2008 International Conference on Climate Change

There was an important conference on climate change held in New York this past week. The media tried to dismiss it, but the question is whether the concerns and points raised in the conference have scientific merit. Here is one view: Prominent Scientists Debunk Global Warming.

Marc Shepperd roundup of the conference.

A milestone report was presented at the conference: Nature, not Human Activity, rules the climate, a position statement on global warming by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). This is perhaps the most important document, on the global warming debate this decade, aside from the IPCC assessments. This report is a dissent from those assessments, pointing out the flaws and errors in those assessments. Since practically all the Global Warming is a Crisis crowd uses IPCC reports as a basis, this dissent is a powerful antidote to the hype.

UPDATE:
This email from Lord Monkton, a global warming 'skeptic', was posted as the pro-AGW blog RealClimate, in a thread that was highly dismissive of the conference. Yet the response forms a good summary of the "skeptic" position:

“Thank you for getting in touch. You do not explain what points in my published work on climate change you disagree with, though it seems that you do disagree. You ask what I have to offer the scientific community. When I first wrote publicly about the climate, I received 1,000 emails, of which a substantial proportion were from scientists round the world, some of them eminent, who have grave doubts about the official theory of anthropogenic “global warming” and were very grateful that these doubts had been expressed, since they themselves were under official pressure not to speak out. Several scientists, including the most eminent in the field, maintain regular communication with me to exchange ideas and to ask for scientific source documents. I have also assisted in the drafting of peer-reviewed papers to add clarity and logic to the presentation of scientific arguments, and my contributions are acknowledged in the text of the relevant papers. And I am conducting my own (admittedly rather inexpert) researches, which have revealed numerous errors and inconsistencies in the IPCC’s methodology for calculating the magnitude of the effect of greenhouse-gas enrichment on temperature. I attach a draft of a paper for the technically-minded layman that I’m currently working on. In parallel with this, I lead an international team of scientists which is currently working on a rigorous re-examination of the climate sensitivity question from the ground up, with a view to eventual publication in a peer-reviewed journal if the results prove compelling enough.

For what it’s worth, my provisional conclusions are as follows: that the science presented by the IPCC is in numerous respects demonstrably defective and in several areas dishonest; that it has substantially exaggerated the imagined problem; that it has excluded eminent scientists who disagree with it (one of whom, the world’s foremost expert on the malaria mosquito, will be visiting me next week); that it ruthlessly suppresses all dissent; that its publications are not peer-reviewed in the accepted sense of the term; that its reports provide no sound scientific basis for any alarm whatsoever about the influence of humankind on the future evolution of the climate, which will be negligible and largely beneficial; that the failure of global temperature to rise in a statistically significant sense over the whole of the past decade is no accident, but is a consequence of the ending of the 70-year-long solar Grand Maximum, during which the Sun was more active and for longer than at almost any similar previous period over the whole of the past 11,400 years; that it is only marginally more likely that the climate will warm over the next century than that it will cool; that the warming, if it occurs, will be unlikely to exceed one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate; that even if the IPCC’s central estimate were correct the consequences for sea level would be negligible; that all other consequences of warmer weather worldwide are generally beneficial; that, though there are many environmental problems, our influence on the climate is too small to be one of them; that it would be profoundly unwise to adopt any of the mitigative measures proposed by the IPCC, which would merely have the effect of transferring jobs, economic prosperity and carbon emissions away from the West and into China, India and other third-world countries where environmental controls are nothing like as stringent as they are here; that any attempt to restrict fossil-fuel use by third-world countries will have the effect of keeping them poor, so that their populations will continue to increase; and that, therefore, the net effect of attempted mitigation - which would of course have no appreciable effect on the climate and would hence be entirely futile - would be to increase the “carbon footprint” of humankind in the medium to long term, without reducing it in the short.

These are among the points that will be reviewed and discussed at the climate conference in New York, where the emphasis will not be on proselytization and preaching but on quiet conversation about the science. Many of the world’s leading climate scientists will be present, and they will represent a wide range of disciplines and opinions. There will also be laymen like me, who are invited because their influence and experience as policymakers may help to clarify some of the issues.

Finally, you mention “disinformation” which you say I have been spreading. If you would be kind enough to make a list of any points in my published papers at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org which are scientifically inaccurate, supplying in each instance a reference to a peer-reviewed scientific journal which establishes that what I have said is in error, unless there are scientific papers that give another opinion I shall of course be happy to make corrections and see to it that they are posted. That is how true and honest science is done. - M of B”