There were more than 80 speakers from 14 different countries extending from Sweden and Norway to Australia and New Zealand. This was a meeting of climate realists, who view the climate issues with the simple basics of hard nosed science.

The current international exaggerations on global warming are surprisingly popular yet empty of supporting evidence. All too few ask for the evidence when told of scare stories of rising tides, dying polar bears, stronger hurricanes and mosquitoes moving North, while any supporting evidence is notably absent.

Rules of Science

The rules of science have been discussed for years and appear in varying terms. However, Nobel physicist Richard Feynman describes it the following way:

“In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. It’s that simple statement that is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is---if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.” Dr. Richard Feynman, “The Character of Natural Law”, The MIT Press, 1965, p. 156.

In this simple statement is the heart of science, which is to propose and test hypotheses by explaining observations, evidence, and data from the real world. Following Feynman’s advice, a hypothesis which can’t explain the observations, evidence, and data must be revised or dropped. Please note that this process doesn’t involve creation of a consensus. We know that consensus is not science, science is not consensus, voting is not science, appeals to authority is not science, and above all, computer models do not produce evidence. Thus computer models cannot contribute to the testing or verification of a hypothesis, since they produce no observable evidence. This is especially true when we know so little about the climate.

Problems with Computers

Thus, all of those complex computer models we hear so much about, the ones that produce pretty and complex climate diagrams, dynamic and colored oceans, water, and earth, do not produce evidence. They produce elaborate guesses and simulations from the rich minds and imaginations of computer jocks. Regrettably, these computer models are also the largest source of the scare stories and exaggerations going around the world, but they are not evidence.

Recently, President Obama made some remarkable statements.

"Promoting science isn't just about providing resources," Obama said. "It is about letting scientists ... do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient; especially when it's inconvenient. It is about insuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda, and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

The Bullying by the AGW lobby

The decision processes in how to fund these research projects are now dominated and corrupted by the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) lobby, which controls the billions being spent in global warming research. Such bureaucratic bullying provides massive funds largely to people faithful only to the AGW side of these issues.

As Governor John Sununu advised the conference, the AGW lobby now controls who gets funded, who get published, who gets acclaimed, and who gets demonized. This imbalance needs to be corrected fast. Policy makers cannot make good energy policy when they are being told only about computer guesses instead of science. A major concern was the loss of scientific integrity in most of the anthropogenic global warming issues (AGW).

Problems with the Peer Review Processes

Additional problems include the one-sided editorial policies of many scientific journals that are well-known to suppress or ignore the views of the realists; journals such as Science, Nature, Scientific American, New Scientist, and others. The time is at hand to ask President Obama to immediately declare his support for a greater balance in funding, or as he says "It is about letting scientists ... do their jobs”, listen to their statements, understand what they are finding, and give them support where warranted.

What they are finding is profound, particularly that there is little evidence to demonstrate any connection between man-made CO2 and warming.

Hopefully, Obama will end this bullying, one-sided funding and publishing processes quickly, because it is in need of fundamental and serious repair. To repeat, he says this is “about letting scientists do their jobs”. Amen, President Obama.

Major Challenges to the Man-made CO2 Hypothesis

These issues were also discussed quite independently of Obama’s statement at the New York Conference on Global Warming. In addition to many outstanding scientific papers presented at the meeting, several major troubling themes with the AGW (human caused warming) lobby arose. It was recognized by most of the hundreds of attendees that something is dreadfully wrong with the discussions of global warming. Some of these include:

1. The incredible amount of dishonesty among the AGW groups including revising T data, and an unexplained history of the CO2 data that involved the removal of 90,000 direct measurements of atmospheric CO2. The data were reviewed by Georg Beck and discussed at the conference by Dr. Tom Segalstad of Norway, professor of Resource and Environmental Geology Univ. of Oslo, and Dr. Fred Goldberg of Sweden (professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm). These corrected data tell a very different history of atmospheric CO2, and the discrepancies need to be resolved, above board and in the open.
2. The utterly one-sided funding of global warming research completely dominated by the support of the AGW efforts as discussed above. The media generally ignore this $5 billion dollar funding support for the AGW, and instead devote their attention toward the relatively insignificant support allegedly being received from the oil companies.
3. Unreported and unknown by the public, there are the many intimidation techniques used by the AGW lobby, directed at those researchers who might have doubts about the dubious cause and effect relationships between CO2 and global temperatures. In addition to intimidation from their own research supervisors and colleagues, loss of funding, and the predictable ad hominem attacks, many in the AGW with Ph.D.s remain silent. By default they are participants in junk science. Arthur Conan Doyle would have called them "The Dogs that Didn't Bark". It’s been a nasty confrontation.
4. Andy Revkin of the New York Times made derisive comments in his articles about the conference, but he must have missed the excellent presentation of Willie Soon, who showed once again the persistent correlations between the variations of solar irradiance and the variations of global temperatures. For clarity, he shows that CO2 man-made, natural, or other wise is not likely involved with global temperature variations. Soon reported that these correlations have been found in the temperature record in the Arctic, mainland USA, China, and Venezuela.
Revkin doesn't seem to appreciate that these studies do not involve the contrivances of computers, but the collection and analysis of actual field data. To repeat, computers never produce data, observations, or evidence.

5. Soon also reinforced Governor Sununu’s comments about the widespread corruption of the peer review processes. Revkin seems to have missed this as well. Soon told us "We have a system (of peer reviewing scientific literature) that is truly, truly appalling."
The loss of integrity of American as well as science around the world was also a major concern discussed at the meeting, and it remains a significant risk today. We have gotten away from sound science and adopted the practices of low grade trial lawyers, where standards of evidence are much lower than those in science, and where attacking the witnesses is fair game and an accepted standard practice.

We have learned nothing from the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, the heresy convictions of Galileo, and the death in destitution of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who saved the lives of thousands of women in child birth in Europe. At the time the European medical organizations were wrong about deadly puerperal fever and Semmelweis was right, and as a consequence of challenging medical practices of the times, he died a scorned medical doctor. Today’s insulting thugs of global warming are reminiscent of those days.

Major New Uncertainties in our Climate

Additional observations from the meeting are the growing levels of uncertainties, biases, data manipulations, and complexities of the descriptions of the entire climate system. William Gray of Colorado State presented evidence that the oceans, heretofore downplayed or ignored, are very important in the climate system and in general very poorly understood. I happen to believe he is correct, but this doesn't imply that the sun clouds, water vapor, and other forces are not involved, too, as Soon had reported.

When you include the poor computer handling and treatment of the major uncertainties of water vapor, clouds, stunningly bad temperature data, poor temperature station siting, inadequate equipment control, and poor maintenance of the surface stations, you end up with major unsolved questions.

Game Over?

As it stands now there is little scientific support for the man-made global warming hypothesis. The AGW hypothesis has major scientific weaknesses and it angry promoters have lost huge amounts of credibility. As Dr. Richard Lindzen said, “Its game, set, and match”. Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is a nuclear scientist and a science and energy resource for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto:mike@foxreport.org

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