Tuesday
Aug312010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Fred on the IAC
Aug 31, 2010 Climate: IPCC Media Fred Pearce has an article on the IAC report in New Scientist.
The IPCC has tried hard to preserve the normal rules of scientific discourse and to explain continuing uncertainty, but it has been pushed towards simple sound-bite conclusions. Some of this pressure has come from the desire of many scientists to underline their concerns about the dangers the world faces. Sometimes, in the process, "could happen" has become "will happen", and analysis has veered close to advocacy. Journalists have been willing colluders.
Yup.
Reader Comments (19)
More like cheer leaders than willing colluders.
The so called "quality press" should be thoroughly ashamed of their complicity and lack of journalistic ethics.
They have let down their readership in the worst possible way.
Where's Bob Ward? What's he got to say now that the IPCC has been shown to be misleading etc.
Here in Germany much of the press is admitting the The IPCC well is poisoned, but still, they are insisting the water is fine.
Not entirely O/T...has the Telegraph finally rumbled Gray and Lean as complete CAGW headbangers? The IAC report was covered by two 'normal' reporters, who made a fair job of it.
Perhaps the paper has realised that strident and unquestioning advocacy of the Warmist cause is a complete turnoff to its natural constituency and has lost it considerable credibility (and readers like me).
Or maybe the pair of them were just on holiday.
Fred Pearce is entirely too kind. Mindless, politically motivated propaganda has no place in any objective, rational, scientific enterprise whatever, and to pretend otherwise on behalf of peculating Luddite sociopaths bent on destroying global energy economies betrays every established tenet from Galileo on.
Since at least 1999, Railroad Bill Pachauri's pathetic UN IPCC has sought to leverage supposedly disinterested "scientific fact" in support of a death-eating ideology seeking the literal extermination of five billion people as a means to en masse cleansing of Gaia's unwonted post-Enlightenment industrial/technological civilizations (cf: Ehrlich, Holdren, Singer, many another of their eco-fascist ilk). Anyone like Pearce who pretends that this nihilist agenda is a matter of mere typos, minor factual errors amenable to clerical correction, is a fool.
Richard Black is on holiday....
Wonder if they have all bought some carbon offsets, if they have flown anywhere nice?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/30/carbon-emissions-offset-civil-aviation-authority
Alerted by a poster on Jo Nova's site I visited RC to find out what the great and the good made of the IAC report. As this post will doubtlessly be pulled by Gavin I've taken a copy of post #14.
See if you can spot the gotcha! Hint - do the math :)
Quote:
14.OT: Realers might be interested in yet another ancient AGW told-you-so. One of the Australian public broadcaster’s longest running programs, ABC Radio National’s Science Show celebrated its 35th aniversary this week. Veteran presenter and science journalist Robyn Williams chose to re-run this piece from his very first show, all those years ago.
Peter Ritchie-Calder: In the course of the last century we’ve put 360,000 million tonnes of fossil carbon into the atmosphere. On the present trends the accumulated requirements between now and 2000 AD will come out as something like 11,000 million tonnes of coal a year, 200,000 million tonnes of crude petroleum and liquid natural gas, and 50 million million cubic metres of natural gas. Remember, this is coming out of the bowels of the Earth, and now we are taking it out and we’re throwing it back into the atmosphere, and into the climatic machine, into the weather machine, where it is beginning to affect the climate itself. Now this is a very serious matter, and to me there is no question that our climate has changed.
Robyn Williams: Lord Ritchie-Calder in Science Show number one, 35 years ago. Will it take another 35 years to tackle the problem?
Yep.
Comment by GlenFergus — 30 August 2010 @ 6:08 PM
Here's the link given by RC.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2992897.htm#transcript
WRI’s Jennifer Morgan Responds to InterAgency Council Review of the IPCC:-
“Importantly, this review found no evidence that alters the fundamental conclusions of the IPCC that climate change is occurring and it is ‘very likely’ caused by human activity. These conclusions have been recently reaffirmed by several leading scientific authorities, including the National Academy of Sciences.
“The recommendations of the IAC will help bolster confidence in the IPCC – which is comprised of thousands of the world’s leading climate scientists – and will ensure that the IPCC continues to be a leading source of scientific information on climate change.
“Around the world, we are witnessing the types of events consistent with climate models — from wildfires in Russia to massive flooding in Pakistan— that will become even more frequent if we do not take action to reduce climate change. The world must now focus on the serious business of finding practical solutions to the climate crisis.”
http://www.wri.org/press/2010/08/wris-jennifer-morgan-responds-interagency-council-review-ipcc
same old.......
Slightly off-topic, but whenever you get the feeling we might be getting somewhere against the Warmists just nip over to the Guardian Comment is Free page.
Check this one out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/31/greenland-greenpeace-arctic-oil-rig?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:44a0d65b-5df7-4fd5-b5a0-1638f5a9d0ef
It's about the Greenland Rig occupation by Greenpeace 'activists'.
The guy quoted below actually a voice of moderation to some of the other nutters in the threads. Get this quote about countries that have made money from oil..."These fossil-financed sovereign wealth pots should be forcibly globalised, put under the control of the UN and used to compensate nations like the Maldives, which will soon cease to exist thanks to rising sea levels, pay for resettlement and environmental damages elsewhere, and to pay people like the Greenlandics to keep their damned carbon underground."
Yikes!
Whenever warmists pretend they don't want World Government you just need to listen to what they say.
Fred has copied his pot-boiler article from
yet-another-enquiry.gubbermint.uk
another single word ....doh! Its just so Homeric.....hehe
They're good boys, my IPCC sons, they are. They just fell in wiv a bad crowd. It were pressure, that's wot it were. Can't blame 'em. Bloody pressure. They're always good to their old mum, they are.
"Journalists have been willing colluders."
Have to take extreme exception to this. The 'Journalists' were NOT the 'colluders'! The Colluders were the MSM CEO's. They were the ones who were in it up to their kilts; sort of an ENRON kinda thing. Know what I mean? The journalists were saluting and complying with the bosses orders, just trying to pay their bills and put food on the table for their families. Don't blame the little guys! This was upper management at its very worst! It was the Chefs, not the bottle-washers, who were the colluders.
So authors who were circumspect when writing in the scientific literature are being misrepresented by the IPCC?
Since, in some cases, the IPCC Lead Authors and the scientists whose work is being exaggerated are the same people, blaming the press for misresenting the scientists views is a bit rich.
The IAC review does however criticise the IPCC for lacking a clear policy on conflict of interest and suggests that new guidelines be implemented. Though it did not investigate the Pachauri allegations, it notes his board membership of energy companies, and states that given the sensitive nature of the IPCC's work it should "pay special attention to issues of independence and bias to maintain the integrity of, and public confidence in, its results".
No policy of conflict of interest? Makes the City look like the Quakers.
I should have said, above extract from the Guardian itself:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/rajendra-pachauri-un-climate-change-pressure-resign
Quick comment on reforming the IPCC: I'm not sure I would change anything!
Here is what I mean. There are two different models that have been adopted to find truth. One model creates a neutral third party that examines the evidence and provides a summary report. The IPCC in principle tried to follow this model, but in practice failed because advocacy, instead of dispassionate science, became the norm.
Everybody is focused on "fixing" the IPCC, but I think that is a fool's errand. The advocacy is so deeply ingrained that it seems highly doubtful it will change. What I propose is that we adopt the alternative model for attempting to discover truth. The alternative model is an advocacy model. With an advocacy model, you charge different parties with advocating (i.e. making the best case possible) for their side of the argument. Once both sides have offered up their best case, anyone can judge (political leaders? the public? others?) who was most persuasive.
Instead of trying to reform the IPCC, leave it alone. It can be the standard bearer for the "pro AGW" side of the argument. I would really like to see the best and brightest on the skeptical side lay out a step by step case for caution when it comes to swallowing the AGW hypothesis. By publishing an alternative view, I think it would put to rest the idea of "settled science" as well as highlight areas of disagreement impossible to ignore.
Likely never happen, but a guy can dream...
James
royfomr, Am I wrong that was a piece that was done on global cooling was it not? Got to wonder did the poster know that? lol
Fred Pearce is truly a strange character:
He seems to be a genuinly nice guy and he approaches much of the climate debate with an open mind and is willing to criticise warmists as well as sceptics.
However whatever he finds wrong with warmists never changes his complete conviction that man is warming the planet.
I believe that the IAC report is indistinguishable from the UK whitewash reports. Heart felt condemnation of the system but total confirmation of the "basic science".
I am truly grateful for the link to the Bob Ward/Frazier Nelson "debate". I agree with all those who said lets have more of him on TV. the best single word I can come up with to describe his performance is "manic".