Bishop Hill Is Tom Chivers serious?
Feb 10, 2012 Climate: WG2 The news that Himalayan glaciers are not melting at all, let alone being set to disappear by 2035 has been exercising all and sundry today. Tom Chivers at the Telegraph has a somewhat snide piece setting out the facts.
Well, some of the facts.
The particular aspect that I want to look at is that ideaa that the glaciers will have disappeared by 2035. The story has been set out in great detail by EU Referendum. We know
- that glaciologist Syed Hasnain had, since 1999, repeatedly claimed a date of 2035 for Himalayan glaciers to disappear
- that Fred Pearce confirmed the 2035 figure with Hasnain and then incorporated it in a New Scientist article the same year
- that this was then picked up and reported by the Evening Standard
- that Pearce repeated the 2035 figure in the Independent in 2000
- that Hasnain repeated the 2035 figure in an interview with an Indian paper in 2001
- that Hasnain disseminated the 2035 figure widely in 2004
- that Hasnain continued to repeat the 2035 figure widely in 2006 and 2007 and 2008
The 2035 date appears to have been added to the Second ORder Draft of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The only document cited in the section on Himalayan glaciers was Hasnain 2002.
The IPCC's expert reviewers raised the issue of the 2035 claim:
- one reviewer pointed out that the report was simultaneously claiming disappearance and shrinkage by 2035
- the government of Japan asked what the level of confidence was in the 2035 figure and pointed out that it was uncited
- a UK reviewer pointed out that some Himalayan glaciers are growing
[Update:after the review, but before publication, another scientist wrote advising of errors in the report, including the 2035 one. Other parts of the letter were acted on, but not the claim about the Himalayan glaciers.]
Despite this, no changes were made to the text. In fact, when V.K Raina challenged the 2035 date in his report on Himalayan glaciers for the Indian government, the IPCC accused him of mischief and defended 2035 as a good estimate of when the glaciers would be gone.
Now let's look at how Tom Chivers reports the strange case of the 2035 date.
When the IPCC stupidly included a prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear entirely by 2035 – apparently because some idiot had misread "2350" in a non-peer-reviewed hydrology article – the error was not picked up by any of the army of internet sceptics, but by a glaciologist at Ontario's Trent University called Prof J Graham Cogley.
"Misread"? Oh dear.
Rather than everyone simply piling on, I shall ask Tom if he cares to comment.
Bishop Hill
Tom Chivers tweets that he is going to add a caveat to his article. He says the 2035 figure was "conceivably misrepresented". I think that's probably fair.
Reader Comments (97)
Tom has updated his post, referring to here. It now says that the 2035 figure is conceivably misrepresented. I think this is fair.
Bish, pressure from bloggers working well then. Ironic, particularly given the angle taken in Tom's article, no?
BUT...why does he even have to update his article in the first place? He should have been knowledgeable enough to KNOW what he was talking about was a pile of dung that even the most cursory of google searches would have given him the information he needed???
Mailman
I got to this post late - as much as four hours late. I at once flipped to the Tom Chivers article and found the reference back here, which I then gathered is a fairly new addition. Here's that expanded sentence in full, as Private Eye would say (and three cheers indeed if the Eye is finally taking a proper satirical look at green energy):
I have a choice at this point: whether I am pedantic and nasty or my normal, sunny self. Pedantically, Tom's addition doesn't fit the existing sentence at all well. Some idiot didn't deliberately misrepresent 2350 in a non-peer-reviewed hydrology article - a little-known Indian scientist made up the figure from whole cloth and kept repeating it. But at least Tom links back here and took the trouble to come across here in person to explain his beef with the Bish.
And I have a beef with Tom's beef. But, before that, let me say that the original post was an incredibly helpful summary of how 2035 became the scare du jour in late 2009, in the build up to Copenhagen, with even the then prime minister holding forth on the grave threat to humanity:
For the full YouTube video, see climatequotes.com. But the ridiculous end date for Himalayan glaciers wasn't even the main problem with Brown's warning, fed to him by scientific advisers that most certainly have known better, as Brian Macker pointed out succinctly on Climate Audit on Jan 24, 2010:
Another little detail not mentioned either by Chivers or the Bish is that after coming up with the 2035 deception Syed Hasnain took a job with none other than Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, in one of his profitable little sideline enterprises. At least so I was led to believe by Richard North.
But all this is mere preamble. Tom Chivers felt that Bishop Hill hadn't really grasped firmly his core argument. And it's that that I really wanted to write about. Another post, hopefully before my lunch break ends.
I have to say that Tom's update is practically invisible.
Likewise, there is no visual cue that the post was updated after publication. This is IMO a nasty habit used by the BBC website. It is particularly annoying when there are literally hundreds of comments on the original text.
I'd like to think that Tom did this out of ignorance rather than malice, so it would be nice if he could add a note at the bottom of his post in the same style as BH's update.
I got to this post late - as much as four hours late. I at once flipped to the Tom Chivers article and found the reference back here, which I then gathered is a fairly new addition. Here's that expanded sentence in full, as Private Eye would say (and three cheers indeed if the Eye is finally taking a proper satirical look at green energy):
I have a choice at this point: whether I am pedantic and nasty or my normal, sunny self. Pedantically, Tom's addition doesn't fit the existing sentence at all well. Some idiot didn't deliberately misrepresent 2350 in a non-peer-reviewed hydrology article - a little-known Indian scientist made up the figure from whole cloth and kept repeating it. But at least Tom links back here and took the trouble to come across here in person to explain his beef with the Bish.
And I have a beef with Tom's beef. But, before that, let me say that the original post was an incredibly helpful summary of how 2035 became the scare du jour in late 2009, in the build up to Copenhagen, with even the then prime minister holding forth on the grave threat to humanity:
For the full YouTube video, see climatequotes.com. But the ridiculous end date for Himalayan glaciers wasn't even the main problem with Brown's warning, fed to him by scientific advisers that most certainly have known better, as Brian Macker pointed out succinctly on Climate Audit on Jan 24, 2010:
Another little detail not mentioned either by Chivers or the Bish is that after coming up with and fooling Fred Pearce, the IPCC and many others with the 2035 deception, Syed Hasnain took a job with none other than Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, in one of his profitable little sideline enterprises. At least so I was led to believe at the time by Richard North.
But all this is mere preamble. Tom Chivers felt that Bishop Hill hadn't really grasped firmly his core argument. And it's that that I really wanted to write about. Another post, hopefully before my lunch break ends.
Sorry 'bout the double post - got a discouraging message after the first one and tried again.
Tom Chivers entitles his article How's that global climate change conspiracy going, again? and that indeed is the main thrust, with the 2035 error only considered in passing. Because of the excellent Dellers commentary on the Bishop's report on the Royal Society I'm not going to have time to respond in any detail. But I will say this. There are for me three components of what I've begun to call the Folk Consensus of climate science and policy:
1. the denier sneer
2. the conspiracy sneer
3. the (very solemn) fossil fuel conspiracy theory.
Chivers brings out the second. The trouble with sneering, though, is that you tend to think of your opponents as way beneath you and thus fail to listen properly to what they're saying. (Why bother, when they're so obviously stupid?)
Nobody I have ever met in all my travels believes in a "global climate change conspiracy" that is falsified by some scientists doing a good job and honestly correcting mistakes. Even the most ardent conspiracist doesn't see things that way. But even the mass of climate scientists behaving well doesn't excuse the disgraceful behaviour of the IPCC insiders revealed in the Climategate emails, the very strange story of Syed Hasnain's lousy science being defended by his boss Rajendra Pachauri when he knew perfectly well it was indeed lousy and many other such detailed examples.
Some people overdraw the climate conspiracy. But we know some conspiring has been going on - we know that from the Climategate emails, for goodness sake. It's never easy to achieve balance in one's thinking once such evidence emerges. But sneering never, ever helps.
Tom Chivers is way off beam here. It is stretching credulity to say only that the 2035 nonsense “is conceivably misrepresented”. His comment may be, as the Bishop suggests, “fair” but it is not accurate.
Georg Kaser, tropical glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck and an IPCC “lead author”, had warned colleagues about the howlers a year before the report was published, saying that: “This number is not just a little bit wrong but far out, by an order of magnitude. It is as wrong as can be wrong. To get this outcome, you would have to increase the ablation (ice loss) by 20 fold. You would have to raise temperatures by at least 12 degrees Celsius (21.6 Fahrenheit). It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing”.
And so it wasn’t discussed. Asked why his warning was not heeded, Kaser pointed to “a kind of amateurism” among experts from the region in charge of the chapter where the claim appeared: “They might have been good hydrologists or botanists, but they were without any knowledge in glaciology”
Despite a ruling that the IPCC must rely only on “peer reviewed” literature, none of the papers on which a critical section of its case rested had been so evaluated. Its 2007 scare-the-children figure was lifted from a 2005 paper written by scientists hired by a lobby group who lifted it from a 1999 report by the International Commission for Snow and Ice whose author probably lifted it from an earlier (1991) ICSI report on a different topic and, either by mistake or for a wheeze, changed 2350 to 2035. Its “experts” ignored warnings that they would become a laughing stock and served up the tosh to a gullible world.
There was no need for “any of the army of internet sceptics” to pick up the error. Kaser at least had picked it up before sceptics could even get to it. The scandal is that no-one did anything about it. That surely is the story.
** Note that Kaser was an IPCC WG1 lead author but not on glaciers. An IPCC official claims that he sent his comment to the wrong department and that it was mislaid as a result (“the cross-check is in the post”). Kaser it was who debunked that other “poster child” (his term) of the AGW narrative, Mount Kilimanjaro”s shrinking ice cover.
Tom Chivers tweets that he is going to add a caveat to his article. He says the 2035 figure was "conceivably misrepresented". I think that's probably fair.
You are being generous to a fault here! The 2035 figure was not literally misrepresented by the IPCC, rather it was faithfully reproduced. The implication that it was based on sound science was indeed a misrepresenation, one doubled-up upon later by Pachauri's describing the contrary view as 'voodoo science'. So not 'conceivably' misrepresented. It was misrepresented. No doubt whatsoever.
I think Chivers on the other hand is conceivably a dupe for the climate alarm industry. Note that I giving him the benefit of the doubt. I may be misrepresenting him.
What's this rubbish about "as Bishop Hill claims"? Does Chivers really believe dozens of commentators all over the web haven't independently found the same evidence about the 2035 claim
The source Chivers has used includes the report authors denying that it was a transposition of figures from 2350 to 2035. Chivers chose to exclude that part from his article. It is transparent enough by looking at the source for it but does change the tone of what Chivers wrote.
Professor Cogley came up with a plausible explanation for the error. That doesn't make it the correct one and was only suggested after the issue was gaining media attention.
I find Tom's self defense to be very curious, but typical of journalist-believers.
The fact is that the glacier problem was not an isolated failure of the IPCC. It is well documented that this was part of a systemic problem. Glaciergate was simply the most obvious.
Tom's quick reliance on the work of 'tens of thousands' of workers is a bit of a tell that he is still not looking at this as a journalist so much as a believer.
@Tom Chivers
"That's why, despite the existence of a lunatic antiscientific greenish fringe who have latched on to the climate-science.."
Tom, you may be right, but that's no way to talk about your colleagues..
@Tom Chivers
"That's why, despite the existence of a lunatic antiscientific greenish fringe who have latched on to the climate-science.."
Tom, you may be right, but that's no way to talk about your colleagues..
Chivers should be... shocked to discover there’s gambling in this casino…
....but he obviously likes Gambling so much he didn't see it!
As I've posted on Tom's blog (which I consider to be excellent in may other respects), the problem here is that people tend to seek out information sources that confirm their already strongly held beliefs. So it's unlikely that Mr Chivers is aware of many of the things that have concerned us over the years at places like this, or Watts, or ClimateAudit, or elsewhere).
I particularly dislike the way he equates AGW sceptics with moon landing deniers. I had that one thrown at me not a fortnight ago by a colleague at work!
Having pointed to Chivers a warmist site where he can read it all about the 2035 fiasco, he's just confirmed my earlier thoughts by refusing to read it. He's even gone childish and accused me of being "an angry man". Oh bother.
If those are the Skeptics, I'm an astrologer.
I think the "conceivably misrepresented" characterisation perpetuates Hasnain's contention that the 2035 date came from Fred Pearce rather than from himself. It's conceivable that he may not have actually said "2035"; perhaps Hasnain said something like "within 30 to 40 years", and Pearce converted that to an actual year. But Hasnain's demurral seems disingenuous -- he said something similar in 2009, saying "Himalayan glaciers are expected to lose 75 percent of their ice by 2020."
I found the EUReferendum article (linked in the main post) on the argumentative side. For example, it takes each repetition of the same "2035" quote -- likely just cut-and-paste from Pearce's article -- as re-endorsement by Hasnain. I would recommend instead John Nielsen-Gammon's article here.
Maurizio:
There are two problems with that. One is that facts are facts, whether or not the person delivering them is angry or not. The second is that we should be angry, about two things.
1. From the UK prime minister downwards, this lousy piece of science became The Consensus before Copenhagen, deceiving millions about an imminent threat to "three quarters of a billion", in a naked attempt to browbeat world leaders into damaging carbon control agreement at the end of that year
2. Those that opposed this myth - and it didn't start with Graham Cogley - were written off as deniers and guilty of voodoo science before Copenhagen, only for the big names of the IPCC to admit afterwards that the whole thing was tosh. Whereupon we were set upon by the same people for being conspiracy theorists and loonies. Some habits are hard to break.
It's infuriating to be treated like this but that's not the key reason to be angry, which is what I pointed out above: if you sneer at people for too long, it becomes impossible to listen to them. And in this case there is still much to learn from sceptics. Even the angry ones.
Andrew,
Interesting. I read the Yale Climate Forum piece, which seems to document things well. It doesn't appear to directly accuse IPCC scientists of improper practises though. I'm sure someone here knows where there is an account that gives:
Good evidence that the IPCC process was deliberately corrupted, rather than the paragraph being the result of an honest error.
Evidence that this kind of error is repeated elsewhere in the IPCC reports - as it surely would be if there were an important structural problem.
The IPCC reports are, to a large extent, written and reviewed by the very large number of scientists that work in the field. I am therefore surprised that you distinguish 'IPCC scientists' from 'other scientists'. I think we agree that it is crucial that the error-catching processes are robust, and that the reports accurately reflect the state of the science.
Perhaps you would like to suggest how you think the IPCC process should be changed, in order to make it more robust? I guess this assumes that you think having an assessment of the science is useful in the first place :)
Doug McNeall asks the Bish for:
I'll interject that the key evidence is not how many times this extreme claim was made in IPCC reports but the extraordinary use made of the claim by politicians of the highest level, culminating in the speech of Gordon Brown to the Major Economies Forum in London in October 2009 , as detailed above. Who on earth put the UK prime minister up to that, picking this one rogue paragraph out from so many others?
You can choose to believe that such an unfortunate sequence of events, including the very close involvement of Pachauri throughout, was 'an honest error'. But if you do, I've got a series of wonderful deals for you to consider that I've been alerted to by email from a widow in Nigeria.
Chivers thinks he's defending "science" (generic) against us barbarians. You see in the mind of someone like that, it's axiomatic that we're all also creationists, moon landing deniers, "birthers" and whatever else you choose to add to the impact of the fallacy. In this respect he's no different to the people I debate with. You always get the "I bet you don't think smoking causes lung cancer" argument appended to the objection.
It's immensely frustrating that someone can't understand how it is you can disagree with one particular implementation of the scientific method in a particular field, without dismissing science in its entirety.
Feb 10, 2012 at 3:12 PM | Doug McNeall writes:
"Interesting. I read the Yale Climate Forum piece, which seems to document things well. It doesn't appear to directly accuse IPCC scientists of improper practises though. I'm sure someone here knows where there is an account that gives:
Good evidence that the IPCC process was deliberately corrupted, rather than the paragraph being the result of an honest error."
Are you suggesting that IPCC people are to be treated as innocent until proved guilty? What standard of proof shall we use? Are you suggesting that the standard used in courtrooms should be used here? You know that no such standards can be met here. What is your purpose in making your demand? Is it to silence discussion here?
What is the so-called honest error? Anyone with a scientist's understanding of glaciers knew that the 2035 date was quite simply inconceivable. If an error at all, this error was not an ordinary error of any sort. But things are much worse for your position. Anyone with a scientist's understanding of rivers knew that glacier melt cannot supply water for large populations. They knew that the source of any large river supplies only a very small amount of the water carried by the river. In my plain language, anyone who made the errors I just described must be suffering from an IQ deficiency, a delusion, or a desire to deceive.
As others have explained rather eloquently, what is so frustrating about your comments on this post is that you fail to recognize the fact that sceptics were all over the problem under discussion when it first occurred. Sceptics have recorded and exposed the history of this sordid affair yet you treat us as making up a case against scientists who might be innocent. Sir, you are simply quite ignorant of the history that you claim to know.
Feb 10, 2012 at 3:12 PM | Doug McNeall writes:
"Evidence that this kind of error is repeated elsewhere in the IPCC reports - as it surely would be if there were an important structural problem."
One error of whatever magnitude is no evidence but two errors would be? Surely, you jest?
Feb 10, 2012 at 3:20 PM | Richard Drake
"I'll interject that the key evidence is not how many times this extreme claim was made in IPCC reports but the extraordinary use made of the claim by politicians of the highest level, culminating in the speech of Gordon Brown to the Major Economies Forum in London in October 2009 , as detailed above. Who on earth put the UK prime minister up to that, picking this one rogue paragraph out from so many others?"
Yes, the spectacle of a Head of State making a claim no less preposterous than, say, the claim that the Moon is made of green cheese provided powerful evidence that something beyond a simple error was involved. The evidence did not prove corruption as it is proved in a courtroom but it screamed to High Heaven that an investigation for corruption should commence immediately.
Doug McNeall, Oh dear, where to start?
Well lets start at the end, how should the IPCC process be changed?
The review process should be anonymous (as with journal review) so that IPCC authors can't just automatically dismiss comments from reviewers they don't like.
And the authors should not be allowed to insert whatever nonsense thay like into the final version of the report after the final round of review comments (such as the fabricated criticism of McKitrick that the AR5 ZOD admits was unjustified, and the ridiculous FAQ3.1 Fig 1)
Doug...
Good evidence was already provided. If you can bring yourself to look at watts up..
or the Daily Mail.
Where to quote again...
A scientist said is was known prior to the report..
But it was left in to influence politicians..
And we have world headlines, troops if journalist running around the himalayas, pointing at glaciers, and Gordon Browns public speeches that 3/4 of a bullion people were dependant on water.
Perhaps you skipped over my earlier link, with David Rose quoting the scientist concerned..
Perhaps you missed that the scientist, that the phone conversation originated, ended up in the pay of. Pachauri organisation looking at said glaciers,
And Pachaurus, response to other scientusts....
that the IPCC is hopelessly politicised and that science is corrupted ..
Surely.. the fact it was known to be wrong, but included to influence policymakers, is evidence!!
Sorry to be blunt,maybe you missed this earlier, it just looks like you ignored it..
@Doug McNeall
The 2035 date wasn't the only mistake in that IPCC paragraph -- the extent to which glacial melt affects water supply in the region was also overstated. See the discussion by John Nielsen-Gammon (who also likes the Yale Climate Forum piece) which I linked earlier. The failure by the authors of the chapter was not simply relying on a poor source -- a copy of a copy of ... -- but more prominently the ignoring of well-stated comments which, if taken, would have corrected the errors before publication. Inserting the original claim seems to be merely lazy -- and in defense of it, the echoes of the 2035 claim in many different places may have made it appear more authoritative -- but I can't imagine any valid reason for ignoring the review comments.
Steve McIntyre's experiences with AR4 comments being ignored by the IPCC writers, are further examples that authors' viewpoints persist through review. The initial composition of the draft will have author biases; that seems to be unavoidable. The review stage is intended to correct such biases, yet it does not seem to perform that function, because the same author team is empowered to respond to review comments, with little to countervail. That is what I consider to be the key structural weakness. For a document which claims to be a consensus agreement, each chapter is indelibly marked with the scent of its lead author.
[And the SPM is a different matter entirely.]
The EU Referendum article the Bish referenced is worth reading. It details how the 2035 date was not - in any shape, form or fashion - a misreading of 2350; it was deliberate alarmism reapeated endlessly for purpose.
Daily Mail:
"The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035
*** last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. ***
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html#ixzz1lzqoVRJr
---------------------------
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "WE must make history at Copenhagen"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/25/another-climate-fail-new-research-casts-doubt-on-doomsday-himalayan-water-shortage-predictions/
“There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course for the next few decades’
“If we do not reach a deal over the next few months, let us be in no doubt”
“Once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice, by then it will be irretreivably too late..
..we should never allow ourselves to lose site of the catastrophy we face, if present warming trends continue…..”
“In 25 years the glaciers that provide water for 3/4 of a billion people will disapear entirely”
Here he is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pyZEC__hfQk#t=0s
-------------------------------
Gordon Brown was aso speaking of anti-science - flat earther deniers....
IPCC processes and leadership seem to me to beyon redemption. Pachuari still in place, against IAC advice, all the IAC guidelins/criticicism ignored..
Doug - ARE you going to defend it was known about (wrong) but left in to influence....
are we going to pretend it was just one typo in a big report, that meant nothing
(Hougthon tried that one on me..)
Theo Goodwin: despite your support for my earlier posts it has to pistols at dawn for calling Her Majesty's lowly First Lord of the Admiralty "Head of State". Sorry it had to end like this.
Feb 10, 2012 at 5:26 PM | Richard Drake
It is sad. But there is a certain "exhilaration" in it too. What do you suggest? Classic flintlocks?
I do apologize for misusing the phrase "Head of State."
Theo, I'm just looking into this:
You can have one of those.
I'm hoping for a local sponsorship deal as I avail myself of a faster acting design.
Richard Drake
First Lord of the Treasury, please!
First Lord of the Admiralty no longer exists. The post (which was a Cabinet one from 1806) disappeared when the political control of the three services was amalgamated in the Ministry of Defence in 1964.
Richard,
In my humble opinion, Nock made the best flintlocks.
Please inform me of the later design that you choose.
There are tens of thousands of scientists working in climate-related fields worldwide
I wish the cheerleaders for warmism would get a grip on how few actual scientists are actually alleging the warming.
There are many scientists who investigate the alleged effects, but take the actual warming for granted – but that is a very different thing.
Mike: Hoist with my own petard, as usual.
Theo: I bow to your greater knowledge and, thinking carefully about that, suggest a postponement!
Mooloo:
Make that how few scientists are actually alleging that highly dangerous warming is so likely, due to current emissions, that vastly expensive emission controls should be enacted which are certain to stop the said warming in its tracks.
Make that no scientists. Nobody claims that certainty at the end yet it's an essential piece of the logic.
Richard Drake - you need one of these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7YKbxmrFbk
Feb 10, 2012 at 6:49 PM | Richard Drake
"Theo: I bow to your greater knowledge and, thinking carefully about that, suggest a postponement!"
Agreed, Richard. We can do it after cocktails some time.
I don't understand how the 2035 debacle helps prove Tom's point. He is saying that the error was picked up by a Glaciologist and not a sceptic. Fair enough. However the Glaciologist found and reported the error before the report was published. So how were sceptics supposed to spot the error first? Clairvoyance? Also the fact that the error was picked up and reported at the draft stage and yet it strangely remained in the final report doesn't exactly breed confidence in the notion that there is definitely no conspiracy. Certainly in this area.
Or am I missing something?
amoorhouse: I don't think you're missing something. Jonathan Leake broke the story as far as the MSM is concerned in The Sunday Times on 17 Jan 2010, including this sentence:
If Cogley had long been unhappy with the IPCC's finding, doesn't that mean by definition he was one of the deniers, those guilty of voodoo science according to Pachauri only weeks before? Oh no, sorry, unlike the other critics he was a real scientist. Or so he is categorised after the event. But we don't care what he's called. We only care what the data said and who was being true to it. He who has ears to hear ...
Chivers' post remains as pointless as ever. He sneered at climate skeptics for not spotting a "misread" of 2350 into 2035. He's now been shown wrong on the 'misread' claim, with climate skeptics spotting his error. Hard to imagine anything that would be any more invalidating for Chivers' initial thesis.
Othere results have been that we now have a rough idea that science might be self-correcting in the long run, and we also have hard evidence that Crusading Skeptics/journalists don't bother doing Google searches, and cannot fathom self-correcting themselves.
Chivers' piece is supposed to be journalism? By what definition?
"Chivers' piece is supposed to be journalism? By what definition? 2
It has all the breathlessness and ignorance we see from the "journalists2 in their first year. Tom is just 28/9 years old, when to Dulwich College and Oxford, so in terms of the sagacity that one gets with a life time of experience we are faced with youthful brashness. He's a poet and extremely "right-on" his take on the Turin shroud being that the scientists who declared that it couldn't have been a forgery were christian zealots, and laughing out loud that it could be anything else. See here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100125247/the-turin-shroud-is-fake-get-over-it/
Then see the reply, I think our Tom is a "right on" poet with a closed mind, though to be fair he did post the researchers' response, but then again maybe he didn't fully understand it and thought they looked ridiculous, who knows what a chap who believes there are tens of thousands of scientists who believe in CAGW has for thought processes?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100126480/the-shroud-of-turin-forgery-or-divine-a-scientist-writes/
He obviously hasn't gained the maturity to keep mouth shut until you fully understand what's been said. Mind you given the successful career of those who have led in this activity he might be another John Prescott, who I believe graduated from Oxford as well.
By the George Moonbat standards.
Maurizio Morabito said:
Unfortunately the long run is too long for the political process. You can't make a name for yourself if the science is uncertain. You can't impress your green advocate chums. You can't interfere in our lives under the cover of saving the world. You can't make policy to look busy.
geronimo
You've got the wrong Tom Chivers.I think you'll find that biog refers to a poet and publisher not the mouthy "Assistant Comment Editor" at the Telegraph whose entry in journalisted.com tells us absolutely sod all about him.
He appears to come from the same stable as Ed West and Hugo Rifkind which makes a trio of youthful (I don't have a problem with that in itself; we've all been there) commentators who apparently are being paid to demonstrate that with age may, with any luck, come a certain level of maturity, but evidently not yet
I could name several real reporters who got out of the profession when it became clear that this breed of self-opinionated adolescent was likely to be the future of journalism. As one of them said to me (and she was only in her thirties), "Everybody has an opinion but nobody should be paid to express it in a mass-circulation newspaper till they have passed their 40th birthday and learnt a bit about life, love, and above all humility."
Good advice.
It's all right for us; we're not being paid but they are and their readership assumes they know what they are talking about. Big mistake!