Wednesday
Oct022013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Working Group II leaked
Oct 2, 2013 Climate: IPCC Climate: WG2 An anonymous correspondent has sent me the IPPC WGII Second Order Draft and the reviewer comments, together with a few other related documents.
I've uploaded them here.
Reader Comments (17)
Please be gentle on Chapter 10. We did our best.
I do hope the last part of the file naming scheme is no reflection of the value of the documents!
Chapter 0 best comments so far
"This report is 2700 pages. It should be deleted by about 1900 pages." (ZHAO, ZONG-CI, National Climate Center)
Many interesting comments in the first file, here is a taster.
"Surprisingly there is very little coverage of the temperature threshold agreed by the policy makers at 1.5 - 2.0 C. There is a box on implication of 4.0 C but little on 1.5 - 2.0 C. Policy makers are most interested in that. Suggest adding a box on the implications of 1.5 - 2.0 C." (INDIA
Oct 2, 2013 at 9:45 AM |
Originaly posted in wrong category.. oops.
Section 1.3.4 Working Group III Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report
From line 44:
Well either we are all doomed to fry or the models are wrong.
My bet is on the latter.
More importantly – what does this mean for the assertions in WGI that the models match observations?
It seems that the lower range models are already rejected in this passage.
At first glance that seems like an embarrassing mismatch.
I like the file names -- SODall.
Fitting with AR5... ARS...
Are they saying something?
Here is a short extract from WGII that I saved on my working mans' web page.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Aust_flood_fire.JPG
There are at least 2 arguable statements in this
1. The floods in Queensland, notably those around Brisbane, happened in a tiny area that is far too small to be modelled by current GCMs. In short, if the rainfall centre was moved 20 km to the west, the floods would have not hurt Brisbane. Yet, these IPCC authors argue that the floods were caused by Man affecting the climate.
2. The Victorian fires are also said to have been caused by Man affecting the climate. At least one major fire that took lives was caused by sparks from electrical power lines; and others might have been lit by arsonists. What has this to do with Man affecting climate?
We are told that climate change is producing more extreme events, including hot days.
Here is a graph I made last night, showing a count of the number of really hot days since 1861, for my home town of Melbourne. http://www.geoffstuff.com/Melbourne%2086017%20very%20hot%20days%20each%20year.jpg
The graph could lead one to believe that really hot days were more common around the 1890s. By this analysis, one can infer that in the last 20 years the frequency of really hot days in a given year has declined from the long term average. This assumes that the baseline is due to natural variation,
Just a comment on the wildfires in Oz. A good friend there has told me that the main issue is that "green" regulations have stopped residents and farmers from clearing undergrowth around their properties and from building proper firebreaks. Result: fires are more dangerous and damaging (I think they have had similar experience in the US?).
Apparently one guy decided to ignore the BS regulations and cleared a good space around his home. When a fire came through, his was the only place not destroyed. But the authorities still took him to court and he was fined heavily!
Now the IPCC have my full permission to 'sex up' this particular document.
Then again I'm not sure what one could do working from such gems as ..
Fischer, A., Glenk, K. (2011): One model fits all? – On the moderating role of emotional engagement
and confusion in the elicitation of preferences for climate change adaptation policies.
Ecological Economics 70: 1178–1188
I'm off to see my Dentist now - see if she can help.
Any chance of the WGI SOD comments being leaked? Have they already?
@Geoff, mikey: the Victorian fires were so destructive because of Loony Left carbon policy.
See this piece by Jo Nova: "Wholesale theft in the name of carbon". Some quotes:
Peter Spencer bought a farm south of Canberra in the early 1980s. In the mid 1990s new laws rolled into action that prevented land clearing. That meant, even though the land belonged to him, Peter could no longer clear the regrowth. Eighty percent of what he paid for was effectively confiscated.
(...)
After the land-clearing laws came into effect, Peter paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up ponds for trout fishing. But new water laws ended that too (and also without compensation). Tenaciously Peter then set up a fine-wool breeding program, but the bushfires of 2003 (that destroyed 500 homes in Canberra, and native forest near Peter) meant that hundreds of wild dogs were forced out of burnt areas. They over-ran his property, killing hundreds of sheep.
(...)
Spencer points out that the land-grab by the Australian Government meant the nation met its Kyoto commitments, a target that would otherwise have been blown away. The carbon stored in confiscated land amounts to about $10.7 billion in carbon credits. Probably the total value lost (with interest) from the productive use of that land would be many times higher.
(...)
[Comment by Tel]
Except that really that regrowth gets hit by a bushfire before long and the carbon comes right out again. A regular grown then burn cycle for Eucalypt trees has the same long-term carbon footprint as regular cycle of planted crop then harvest.
[Comment by Rod]
Wasn’t the inability to clear regrowth one of the reasons for the shocking fatalities, due to the speed of the Victoria fires?
When I was studying political science I used to burst out laughing at the stupidity of the excesses of the Stalin and Mao regimes. I went on to work for the government for a few years. I watched a generational change take place. The older blokes who had lived through the war were mostly pragmatic and had empathy for the voters. They moved on, and a new lot of zealots gained far too much power – they cared for vague and general “causes” far more than for people and their rights. Just like Stalin and Mao. I don’t laugh at such idiocy any more. The consequences are far too close to home.
The blokes listed on the memorials just up the road from Peter at Canberra would be outraged.
Note the relative sizes of the review comments files - my chapter (4 - Terrestrial and Inland Water Systems) is the largest at 1.3Mb, because we had the most review comments (1775). This helps explain why I have had less time for blogging lately!
@astateofdenmark - all review comments and author responses will be released by the IPCC once the final reports have been published. This hasn't happened for WG1 yet - although the final draft chapters have been released online, there is still tidying-up to do on copy-editting etc. This will be completed in January.
There's a doc with Review Statistics. Only 32 governments bothered to submit comments, out of 180 or so IPCC member states.
Ben Pil: I like the file names -- SODall.
Fitting with AR5... ARS...
thank you!
I was beginning to think I was the only one was seeing AR5ES everywhere.
Richard Betts all review comments and author responses will be released by the IPCC once the final reports have been published.
are you 95% confident in that?
A slightly amusing comment from Germany on the SPM:
"Replace in the whole chapter "race" by "skin color". Reason: it is scientifically proved that whole humankind belongs to the same race. (GERMANY)"
Richard Betts
When the AR5 fuss dies down, I would still like to know what the Metoffice best estimate is for the most likely time of onset of the descent into the next full-on N Hemispere glaciation. As commented previously, as a geologist, I find it utterly incredible, given the vast funding thrown at climate research, that this inevitable and clearly deleterious climatic destiny seems to be completely ignored and of no interest.
Since in geological terms it has to be considered the next predictable massive natural climate changing event, wholly dwarfing any trivial AGW influence, and carrying such obvious and overarching impact on humankind, one would expect it to hold the primary inquisitive priority of climate scientists.
But it seems, not so. One is exceedingly hardpressed to elevate climate research to more than political grandstanding unless and until priorities mature.