Wednesday
Aug012012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Pielke Jr says Field has misled Congress
Aug 1, 2012 Climate: IPCC Climate: WG2 Roger Pielke Jr's latest post is very important. It concerns IPCC lead author Chris Field, who is a professor at Stanford and head of Working Group II. RP Jr accuses him of misleading the US Congress over the IPCC report:
What Field says the IPCC says is blantantly wrong, often 180 degrees wrong. It is one thing to disagree about scientific questions, but it is altogether different to fundamentally misrepresent an IPCC report to the US Congress. Below are five instances in which Field's testimony today completely and unambiguously misrepresented IPCC findings to the Senate. Field's testimony is here in PDF.
[Corrected misdirection of Pielke's comments]
Reader Comments (20)
Bish, the chap giving the testimony was Field, not Parry.
Who then is Field?
Cumbrian
Thanks. Fixed.
Headline still wrong
Will they notice, probably not.
Of course they won't notice simply because the objectives of these hearings is not to get the truth.
Mailman
Pielke Jr is assuming that Field was telling Congress about the conclusions of AR4, in which case his criticism appears to be valid. However since Field is a lead author of AR5...........
the recent IPCC SREX report.. forgotten that? no attributable agw signal for extremes for decades
Arthur Dent you mean AR5 conclusions which as yet does exist , so how could he review its conclusions is it part of the super powers warmest's have to see into the future , ?
Maybe he was just telling them what he was going to write.
"I am delighted to appear before you today to discuss one of the most important issues facing the nation – the serious challenge of a changing climate and especially the links between climate change and extreme events. As the US copes with the aftermath of last year’s record-breaking series of 14 billion-dollar climate-related disasters and this year’s massive wildfires and storms, it is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disasters is clear. Overwhelming evidence supports the conclusion in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that “A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.” (IPCC 2012)."
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=fe138741-9ce8-4444-9912-c2004ae9e955
Propaganda, pure and simple, the IPCC raison d'etre, he's simply playing to the press, after all isn't that what Pachauri has been encouraging. They've dropped their thin veneer of 'science'.
jferguson
May I respectfully suggest "what has already been written"?
All a bit confusing Bish.
Your link looks to be to be related to Realclimate!
Try AW or better still RP.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/ipcc-lead-author-misleads-us-congress.html
Re: KnR
>Arthur Dent you mean AR5 which as yet does exist , so how could he review its conclusions
He has modelled AR5 and since the model comes to right conclusions those are the ones that will be used. Should AR5 disagree with the model then it will be rejected in favour of the model's output.
Is misleading the congress a crime ?
This is a sad day for our friends who are also working on AR5. The Head of WG-II (a group whose AR4 results have already been poo-pooed by RealClimate as soon as the various -gates surfaced) deserves demonstrably to be called a cretin, if only because nobody can dare suggest malice on his part. Therefore pretty much all IPCC work for AR5 has suddenly become of scarce repute, because there are only so many Heads of Working Groups around.
In the meanwhile on Twitter, Kloor has joined the chorus of those requesting false balance, namely a Roger Pielke Jr post berating Christy's mistakes. Apparently there are some people who don't even understand how damaging for the IPCC is for the Head of a WG to be considered equal in importance to one scientist.
Word has it he was hit on his head by a giant piece of falling sky as he left the Hearings.
Wolf!
Wolf!
Wolf!
There seems to be some confusion about what is being criticized in Field's statements and what those criticisms are. To get clear on these matters visit Pielke Jr's website. His focused and detailed responses to comments clarify everything. Pielke's claim that there are lies or misrepresentations becomes very clear.
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 3:12 AM | Theo Goodwin
Theo,
I don't believe we need to limit ourselves purely to RP's very valid criticisms.
Indeed the IPCC scientists have already confirmed that -
"In my (perhaps too harsh) view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC" Tom Wigley
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=6356
and
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
Kevin Trenberth
and wasn't it Trenberth who was the cause of Chris Landsea's resignation from the IPCC process because of the former's gross exaggerations and misrepresentations at a press conference.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/07/07/chris-landsea-and-the-moral-midgets/
RP highlights further confirmation but of more interest is that they dare do this before Congress.
It will be interesting to see how Congress responds. Though I believe this particular committee was chaired by Barbara Boxer...
“The message I have for climate deniers is this: you are endangering humankind,” Boxer said during a press conference in the Capitol. “It is time for climate deniers to face reality, because the body of evidence is overwhelming and the world’s leading scientists agree.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/197815-boxer-to-climate-deniers-you-are-endangering-human-kind
Oh and just to clarify I'm not criticising the IPCC SREX report - this was obviously one that was put together by real scientists.
What the lead authors of IPCC are prone to do is then go on to exaggerate and misrepresent the actual science in their press reports, summaries and congressional testimonies. But with no comeback from the leadership of the IPCC who indeed support them!