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CLICK source to see FULL report with video links from the BBC Horizon show tomorrow (24/Jan/2011) 21:00

See below open letter to Sir Paul Nurse President The Royal Society from Rupert Wyndham
Sir Paul Nurse
President The Royal Society

Dear Sir Paul

BBC – Horizon

On the BBC Today programme this morning you made some introductory comments in anticipation of your involvement with the Horizon programme next week. Given that these were only prefatory observations, I acknowledge that writing to you now may be premature. Nevertheless, even in the context of the few words spoken today, you touched upon an issue of supreme and extraordinary importance.

In particular, and specifically in relation to so-called anthropogenic global warming but probably also more generally, you expressed concern at the perceived alienation of the public at large from science. I believe that perception to be correct. In fact, in relation to disingenuously mutated ‘climate change’, I’d go further and suggest that your guestimate of 50% of the US and 30% of the UK population being now not only sceptical, but also cynical [my interjection], is almost certainly well short of reality.

You propose that it is essential to divorce the pursuit of scientific truth from the imperatives of politics. I could not agree more. A necessary prerequisite to that, however, is that scientists should cease being opportunistic and self-serving and, instead, elect to pursue the truth and speak with objectivity and rigour, as far as it is in their power so to do. Far from dispassionately pursuing genuine understanding of the natural world, global warming pseudo-science has been for years nothing but an elaborate and increasingly discredited farrago of falsehoods, indeed often outright lies. Today’s contribution from the Met Office and the WMO provides a convenient and timely illustration of the truth of the charge. Furthermore, wilful mendacity has been promoted with shameless disregard for the integrity of scientific method combined with an insolent disparagement of any who chose to question the prevailing consensus orthodoxy - a claimed consensus which, by the way, has been itself easily demonstrated to be a blatant lie.

The role of The Royal Society in this subversion of science has been egregious and outrageous. As we both know, neither has it been only the occasional man on the Clapham omnibus who has found its conduct disreputable. Even numbers of its own Fellows have finally been embarrassed by the invidious position into which a clique of their confreres had manoeuvred them, and have finally spoken out in protest. Moreover, I and almost certainly you too are aware that others less publicly have strongly expressed their disapprobation of the Society’s public stance and conduct in the matter. In this regard, recent alterations in the Society’s guidelines to the public represent a welcome shift from dogmatist propaganda, but remain still a travesty of scientific objectivity.

Albeit tempered with agnosticism borne of long experience, I shall watch your contribution with interest. If you can detach the pursuit of science from politics, you will do a service to your fellow man. In the meantime, allow me to enclose copies of a brief exchange of letters with your predecessor. I do so because it is abundantly clear that, for him at least, science, AGW and politics are inextricable constituents of a fundamental verity, to which all should subscribe. I do not, and neither do huge numbers of others, including proper scientists (let me call them), many of great distinction. In fact, I will go further. Not simply for the implications of its content but also for the status of its author, I regard the letter written to me by Lord Rees to be one of the most ethically scandalous that I can recall ever receiving.

Yours sincerely

R.C.E. Wyndham