Climate War Continues Despite Reconciliation Meeting
Is the world in danger of a heat collapse or just an eco-dictatorship? In the world of climate research the hostility between warning scientists and sceptics has become reinforced. Recently, a reconciliation conference took place in Lisbon - but there seems to be no particular interest in peace.The problems start with naming your opponents correctly. Are sceptics battling against alarmists? Deniers against catastrophists? Or realists against warmists? The conflict is between established climate researchers, who warn of the consequences of man-made global warming, and that colorful camp of scientists and non-scientists, who distrust the computer models of their opponents, who think all the talk of climate change is a big mistake or even a conspiracy by radical ecologists.
The battlefield of this war, which is fought with graphs, charts and verbal attacks, is usually the digital jungle of the internet. Therefore, it was a little sensation that parts of the warring factions were actually physically meeting in Lisbon last week - and this under the headline "reconciliation in the climate debate." Equally remarkable was the fact that the workshop with about 30 participants was organised by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. After all, the EU has an official goal of limiting global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels - and this limit is one of the favorite targets of the sceptics.
... most important representatives were absent from the meeting. Gavin Schmidt, a U.S. climatologist and the mastermind of the climate alarmist blog "Realclimate.org, was absent. He was invited and turned down, a decision possibly linked to the fact that Steve McIntyre had confirmed his attendance.
... some researchers have called the man from Toronto "idiot", "madman" or "playground bully" for example in the e-mails which were stolen from a server of the University of East Anglia at the end of 2009 and subsequently posted on the Internet. The guild of climatologists called this a criminal act, the sceptics dubbed the affair "Climategate". It was - in addition to the concession by the IPCC to have committed errors in the forecasts for the melting of the Himalayan glaciers - the climax, so far, in the conflict over climate research.
While some want to save the world of a heat shock, others claim they want to protect mankind from an eco-dictatorship. Mainstream climatologists, however, do not participate in a battle for the truth, because the latter is clearly on their side. They consider all reservations about their own claims to be pure nonsense and reply that the scientific debate was settled long ago.
"This is a mistake," says Judith Curry in Lisbon. The geophysicist from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta was one of the first who got involved in discussions with the sceptics. Since then, she has become a pariah and battles on her blog against her opponents. "The uncertainties in climate models are researched completely inadequately. The science establishment attempts to conceal this fact from the public," said Curry.
in the end the plenum could not agree on this which was partly due to substantial differences between the positions even among the sceptics camp. There was also resistance from moderate researchers who did not want to see their names listed under a joint statement that would worsen their position in disputes with colleagues.
The warmists will take the lack of consensus certainly with satisfaction. The status quo, with both parties remaining in their trenches, might be in the interest of both sides. The sceptics can continue comfortably in their online forums to talk about their conspiracy theories. And the alarmists? As one participant put it: "They can continue to blackmail the politicians by saying: 'If you do not follow us, then the sceptics will take over the field'."
Geophysicist Curry left a sarcastic comment on her blog after the session. According to Wikipedia reconciliation is a "resumption of normal relations between warring parties". "But it is not clear," says Curry, "whether there ever have been normal relations between mainstream scientists and the critical climate blogosphere."