A Modest Proposal for Research Money

The Royal Society has published a report on the feasibility and possible dangers of technologies for cooling down the Earth, known as geoengineering. The ideas include artificial trees that draw CO2 from the air, mimicking volcanoes by spraying sulphate particles a few miles above the Earth to deflect the Sun’s rays, cloud seeding or launching trillions of small mirrors into space to act as a sunshield. For more ideas see news article in DN. 

The panel of 12 scientists who produced the report called for a £100 million annual global research fund to study geoengineering technologies and said that Britain should contribute £10 million a year, ten times the amount being spent now on such research. Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the panel, said:

• It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions we are heading for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases.
  

However, Professor Shepherd admitted that he had no firm opinion on how likely it was that the world would need some form of geoengineering: 

• My opinion ranges from maybe to possibly to probably, depending on what I had for breakfast.
  

In the report Professor Shepherds breakfast ambivalence is expressed as:

• It is likely that global warming will exceed 2°C this century  unless global greenhouse gas emissions are cut by at least  50% of 1990 levels by 2050, and by more thereafter. There  is no credible emissions scenario under which global mean  temperature would peak and then start to decline by 2100.  
  

What to say about this? Is the Royal Society joking or not? Well, let us take a look at its Climate Change Controversies, A Simple Guide, in particular how the Society counters what it presents as Misleading Argument 5: "Global warming computer models which predict the

future climate are unreliable":

• Modern climate models have become increasingly accurate in reproducing how the real climate 'works'. They are based on our understanding of basic scientific principles, observations of the climate and our understanding of how it functions.
• Using this understanding of the climate system, scientists are then able to project what is likely to happen in the future, based on various assumptions about human activities.
  
• It is important to note that computer models cannot exactly predict the future, since there are so many unknowns concerning what might happen.  
• While climate models are now able to reproduce past and present changes in the global climate rather well, they are not, as yet, sufficiently well-developed to project accurately all the detail of the impacts we might see at regional or local levels. 
  
• They do, however, give us a reliable guide to the direction of future climate change.  The reliability also continues to be improved through the use of new techniques and technologies.  
  

These statements seem to support rather than refute Misleading Argument 5 stating that climate models are unreliable. How is it possible that the Royal Society without blushing can present nonsense like: Modern climate models have become increasingly accurate...the reliability also continues to be improved...they do, however, give us a reliable guide to the direction of future climate change... 

Notice in particular the Misleading Statement: the climate models are not, as yet, sufficiently well-developed to project accurately all the detail of the impacts we might see at regional or local levels... intended to give the impression that global climate models are accurate, without in fact saying anything. Clever or just stupid? Which is the audience addressed by the Royal Society?

The Royal Society, in good company with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, seems to uncritically repeat whatever the political organ IPCC says, but why?