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Climate Change developments – call for honest dialogue

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The UK Government’s chief scientist has called for honest dialogue on climate change. Quoted from the Timesonline Science chief John Beddington calls for honesty on climate change 27/01/10

“” “The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.

Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports.

He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.

He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”

He said that the false claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 had exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented.

“Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate. We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There’s definitely an issue there. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.” “”

Comments
You know what totally works better than peer-reviewed empirical science? Figuring out climatology in your head, and assuming that any consensus the other way is the result of people figuring it out in their biased heads. Why is there not a single climatological organization that disagrees about global warming? Is the iron grip of politics just that strong? If the evidence against were strong enough, climatologists would have broken away in sufficient numbers to form such a union — not just be lone voices in the wilderness. Instead, oddly, we have a wide range of scientific opinion, all of it inclusive of some degree of other of climate sensativity to greenhouse gases. Somehow, in all of climate science, there is no equivalent to the Discovery Institute in the way of strong opposition to the theory as a whole (that is, if the DI consisted of biologists, which of course it does not). Wait, I mean "1998, 1998, 1998!" Or is that an unfair representation of the skeptics?Lenoxus
January 30, 2010
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Be sure to play: http://www.yourdiscovery.com/earth/weather/feature1.shtmlMung
January 29, 2010
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I'm all for it. How much more is it going to cost us to get honest science?Mung
January 29, 2010
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Of course, uncertainty is exactly what the IPCC was trying to dispell so they could get the politicans and the people to do what they wanted.tragic mishap
January 29, 2010
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A similar call for transparency: Lord Lawson calls for CRU Inquiry to be held in public (Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s government)
LONDON, 28 January 2010 – Lord Lawson, the Chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has this week written to Sir Muir Russell about the terms of reference and the conduct of his Independent Inquiry into the allegations against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. Lord Lawson said the terms of reference needed to be broadened to cover not just what occurred within the CRU but also the impact externally, including whether the CRU sought to deny opportunities to other scientists to publish dissenting views. The Inquiry should take evidence not just from the CRU but also from those who feel they or their work have been improperly treated or have had information unreasonably denied to them.. . . .
DLH
January 29, 2010
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