Our Lecture Series

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?”

Date: 
December 7, 2022

LECTURER:
Professor Ole Humlum has had numerous Lectureships and Professorships at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, the Faroese Natural Museum, Faroe Islands, the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and at the University of Oslo. Each month he now publishes his comprehensive http://www.climate4you.com/ updates, summarised annually as a GWPF “State of the Climate” publication. In this lecture, Prof Humlum analyses global meteorological and climatological data to assess the real state of earth’s climate and concludes that all these observations reveal that there is no climate emergency and in parallel he comes to a surprising explanation as to possible cause of observed modern warming.

TITLE:  
“The State of the Climate – Based on Real Observations”

Date: 
October 26, 2022

LECTURER:
Professor Wyss Yim spent 35 years until retirement at the University of Hong Kong. At a global level, he was Leader of the International Geological Correlation Programme Project No. 396 Continental Shelves in the Quaternary 1996-2000, Chairman of the Continental Shelf Working Group of the International Union for Quaternary Research 1999-2003, Deputy Chairman of the Climate Change Science Implementation Team of UNESCO’s International Year of Planet Earth 2007-2009 and is currently Science Advisor of the Association for Geoconservation, Hong Kong.

In this lecture, Professor Yim focuses on terrestrial and submarine volcanoes, demonstrating how these profoundly impact natural climate variability. Studies on the release of geothermal heat from volcanism, underestimated and ignored by the IPCC, improve understanding on the real causes of natural climate variability.  

TITLE:  
“Volcanic Eruptions, a Driver of Natural Climate Variability – ignored by IPCC”

Date: 
September 21, 2022

LECTURER:
Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen is Chairman of the US Science and Environment Policy Project (SEPP), amongst many other past and present distinctions. He is author of the textbook “Introduction to High Temperature Superconductivity”, andhas authored numerous papers on topics including, for example, infrared Fourier spectroscopy for rocket re-entry instrumentation and harsh industrial instrumentation.  In this lecture, Dr Sheahen focuses on the work of Professors Will Happer and William van Wijngaarden in their pioneering work in calculating the real-world Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) of the five most common Green-House Gases (GHGs), emphasizing how their calculations have now been precisely verified by satellite measurements, thus validating their research. These results verify the actual low GWPs of these GHGs, and, in particular, of the irrelevancy of the impact of Methane on climate. The results have profound implications, particularly for agriculturally-based economies like those of Ireland and New Zealand. He concludes that there is no scientific basis for regressive agricultural policy; on the contrary, global food scarcity should dictate its further development.

TITLE:
”Methane – the Irrelevant Green-House Gas”.

Date: 
June 22, 2022

LECTURER:
Dr. Lars Schernikau, a commodity trader, entrepreneur and energy economist, presents his challenging views, backed up by hard science. He argues that many fail to appreciate that reliable electricity supply is crucial for socio-economic stability and growth, which in turn lead to eradication of poverty. Understanding the true cost of electricity generation is therefore paramount to designing future energy systems. He introduces the concepts of energy return on energy invested and the full cost of electricity, which also can explain why wind and solar are becoming more expensive the higher their penetration. He then makes important suggestions for energy policy, considering the new challenges that come with global efforts to “decarbonise”, to be achieved through increasing energy and material efficiencies. He advocates research into new generation technology, while in parallel investing in conventional generation technologies until that new technology becomes feasible. He suggests that politicians should pay heed before current renewables-focused policies lead to energy blackouts!

TITLE:
”How to Make Future Energy Affordable, Reliable and Sustainable”.

Date: 
May 18, 2022

LECTURER:
In this talk, author, communicator and entrepreneur, David Siegel, explores how the global temperature record is made, what the greenhouse effect really is, and how the sun and the shapes of the continents are mostly responsible for our climate. He challenges us on whether the earth is really warming as much as people think, and if there are "positive feedbacks" that will create runaway death and destruction? He shows that we are now starting to learn more about what really drives our climate, and the more we learn, the more the scary narrative of the IPCC falls apart. This lecture is on the physical basis of climate, not the political nonsense.

TITLE:
“Get to know the real cause of Global Warming – and zap your Eco-Anxiety”

Date: 
April 20, 2022

LECTURER:
Tom Gallagher and Roger Palmer, both Canadians, from Victoria, the capital of Vancouver Island, have life-long complementary careers in the study of the paleoclimate, geology, earth/ocean systems and the related quantifying methods.  Their presentation is a fascinating review of the lessons learnt from the last 67 million years of earth’s history, with its many ice ages and, in particular, from the 11,000 years since the most recent glaciation. Their conclusions debunk the notion of a climate emergency, suggesting rather that we should enjoy the current benign climate before the onset of the next ice age. 

TITLE:
“Lessons from Paleoclimate – Conveniently Ignored by the IPCC”

Date: 
March 23, 2022

LECTURER:
Professor Michael Kelly, FRS, FREng, is Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology in the University of Cambridge. He studied Mathematics and Physics to at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and completed his PhD in solid state physics at Cambridge. Amongst many other distinctions, he is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Academy of Engineering of New Zealand.  Professor Kelly previously addressed the ICSF in December 2019 on “Energy Utopias and Engineering Reality”. Since then he extended his analysis to the practical challenges of the UK’s 2050 Net Zero ambition and concluded that the cost would exceed £3 trillion and that the target was simply unattainable. A parallel study for his home country, New Zealand, led to a similar conclusion. In this lecture, he extends his analysis to cover Ireland, which also aspires to a Net Zero 2050, but without any appreciation of the associated costs and resources. (Apologies for the loss of sound in the first 30 seconds of the video recording).

TITLE:
“The Cost of Achieving Net Zero in Ireland”

Date: 
February 10, 2022

LECTURER:
Dr Patrick Moore describes himself as a “sensible environmentalist” and is internationally acclaimed for his forthright views on fake catastrophe narratives. Raised in pristine Vancouver Island, British Columbia, later with a PhD in Ecology, in the 1970s he campaigned with Greenpeace against nuclear bomb testing and whaling. Having led Greenpeace for 15 years, in 1986, he left them over major differences in policy. In the 1990s, he continuing with several personal campaigns. In more recent times, his thoughts have synthesised into what he calls a unified theory of scare stories. In his lecture, he highlights some of the patent fallacies that are thrust by activists upon society nowadays. He is dedicated to truly sustainable development, and is totally convinced that healthy skepticism is at the very heart of scientific enquiry. 

TITLE:
“Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”

Date: 
December 1, 2021

LECTURER:
Dr Benny Peiser is Director of Net Zero Watch, the campaigning arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is the UK non-partisan think tank focused on climate and energy policy. In his lecture, Dr Peiser provides an overview of the main conclusions of COP26, and why the UN climate summit failed to overcome the deep divisions between developed and developing nations. He argues that we are entering a new phase of the so-called Issue Attention Cycle surrounding climate change as concerns about the climate are being increasingly overshadowed and eclipsed by growing concerns about the economic and political costs of Net Zero. He concludes this landmark lecture with an alternative “Net-Zero 2050” Strategy. 

TITLE:
“After COP26, with a looming energy crisis, is there a realistic alternative to Net Zero?”

Date: 
October 27, 2021

LECTURER:
Dr Roger Pielke Jr holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science from the University of Colorado. Formerly a Scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, he has many distinctions including an Eduard Brückner Prize from Germany, an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and he was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. He is also author of seven books on climate science.

TITLE:
“What does IPCC AR6 say on Scenarios and Extreme Weather?”

Date: 
September 22, 2021

LECTURER:
Dr Steven Koonin of New York University, a leading theoretical physicist, formerly chief scientist in BP, later Undersecretary of Science in the US Department of Energy in the Obama Administration, recently author of the best-seller: “Unsettled? What climate science tells us, what it doesn’t and why it matters”.

TITLE:
“Unsettling the Science”

Date: 
June 23, 2021

LECTURER:
Professor Will Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton, world leader in atomic, molecular and optical physics, co-founder of the CO2 Coalition

TITLE:
“Climate, CH4, N2O and CO2 - the good news for Agriculture”

Date: 
May 12, 2021

LECTURER:
Professor Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, has published widely on the economics of climate change and public policy

TITLE:
“Climate Policy – when Emotion meets Reality”

Date: 
March 31, 2021

LECTURER:
Professor Emeritus Richard S Lindzen, world-renowned dynamical meteorologist with interests in planetary waves, origins of ice ages and observations on climate sensitivity

TITLE:
“The Imaginary Climate Crisis? How can we change the Message?”

Date: 
March 3, 2021

LECTURER:
Dr Roy W. Spencer is Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre

TITLE:
“Is there a Climate Crisis? Reviewing the Evidence”

Date: 
January 21, 2021

LECTURER:
Dr John R Christy is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville

TITLE:
“Testing Climate Claims - Update 2021”

Date: 
November 25, 2020

LECTURER:
Professor William van Wijngaarden is a Full Professor in the Physics Department at York University in Toronto, a pioneer in using radiative transfer to calculate precisely the forcing due to the various greenhouse gases

TITLE:
“Methane and Climate Change”

Date: 
October 21, 2020

LECTURER:
Professor Ray Bates is Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at UCD. Formerly of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre and the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen

TITLE:
Methane Accounting in the EU, its Implications for Ireland – The Good News”

Date: 
March 5, 2020

LECTURER:
Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) is an independent Dutch foundation founded by Emeritus Professor Guus Berkhout and by Science Writer Marcel Crok.

TITLE:
CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration: ”There is no Climate Emergency”

Date: 
November 27, 2019

LECTURERS:
Professor Michael Kelly is the Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology in the University of Cambridge since 2002, and a Professorial Fellow at Trinity Hall

TITLE:
“Energy Utopias and Engineering Reality”

Date: 
September 19, 2019

LECTURERS:
Nic Lewis studied mathematics and physics at the University of Cambridge. Since 2011 he has focused on estimation of climate sensitivity.

TITLE:
“Getting Real on Climate Sensitivity”

Date: 
May 9, 2019

LECTURER:
Dr John R Christy is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama in Huntsville

TITLE:
“Promoting Truth in Climate Science”

Date: 
November 29, 2018

LECTURER:
Dr Patrick J Michaels, Centre for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists

TITLE:
“The ‘Lukewarm’ Alternative to the IPCC”

Date: 
September 26, 2018

LECTURER:
Professor William van Wijngaarden, Full Professor at the Physics Department of York University in Toronto, Canada

TITLE:
“Quantifying the Low GHG Influence of Agricultural Emissions”.

Date: 
April 9, 2018

LECTURER:
Professor Nir Shaviv, Professor at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

TITLE:
“The Cosmic Ray Link – from Geological Time Scales to 20th Century Climate Change”

Date: 
February 14, 2018

LECTURER:
Professor Nicola Scafetta, Associate Professor in Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography, University of Naples

TITLE:
“Natural Climate Oscillations and the Interpretation of the Post-2000 Temperature Standstill”

Date: 
December 6, 2017

LECTURER:
Prof Henrik Svensmark, Sun-Climate Research Group at the National Space Institute at the University of Copenhagen

TITLE:
“Another Perspective on Climate Change – Solar Influence, Cosmic Rays and Clouds”

Date: 
July 12, 2017

LECTURER:
Professor Adrian Simmons, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, UK Former Chair, Committee for the Global Climate Observing System

TITLE:
“Towards Better Monitoring and Understanding of Climate Change –Variability and Change in Atmospheric Temperature and Humidity”

Date: 
June 1, 2017

LECTURER:
Professor William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University, world-leader in atomic, molecular and optical physics. 

TITLE:
“Irish Agriculture – A New Look at the Influences of Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Carbon Dioxide”

Date: 
May 4, 2017

LECTURER:
Professor Richard Lindzen, Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science, Emeritus, MIT, Member of the US National Academy of Sciences

TITLE:
“The Science and Politics of Climate Change”