Posted 2012-February-09, 16:03
And, in case you are wondering about the origins and support for where that agenda came from, here is an excerpt from Andrew Montford's latest exposé on how the Royal Society became an advocacy group:
2001: Working with environmentalists
On the Royal Society website, it is still possible to see details of a meeting
organised by the Royal Society in the wake of the IPCC’s Third Assessment
Report. Entitled Climate Change: What We Know and What We Need to Know, it was held at the Society on 12 and 13 Decmber 2001.
These records give a strong flavour of the new direction that the Society was taking under
May’s leadership. The meeting was opened by Sir John Houghton, a former
head of the Meteorological Office (Met Office), a fellow of the Society and
the head of the IPCC’s scientific panel. Houghton has been a key figure in the
pushing of global warming as a major policy issue, and is believed to have
been responsible for what was widely perceived as the hyping of the science
in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. The meeting was closed with a speech
by May himself, perhaps an indication of the importance that was attached
to the occasion.
Many of the attendees were prominent scientists involved in research
into climate change and its impact, their names familiar to anyone who
has followed the campaign to keep global warming at the top of the
news agenda: Brian Hoskins, Myles Allen, John Mitchell, Julia Slingo, Martin
Parry, Bob Watson, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, Sir David King and Mike
Hulme. But this was not a scientific meeting. As well as the scientists, there
were representatives from a variety of environmental NGOs, including the
Worldwide Fund for Nature and Greenpeace, civil servants, representatives
from the nuclear and energy-efficiency industries and an environmentally
minded oil executive in the shape of Mark Moody-Stuart.
Also on hand was the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin, who was to speak on the
difficulties of communicating climate change science. Harrabin has been one
of the most frequently criticised environmental journalists in the UK, accused
of being too close to environmentalists and of failing to question scientists
closely enough. He has also been instrumental in attempts to have sceptic
voices sidelined at the BBC, organising a seminar of NGO staff and BBC
decision-makers to address what some perceived as a ‘false balance’ in the
corporation’s output.
Some time after the meeting took place, Houghton issued a report outlining
its conclusions.
Although details are somewhat sparse, it is possible to get a
sense of the mood of the participants. For example, the conclusions of the
‘Communicating Climate Science’ section were as follows:
Efforts to manage climate change will not succeed until we are able
to convey the idea that individual behaviour can make a difference.
Education and communication will have a key role to play and it was
suggested that the media continues to be an effective way for scientists
to reach the general public. Other stakeholders such as local authorities
and environmental pressure groups also have an important role in
communicating climate change science.
…the science can provide compelling arguments that the public can accept once they have reached a threshold of engagement. Scientists
and communicators were urged to avoid claiming certainty where there is
none. The point was made that communication will only succeed by telling
the story clearly, correctly and repeatedly in different ways and regularly
arguing for the need to reduce emissions…
28.The overwhelming impression is not of a meeting struggling with the
science, but with an advocacy movement struggling to get a grip on the
political agenda. The meeting was a strange one to be found under the roof
of the Royal Society.
2005: a Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change
29.In 2005, the Royal Society issued another position paper on climate change
that was very much a low point in the Society’s history. It was remarkable for its
aggressive stance towards those who questioned any aspect of the officially
sanctioned IPCC view of climate science. The document was written by Sir
John Houghton, who had been in charge of writing the IPCC’s scientific report
in 2001, and Sir David Wallace, a physicist and the Society’s treasurer. Entitled
A Guide to Facts and Fictions About Climate Change, the document took
issue with claims that evidence in support of the global warming hypothesis
was exaggerated and that scientists were underplaying the uncertainties in
their understanding of the climate.
It presented what it said were twelve misleading arguments put forward by sceptics, although it did not provide any citations to allow readers to assess these arguments on their own terms or indeed to determine if they really formed part of the sceptic case.
30.The tenor of the document is of swatting away unscientific criticism from
politically motivated attackers, but many of the counterarguments it outlined
were rather tenuous. For example, one of the allegedly misleading claims
by sceptics concerned the reliability of climate models, arguments which
Houghton and Wallace paraphrased as follows:
There is no reliable way of predicting how temperatures will change in
the future. The climate is so complex that it is hard to predict what might
happen. The IPCC’s climate scenarios are developed by economists not
scientists and are often misleadingly presented as predictions or forecasts,
when they are actually just scenarios – the most extreme of which are
totally unrealistic. The IPCC’s findings are dependent on models that are
badly flawed. No climate model has been scientifically validated. The IPCC
2001 predictions showed a wider uncertainty range than that in earlier
reports.
31.Far from demonstrating that these claims were misleading, however,
the authors actually went on to support them: the very first sentence of the Society’s response was in full agreement with the sceptic critique, noting that
‘Climate change is complex and not easy to predict…’.
The rest of Houghton and Wallace’s piece had little to say by way of disputing the difficulties of modelling the Earth’s climate and failed to touch on the other criticisms made.
The story was the same for what Houghton and Wallace called ‘Misleading
arguments - the claims that scientists had been exaggerating the dangers
of climate change by linking individual extreme weather events to climate
change and that the impression of increasing weather damage was due
to social and economic change rather than any difference in the climate.
A close reading of the Royal Society’s alleged rebuttal reveals that they
actually had no disagreement with what sceptics were saying, noting that
individual weather events could not be ascribed to global warming and that
socioeconomic factors were indeed a factor.
The picture that emerges from the analysis above is clear. By presenting
their response as a rebuttal of misleading claims rather than seeking areas
of agreement, the Society managed to sow discord where there was in
fact a measure of harmony. This approach might have been useful for the
purpose of maintaining political pressure, but did little to advance the public
understanding of the science or to enhance the reputation of the Royal
Society or of British science.
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