying property on low-lying land. He knows there’s nothing dramatic to worry about and I encourage you not to be so nervous too. There’s no proper evidence linking human activity to any significant part of those phenomena, and the constant deliberate terrorising of people who don’t seem able to find anything out for themselves represents a colossal crime. I’ve done many things in life and at the moment I drive kids to school and back for the council; they display a variety of problems, one of them refusing to go school because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t get Covid and die by lunchtime, he’ll certainly suffocate from CO2 poisoning by teatime. He believes this because he’s told by his teachers – people he respects, God help us – that it’s true. He has, in effect, been turned into a raving nutcase by the incessant bombardment on which the government, through the schools, insists. Don’t tell me there’s no general direction of travel, mate – I see it every day. Look your own facts up and grow a pair. I won’t be coming back to this article – getting too angry.
Of course there are thousands of web links about climate change and I am familiar with many of them. I was asking because I am interested in which of those links you have seriously studied. IPCC reports are quite hard going, do you spend time reading and understanding the arguments of sites such as carbon brief and skeptical science? I spend a great deal of time reading and engaging with sceptical sites such as this one because I think it is important to read both sides of an argument is really doing themselves justice.
Don’t tell me there’s no general direction of travel, mate – I see it every day. Look your own facts up and grow a pair
I live in the same world as you and as a 72 year old retiree I have the time and perspective to think about the way the world is going. There is, for example, an obvious rise in authoritarian government – democracy is in retreat. But “globally controlled, top-down economy” – that’s not at all obvious. The Chinese government may be planning something on these lines, but many countries are trying to reverse globalisation. Small independent businesses thrive in many countries. In any case trends change – 20 years ago free market democracies and globalisation looked unstoppable.
The Climate Crisis $cientists are not Scientists …. they’re propagandists; bought and paid for to give a chimera of credibility to the Globalists’ plan for global Communitarianism.
Global warming mantra is a distraction , I read that the top 100 companies cause nearly all World Pollution ! POLLUTION is the thing & does it get a mention ???..
The Climate system is mathematically chaotic. That was established by Lorenz in 1963. It is because they are trying to model a non-linear, rotating coupling of 2 fluids, atmosphere and oceans. What that means for modelling of the climate system is that long term predictions about regional climates is impossible, weather forecasting is ok for no more than a week at best. Applications of statistical tricks won’t mean anything as they can’t shortcut chaotic behaviour. But it’s worse than that, when it comes to the behaviour of clouds no one knows how to model their physics. That is important because cloud is a very effective reflector of heat from the sun which affects total insolation and also a blanket to slow outgoing heat radiation.
Additional to that, in longterm computer modelling, each step of calculations bring in a minute rounding error. Significant analysis of the modelled system is required to establish if such roundings of billions of calculations leads to a reasonable bounded prediction. Remember Lorenz comment about a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causing a tornado in Texas. Subsequently he extended the quote to consiser that such a flap of butterflies wings might stop a tornado forming.
Consider how the extra precipitation that would occur from warming that might happen. If it increased over Greenland and Antarctica then sea level would fall as snow accumulated. Even if there were no increase in CO2 the chaotic behaviour of climate continues and no one could even predict the climate change of that by 2100.
As for Covid models, I despair.
There’s a lot of scientific snake oil about these days.
The climate alarmism is as far away from accepted scientific processes as possible. It is based on lies dressed up as science. It is necessary to go back to the initial claims that support the lies. We had the claim that the atmosphere acts like a greenhouse and gases trap radiation. Greenhouses do not get warmer because of trapped radiation and this has been proven experimentally with model greenhouses. This also relates to Tyndall’s work on gases and demonstrated with modern interpretations using glass tubes, candles and thermal cameras. This is something Paul Daniels could have created as a magic trick. It was created for the BBC by Sussex University and used a thermal camera tuned to carbon dioxide. Thermal cameras cannot detect air temperatures so it measured nothing with air in the tube and it responded when carbon dioxide was put in. In the atmosphere the greenhouse effect resulted in the claim of backradiation which does not comply with the laws of thermodynamics.
More importantly we are repeatedly told about trapped heat. Trapped heat does not heat anything. Heat is defined as thermal energy which is transferring from one location to another due to temperature differences and it always moves from high to low temperatures. For heat to be trapped in the natural world there would be no temperature differences anywhere in the universe and we would all be dead. For anybody who does not belief this about trapped heat, I suggest they take a thermos flask of hot water to be and they will discover that heat trapped in it does not keep them warm.
Articles like this give the alarmists credibility because they need to be called what they are, which is liars and the proof is easy for all to see.
Headline Translation: ( since you cant Say it ) : Climate FRAUD and Covid Science Highlighted by Critical New Report.
This paper is a milestone.
A certain type of bad science is gaining ground, its main hallmark being misuse of the precautionary principle. Its principal tenets are that the most alarmist interpretation of the facts must be accepted for fear of a potential catastrophe, and that dissent increases the risk of catastrophe and must accordingly be suppressed. It has other characteristics, notably the privileging of hypothesis above data, the manufacture of consensus and the creation of a subcaste of scientists who own a given issue, but these are merely consequences of the basic principle that activism takes precedence over the search for truth.
Now, at last, somebody has taken two apparently unrelated examples of the phenomenon and analysed the remarkable similarities between them. I hope that there will be many more and that the thing will come to be recognised as a thing.