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World Federation of Scientists changes its policy: “Climate change in itself is not a planetary emergency.”

Larry Kummer, Editor

Summary: While climate scientists quietly work, the noisy action has been on the policy frontiers. Activists on both sides play for the crowds, often using the standard sales tools of exaggeration and misrepresentation. Advocates of action had more supporters among journalists, and were able to do this on a larger scale. Unfortunately Mother Nature responded with the pause, undercutting their forecasts of imminent doom (forecasts beyond anything in the IPCC’s work). Now come the consequences, as people defect from the cause.

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Contents

  1. International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies
  2. Update
  3. What to do about climate change
  4. Background Information
  5. Who is the World Federation of Scientist?
  6. Key things to remember about global warming!
  7. For More Information

(1) The International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies

Report by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley about the 46th Session of the International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies of the World Federation of Scientists in Erice, Sicily. Posted at WUWT. This report remains uncorroborated, and its significance is as yet unknown. But it’s certainly a step backwards.

Excerpt:

The World Federation of Scientists, at its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, has been advised by its own climate monitoring panel that global warming is no longer a planetary emergency. The President of the Italian Senate, Judge Pietro Grasso … and the President of the Federation, Professor Antonino Zichichi {emeritus professor of Physics, U of Bologna}, said that care should be taken to examine carefully the basis for concern about CO2 emissions as well as the relevance and cost-effectiveness of proposed mitigation measures.

… This year Dr. Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario and chairman of the Federation’s permanent monitoring panel on climate, gave the Federation’s closing plenary session his panel’s confirmation that “Climate change in itself is not a planetary emergency.”

… {Essex said} “Human societies have lived and thriven under every conceivable climate, and modern technology makes adaptation to changing weather conditions entirely routine.” The increasing fraction of CO2 in the air could be expected to result in some warming, but it had been accepted that “the benefits of food production and the relief of starvation overwhelm concerns about the potential climate changes induced by land-surface modification.”

… “Our greatest concern at present is that the intellectual climate for scientific investigation of these matters has become so hostile and politicized that the necessary research and debate cannot freely take place. Political constraints take the form of declaring the underlying science to be settled when it clearly is not; defunding or denigrating research that is perceived to threaten the case for renewable energy; or the use of odious pejoratives like “denialist” to describe dissent from officially-sanctioned views on climate science.”

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… Professor Essex called for “free and open debate on all aspects of climate science, even where hypotheses are put forward for examination that openly contradict the official positions of political entities.”

He said the panel found persuasive indications that climate models systematically understated natural climate variability and significantly exaggerated the impact of CO2 emissions. Accordingly, past, present and proposed policy measures could be shown not to provide net benefits to society regardless of the rate at which the planet might warm. Limited resources would be better devoted to more pressing issues.

(2) Update

Comment by Steve McIntyre posted at the WUWT article:

Despite the opening sentence in the above post (“It’s official”), no such position was officially taken by the WFS. Indeed, many participants in the conference hold diametrically opposite views.

That was my impression as well, that Mockton was overstating in his opening line — so I omitted it from the excerpt shown here.

(3)  What to do: website page for the Permanent Monitoring Panel – Climatology

The page now shows:

Summary of the Emergency:

Being revised.

Priorities in dealing with the Emergency:

Being revised.

From the Wayback Machine, the page formerly read:

Summary of the Emergency

The safety and well-being of human populations are threatened by the variability and change in both the climate and the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Research into these trends is being significantly influenced by a number of factors:

  1. What was once a relatively easy and low-cost task of obtaining data for studying and predicting these changes, is now becoming expensive, complicated and threatening as data are copyrighted and offered on a ‘for sale’ basis by international co-ordinating bodies.
  2. Global monitoring of trends requires inter-comparability and continuity of key observations, combined with the recovery of historical information. Unfortunately, observation systems for gathering climatic data are becoming increasingly costly and difficult to maintain. Furthermore, some of the standard systems upon which climate research depends (e.g. the international upper-air sounding system) are being eroded.
  3. The quality of the information provided to the lay public, industry and governments is critical to the public perception of this issue and the scientists studying it. This, in turn, affects the allocation of limited resources for research and, ultimately, to public well-being. Unfortunately, the quality and reliability of the information is highly variable and is sometimes distorted. Scientists need to do a better job of communicating such information to present an accurate and timely perspective on the significance of their research and its accomplishments.

Priorities in dealing with the Emergency

  • To encourage and support free access to data on climate change
  • To monitor the monitoring of the global environment
  • To stimulate the education of the public with regard to the causes and effects of climate change.

To monitor:

  1. The increasing vulnerability of human society to the effects of climate change (e.g. More and more people living on flood plains and in areas threatened by tropical cyclones).
  2. Climatic extremes (e.g. droughts) to determine the extent of change and variability.
  3. Ways in which vulnerability to climatic disasters can be reduced (e.g. forecasting drought in order to avoid famine).
  4. Improved methods of forecasting variability and change (e.g. improved models for predicting El Niño) and the responsible issue of forecast products.
  5. The adequacy of climate-observing networks in light of the present and continuing deterioration of the current systems.
  6. Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone).
  7. The possible effects of natural episodic influences on the climate (e.g. volcanic activity).
  8. The effects of the commercialisation of national meteorological services on data and information services, observation networks and prediction research.

Permanent Monitoring Panels and Working Groups:

(4) Background information

(5) What is the World Federation of Scientist?

“About the Organization”

The World Federation of Scientists (WFS) was founded in Erice, Sicily, in 1973, by a group of eminent scientists led by Isidor Isaac Rabi and Antonino Zichichi. Since then, many other scientists have affiliated themselves with the Federation, among them T. D. Lee, Laura Fermi, Eugene Wigner, Paul Dirac and Piotr Kapitza.

The WFS is a free association, which has grown to include more than 10,000 scientists drawn from 110 countries. All members share the same aims and ideals and contribute voluntarily to uphold the Federation’s Principles. The Federation promotes international collaboration in science and technology between scientists and researchers from all parts of the world – North, South, East and West. The Federation and its members strive towards an ideal of free exchange of information, where scientific discoveries and advances are no longer restricted to a select few. The aim is to share this knowledge among the people of all nations, so that everyone may experience the benefits of the progress of science. {from their website}

“Organising the Fight”

The World Federation of Scientists … has been addressing the planetary emergency problems for over 20 years. A major turning point was reached, in August 1997, with the decision to establish Working Groups and Permanent Monitoring Panels to follow up each identified Planetary Emergency. The motivation for reaching such a decision is expressed in the opening address (Handling of Planetary Emergencies – The search for New Solutions) made by T. D. Lee, K. M. B. Siegbahn and A. Zichichi, during the 22nd Session of the International Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, held in Erice. {from their website}

(6) Some of the key things to remember about global warming!

While cheering for their faction of scientists, laypeople often lose sight of the big picture — the key elements for making public policy about this important issue.

  1. The work of the IPCC and the major science institutes are the best guides for information about these issues.
  2. The major global temperature measurement systems tell — broadly speaking — the same story since the 1970s: two decades of cooling, two of warming, followed by a pause.
  3. This is consistent with the larger firm conclusions of climate scientists: two centuries of warming, coming in pulses (ie, waves), with anthropogenic factors becoming the largest (not the only) driver since roughly 1950.
  4. There is a debate about the attribution (causes) of past warming — which probably varied over time — between natural drivers (eg, rebound from the Little Ice Age, solar influences) and anthropogenic drivers (eg, CO2, aerosols, land use changes). The IPCC’s reports make few claims about attribution of climate activity, as this remains actively debated in the literature.
  5. There is an even larger debate about climate forecasts, both the extent of future CO2 emissions and the net effects of the various natural and anthropogenic drivers.

For the past five years my recommendations have been the same:

  1. More funding for climate sciences. Many key aspects (eg, global temperature data collection and analysis) are grossly underfunded.
  2. Wider involvement of relevant experts in this debate. For example, geologists, statisticians and software engineers have been largely excluded — although their fields of knowledge are deeply involved.

(7) For More Information

Reference Pages about climate on the FM sites:

Other posts in this series about global warming:

  1. Still good news: global temperatures remain stable, at least for now., 14 October 2012
  2. When did we start global warming? See the surprising answer., 18 October 2012
  3. The IPCC sees the pause in global warming!, 18 December 2012
  4. Lessons about global warming from Alaska, 9 January 2013
  5. Secrets about global warming that you must not know, least they ruin the narrative, 22 January 2013
  6. Hidden news about our weather in July: experts tell us what even well-informed people do not know., 8 August 2013
  7. The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT), 18 August 2013
  8. One of the most important questions we face: when will the pause in global warming end?, 25 August 2013
  9. Possible political effects of the pause in global warming, 26 August 2013

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