Scientific scepticism within the policy-driving field of climate science has taken another significant step in growth and reach in Europe and internationally.
Photo: Benny Peiser, Lord Lawson (GWPF)
Five years after its inauguration in 2009, the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation has announced the launch of its new campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum.
The new organisation will be able to conduct campaigns and activities which do not fall squarely within the Foundation’s remit as an educational charity. This arrangement reflects those used by other organisations with dual structures, such as Amnesty International UK and Greenpeace UK.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s news and opinion pieces will henceforth be covered by the new website of the Global Warming Policy Forum, as will the CCNet newsletter, founded and edited by Dr Benny Peiser since 1997.
Trust and credibility in the eyes of the public
The Global Warming Policy Foundation calls itself an all-party and non-party think tank which is open-minded on the contested science of global warming and says it is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated. Its key to success is the trust and credibility that we have earned in the eyes of a growing number of policy makers, journalists and the interested public.
Members include renowned climate scientists
Its academic advisory council includes renowned scientists from all over the world, including Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick, Nir Shaviv, Robert Carter and Henrik Svensmark.
Public has lost trust in climate science
The GWPF site states that this is of great relevance today in light of scientific scandals and the public’s loss of trust in climate activists and politicians. “For us, public trust is our most important asset. It has been accumulated as a result of the reasoned and moderate positions we have taken, the integrity of our foundation and the credibility of our actions.”
Along with the newly founded campaigning forum, the Foundation will continue to advance its charitable objects by commissioning and publishing reports and papers and by organising lectures and debates on key matters relating to climate science and policy. “While the Foundation will continue to publish our reports and videos, the Forum will campaign in a way that will make our work even more effective,” said Dr Peiser, the Director of both arms of the GWPF.
To shape future evolution of climate science
Lord Lawson, the chairman of both GWPF arms said: “This reorganisation will enable us to build on the progress of the past five years and make substantial further progress over the next five – years which may well be decisive in the evolution of climate change policy.”
The new campaigning organisation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. In recent years, the GWPF’s influence has grown rapidly, among both UK and international policy makers and the news media and is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading think tanks on global warming policy issues.
Independent, no funding from energy companies
The GWPF writes that it is funded overwhelmingly by voluntary donations from a number of private individuals and charitable trusts. In order to make clear its complete independence, it does not accept gifts from either energy companies or anyone with a significant interest in an energy company.
I was initially sceptical of the GWPF, but since then they’ve grown into an impressive, rational organisation. For me it is a daily source of information. I hope their current development continues.
Yesterday the Guardian was jumping up and down with glee that they had uncovered how heretofore secretive funding sources of GWPF were actually tied to fossil fuel interests (through the sinister Neil Record and Nigel Vinson) — somehow, obtusely, in a cloak and dagger sort of way. Maybe this behaviour should be christened the Gleick Syndrome.
After the second yawn in as many lines, I stopped reading. Perhaps someone else would like to give it a go.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/02/nigel-lawson-climate-sceptic-organisation-funders
The DeSmog UK article “An Honourable Man” actually makes for good reading, plus it brings back some fond memories of acute Schadenfreude:
http://desmog.uk/2014/09/01/nigel-lawson-honourable-man
Parts 1 & 2 are out – funny how Delingpole is introduced (with the envious title of “eccentric denier” – no doubt he’d be proud) – but notice how the author can’t bring himself to mention the name McIntyre.
Part 3 on Friday. Can’t wait to see how the author wraps it up.
Part 3 of Brendan Montague’s story on Lawson’s denialism is out:
http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/05/prologue-33-key-was-secret-campaign-cash-and-it-should-all-be-traced
Montague has good writing skills.
It’s his reasoning skills which are wanting.
Gleick Syndrome.
Rather than attempt to look at which side of the debate is more credible based on the data, he believes he has cunningly found the source of scepticism concerning human-driven climate change orthodoxy: a pervading mistrust of statism and a belief in laissez-faire economics.
It apparently hasn’t dawned on him that perhaps a belief in statism and a mistrust of laissez-faire economics could be driving the Warmist mind (as well as an apparently commonly-held conspiracy theory about evil fossil fuel barons seeding doubt on the science) — as though anyone needed to: nature herself is making a mockery of Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory.
Kurt in Switzerland
O/T David Appell is now publishing tasteless, defamatory statements about Patrick Moore; a sure sign that nature is no longer cooperating with Chicken Little:
http://davidappell.blogspot.ch/2014/09/when-patrick-moore-warned-about.html
Does Appell really believe Patrick Moore didn’t undergo some soul-searching (not to mention looking at data) prior to his about-face [on the dangers of human-driven climate change], that he really “sold his soul for a buck”? Is Appell so abject that he doesn’t realise that his actions are straight from the gutter, that his own credibility is thus compromised? (Or perhaps he’s just hungry for some web traffic on his site — trolling for trolls, so to speak).
Pitiful.
Kurt in Switzerland
When McKibben takes money from the Rockefeller foundation, or Joe Romm from Soros via ThinkProgress, that’s good and pure because it helps to save the planet.
When Patrick Moore takes money from a Nuclear industry association that’s evil and corrupt and proves that all arguments Moore makes must be wrong.
If David Appell reads this: David, just say yes, wouldya, thanks. You’re a cardboard cutout 2 cent whore in need of a customer.
“Would You Believe Bill McKibben Doesn’t Know Who Funds 350.org?” 5/15/12
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/05/would-you-believe-bill-mckibben-doesnt.html
Dirk: I have several times criticized ThinkProgress’s Center for American Progress for not revealing who their funders are, such as:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-global-warming-ruining-thanksgiving.html
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/05/would-you-believe-bill-mckibben-doesnt.html
and for other matters:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2008/10/nitrogen-trifluoride-scare.html
Thanks David, very fair of you to point this out. You have to give him credit for that, Dirk.
Yes I do. My Apologies, David. I thought you were politically as one-sided as you are scientifically.
(Quote from one of the pages: “Look, I still think carbon dioxide warms planets, humans are influencing climate, and we continue to burn fossil fuels at our peril. That’s hard science.”)
You have still not understood what it means that Earth’s climate system is a chaotic system with nonlinear feedback. You should look into the predictability of chaotic systems with simulations of limited precision. The reason for the chaos is the amplification of low order state information.
…you know for me it stopped being a scientific problem a long time ago. I see it ENTIRELY as a political movement (as the reason for the failure of the climate models is so OBVIOUS.)
(If this comment appears alone: it was preceded by another one in which I apologize to David; but that apology is still in the spam bin)
“I thought you were politically as one-sided as you are scientifically.”
One can’t be “one-sided” on the science. You either understand and accept the science or you don’t. I understand and accept that humans are altering the climate through GHG emissions.
“You have still not understood what it means that Earth’s climate system is a chaotic system with nonlinear feedback.”
I know very well what what a chaotic system is. Climate may be one, but it clearly has patterns that indicate a lot of determinism, such as all the recent ice ages, the warming after the PETM for a couple hundred thousand years, and the warming of the last 100 years.
Climate change after the PETM looks quite deterministic. So if there are large nonlinear chaotic phenomena in the climate system, they seem very rare. Yes, there are events like the Younger Dryas, but it’s really not known that chaos caused that, or other reasons (such as a shutdown of the AMOC due to a large ice dam that burst).
I certainly don’t think the current warming is chaotic, because we know the Earth is absorbing more energy than it’s radiating. By conservation of energy (which overrules even chaos), it has to be warming. And to no scientific surprise, it is.
So I don’t see that nonlinear jumps are common, but even still they’re no cause for calm, because of the way we’re loading the atmosphere with additional heat. More heat means larger fluctuations.
What chaotic changes in the climate system do you see? (Pick any time period you want.)
Kurt: What about my post is “defamatory?”
David Appell:
“What about my post is “defamatory?”
defamatory – adjective – (used of statements) harmful and often untrue; tending to discredit or malign; synonyms: calumnious, slanderous
Reposting the online article with quote from an erstwhile Greenpeace colleague (the last one in your referenced article) fits the definition rather well, IMHO.
Kurt in Switzerland
P.S. You didn’t address the rest of my comment. You should at least re-read it.
Again, how is my post “defamatory?”
Certainly, quoting someone else isn’t defamatory.
Nor are my statements untrue. They point out Moore’s huge inconsistencies. Something true can’t be defamatory.
Kurt: I don’t think the rest of your comment deserves a response from me.
Or rather, I disagree with your comment.
Stop trying to be coy. You know what you’re up to.
If you wallow in the gutter long enough, your clothes become soiled. And you forget how clean laundry looks and smells.
What I’m up to is exposing the huge inconsistencies of someone who works in the field of public relations, and whose science is now extremely faulty.
Call it coy if you want — I don’t care. I think it’s important.