Does my consensus trump your consensus?

If only to prove that there’s no such thing as “scientific consensus” on climate change, the group of scientists, economists and other prominent consensus-busters that convened in New York issued a declaration summarising its findings last week.

I noted a few days ago that this group, which styles itself the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC, in pointed contrast to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, convened by the United Nations and patronised by green lobbyists and political pressure groups) had rudely been dismissed by a credulous, editorialising media, which promptly got its facts wrong on the Flat Earth Society.

The Manhattan Declaration that emerged from the conference merited hardly any coverage. The exceptions on major media sites that I could find are a column in the Wall Street Journal that mostly makes the valid point that Al Gore makes an easy target, a disputatious item in a column in the New York Times, a couple of blog posts by Melanie Phillips on the Spectator’s website, and a report in The Register that calls the NIPCC the “IPCC’s ‘evil twin’”.

The summary for policymakers — another reference to its politicised counterpart at the UN — is available in PDF format.

Of course, even if there were consensus, it would have no scientific value in and of itself. Science is about observation, hypothesis, experiment, and proof, not about how many people believe this or that incomplete hypothesis. Basing public policy that binds billions and costs trillions on such incomplete hypotheses incurs far more risk than the political pressure groups would claim accompany no action or voluntary action.

The full text of the Manhattan Declaration follows (original link):

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change
“Global warming” is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend –

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth.”

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008

Are these points worthy of debate? I think so. No matter what you think about the “scientific consensus”.