Denier Weirdness: Anthony Watts, Tim Ball and Nigel Lawson on The Very Secret Society

Update - see below for correction and update with a 1976 quote from Freeman Dyson.


You know that Anthony Watts has descended into fruit cake land when you read junk like this at WUWT (archived here).

A secret meeting occurred between Lord Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and members of the British Royal Society. Why the secrecy? It is likely because this collective of specialists is scrambling to recover reputations after being misled.

Yep, a secret meeting between the very royal very secret scientific society and the very unroyal even more secretive Global Warming Policy Foundation.

What a lot of nutters there are at WUWT.  Do they really and truly think that after all the publicity the GWPF gave to the very Laughable Lord Lawson's engineering of a meeting with the Royal Society that it was somehow "secret"?  Sheesh!

You want to know why they called it "secret"?  It was because the members of the Royal Society refused to allow Nigel Lawson to turn the meeting into a media circus.  The GWPF milked it for much more than it was worth, as science deniers are prone to do.  You know they are on a losing streak when they have to resort to getting conspiracy theorising greenhouse effect denier, Tim Ball and utter nutter Anthony Watts to help them do their dirty work (part of an incomprehensible mish mash of conspiracy theorising gobbledegook by Tim Ball archived here).

Here's an excerpt of what Nigel Lawson wrote on the GWPF website, which is kinda sad or weird or maybe funny if you're into black humour (full version archived here):

The charge that my critical views about climate change policy are based on inadequate exposure to reputable scientists was always absurd, not least given that the academic advisory council of the GWPF has on it, among others, the world’s most highly regarded physicist, Professor Freeman Dyson of Princeton, arguably the world’s most eminent climate scientist, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT (who flew over for the meeting), and three Fellows of the Royal Society.

So Nurse’s team were able to tell me little I did not already know. But what did emerge was that, if anyone needed educating, it was them. Despite the fact that they were headed by Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, the Director of the Grantham Institute, which has pronounced views on climate policy, and a member of the Climate Change Committee, which is concerned with the implementation of the Climate Change Act, they were very reluctant to engage on the crucial issue of climate change policy at all. What was clear, however, was that they had no understanding of, or interest in, the massive human and economic costs involved in the policies they so glibly endorse.

Wow - they are getting advice from a 90 year old physicist - who has never done any research on climate (see update below), and an ageing contrarian climate scientist who hasn't published a paper in years.


The Brits are a funny mob sometimes.  Why the Royal Society would bother with idiots like Nigel Lawson is anyone's guess. I suppose they have their reasons.

Update

Tonylearns in the comments alerted me to the fact that Freeman Dyson did do a bit of writing about climate back in the days when science deniers are under the mistaken impression that scientists thought the world was heading for cooling.  Here is a quote from one of Freeman Dyson's papers in which he urges "insurance" in case global warming gets too bad:

It is highly unlikely that the particular emergency program here proposed will ever be implemented. My discussion of it is enormously oversimplified. The purpose of this paper is to begin a process of mental preparation which may enable us to have realistic plans ready if ever the danger of catastrophe from CO2 accumulation becomes acute. To have plans ready is a form of life insurance, valuable even if the threatened catastrophe never happens. And there are many other useful purposes which a global reserve stock of organic materials might serve, quite apart from its use as a buffer against atmospheric CO2.