A change of climate at the Royal Society.

Bishop Hill points out in several recent posts that the Royal Society is to fully rewrite its statement about climate change.

This seems to have happened because 43 Fellows of the Royal Society

... complained that it had oversimplified its messages.

They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood.

and

One Fellow who said he was not absolutely convinced of the dangers of CO2 told me: "This [RS pamphlet 'Climate Change Controversies'] appears to suggest that anyone who questions climate science is malicious. But in science everything is there to be questioned - that should be the very essence of the Royal Society. Some of us were very upset about that.

"I can understand why this has happened - there is so much politically and economically riding on climate science that the society would find it very hard to say 'well, we are still fairly sure that greenhouse gases are changing the climate' but the politicians simply wouldn't accept that level of honest doubt."

The result is a carefully worded statement from the Royal Society "New guide to science of climate change", with this as the closing paragraph:

There is a wide variety of views across the Fellowship on any active area of science, not just climate science, and this diversity is an essential component of the testing that scientific knowledge must always undergo. Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect – there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements, etc. However, the existence of some uncertainty does not mean that scientific results have no significance or consequences, or should not be acted upon. The enormous beneficial impact of science over the last 350 years is testament to the success of this balancing of uncertainty with action in the application of science.

The Times suggests that Rebel scientists force Royal Society to accept climate change scepticism and the Telegraph says Royal Society to publish guide on climate change to counter claims of 'exaggeration'.

In the light of the Royal Society's decision to acknowledge that different scientists (of equal calibre) can and do interpret results differently, and are capable of having informed differences of opinion and debate, can anybody truly say, "The science is settled", and call those of a different opinion 'deniers' and 'flat-earthers'?

It will be interesting to see what happens next, and how world governments will react.

....

Advanced Science.

In a statement about Science and Maths A-level exams, Sylvia McNamara, from the QCDA, the body responsible for the development of the curriculum and qualifications in England, said

"This summer A-level students will sit the new style exams, which demand a more broader understanding ...

Sylvia McNamara is a very important person, in a high powered job. She is Executive Director for Policy Implementation at Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), her background :-

... having worked at Birmingham City Council as Director of Education and prior to that as a lecturer in special educational needs at the universities of Nottingham Trent and Leicester.

She's obviously the best person the implement policy decisions across the whole curriculum, including those for bright, able, gifted and talented young people - because they too have been recognised as having special educational needs.

If your child is gifted or talented, talk to their teacher, the school's Leading Teacher for Gifted and Talented Education or the headteacher about the support available. You may also find it helpful to talk to your local authority's Gifted and Talented lead ...

Good for you Sylvia for remembering this, well done for making sure clever kids are catered for.

Let's look at the "more broader" Science Diploma Sylvia is so proud of. It should be good, because 

Schools Minister Jim Knight [...] asked the science community, employers and higher education experts to come together to ensure the new Advanced level Science diploma is of the highest possible quality.

These experts must have had lots of meetings, because they managed to produce all these documents

* Initial Scope 09-08
* Draft Themes 10-08
* Draft Themes Annex
* Draft Themes Summary
* Secondary Research Report - January 2009
* Market View Report - January 2009
* Market View Annex - February 2009
* Student Voice Report - March 2009
* Consultation Findings - March 2009
* Criteria Consultation Interim Report - May 2009
* Criteria Consultation Report - June 2009
* Employer Voice Report
* Advanced Level LoL*** - Final Draft for Consultation - February 2010

This diploma will

... be phased in over two years with the Foundation and Higher level being introduced in September 2011, and the Advanced Science diploma now being introduced in September 2012.

It's going to be so difficult that at age 16

* the Foundation level is equivalent to 5 GCSEs at grades D to G
* the Higher level is equivalent to 7 GCSEs at grades A* to C

Crikey, that sounds tough. Imagine the rigour. Imagine the challenges students will have to face to be able to complete assignments and pass tests in only one subject that is equal to all those GCSE passes - and to be able to do all that whilst also studying at least English and Maths and two other subjects to ensure 'breadth' of study. Anybody studying this syllabus must be incredibly bright, and so incredibly focused on learning that they won't mind having their noses glued to books for the two years needed to get through this syllabus.

Imagine how proudly superior these students will feel when they realise they've got a longer list of qualifications than those of their peers who have studied Biology, Chemistry and Physics as single subjects, and who are only awarded one GCSE pass for each. Imagine, too, what this amazing qualification will do to the league tables - every school will be eager to take it up.

It gets even better, because in the sixth form

* the Advanced level is equivalent to 3.5 A levels

Fantastic! It's amazing! Only the most able, the brightest will be able to stand the pace, after all, very few these days manage to do more than 3 subjects at A-level, not even Oxbridge expects that much. The students following this course will be scientific world leaders, so let's hope loads of teenagers sign up to study this diploma.

Ah, you're thinking, it isn't often Mrs Rigby is thrilled by innovative learning opportunities, so why does she sound so pleased?

Well, she's delighted to think the government, via QCDA, has at long last realised that academic rigour is, errm, de rigueur - that it's fashionable, it's common sense, it's the 'in thing' to do.

Mrs R knows that, by the time they reach (now compulsory) 6th form, every single student will have been through 12 years of full-time education and, in the state sector, every scrap of learning will have been dictated and micro-managed by the government and its agencies.

Mrs R knows that every single state school (in England) will have complied with the ruling that makes Science a key subject, a compulsory subject - so no individual student will have been able to avoid either lessons or (in England) assessment at the end of each 'Key Stage', and their results will have been written down on a list.

So it's interesting that the "Diploma in Science" site needs to ask this challenging question

"What is science?"

***
Oh, by the way, LoL in this context is not the internet acronym, it refers to "Level of Learning"

....

... when global cooling was all the rage

Iain Dale asks a few questions about "Back when global cooling was all the rage". In amongst the comments is one from Shinsei, who doesn't appear to have a blog.

Let's look at Shinsei's comment in a bit more detail. (my comments in italics).

Shinsei - I'm sorry to sound slightly irate Iain but it is incredible that you keep posting comments about global warming that are factually incorrect and that you keep posing questions that you claim "no one has ever been able to explain to me" when a couple of minutes on the internet would explain these things simply.

The internet is a wonderful thing, and is also full of inaccuracies, but even so a 'couple of minutes' online will find articles that confirm Iain Dale's memories. A search will also discover many recent publications that ignore earlier scientific discussion and debate - something that's unusual in Science.

There is, of course, personal knowledge too - and that's what Iain Dale is referring to, and so he is not 'factually incorrect'.

It's remarkable how many of the adult population were at school in the seventies, or even earlier.

A high proportion of those were capable of reading independently even before they left primary school and had an interest in things climactic and scientific, especially as at that time there was a significant dip in temperatures and deep snow (40cm) in March 1970, for example. These people's memory is still remarkably acute considering they must all now be, oooh, at least 45.

The best science is checked by peer review - but some of the AGW people still don't want to share their data, maybe that's because when other real scientists check the figures and draw their own graphs a bit of figure-fiddling is easily spotted - WuWT - 'The smoking gun at Darwin Zero'

Shinsei - 1) There was a mediaeval warm period, no member of the IPCC would deny that, however it was a lot less warm then than the temperature today.

Oh really? Less warm? Lookee here on WuWT

Shinsei - 2) Grapes have been grown in Yorkshire ever since the Romans brought grapes to England.

No, sorry, grapes have not been "grown in Yorkshire ever since the Romans brought grapes to England."

The internet has your answer, with a little help from the Domesday Book

"... Of the Domesday vineyards, all appear to lie below a line from Ely (Cambridgeshire) to Gloucestershire. Since the Book covers all of England up to the river Tees (north of Yorkshire), there is therefore reason to think that there weren’t many vineyards north of that line."

Shinsei - 2) (contd) ... There are plenty of vineyards there [in Yorkshire] today. ....

Another quick search of the internet discovers a few modern vineyards in Yorkshire, at Ryedale, Holmfirth, Leventhorpe, Skellow and Great Hammerton Mrs Rigby has no knowledge of either them or their wine, she's sure it's tasty - but she doesn't really think that five vineyards in the whole of Yorkshire (2,941,247 acres/4,945 square miles) is "plenty" - but that's her subjective opinion and so is open to debate.

Shinsei - 2) (contd) ... All the documentary evidence though is that the wine made from these grapes in Roman times was pretty dire stuff, as you'd expect from a cool northern climate

How do you know that grapes from Roman wine was "pretty dire stuff"? Have you tasted any? Are your tastes the same as those of the Romans of that period? Have you made wine made from the same variety of grapes and the same species of yeast?

Where is all this 'documentary evidence'? - You ask other people to show their sources, but don't produce any of your own to support your sweeping statements - which, if unsupported, are merely opinion, not fact.

Did you read a book, an article in a newspaper or a scientific or archaeological journal, and was that information backed up extensive practical and physical research or was it merely written by a person with twentieth or twenty-first century ideas and opinions of how horrible it must have been to have been a wine-drinking Roman living in Britain?

Shinsei - 3) I doubt you were ever TAUGHT at school that the world was going to cool rapidly. There was never a serious or consistent enough scientific consensus for global cooling to get into school textbooks or exam syllabuses. ...

The thing is, it looks as if you weren't there, so can only "doubt" what was or wasn't taught. Try asking people who were, and see what they say. Iain Dale is one of them.

Anyhow, why the big capitals? Not everybody who was alive in the seventies is now visually deaf!

Back in the dark, unenlightened, old days, including the seventies, eighties and early nineties, children were taught Biology, Physics and Chemistry. They did Cookery/Domestic Science and used scarily sharpened knives. They did metalwork, with help from a metal-meltingly hot forge. In woodwork they using hard, heavy, hammers and newly whetted chisels, as well as needlework where fine, sharp metal needles and big pointy scissors helped make new clothes.

Back then school science teachers let children 'experiment' with nasty things like copper sulphate - because it obligingly changed colour on demand, let them chase mercury with magnets, let them make things go bang and cut open dead creatures to learn how they worked. Schoolchildren didn't die because of it. They were allowed to cook food in hot ovens, then take the meals home to be reheated. Nobody died of food poisoning - and nobody died of overwork either, even though Maths happened before calculators could be carried around in your pocket.

Schools taught how to do practical Science, how to analyse results and how to draw conclusions from those results. It was seriously frowned upon if results were fiddled with or ignored in order to make them fit a hypothesis or theory.

Children were taught to question their results and investigate oddities and anomalies - not to hide them and presume they were wrong, because the best science teachers knew that it's always wise to look for the unusual result in case it's important. They'd heard of people like Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin 'by chance'. (Even Wikipedia can be your friend, sometimes.)

Maybe all this is why so many 'oldies' are questioning the science behind climate change and global warming, because many of them have always been inquisitive and have always asked questions because their scientific education was based on finding out rather than being spoon fed - and because they've heard it, or something like it, before and also lived through the banning of CFCs.

Modern schools are struggling to find suitably qualified, knowledgeable and experienced Science teachers, especially those who are capable of teaching across the three disciplines of Biology, Physics and Chemistry to A-level standard. Some secondaries limit the amount of practical work their students can do because an H&S person says it's potentially too dangerous to let them get their hands on chemicals, which is why so few school labs have fume cupboards and bits of glass that might break.

Modern 'Science', as dictated by the National Curriculum, teaches theories and dogma instead of encouraging investigative, independent and original thought. This, at its' worst, leads to unquestioning acceptance of new theories as scientific fact - many of today's students are never taught the difference, never taught to question the 'experts', never either expected or allowed to form their own opinions, especially not if their ideas run counter to current accepted thinking, and can in fact lose marks in exams if they don't produce the right answer containing the appropriate key words.

And, actually, Mrs Rigby knows that "Global Cooling" was taught in schools - but as a theory, as a possible, as a likelihood, not as a proven fact.

Shinsei - 3) (contd) ... However it probably appeared on a couple of Panorama programmes in the mid 70s. The media gave the global cooling thesis far greater prominence than the actual climate scientific community which, even then, were publishing far more research showing evidence of AGW.

It looks as if you're guessing. My clue is the use of the word "probably". If you don't know, keep quiet otherwise you make yourself look silly.

Shinsei - 4) Even if the world has been hotter in ages past without any man-made influence (which it no doubt has) that doesn't mean that current warming is not caused by human influence. ...

... and of course you have to accept the counter argument that if indeed there is current warming it could be a natural process, that we meddle with at our peril.


A theory is just that, it's an idea, it's ephemeral until it is proven - just like Darwin's Theory of Evolution. As we can't go back to see what happened to the dinosaurs we will never know, for sure, how some of them got to be so big, what they looked like, what colour they were and we'll never know why they seemed to have died out in a hurry. And nor will we know, for sure, why the Galapagos finches have different beaks, although we can make a jolly good guess.

Shinsei - 4) (contd) ... Climate is dependent on numerous factors - solar activity, moon orbits, tectonic plate shifts, tidal movements etc ...

As for tectonic movement affecting climate - I think you're misleading yourself. Tectonic movement theories are positional and have nothing to do with climate, although it can be, and probably is, related to volcanic activity which over millions of years has caused landmasses to move to areas that are either warmer or colder than where they originated. That isn't climate, it's a mixture of geophysics and geology.

The timescale involved is incomprehensible to most people, who think that maps are always going to be accurate because they're written on a piece of paper, and who worry when nature moves a bit of coastline to make it look different from an old picture.

Nature does things mankind doesn't like and things that mankind doesn't understand. Science is our way of trying to make sense of the planet and its' natural forces.

Shinsei - 4) (contd) ... AND man-made CO2 emissions.

Really? Is climate controlled by man-made CO2 emissions?


Prove it!


I haven't yet seen a single jot of incontroversial evidence that mankind has made things on Earth worse by breathing out.


I do, however, know that man's activities used to be a lot dirtier than now, with factories and homes belching out a mixture of sulphur gases that, according to scientists of the time, caused acid rain which killed inland fish and the European pine forests.


The filth spewing out of both homes and industries mixed with bitterly cold, damp, air causing poisonous smogs that killed people. The Thames was so dirty that salmon stopped breeding in it about 200 years ago. If you fell in and were rescued you were likely to succumb to poisoning, and it's mainly because London was an embarrassment that there were the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, (which extended to the creation of smoke control areas and closure of urban power stations, with new ones built out of sight in the countryside) and also the beginnings of serious regulation of hazardous waste.


I also know that without CO2 plants will die and animals will starve - even primary school children are meant to study food chains, webs and pyramids these days, so there's absolutely no excuse for ignorance.


We need plants to survive, more CO2 possibly means more, healthier, plants - which is a good thing.

Shinsei - 4) (contd) ... The issue at the moment is that all these non-man made activities are not significant enough currently to explain present warming conditions.

Really? How do you know? Who told you, and who told them. And what "warming conditions"?

It isn't being widely reported that USA has had its earliest snowfall for years.

The BBC didn't mention the hard frosts in Southern England last week, that froze some ponds deep enough to support a human - I saw it, I did it, so it happened.

Why are they not telling?

It's mind-numbingly arrogant of mankind to believe that a single successful species - Homo sapiens - that is only capable of inhabiting a tiny proportion of the surface of this planet, can have a greater influence on climate than to quote "... solar activity, moon orbits, tectonic plate shifts, tidal movements etc"

Have you any real idea how utterly insignificant animals of any species are when the planet gets angry? Hollywood got it wrong - running away from a volcanic eruption and pyroclastic flow isn't a viable option, as the people of Pompei and Herculaneum discovered and more recently the people living near Mount St Helens.

Did you know, for example, that the eruption of Krakatoa in 1833 resulted in a serious dip in temperature due to particular atmospheric pollutants?

Did you know about Constable's paintings depicting weather patterns related to volcanoes?

How about other painters? - Look here where it says, "Many of Joseph Turner's works depicted sunsets. It is now clear that he was painting glowing skies caused by sunlight scattering off volcanic dust from the immense eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815."

They called that year the "year without a summer" because it got a bit cold and a bit dark, and crops failed.

And you say nature can't change weather patterns because it is not significant enough!

Shinsei - 5) There are snow drops out in Hyde Park today. I don't remember reading in Tacitus anything similar happening in the first century AD.

It's thought that snowdrops (Galanthus) were brought to Britain by the Romans, who will also have known of autumn and winter flowering variety, Galanthus reginae-olgae, that is native to Greece and Sicily. There's even a picture of some here, nestling amongst autumn leaves.

And anyway, even if Tacitus did mention the odd flower or two, he had much more important things to write about.

Separately, did you ever learn about trading in Dutch Tulips or South Seas investments, and did you hear of the Emperor's New Clothes?