With all the political arm-twisting over climate change going on before G8 begins, the BBC as usual missed the real story this morning. The Today programme (0714) reported correctly that a row had broken out over last month’s ‘unprecedented’ declaration by the world’s scientific academies that there was now ‘consensus’ for the view that climate change was real, that human activity had caused concentrations of greenhouse gases to rise to pre-industrial levels and that government should act.

Unfortunately, this happy consensus promptly broke apart. Bruce Alberts, President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, furiously complained that Lord May, President of the Royal Society, grossly misrepresented the US Academy’s position in a press release that he allegedly spun out of all recognition. Lord May’s crime seems to have been to have said US policy was misguided and blamed the Bush administration for ignoring what the scientists were saying.

But this complaint about spin, embarrassing though it is, pales beside what the Russian scientists have been saying about this ‘consensus’. For the Russian Academy of Science has protested that its name has been taken in vain. It had not seen the ‘consensus’ statement before it was issued in its name, and now that it has done so it thinks it is rubbish -- because it sticks by its belief that the man-made global warming theory is rubbish. And it has asked its president, Yuri Osipov, to withdraw his signature. As it said:

‘1. The Council-Seminar announces that the Russian Academy of Science has not been given the opportunity of working over the text of the «Academies' statement. The Academies' statement itself has not been discussed by any of the collective bodies of the Russian Academy of Science. The decision to support it has not been taken by any of the collective bodies of the Russian Academy of Science.

'2. The Council-Seminar sees the Academies' statement as lacking scientific proof and having contradictions in logic in its many assertions.

'3. The Council-Seminar attracts attention to the fact of absence at the present level of knowledge of cost-effective methods of stabilization of greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere.

'4. The Council-Seminar noted that the Academies' statement offers costly and ineffective measures to achieve unproven targets.

'5. The Council-Seminar asks the President of the Russian Academy of Science to repudiate his signature from the Academies' statement.

'6. The Council-Seminar reiterates its full support to its Statement of May 14, 2004, including:
- in regard of the absence of scientific basis of the Kyoto Protocol,
- in regard of ineffectiveness of the Kyoto protocol to achieve aims of the UNFCCC,
- in regard of risks to the Russian economy from the ratification of the Kyoto protocol.’

As has been pointed out by Benny Peiser, the natural catastrophes expert at Liverpool John Moores university, by alienating the science establishment of two countries Lord May has plunged the international scientific community into disarray, brought the Royal Society into disrepute -- and exposed the so-called climate change ‘consensus’ as a complete farce.