Monday
Aug302010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill IAC report reactions
Aug 30, 2010 Climate: IPCC I'll update this post as I see things.
Climate change predictions must be based on evidence, report on IPCC says.
(Chance would be a fine thing)
GWPF Calls On IPCC To Implement Fundamental Reforms Without Delay
Independent Audit Panel Slams U.N.'s Climate Group
U.N. climate panel urged to reform and stick to science
Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN climate change body, under pressure to resign
Reader Comments (61)
Did you mean "change would be a fine thing"?
Just watched the coverage on the BBC News - delivered by Harrabin. Apparently it was just an embarrassing mistake over the melt date of the Himalayan glaciers, and Pachauri will be resigning soon. Apart from that everything's fine and the panel has been complimented on its work. Oh, and the science is unaffected.
This has been the top story on theTimes and Telegraph sites for a couple of hours now, while for the Guardian -it still hasn’t happened. The reaction time of the old Pravda - i wonder why.
I like Reuters, and seeing as it's a wire story, no doubt will appear elsewhere-
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE67T2X120100830
That would be a refreshing change.
Get the impression there is a thin veneer of reform but no fundemental change will actually take place. Too many vested interests.
Atomic Hairdryer:
"a wire story, no doubt will appear elsewhere"
Well it did. Here's the Telegraph:
Even the BBC's website has this:
Come on - that's (sort of) progress.
And here's the New York Times:
Channel 4 interpret the review this way
Climate change panel should be reformed, says review
I found this quote from Myles Allen interesting
Sounds like this has been the case already, the process being dominated by scientists and activists with an axe to grind.
ipcc on bbc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y0VIlUIe0M
WWF
Adopt a Pachauri
Steve2. The quote from myles Allen is interesting. This is the first I heard they do it for free. No expenses, no salary from the taxpayer whilst they spend weeks doing IPCC work? Shades of Mitchell here I think. Hey, I'll do it for free if they pay me a salary and expenses.
That’s right, they do it for free. We’ve effectively been buying our next fifty years’ worth of energy policy from a charity shop
The Guardian's piece is up here:
Guardian's first piece -Ed Pilkington
From the piece ...
Harold Shapiro, a Princeton economist who led the review, said the IPCC's assessments had put it "on the world stage, and raised public awareness of climate change".
As has been pointed out many times, Climate Change is a given, we just have to go along with the assumption and support the hypothesis.
Pachuri's reaction...
Pachauri said later he had no intention of resigning unless the 194 governments who control the IPCC asked him to do so. "I now have an added responsibility to see the recommendations through. This is a mission and I cannot shirk or walk away from it," he said.
Making it clear his power base is wide and he will use it...
@Phillip Bratby
Thinking about it more the thing that really strikes me about what Myles Allen said is that he has essentrially said that the demands of greater accountability (if the IAC review is implemented) may mean that the IPCC can only attract low quality scientists and/or scientists with an axe to grind. Surely therefore he's identified an inherent problem in the IPCC process as it stands today? I mean if you only have to slide up the "burdensome"-ness control slightly and diligent scientist slip out of the process how burdensome is it now?
Sounds like there really needs to be greater shake up!
When glasnost came to the Soviet empire it marked the beginning of the end. Glasnost appears now to be coming to the IPCC. Let us wait patiently.
The Telegraph has a neutral piece... (not by Ms. Gray)...
IPCC told to stop lobbying and restrict role to explaining climate science
What I like is the byline - always important in a "broadsheet"...
An independent investigation into the UN’s climate change body has warned it to stop lobbying and to restrict its role to explaining the science behind any changes in global temperature.
The use of the word "any" and not "the"...
Not as offtopic as it may seem:
The Guardian has published an analysis-free report on the AIC report, highlighting calls for Pachauri to go. This was quickly followed on their Climate Change page by an article by the Observer’s environment editor which, a propos of nothing, gives a number of essentially random quotes from Lomborg, finishing with this quote from Pachauri:
"What is the difference between Lomborg's view of humanity and Hitler's? You cannot treat people like cattle. You must respect the diversity of cultures on earth. Lomborg thinks of people like numbers … if you were to accept Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing."
Looks like the Guardian is putting the knife into Pachauri in an effort to save the IPCC
When they report that these guys were working for free, how free was it? Does this mean they were paying their own way(s) to the working sessions? Were they working entirely on their own time, not time paid for by their day jobs?
When I did professional committee work, my day job always supported the trips and at least some of the writing and research time and all of the time that had necessarily to be spent during the day.
I find it hard to believe that this is not the typical situation for the participants.
I do understand that Richard Tol, who is in some way to represent Ireland in the upcoming effort is not even getting his travel supported.
I think Myles Allen has a point but may not have expressed it as well as he could. As I understand it, IPCC people aren't paid by the IPCC but costs/expenses paid by their governments. If scientists have their own research committments though, they may not be able to committ to the IPCC, may lose funding or even pay. Some scientists I know have their pay based on research completed and publication rate. As j ferguson says, it's not an unusual situation. I did some standards work and my employer covered my costs/expenses, others have offered paid sabbaticals with no loss of benefits or seniority.
Anoneumouse.. like it. Cartoon? :)
Geoff, surely that's libel, Pachauri's statement as quoted, or close to it. I hope Lomborg at least threatens to sue. And, historically ironic, coming someone who heads an organisation whose 'grey literature' comes from genocidal idiots! Everyone knows Hitler was very 'green'.
I should add to my comment above about my day job supporting my professional committee work that since no-one was too certain exactly what I did in my day job, no-one could detect the interruptions in it.
From the time capsule. Dateline 1995
House of Lords select Committee on the Economics of Climate Change
Chapter 9 Conclusions and Recommendations
The IPCC process
171. We can see no justification for an IPCC procedure which strikes us as
opening the way for climate science and economics to be determined, at least
in part, by political requirements rather than by the evidence. Sound science
cannot emerge from an unsound process (para 111).
172. The IPCC Summary for policy makers says that economic studies
underestimate damage, whereas the chapter says the direction of the bias is
not known (para 114).
173. We are concerned that there may be political interference in the nomination
of scientists to the IPCC. Nominees’ credentials should rest solely with their
scientific qualifications for the tasks involved (para 116).
174. The IPCC process could be improved by rethinking the role that
government-nominated representatives play in the procedures, and by
ensuring that the appointment of authors is above reproach. At the moment,
it seems to us that the emissions scenarios are influenced by political
considerations and, more broadly, that the economics input into the IPCC is
in some danger of being sidelined. We call on the Government to make every
effort to ensure that these risks are minimised (para 118).
Commons response. All recommendations ignored.
A pretty off-topic question but it occurred to me as I was reading here and at my age, if I don't write it down while I thinking about it......
Does NASA or the IPCC do the crowd estimates that the TV stations are quoting for the "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington Saturday?
The point about IPCC authors being unpaid was aptly made in a 1992 paper by Lindzen recently discussed at
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=324
when he pointed out that few university professors could take the time off to do the job, which would naturally fall to those in government employment.
@Lewis
‘Hitler was green’ is the kind of incomplete syllogism I’d rather leave to “the other side”.
Telegraph has an editorial up: Flawed Science.
All this is surely very damaging to the IPCC. Most people pay most attention to the headline and little to the detail. And look at the headlines quoted above by the Bish (and others). Just now the BBC's 10 o'clock news reported that the report stated that the IPCC needed reform "in order to restore the credibility of climate science." So climate science is not credible? Hmm ... interesting.
Well maybe, Geoff, and it's the kind of fatuous statement I'm likely to make. J'appelle une chat une chat, even when it's not a cat. If you've ever had to move through the incoherent verbiage of that should be unnameable man, it could be that you would see those 'useful idiots' nihilism as having a similar, general European origin. My point was that P's statement must be libellous?
The good old BBC just put out the 10 o' clock news with Roger Harrabin delivering a message of the IPCC 'must do better' rather than 'the CAGW yarn is not to be believed'. Coupled with the giant video wall showing scences of "catastrophic polar melting", my take is that its not likely that the world's biggist alarmist propoganda broadcasting machine will the stopping anytime soon, sadly.
And, to put it more generally, there is a kind of self-loathing of which, along with his Russian friend, is an exempla. The 'back to nature' sketch wasn't invented in the eighties. The fact that neither of them practised what they preached, doesn't mean that after the're 'deluge', they wouldn't have wanted to enact it. A peaceful (slightly depopulated) harmony would have reigned.
And nihilism is not in other people, but ourselves.
'Climate change' has become, now, how Pachuari see's us - as an extraordinarily privileged west who gain their privileges from stamping on the neck of others. I know many who think completely differently - one who said, very sweetly ( I blush ), "It was the British who gave us democracy and the rule of law. Although they failed in incorporating the whole of India, they left us with what is benign about themselves. Our previous conquerors didn't do that!
O/T I know, so apologies, Booker on sea level rises:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
I believe we finally have a climate change consensus. A quick scan of both RealClimate and sceptic blogs reveal comments at both supporting the IAC report's recommendations.
Dams fail slowly or quickly. I'm content to watch the public being forewarned about official detection of small, moisture exuding cracks in that once mighty and unassailable edifice known as CAGW.
I only feel pity for those who've camped downstream because they believed that all scientists were honourable.
What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!
Saint Francis Dam failed only 11 years before I was born--I remember seeing some of the wreckage in both materials and lives. And I know what the cause were (for the history impaired--arrogant engineers and other "scientists" that knew better than anybody else. (You can go to Owens Valley and see an even crueler example of the handiwork of the same crew)
I was at work down town when Baldwin Hills failed. Might have been simple incompetence, but I don't think so.
Your metaphore is not comforting, since the damage by the Warmists is many orders of magnitude worse--and those two were bqad enough.
Robin Guenier -
rebuilding credibility seems to be the meme for today:
31 Aug: Independent: Revealed: why failure of climate summit would herald global catastrophe
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
The world is heading for the next major climate change conference in Cancun later this year on course for global warming of up to 3.5C in the coming century, a series of scientific analyses suggest..
Today, the Coalition's Climate Change Secretary, the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, will travel to Berlin to discuss strengthening the EU climate target in advance of the Cancun meeting from 20 per cent to 30 per cent, with his German and French counterparts, Norbert Röttgen and Jean-Louis Borloo.
Mr Huhne told The Independent: "There's hard work ahead to maintain and build on the level of commitment embodied in the Copenhagen Accord and to rebuild the credibility of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process...
If there are no further breakdowns, it is possible that the meeting may at least restore faith in the UN climate process. "Nobody thinks Cancun will be a big-bang moment," said Keith Allott, head of climate change for the World Wide Fund for Nature. "What the world needs to do is put some wheels back on the climate truck."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/revealed-why-failure--of-climate-summit-would-herald-global-catastrophe-2066127.html
Like you, Larry, I am aware of the dangers posed by untrustworthy advisors but I do draw a small amount of comfort in today's verdict.
If some of those who are mortally threatened by scientific misdirections take a step back and reappraise their positions, then they may just add their weight to those who simply ask direct questions to an establishment that is currently under siege.
We can just hope that tragedy may be minimised.
The Guardian’s reaction is most peculiar. Their site leads with FIVE climate change stories, three about Lomborg’s latest book (two by a journalist from a sister paper and one by a freelance writer who has previously written a book attacking Lomborg); followed by a report on a future climate change debate at the COI; and coming in fifth and last - a report on the IPCC report by the New York correspondent. Apparently, none of the Guardian’s numerous environment and science correspondents are working this week.
And there’s a climate catastrophe editorial about an Egyptian mosquito whch has been found in Holland - for the first time since the sixties. Pass the smelling salts and spray some more DDT down your crinolines dears.
A Pravda piece from the Guardian...
Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change
They were obviously saving this for the right moment, and so the morning after the IAC report seems like a good time.
Lomborg has never been a skeptic. 100Billion? I very much doubt that (and he book is based on economics.) Because if that figure is true, then AGW is not actually a problem just an annoyance (around the true cost of a Three Gorges dam type project.) Then he goes on about Geo engineering, which as an engineer I find is real King Canute stuff (but worse because it could makes things worse.)
Thanks for your quotes Pat. It does seen that irrespective of the spanners thrown in the works by recent findings that Mr Huhne, et al, are still true believers when the sacrifices of other, less important plebians, are called up to make the supreme gesture.
As much as your adherence to the faith is admirable Mr H, your defence of the weak is non-existent and your grasp of reality is vaporous and owes more to blind belief than objective analysis.
Mr H, the longer you chose to suspend your critical faculties because of your political leanings the more badly will those who come after will judge the aftermath of your actions.
FGS, forget your sense of self-importance and hubristic certainty that you are crusading to defend the masses against catastrophic man-made climate change.
Entertain a modicum of doubt 'cos the defence of "I wiz only acting under orders" is a busted flush.
.. and the Independent too leads on climate change, but buries the IAC report among three other articles and an editorial which talks of:
“ .. the kind of binding agreements that might, at this near-midnight hour, contain average global rises in temperatures to around C – the maximum manageable”.
(Presumably “C” is editorial shorthand for “whatever temperature the subeditor thinks will best frighten the readers”).
Finally, there’s Mark Lynas to tell us that:
“Sea levels are creeping higher, polar bears are history and tropical storms of undreamt-of ferocity batter the world's coastlines”.
The real tragedy of global warming is that Britain’s two left of centre newspapers are both indulging in Pravda-like propaganda campaigns to hide the truth from their readers.
It would be witless to see Bjorn doing anything but mending his own cuticles as he admires the yachts in the as yet unfrozen harbours. He is an economist (?), after all, and who is more wrong than they. But, still, no one has any right to compare his views to Hitlers.
The Independent Pravda piece... the lead story for the day... (IAC buried as was mentioned in an earlier comment)
Why failure of climate summit would herald global catastrophe: 3.5°
Strange they are resorting to this shrill "we're doomed" message... I think the Independent is down to its last core readers (it used to be a good newspaper) so why the need for the "end of the world" message?
Ref Huhne et al
I doubt these people are believers, they are people for whom the gravy train is rolling and it is in their financial interest for it to continue rolling as it is for the people who advise them (such as Sir Humphrey Appleby (see UK TV comedy)).
As many have said on this forum before, you must follow the money and it is only a small number of us who would not prostitute ourselves for a slice, should we be "fortunate" enough to be offered a crumb. If you are in a position of favour then the pot is big enough to make the crumb a plateful of crumbs.
It is this gravy train that is difficult to stop, rather than the bad science itself. Good science or an illumination of the bad science to the public at large is a minor irritation to these people when they appear to control/influence the media so comprehensively. Had it not been for the internet and "free speech" many of us would have probably been tagging along blindly........ as we probably have been for centuries on other matters
Steve
@geoffchambers
The Guardian's line on Lomborg seems very reminiscent of a deliberate policy change, a directive from the politburo?
I can't believe it is all just because Lomborg has bumped up the priority of climate change in his latest book, I notice he still isn't explicity quoted as saying it is Num 1, and I can't see anything else different about his position. Maybe the Guardian are distancing themselves from doom and gloom alarmism which is looking ever more detached from reality.
Although I think Lomberg has always had something of the slick cynical operator about him, it wouldn't surprise me if had been playing the long game for just this very moment.
pat (and Jiminy Cricket):
Thanks for drawing our attention to the Independent's attempt divert attention from the IAC report. It appears to be trying to replicate, for Cancun this time, the pre-Copenhagen 'last chance to save the world' story. It's a strange article, full of vague phrasing such as "up to", "suggest", "likely", "widely considered", "it is thought", etc. Judging from the comments, it didn't much impress online readers. And it's odd that Chris Huhne seems to think the objective these days is not so much to save the planet but to shift "investment into new clean technologies, generating jobs and growth ..." The the risk now. he says, "is in waking up late to these opportunities and losing out to other major blocs who are already eyeing up market share."
More interesting perhaps is this story in the Guardian: CBI to host climate change 'clash of the titans' debate It seems the CBI is to host the debate at its annual conference in November. Now that might be entertaining.
stephen lewis:
“Good science or an illumination of the bad science to the public at large is a minor irritation to these people when they appear to control/influence the media so comprehensively. Had it not been for the internet and "free speech" many of us would have probably been tagging along blindly........ as we probably have been for centuries on other matters”
Well said. But the average Guardian or Independent reader, far from being “on the gravy train” has given up gravy for the good of the planet and wants to deprive the rest of us too. How their philosophy took over the entire British establishment and political system is a mystery which can’t be solved by simply “following the money”.
You're not wrong Geoff but it seems that the people who control the Guardian are on the gravy train.. perhaps they were disappointed having not been able to get on the MP's expenses train.
It does seem that if you're in the right place there are many trains on the platform. The global warming train is probably one of the richest trains that departed taking with it our media moguls, many esteemed leaders plus the organisers of the party such as Al Gore et al (including it would seem Barack Obama who was a member of the foundation that funded CCX ... if I have understood the information correctly.
Some good comments on the Indy article:
Shangi Yahtahei: "Please give us the exact scientific description of "climate balance"."
Chris Ward: ""Up to 3.5C" - Would that be like "up to 10Mb" broadband?"
I noticed a not particularly nuanced tweet from Andy Revkin earlier (http://twitter.com/Revkin): "IPCC's Pachauri endorses new Lomborg book on climate action. Is Patchy the new denier enabler??"
"Denier enabler"??
What is thje Daily Mail's circulation again? ;)
UN climate experts 'overstated dangers':
Keep your noses out of politics, scientists told
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307446/UN-climate-change-panel-relied-vague-imprecise-predictions.html#ixzz0yAJAkON8
UN climate change experts have been accused of making 'imprecise and vague' statements and over-egging the evidence.
A scathing report into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for it to avoid politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science. "
--------------------
Newspaper tipping point?
8. 40am and I've had BBC Radio 4 Today on since 7.30. They seem to have decided to entirely ignore the IAC report today and all we got was a mention of Bjorn Lomberg, described as something like "arguably the world's most well-known climate sceptic", his book and the need to DO something RADICAL and VERY EXPENSIVE to save the world from its doom.