Saturday
Mar132010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Dowlatabadi on alarmism
Mar 13, 2010 Climate: IPCC Choice quote from Hadi Dowlatibadi, Lindzen's co-interviewee in the video linked in the last post. At the tail end of a discussion of aerosols, Dowlatabadi, a mathematician working in the climate area and not, to my knowledge a sceptic, said this:
Our commitment to speaking with alarm about the process is significant enough to influence the instructions to authors at the IPCC.
Wow.
(The quote is at 48 mins if you want to check it).
Reader Comments (25)
Your grace,
This comment, as quoted above, is hard to understand. It could mean things bad or good depending on what he was talking about. Could you flesh it out a bit?
Well I'm not sure really. In some ways I'm throwing it out for the community to dissect, but whichever way you look at it, the acknowledgement of a commitment to alarm is, well, alarming. Are the IPCC trying to calm authors down or fire them up?
Your grace,
I take it that the "process" is global warming. The commitment to "speaking with alarm" suggests that discourse on global warming should be accompanied by "alarm." Finally, authors contributing to these documents should be advised that their work be accompanied by "alarm."
You're right. Wow.
I didn't get that far yet. It's funny (and helpful, thanks) that I was thinking of watching this TVO thing a couple of days ago and decided against. Recommendation from the Bishop is as near to a moral absolute as one can hope for in this area so I duly started - and the thing that struck me on the personal level was the manifest respect shown to Lindzen by Dowlatibadi. And his agreement on a number of substantive points, including Lindzen's comparison of the way models are used to ouija boards! I paused at 25 mins, to attend to some other things, and have just seen this comment. I'll look out for the IPCC alarmism point later and give everyone my reading - if you're not very careful!
I haven't watched the whole interview, but from the preceding comments (i.e. a couple of minutes before the quoted extract), I think the "process" referred to relates to aerosols and cloud formation, rather than global warming per se.
I had read it as referring to aerosols, but in some ways it doesn't matter what they were talking about - just that someone has a commitment to alarmism.
I think you are making a bit too much of this. Given the whole segment from 47:30 to 48:10 it is clear Dowlatibadi is referring to production of aerosols. What is unsaid and IMO possible is that his alarm is at the lack of proper recognition the IPCC give to aerosols thus exagerating their position on CO2. I agree his choice of words in the moment were a little unfortunate but, from the overall tone of the interview and his reponses to Richard Lindzen's points, I do not see any evidence of him being "alarmist". Replay his response to the host's concluding question.
I check you on the quote, but I'm not sure how to interpret it. not banned yet makes a plausible case, but that interpretation still makes it feel like a bit of a non sequitur.
"... and I would add further that aerosols can dramatically change the properties of clouds, and we are creating enormous mountains of aerosols through industrial activity, for example in China right now, which is dramatically affecting all of these processes, and our ability to understand them is rather limited. And our commitment to speaking with alarm about the process is significant enough to influence instructions to authors of the IPCC."
Thanks for the link to an excellent video.
I share the view of those who think that Dowlatabadi was referring to his aerosol commentary.
I watched the video. It seemed to me that Hadi Dowlatibadi was saying that the IPCC autors had been pressured to raise alarmist claims rather than give nuanced explanations that included the doubt in thje science.
For a while it almost seemed as if this was a put up job with 2 sceptics. Both men seemed willing to look at the data and both recognized the degrees of uncertainty in the science. After a while though it was clear that Dowlatibadi was in the camp of "even if CO2 doesn't raise temps it must be doing something bad so we should control it." ie. he was coming from the point of view that nature is as it should be and anything mankind does must have a net deliterious effect. But he still was quite impressive and seemed willing to change his opinion on specifics if they would be proven wrong. net net...He did not seem to be a CRU "scientist."
I thought the most revealing comment was in response to the question about what percentage of scientists share their rational approach and what percentage are ideologues. The response from Hadi Dowlatibad was that too many scientists are entrenched in their message. The implication was that many climate scientists are ideologues. How refreshing to hear that from an IPCC contributor.
I think Dowlatibady was saying the same thing in that quote as all the rest of us have been saying here and elsewhere: that the group in power of the IPCC has a commitment to alarm and that this commitment goes so far as to change the way the science is being passed on to the public. In this one comment, he was saying that the public was NOT getting the straight goods. It was too bad that the moderator, who otherwise did a good job, missed on this comment completely.
I've emailed Dowlatabadi to see if he can explain for us.
I'm pretty sure that Dowlatabadi means to say that IPCC authors have been instructed to err on the side of alarmism.
Richard
The look on his face after he said it suggests that this is the case. I wonder if there is documentary evidence to support this idea?
Have a read:
http://www.airimpacts.org/documents/local/M00007471.pdf
From that PDF:
"Well known steps towards better public health are yet to be taken in
most of the world (e.g., potable water, control of indoor air pollution,
etc.). Severe human resource constraints mean that concentration
on climate policy will be to the detriment of these proven steps
towards better public health & is unambiguously bad public policy."
Given that the IPCC clearly understated sea level rise in the last report, among other reasons, there is ample evidence to the contrary.
I would have thought any hint that IPCC authors had directives to tend towards alarmism is er, alarming :)
I thought Dowlatabadi may have been replying to this from Lindzen just before @ 46:30
Though listening again to Dowlatabadi a few times to get the nuance and I'm not sure what to think, Dowlatabadi says that there is a lot of aerosols going up but admits that there is limited knowledge about how this will effect clouds before going on to make that statement about the alarm instruction to IPCC authors.
From the Third IPCC Report:
* Based on tide gauge data, the rate of global average sea level rise during the 20th century is in the range 1.0 to 2.0 mm/yr, with a central value of 1.5 mm/yr (as with other ranges of uncertainty, it is not implied that the central value is the best estimate).
* Based on the few very long tide gauge records, the average rate of sea level rise has been larger during the 20th century than the 19th century.
* No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected.
If the latest report understated sea level rise, then we can only conclude that the IPCC were totally wrong when they wrote the above in the third report.
If they could be THAT wrong in 2001, what makes you think they're right in 2007?
@Frank O'Dwyer
Surely you can only say that the IPCC may have based their sea level projections on a flawed paper?
We are talking about the future here, so I suggest that before we know if the error was up or down, we have to wait until this gold standard organisations' 5th report before we see which papers or studies they eventually decide to base their next projected levels on.
@Bishop Hill
There is no documentary evidence that the IPCC errs on the alarmist side. They're not stupid.
But, if you look at the selection of lead authors, the "errors" in WG2 that have come to light, and the twisting of literature in WG3 that is harder to for a layperson to uncover but plain to see for an expert (see my post at Pielke Jr), then you can only conclude that this is too much to be happenstance.
Richard
I take your point. It's just that the reference to "instructions to authors" suggested the possibility of a written document to me.
The IPCC mission:
“The IPCC reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-
economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of human-
induced climate change.”
How can they not have a bias toward AGW, it is their stated mission?
Steve2,
No I can say they lowballed SLR based on both the information they had at the time (they left out any estimate of ice melt contribution - they could have gone to town on that), and based on actual observations since.
Notice also that 'sceptics' such as Lawson and others shouted the IPCC estimate of SLR from the rooftops - hardly what you'd expect if it were 'alarmist'.
Amusingly, 'sceptics' also cheered the withdrawal of the paper, as if it meant that SLR was no longer a problem. They so often seem to interpret any fact and its negation as evidence for their case, I wonder if there has ever been a more credulous bunch of 'sceptics' in all of history.
Also they seem to be rather uniformly alarmist about the economic implications of mitigation ('back to the stone age' and 'living in caves' etc). Perhaps it forms part of their instructions? It would be irresponsible not to speculate wildly.