ICSF commenced its ongoing lecture series by distinguished international scientists in 2017, which have attracted wide and diverse invited audiences.
Those with open and enquiring minds on climate science are welcome to apply to attend future lectures at jim.obrien.csr@gmail.com
Date:
December 13, 2023
LECTURER:
Dr Benny Peiser is the director of the UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a leading non-partisan think-tank focusing on climate and energy policy. The GWPF promotes a culture of open debate, tolerance and learning, as outlined in its regular “Net Zero Samisdat” newsletter. In this lecture, Dr Peiser provides insights on the geopolitics and political wrangling of COP28, and analyses the deepening divide between climate alarmism and energy realism. He reviews the evidence for the welcome decline of the climate agenda which is being overtaken by mounting concerns about the economic, political and social costs of radical climate policies. He concludes that this new pragmatism emerging from COP28 is indeed to be welcomed.
TITLE:
“Reflections on COP28 – Energy Realism eclipses Climate Alarmism”
Date:
November 14, 2023
LECTURER:
William van Wijngaarden is Full Professor in the Physics Department at York University in Toronto, Canada. In recent years, he has collaborated extensively with Professor Will Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA, and they together are now world leaders in atmospheric physics. This lecture features their modelling of the influence of the various Green-House Gases on earth’s radiation which has led to a lower estimate of climate sensitivity to increasing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels and has also demonstrated the minimal influence of the agricultural emissions of Methane (CH4) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O). Their findings have been rigorously verified by satellite measurements, thus superseding IPCC modelling. Furthermore, Prof van Wijngaarden demonstrates that slightly increasing CO2 level will benefit crop yields.
TITLE:
”The latest Climate Science – Good news for Irish Agriculture!”
Date:
October 18, 2023
LECTURERS:
Dr Samuel Furfari served as a Senior Official in energy policy in DG Energy in the European Commission for 36 years, pioneering the strategic direction of EU Energy Policy. He was Professor in Energy Policy and Geopolitics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and currently teaches at the ESCP Business School in London. He poses the key question - as there is no climate crisis, why continue to destroy what originally made the EU prosperous – namely reliable, abundant and cheap energy? Prudent energy policy was essential to the prospering of the European Community since its inception in 1952 up to 2016. Since then, the Green Deal Energy Transition is undermining energy supply. The future is therefore to go back to the past!
TITLE:
”European Energy – Back to the Future of the Past!”
Date:
September 13, 2023
LECTURERS:
Douglas Pollock, an Industrial Civil Engineer based at the University of Chile in Santiago, is an expert on the impacts of renewables on power grids. Dr Bruce Everett is an economist, a veteran of the energy industry who in retirement supports the CO2 Coalition. Their two presentations demonstrate that high levels of renewables (quite contrary to popular expectations) will inevitably increase electricity prices, exacerbate grid instability, causing environmental damage with very uncertain reductions in CO2 emissions. They raise serious questions about the wisdom of the proposed massive Irish/European/US investment in renewables, in particular in offshore generation, and therefore strongly suggest a radical reassessment of energy policy in those regions.
TITLE:
”Renewables Need Reality-Checks!”
Date:
June 19, 2023
LECTURER:
David Horgan is a noted commentator on energy policy with 40 years’ high-level experience in development of natural resources in Latin America, Africa and in the Middle East and a First Class degree in law from Cambridge and MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School. In this lecture David reviews the significance of reliable and affordable energy to society, demonstrating the growing global supply/demand imbalances; investment in reliable supplies is now falling well short of societal needs because of counter-productive climate-driven ideologies and showing in particular that Irish energy policy is increasingly a basket-case scenario. He argues that current energy policies, however well-intentioned, are tantamount to economic suicide, and so need urgent objective review.
TITLE:
”European Energy Policy – Economic Suicide?”
Date:
May 24, 2023
LECTURER:
Marcel Crok is a science writer who has for nearly 20 years specialised on critiquing the science of climate change. In 2019, he co-founded the Clintel Foundation in cooperation with Professor Guus Berkhout. Since 2021, he and a team of top independent scientists have focused on an in-depth analysis of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report AR6. Their just-published analysis clearly demonstrates group-think bias, significant errors and disinformation in the latest IPCC AR 6 Report. Accordingly, he argues that IPCC needs to be reformed, so that climate/energy policymaking can be re-set, based on objective science and solid engineering.
TITLE:
”The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC”
Date:
March 22, 2023
LECTURER:
Professor Pete Ridd is a geophysicist with over 100 publications and 35 years’ experience working on the Great Barrier Reef. He was Professor of Physics at James Cook University in North Queensland for over a decade before being fired in 2018 for pointing out serious quality assurance issues in reef science. He shows that the latest data on the state of the world’s coral reefs is extremely encouraging, especially for the Great Barrier Reef. He comments also on the subject of freedom of speech and thought in universities and on the associated collapse of intellectual rigour.
TITLE:
”World's coral reefs are not declining – proof that the climate censors were wrong”
Date:
March 1, 2023
LECTURER:
CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON (THE 3RD VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY) is a Classical mathematician, pianist and composer, adviser to presidents and prime ministers, Expert Reviewer for IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and holder of the Meese-Noble Award for Freedom, the CFACT Valiant for Truth Award and the Intelligence Medal of the Army of Colombia for his research in climate sensitivity and mitigation economics, in which he has published some two dozen peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. His team is analyzing the macroeconomics of net zero, and researching an elementary error of physics without which climatologists should not have predicted dangerous warming. In this presentation he selects, refines and presents scientific and economic arguments that, taken together, bring to an end the climate catastrophe narrative.
TITLE:
”The Uneconomics of Net-Zero”
Date:
January 24, 2023
LECTURER:
Professor William van Wijngaarden is a Full Professor in the Physics Department at York University, located in Toronto, Canada. He and Professor Will Happer of Princeton University are now pioneers in calculating the radiative transfer forcing due to the main greenhouse gases, and their hugely important research results are now verified by satellite measurements. Prof Wijngaarden concludes that the GHG forcing due to agricultural emissions, contrary to IPCC views, are quite insignificant. Therefore any proposals to place harsh restrictions on nitrous oxide or methane emissions because of warming fears are not at all justified and could unintentionally jeopardize world food supplies.
TITLE:
”Do Agricultural Emissions of Greenhouse Gases Affect Climate?”