The AGW Consensus: Crumbling

Fresh climate scepticism is afoot across the globe, from distinguished scientists to prominent public figures. Let's go through some of them them.

1. Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, on climate computer models: "I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in." See his Youtube videos here and here.
   
2. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, is quoted as saying that the "models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view."
   
3. Richard Lindzen, Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examines negative climate feedbacks: "Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age." Love that one.
   
4. Australia’s foremost Earth scientist, Ian Plimer, has published a new book: Heaven And Earth: Global-Warming – The Missing Science. Prize quote: "The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology."
   
5. Dr Claude Allegre, renowned French geochemist and public figure, and likely to become head of France's equivalent to the EPA: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."
   
6. And of course, good old DUDE extraordinaire and president of the Czech Republic (and the EU), Vaclav Klaus: "Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment."

It'd be nice to think a new consensus might soon be formed - one in which the theory of AGW is consigned to the dustbin of overblown-errant-nonsense-we-never-should-have-believed-in.