Lecture Series 2025

Date: 
May 21, 2025

LECTURER: Dr Roger Pielke Jr

Roger Pielke, Jr. is an American political scientist who describes himself as an “undisciplined professor” of science, policy and politics. He holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science from the University of Colorado. He received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany, for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden. He is a prolific writer and many know him from his blog “The Honest Broker”. In this lecture, he gives critical insights on the shortcomings of IPCC Reports also comments on the importance of climate variability, as well as identifying falsehoods behind “extreme weather” attribution. A common challenge is scientific integrity – or the lack of it – and he questions how this might be ensured in the future.

TITLE:
“Climate Scenarios, Weather Attribution – Is there hope for Scientific Integrity?”

Date: 
April 23, 2025

LECTURER: Douglas Pollock

Douglas Pollock is an Industrial Civil Engineer who graduated from the University of Chile. He has a long experience in analyzing how electrical grids are affected under high levels of renewables, both in terms of cost and emissions. His recent Report commissioned by the ICSF “Ireland’s Renewable Energy Targets for 2030 – A Reality Check” found that quadrupling the current level of renewable capacity on Ireland’s electricity grid as planned in CAP24 by 2030 would lead to consumer electricity costs rising by two to five times, the Irish costs already being amongst the highest in Europe. The Report also indicates that the aspired level of 80% renewable energy by 2030 is not feasible and that the reduction in CO2emissions would be significantly less than hoped for under the Climate Action Plan. The conclusions point to an urgent need for a reality-check on the rationale for renewables, and indicate that Ireland’s energy security must re-focus on conventional gas-fired generation backed up by an LNG import terminal and strategic storage. Similar consideration will apply in other jurisdictions aspiring to high levels of renewable generation. 

TITLE:
“Ireland’s Renewable Energy Targets 2030 – A Reality Check”

Date: 
March 26, 2025

LECTURER: Emeritus Professor Richard S Lindzen

Professor Dick Lindzen is a world-renowned dynamical meteorologist with interests in climate, planetary waves, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres and hydrodynamic instability. He was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, and has received numerous prestigious awards, and is a member of both the National Academy of Science of the US and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In this lecture, Prof Lindzen presented some personal memories of his postgraduate days with Prof Ray Bates, summarizing the evolution of their understanding of the climate system. Prof Lindzen concluded with some insights on the absurdity of the UN/media-led political narrative on climate alarmism and described its welcome dismantling under the new US Administration.  

TITLE:
"Ray Bates, his Scientific Legacy and the new US Climate/Energy Politics”

Date: 
Feb 26, 2025

LECTURER: Emeritus Professor Kees de Lange

Kees de Lange is an Emeritus Professor of both Universities in Amsterdam, and has written over 200 papers in refereed scientific journals and is a distinguished member of the CO2 Coalition. In parallel, he is also a politician and was elected member of the Parliament of the Province of North-Holland, and of the Senate of the Netherlands where he served for four years. In this lecture, Prof de Lange goes back to the basics, learning from observations rather than models, thereby demonstrating that there is no credible climate crisis, and that there is much more to climate than CO2 alone. He then focuses on cloud composition and the lack of experimental data, now hampering progress in climate science. He finally addresses global future energy supply, and concludes that nuclear, not renewables, will be the power of the future.

TITLE:
"Natural Science and Earth’s Climate – IPCC: Facts or Fiction?"

Date: 
Jan 29, 2025

LECTURER: Dr Benny Peiser

In 2009, as preparation for the Copenhagen COP15, Dr Benny Peiser and former Chancellor Nigel Lawson founded the GWPF, the world-leading non-partisan think-tank, focusing on climate and energy policy; it promotes a culture of open debate, tolerance and learning. Thanks to their determination and endurance, the GWPF became the lighthouse of climate/energy realism. The ICSF was particularly honored to host Dr Benny Peiser’s farewell lecture as GWPF Director. In it, he described that for too long, climate science and energy policy have been dominated by dogmatism, censorship and eco-socialist control. However, overly-liberal political leaders have now lost power and the tide is turning, the Trump 2 era has arrived. Some legal shackles and political constraints for radical policy reforms remain, so Dr Peiser suggested strategies for eager governments to exit from self-destructive Net Zero targets.  

TITLE:
"How can eager governments get off the Net-Zero hook?"