Bishop Hill "No sexing up here" says IPCC
Apr 7, 2014 Climate: WG2 The IPCC has issued a statement disputing some of the claims about the sexing up of the Summary for Policymakers made in the Mail on Sunday yesterday. This is the guts of it:
The Mail on Sunday also quotes some passages from the Working Group II Summary for Policymakers on migration and refugees, wars and conflicts, famine, and extreme weather, which it claims are “sexed up” from statements in the underlying report. In doing so it misleads the reader by distorting the carefully balanced language of the document.
For instance, the Mail on Sunday quotes the Summary as saying climate change will ‘increase risks of violent conflicts’. In fact the Summary says that climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying factors such as poverty and economic shocks. The Mail on Sunday says the Summary warns of negative impacts on crop yields, with warming responsible for lower yields of wheat, maize, soya and rice. In fact the Summary says that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts, with wheat and maize yields negatively affected in many regions and effects on rice and soybean yields smaller in major production regions.
The references to the underlying report cited by the Mail on Sunday in contrast to the Summary for Policymakers also give a completely misleading and distorted impression of the report through selective quotation. For instance the reference to “environmental migrants” is a sentence describing just one paper assessed in a chapter that cites over 500 papers – one of five chapters on which the statement in the Summary for Policymakers is based. A quoted sentence on the lack of a strong connection between warming and armed conflict is again taken from the description of just one paper in a chapter that assesses over 600 papers. A simple keyword search shows many references to publications and statements in the report showing the opposite conclusion, and supporting the statement in the Summary that “Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and inter-group violence…”.
The points in the second paragraph seem to me to fall into the category of "distinctions without a difference". As for the third, I'm not sure why the number of papers cited in the chapter is of any relevance at all - the question is how many papers support the conclusion in the Summary for Policymakers and how many contradict it. Perhaps readers with the time to do so can investigate.
More pertinently, one has to wonder about the wisdom of the IPCC in incorporating woo like this in the report in the first place.
Bishop Hill
Ben Pile has now responded. Having a bit more space to set out his case, I think he makes a very strong case that the Summary for Policymakers is sexed up and I think I see problems here for the reputation of the IPCC's press office:
The [IPCC's] implication here seems to be that there are lots of other papers, cited throughout the chapters, which support the SPM’s claims. If it’s true, it is the IPCC’s problem. I checked the SPM’s claims against the chapter references cited in the SPM. Moreover, if the evidence considered by the WGII is contradictory, the contradictory nature of the evidence should be reflected in the SPM. It wasn’t. We don’t need to think very deeply about why such an evaluation of the evidence was omitted.
Reader Comments (41)
The fact that the IPCC feels the need to respond to a single journalist in a single country shows that they are running scared.
Did the IPCC have anything to say about newspapers and TV who exaggerated the SPM's claims?
Who in the IPCC is responsible for quick-reaction statements? Everything else takes months or years. Did this come from an individual?
Rhoda,
Quite. The IPCC statement is the opinion of whom?
(Did I use "whom" correctly there?)
OK it's spot the difference time:
"For instance, the Mail on Sunday quotes the Summary as saying climate change will ‘increase risks of violent conflicts’.
In fact the Summary says that climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying factors such as poverty and economic shocks."
"The Mail on Sunday says the Summary warns of negative impacts on crop yields, with warming responsible for lower yields of wheat, maize, soya and rice.
In fact the Summary says that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts, with wheat and maize yields negatively affected in many regions and effects on rice and soybean yields smaller in major production regions."
I don't know about anyone else, but I can't see where the Mail got it wrong. They did say that climate change will cause more armed conflict and that crop yields would be down because of it. What's more they're saying they said it and saying David Rose is misrepresenting them by saying they said it. That about sums it up.
Rhoda -
Indeed. And I wonder if said individual will be issuing an immediate response to Charles Moore's latest in the Telegraph:
The game is up for climate change believers
That they need to respond at all, shows how times have changed, In the past no matter how stupid their statements, their approaches was to deny the issues , lie about the issues and then claim it did not matter as it was minor. Here we see that a tiny pinprick has caused them to rush out to rebut.
Although to be fair in true IPCC style they done a ‘nonsense’ job of it , they have become to use to a compliant press with the usual suspects willing to repeat without question the IPCC views. Which has made them lazy, ironically in the long term this is a good thing as it make sceptics' job easier.
geronimo
You said exactly what I was trying to formulate about this IPCC nonsensical defence. I'll give up trying now!
lapogus
Instant response to Moore in the Telegraph from Tom Chivers.
He hasn't read Darwall's book but feels qualified to berate a fellow commentator for the suggestion that climate science is an attempt to forecast the weather 100 years ahead.
No idea what his qualifications are but I doubt that a PhD in Climatology is one of them which makes his view about as valuable as Moore's ... or mine ... or yours ...
The fog of war. The IPCC, despite the fact that the message was a little more realistic and tempered this time cannot cope with the fact that they have lost the public. Nobody believes what they say anymore since they have over egged the pudding. To accuse a journalist of using their report to his advantage is naive in the extreme.
If the SPM was really meant to be an honest, scientific summary they wouldn't let politicians within a mile of it.
Even then, the science would still by biased because of the control of scientific funding by the same politicians.
So when the BBC published a story whose graphics say temperature will rise 3C by 2050 that's in 36 years time, how quickly did the IPCC jump in to say 'that is not what our evidence says' ?
..we are still waiting
- So Which side in the climate debate has the integrity ?
IPCC, BBC eco-warriors damn you ! You've let the public down.
It sounds like Barack Obama wrote it (N.B.!)
Could the author be Bob Ward?
Rhoda:
stewgreen:
The article where John Kerry says Denial of the science is malpractice. The kind of black propaganda IPCC spokesmen evidently prefer. David Rose and Ben Pile, carefully trying to show where the WG2 SPM has exaggerated the findings of the main report, are denying, after all, the validity of the 'iron triangle' of scientist/alarmist commentator/policymaker that Richard Lindzen taught us about long ago.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
The Bishop: "More pertinently, one has to wonder about the wisdom of the IPCC in incorporating woo like this in the report in the first place."
Maybe for the time being only it is their job and they know it. Although warmist ideology seems to be on the wane in the corridors of power the juggernauts that are governments are still careering down the green CAGW highway. So they haven't told the peripheral agencies they made responsible for climate policy and monitoring the IPCC to tip them off to moderate their prophecies of woe. So, not having been told to change, the IPCC continues its charge down the same highway and we have what we have.
Bureaucratically enforced policy, albeit out of date, rules and there is no room for wisdom.
Quotable quote. The 'out of date' has to be right. There are also of course attempts to rewrite history:
Lord Deben on Twitter yesterday, telling a story some here have been happy to endorse. But 'climate change deniers' have never existed, in any possible sense of that deadly phrase. In the last few of the 26 years since 1988, certainly, skydragons have arisen, made a lot of noise and been roundly rejected. But sceptics have always been adapters. We also understand that saying "You were right all along" is hard, especially when the persons concerned have profited unjustly from being wrong for so long.
Hmm, dunno how you can "sex up" IPCC climate porn'?
Immediately it was apparent, when I commenced reading the latest Summary for Policymakers, in that, you could tell by its miserable phrasing and recurrent tenor - it was going to be arrant nonsense and it was duly served up. Risible stuff, and likely drafted by a huddle of Greenpeace reactionaries and political shills from the DECC - Greenpeace/DECC..... which amounts to the same thing.
Stifling a guffaw, I am agog at the chutzpah of these absurd green creeps, who set to making some sort of slap stick defence of said exaggerated guff [Summary for Policymakers] - they do put on a show - dramagreens doing tragi-farce.
It's time to put out the light at the IPCC and forthwith to switch off the funding of these lunatic climate porn' pedlars.
If you take another look at paragraph three (if I read it right) this is where the IPCC shoots itself in the foot.
In which case, why was that the one paper that appears to have been the basis for that part of the SPM?The word coming out of the SPM meeting is that the UK/USA applied the "branch meeting gambit". Out-sit all the others who are fed to the back teeth with all the pointless bickering and point-scoring and have either gone to bed or down the pub because they do have a life. At which point the fanatics ram through their chosen minority view.
And will someone in the IPCC (or anywhere) explain by what right the DECC officials (not part of the IPCC; not climate scientists as far as we know) decide that the wording of the SPM wasn't scary enough for them and insist on their version.
" In fact the Summary says that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts, with wheat and maize yields negatively affected in many regions and effects on rice and soybean yields smaller in major production regions."
And yet worldwide crop yields continue to rise relentlessly. Is it possible that they actually believe that maize and soybeans prefer cooler weather and less co2?
Mike Jackson,
Indeed.
But then, the IPCC and all of the conferencing palaver, €£$millions wasted - all of it politicking, therefore it follows, this bunch of shamateurs the UNIPCC - was never anything to do with science - was it?
Agenda 21, the neo-Marxist cultural revolution and back to agrarian UTOPIA!
Mike Jackson @ 1.31pm " what right have the DECC.......to decide the wording of the SPM..."
Read Donna on IPCC process. The member nations appointees (in our case DECC) as of right, edit the final SPM (line by line) to an "acceptable" concensus. The published version goes back to the Chapter Lead Authors to "adjust" their findings to conform to the authorised version.
"as it was the beginning, is now and ever shall be. Amen. (Nunc Domittis)
Nunc Dimittis.
Tsk. :)
Re: crop yields you see no distinction between a blanket statement that the impact of warming is negative and that climate change has different effects in different circumstances, sometimes positive and sometimes negative?
That seems like a pretty important distinction to me.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
...
"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do, " Alice hastily replied; "at least I mean what I say, that's the same thing, you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see!"
...
What I tell you three times is true.
...
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
The muddled IPCC response means the truth is hurting. And the more one digs, the worse the disconnects get between the SPM and the actual underlying chapters. There is much gold to be mined. Contrast, for example, the extinction risk details in 4.3.2.5 to the technical summary and the emergent risk summary of 19.5.1, and then SPM B-2. It all depends and we are not sure became LARGE, especially when combined with known non- climate problems. Thatnismeither wrong, or vacuous. The SPM even did away with the AR4 falsifiable 20-30% of all species by 2100, just like WG1 did away with a central estimate of ECS.
Expect more muddled waffles as the differences continuemtombe dissected. It's worse than you think if Tol felt compelled to recuse himself from the result.
I have replied to the IPCC's rebuttal at http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/04/ipcc-a-damp-squib.html
Strange that they respond to a critical report that pulls out the more extreme possibilities in their report, but they never seem to slap down the various warmist organisations that use those extreme possibilities to promote AGW/CC alarmism.
There's a good deal of quiet from certain quarters.
The section on conflict seems to have been written by member of the Drones Club
Bumpus, Liverman, Adger, Barnett, Webersik, Fairhead, Steinbruner et al were all involved with papers on conflict. I wonder if the dealt with bun fights and knocking policemen's helmets off?
rhoda: Richard seemed remarkably upbeat about the SPM this morning, regarding the tiff between Richard Tol and Chris Field as "trivial" and implying all views had been taken into consideration in the SPM. (I expect optimistic views were considered and ditched from what I've read of it). To be fair he's probably recovering from the trip to Yokohama. Richard has assured us in the past that the Met Office personelle don't fly business class. The DECC people were there too, I'll bet they didn't fly steerage.
"Richard has assured us in the past that the Met Office personelle don't fly business class."
So do they fly 1st class, or cattle class?
So skeptics are proven right, again. This summary for policy makers was designed to scare policy makers and the public, not to summarize the current understanding of climate science.
The explanation as to how it is not hyped up is in direct contradiction with the evidence showing it is in fact hyped up.
If their summary is to have any credibility at all, it should be rewritten.
Otherwise, it should be somply withdrawn.
"I think I see problems here for the reputation of the IPCC's press office..."
Which reputation would that be? I've got it catalogued with fairies, unicorns, and Al Gore's intellect.
Re JK at 2:17 p.m.
For sure I see a distinction between your text:
"climate change has different effects in different circumstances, sometimes positive and sometimes negative"
and the IPCC press release text:
"negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts"
and, yes, to answer your question, I do see a distinction between the text in the body of the WGII report and the SPM claimed to be reflecting that underlying text.
The bottom line remains the same , no scary AGW no IPCC , now what do you expect them to say ?
As I have just posted at Ben's place ...
Oh, Ben! How could you?! The anonymous author(s) of this "Statement" claimed that the language [of whichever of the two documents they thought they were referring to*] was carefully balanced, not 'delicately'. Besides, I've never known the IPCC to do "delicate", have you?!
* As I had noted at BH yesterday, during the March 31 Press Conference, both Pachauri and Field used SPM and "the report" almost interchangeably. Clarity is clearly not their forté.
I mean what could possibly be "delicate" (or "careful", for that matter) - let alone "balanced" - about Pachauri's "hope" that WGII's report would "push government leaders to deal with climate change before it is too late [... and] jolt people into action"?
Or so the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg reported.
Although considering that the author(s) of this "Statement" succeeded in achieving a Fog Index of 18.81, one might certainly wonder about the anticipated and/or intended audience of this masterpiece of conflation, hand-waving and obfuscation.
Then again, it was a rather "rapid" and dishonestly articulated "Statement" - beginning with their claim that:
When, in fact, The Mail on Sunday had merely reported that Bob Ward had made a number of unsubstantiated allegations which for some reason - perhaps best known only to themselves - the author(s) of this "Statement" chose to repeat. Are the authors' reading comprehension and "assessment" skills so utterly deficient that they cannot tell the difference?! Or is it simply the case that context is not included in the curriculum of word-saladry 101?
It would certainly be interesting to know who might have drafted this foggy pastiche. Some might conclude that it was "teamwork" on the part of Bob Ward, Richard Betts, and Stephan Lewandowsky who just happened to meet somewhere or other, decided to have a coffee together, and hammer out 854 words between them. But I couldn't possibly comment ;-)
Could the author be Bob Ward?
Apr 7, 2014 at 12:37 PM | Leon0112
This was my own first reaction.......
Hilary
I imagine that the statement was written by Jonathan Lynn, IPCC press officer, probably in consultation with the WG2 TSU and possibly members of the IPCC Bureau.
I'm not part of the IPCC organisation itself (few Assessment Report authors are) and had no input to the statement. As far as I'm aware, Bob Ward and Stephan Lewandowsky have no connection with IPCC at all, beyond Bob being a reviewer.
splitpin
We always travel economy / standard class on flights and on trains, unless there's some exceptional circumstances such as health considerations.
I've made further comments on the Richard Tol thread.
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