International Climate Science Coalition Launches Register of Climate Scientists

In the aftermath of the failed Copenhagen Climate Conference, revelations of serious corruption in IPCC science, and unseasonable weather in much of the world, the general public and increasingly more media are starting to take a more meaningful view of climate change. Opinion polls in many countries show that an increasing fraction of the public now regards the past century’s warming as being primarily due to either natural or unknown causes, and that a human-induced, or ‘anthropogenic,’ global warming (AGW) catastrophe is improbable. Not surprisingly, there has also been a related erosion in public support for expensive ‘greenhouse gas’ reduction policies.

Consequently, some mainstream media, especially in the United Kingdom, are displaying a new openness to alternative points of view concerning the supposedly ‘settled’ science of global climate change. They are gradually taking notice of the thousands of climate experts who have endorsed open letters, petitions, and other declarations disagreeing with the IPCC’s alarmist conclusions. Some reporters and government representatives have even suggested ‘skeptics’ be invited to take a more active role in future IPCC Assessment Reports and government climate hearings.

These advances have led some observers to confidently assert that the collapse of the global warming scare is imminent and that the war for science-based climate policy is all but won.

This view is naïve. While recent advances have certainly been important, giving more credibility to what many have referred to as ‘climate realism,’ the human-caused global warming movement has far too much momentum to be derailed so easily. Over the past 20 years, “Climatism,” as it has been labeled by American author Steve Goreham, has become so institutionalized in society – the education system, the financial industry, mass media, politics, and even churches – and so beneficial financially, politically, and philosophically to vested special interests, that major AGW-based political decisions continue to be made regardless of growing public skepticism. In particular, there are strong indications that ‘Climategate’ and other recent setbacks for the movement are being quickly compensated for and it will soon be back to ‘business as usual’ for AGW campaigners and their allies in government and mass media:

• Official committees in the UK have exonerated the scientists accused of dishonesty in ‘Climategate’ and other scandals. As a result of chronic and pervasive bias, most of the glaring defects in the IPCC’s expert advisory process have gone unacknowledged and remain unsolved by the environmental policy milieu;

• Most mainstream media have whitewashed revelations of significant errors and corruption in climate science, asserting these scandals do not significantly weaken the IPCC’s case for AGW catastrophe;

• Buoyed by his recent political successes in health care, President Barack Obama is turning his focus to climate change. There are indications “cap and trade” and other severe CO2 reduction plans will be enacted either through backroom deals with Congressional allies (bypassing committees entirely) or by government fiat through the Environmental Protection Agency (which now has the legal authority to regulate CO2 as a pollutant); 

• No major political parties in the current UK election are straying from their pre-Climategate message that a massive ‘de-carbonization’ of the British electrical system is urgently needed; 

• With very few exceptions, national leaders continue to support the IPCC, asserting “all reputable scientists agree” about the need for dramatic CO2 reductions and allocating massive public funding into useless and expensive projects such as storing CO2 underground; 

• Various governments are working with the UN to make the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement to limit ‘global temperature rise’ to 2oC through greenhouse gas controls, legally binding;

• Without polling their members and releasing the results of such surveys, the executives of many national science bodies have lined up in support of the IPCC, post-Climategate; 

• Supporters of a new ecocide law being promoted at the UN believe it could be used to prosecute "climate deniers" who “distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change” (The Guardian, 9/04/10);

• Often hiding generous alternate energy subsidies, governments are moving ahead with ineffective energy options – wind power in particular – to ‘stop climate change’; 

• Climate campaigners are trumpeting the highly questionable ‘ocean acidification’ threat in the event that AGW concerns drop so low that politicians no longer find it a politically attractive cause.

For climate realism to triumph in the face of such overwhelming obstacles will require the vast majority of the public to come to regard AGW concerns as unfounded. This can only happen by quickly expanding the tent of supporters of realistic, science-based climate policies to include citizens of many different political persuasions, social philosophies, and commercial interests. As long as opposition to the IPCC’s extreme climate scenarios are seen to be primarily the domain of right of center/free enterprise activists and other conservatives, as is generally the case now, the mainstream media will never provide objective coverage of the issue.

Consequently, there is an urgent need for a trusted source of climate experts who can properly communicate with mass media and the public, and eventually governments and the UN, about the realities of climate science. This list of climate scientists must originate with an entity that is seen to be unbiased politically, philosophically, and financially, and broadly regarded as having one objective only – to find and disseminate the truth about the exceptionally complex field of climate science. 

Despite the increasing demand for such experts, no one has yet established a sufficiently large, comprehensive, user-friendly listing of leading scientist contacts who are:

• openly skeptical of the IPCC’s AGW assertions,

and,

• widely regarded as credible by the public, main stream media, and government. 

To satisfy this urgent need, the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) is creating The Register of Climate Scientists, an extensive, fully documented listing of climate experts who do not support the central thesis of the AGW movement. In particular, ICSC is collecting qualified endorsers to the following apolitical, non-commercial public message as follows:

“We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming.”

If you are a climate scientist and you support the above statement, please forward your name, credentials, related activities, and location to Tom Harris, Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition at tom.harris@climatescienceinterenational.net.

Public uncertainty about the IPCC is now higher now than ever. However, this doubt will soon be quelled by carefully orchestrated propaganda from the climate activists and their allies in mainstream media, government, and industry unless new, more inclusive strategies are enabled by climate realists. We must help average citizens understand their scepticism is well founded – many professional scientists, highly qualified in the field, also do not support forecasts of anthropogenic climate disaster. For governments to really take notice of this point of view, and be pressured to develop policy accordingly, it must become common knowledge in the general public that literally thousands of climate experts do not support the climate scare. This is the goal of ICSC’s The Register of Climate Scientists.