Climategate: The Wheels Come Off for the IPCC
Back in December 2009, Madhav Khandekar, in a guest posting on the blog of Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., questioned the IPCC AR4 report’s conclusion that glaciers in the Himalayas — vital to the water supply of the whole Ganges Valley — would disappear by 2035. (This was first reported by PJM on December 1.) The problem was that this really couldn’t be verified in the “peer-reviewed” literature. In fact, as it was investigated, it looked more and more suspicious.
Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute followed the footnotes and tracked the suspicious 2035 number down to a World Wildlife Fund report, which mentioned (without citing a source) the 2035 number. The earliest source anyone could find for that number was an article in the New Scientist that quoted “Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, the chief author of the ICSI report.”
The result was that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — after Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, called the 2035 story “voodoo science” — eventually had to withdraw that section of the report. (The full statement is here.)
Bad enough.What had been revealed was that the IPCC had put this inflammatory (and physically impossible) date into the IPCC report, even though it hadn’t been peer-reviewed and couldn’t actually be sourced to anything more than an offhand remark in a casual phone interview.
Naturally, everyone involved was shocked, utterly shocked, that such a thing could happen. There were calls for Pachauri to resign, but Pachauri refused on Jan 23.
The more I read about Rajendra Pachauri, the more inclined I am to think of him as another one of those worthless UN bureaucrats.
Last I was able to bear reading about the continued meltdown (haha, pun intended), Pachauri was affixing blame for the glacier-gate errors in the 2007 IPCC report on the scientists working under him. There were also some money allusions attaching to Pachauri, relating to raising cash for some Delhi institute through the, uh, scam. (shades of Al Gore)
Speaking of the UN, it’s current chief head honcho, Ban Ki Moon, taking the Warmist Bible (aka IPCC 2007 reports) to heart, cautioned before Copenhagen that we had something like 4 years (maybe it was 4 months, or 4 hours, or 4 days or 4 minutes) to “save the planet”.
Human produced CO2 may be a contributing factor to warming temperatures, but all this stuff (including East Anglia revelations) is making this thesis look ridiculous and these people look crooked.
The Barbarians at the Gate seem to have had a very good week overall….
As soon as they say “the debate is over,” it is no longer science: it’s politics. The more we learn about their shenanigans, the more that’s proven accurate.
Pachauri’s credibility has been exhausted. He defended the 2035 date. Only a pre-schooler would believe it. The claim is comparable to a claim such as “The seas will begin rising three feet annually from this moment forward.”
“Hurricanegate” is hardly new, just the puyblic focus on it. In 2005 Dr Chris Landseasea of NOAA and the Antional Hurricane Center resigned from the IPCC over the AR3′s distortion and misuse of his own research, claiming a warming – hurricane link (Landsea’s work in fact indicated the opposite). The guilty Lead Author? Kevin Trenberth, of Climategate fame.
BC: Looks like you lot are about to get your nice white togas mussed…..
Interesting that this was published in the Times of London. They have been huge proponents of AGW.
Why did the climate scientists not object when these reports included science that was unsubstantiated? To me, their silence is a scandal. These bozos are supposedly the experts.
Blind-Faither dwight to the Resucue! in three…. two……………. one and thre-quarters…………………………………………………………………………….
BC, don’t let these facts sway you from posting more WWF, IPCC, NOAA, LLNL et al., ‘fact-filled’ information..! (-:
More importantly, why has there not been great outage and publication of objections from the vast body of true scientists in fields unrelated to climate studies at this blatant violation of the core principles of science research – raw manipulation of data and attempts to disparage all criticism and prevent peer review?
Has doctrinaire socialism so infiltrated academia that scientific minds are willing to maintain silence against today’s Lysenkos?
“Why did the climate scientists not object when these reports included science that was unsubstantiated?”
Greed and status are the probably the two major reasons for their disgraceful behavior. Many of these scientists have fatten their bank accounts considerably since jumping aboard the global warming gravy train. An individual who got involved in this nonsense in the late 1980s—is now a likely millionaire. Some have even been treated like celebrities. The dissenters usually were lucky to get a few dollars here and there.
The climate change movement is in deep trouble. It is rapidly being abandoned by every politician except for the very blue. Obama is too politically weak to to really help anybody deemed controversial.
@2. BC: – The Barbarians at the Gate seem to have had a very good week overall….
Bitter (and irredeemably wrong) much?
Heh.
David Thomson, you’re absolutely right.
Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann was given +540k of ‘stimulus money’ from Joe Biden/ NSF recently. All the while Pennsylvania ‘boasts’ of nearly 9% unemployment..
Just following up on Bohemond @ #5 – Chris Landsea’s resignation letter may be found here: http://sppiblog.org/news/dr-chris-landsea-leaves-the-ipcc#more-743
IMHO This whole thing calls for closing down the IPCC. All it has done was the scare people for a while. Now that many have caught on, its usefulness for the scaremongers is at an end. (And we have Al Gore to thank for the news getting out – don’t we?)
Is there really any difference between these IPCC bureaucrats and “scientists” and master swindler Bernie Madoff, and his completely fictitious stock trades and portfolio statements?
It was a “twofer” for these guys; from their actions completely unprincipled, Postmodern men of the Left, they pushed the currently fashionable Leftist environmental catastrophe meme, and the view of humankind as the worm in the apple of the World, destroying formerly pristine Gaia as their path to unbridled power, and stood—if successful—to gain enormous power over all the surfs beneath them, and a fortune in money besides; Drs. Michael Mann and Pachari have already raked in a fortune in grant money to study the effects of their fictitious “global warming.”
In the process of carrying out their gigantic, world-spanning scam, that was to effect the entire Earth and all its governments and peoples—not that they cared–they have rendered “science” a joke, a fart in elevator Earth, a stench covering the entire landscape; can anyone, ever again, take the claims and discoveries of supposedly “objective” “scientists” as fact, as true, and at face value?
Jack in Silver Spring writes:
“IMHO This whole thing calls for closing down the IPCC.”
Absolutely! Their products are harmful. They are not scientists but self-interested bureaucrats lining their own pockets with taxpayer dollars. Close them down.
thanks for staying on top of these criminals Charlie Martin.
…the only people I have heard getting forced out of the UN turned out to be innocent scape-goats.
My lords, ladies, and gentlemen,
Pray, be kind and compassionate to our poor brother/sister “BC.” He/she is facing the imminent demise of his/her secular savior Mr. Obama; and even more daunting, is finding that those who purported to tell him/her the truth have lied most despicably. One can understand his/her need to sink into denial and lash out at those who tried to share this information with him/her previously, but whom he/she ignored. In part, this lashing out is caused by embarrassment, in part by guilt, and in part by pure natural defensiveness about one’s views.
We, the newly vindicated, can be gentle with “BC” by not rubbing his/her nose in his/her many and serious errors; we all make mistakes from time to time. We need to encourage “BC” to express his/her regrets over his/her mistakes and accept them if and when those sentiments are expressed.
And if he/she refuses to apologize for his/her many goofs, then we go back to treating him/her/it like the malodorous troll with no redeeming qualities it will have proven itself to be.
I sure am glad I’m not one of those people that still believe in anthropogenic global warming. This will be crushing news to them if they ever find out about it.
In fact, the MSM is just being kind by not reporting stories like this. Good people often tell a little white lie to spare someone’s feelings, don’t they? The MSM is just 100% made up of really, really good people who care enough to keep silent when to tell the truth would cause someone else pain.
/sarc
*Cross posted from Wizbang.
“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.”
Activist scientists suck!
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html#ixzz0dZzpkGqw
I wonder how poor ole AL GORE is going to keep his mansion, jets, and travel around the world. Gosh he might have to get a real job. Maybe he would make a good GARBAGE COLLECTOR. He has experience spitting out GARBAGE. GOOD LUCK AL in your new job.
#10 Short answer: YES
paul_unalasaka
You mention: Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann. I prefer to think of him as Michael ‘Piltdown’ Mann.
Someone let the dogs out. Time for litigation to get our money back from the corrupt scientists who have ruined the concept of “science” for may years to come.
KEYBOARD555,
Nah! Al Gore SR. was a Senator from Tennessee too. He was a big wheel in the TVA project and stole millions back when a million was real money. The Gore’s were trying for a Southern version of the Kennedy family. It didn’t work.
Computer modeling. crap in = crap out. Charlie Martin is a computer expert,he knows all their tricks.
Thank you for an excellent article. Why yes, this certainly reminds me of Fox News’ story “30 years of Global Cooling Scientist says” (1/10/2009). Actually, the scientists with whom I’ve discussed carbon cycle, do not want to talk about it because it really is a very complex subject. Not-so-good non-scientists seem to talk much more (but somehow contributions of deforestation, soil carbon, non-co2 greenhouse gasses some of which are on decline, how huge is the range of predictions, are not making it into the discussions).
I thought about this when I was wading to work through chest high water…..
When, if ever, will this info get out to the sheeple ( those lovers of American Idle), and will they be smart enough, or care enough , to dope it out? Why isn’t FOX pushing it?
Why are we still talking about “peer review” as a solution, now that we know that the peers are actually co-conspiritors?
I don’t know about you all but I kind of like being refered to as A Barbarian at the Gates.
I’ll wear it next next to my “Cowboy” badge.
Where did I see a note that the original date projected for the loss of Himalayan glaciers – in entirely casual conversation, apparently, was 2350, NOT 2035? But then that didn’t look critical enough, so they changed it? I blame Kuhn and Popper for all this. They’re the ones who first came up with the bright idea that scientific truth is not absolute and changes whenever those in control think it should change.
The Church of AGW is falling apart because it was built on sand (fabricated data and manipulated computer modeling) to begin with. Newsflash – there is no good reason to screw up the lifestyles of millions in the USA and starve millions more in developing countries because Al Gore and Jim Hanson thought they saw an easy way to make a few billion.
The good news never seems to end for conservatives these days,40 years of libtardism is finally collapsing under the weight of its own BS.The zeitgeist in the US,is similar to that in the Warsaw Pact nations in 1989.
The IPCC also has a bogus definition of radiative forcing (the greenhouse effect) that results in exaggerated warming from CO2. They exclude any effect from the surface temperature warming up, which actually results in significant “radiative cooling”. See Leave CO2 Alone for details.
Yes, the barbarians are at the gate and they are tearing down the APG walls with facts!
It appears that Roger Pielke, Jr. has stumbled onto a rewriting of history. I seems that the Stern Review uses the Muir-Wood et al. (2006) as the sole basis for projecting future global losses from extreme events such as hurricanes, but it now appears that the Stern Review is being quietly changed.
“…to slant the evidence presented to the world toward the conclusion that AGW is a current crisis, a world cataclysm.”
Reportedly, you can add the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) into the mix. Limiting the selection of weather stations from which temperature data are gathered is as reprehensible as “hiding the decline”.
Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say
“NOAA . . . systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias towards removing higher latitude, high altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler,” the authors say. “The thermometers in a sense, marched towards the tropics, the sea, and to airport tarmacs.”
Remember ENRON ? They put those guys in jail, okay a country club jail, but… Which of this climate change group of swindlers is
going to jail ?
I wonder where my enlightened political activist friend, Steve P, is now. Maybe he is still out trying to prevent oil and gas exploration on BLM lands? We have a long way to go before we finally push the official State religion out of the halls of government and out of our classrooms.
Peer review only counts if you don’t get to pick which peers do the reviewing. Same thing applies to picking temperature data stations.
#29 Ui2: I think it’s because we don’t have anything better than peer review. If you have another suggestion, I’d be interested.
The debate is over – global, warming is real.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201001250018
Seems pretty clear to me that with all the revelations regarding the IPCC, the AGW theory is looking more like bunk every day. In spite of all that has come to pass, the warmest adherents are not deterred in the slightest. I used to follow Littlegreenfootballs and post occasionally until I got banned. The worst of it over there is the lack of debate. If you disagree with AGW there they ban you. Why are they so convinced that it is true vs. me who is totally convinced that it is bunk.
Both views can not be correct.
The debate is over – the earth is flat.
Charlie Colorado,
Green is the new Red!
Hmmm…maybe I should have used the term “Orcs” instead…..
43. skeeziks:
The debate is over….
……….like some one wants to debate it with you. lol
The glaciers and hurricanes issues are certainly not the only ones which call into question the effectiveness and validity of the IPCC’s much vaunted “rigorous procedures” and peer-review.
If you’re interested in seeing behind the curtain of this Pachauri polluted process, thanks to a document I found in the Climategate files, I have done a preliminary analysis of (lead author) Keith Briffa’s responses (on behalf of the “chapter team”) to the reviewer comments on the 2nd Order Draft of Chapter 6.
My post focuses on the paragraph [Page 29, Lines 40 to 51] that had elicited the highest number (37) of reviewer comments.
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/the-climate-change-game-monopoly-the-ipcc-version/
Skeeziks, you’ re not keeping up.
First, whether “global warming” is real isn’t the issue; it’s the degree, the amount of that that is anthropogenic, and of that anthropogenic fraction, what fraction of that is due to greenhouse gases versus, say, land use changes, and what the actual climate sensitivity to the GHG forcing might be is all quite open to debate.
Second, you shouldn’t use Media Matters, with its glaring agenda and long-documented problems with truthfulness, as much of a source of any sort, and particularly not a scientific source. In this case, what they’re proclaiming here is based on a misleading press release that cherry-picks a particular window of temperatures to say the average temps are still high. What they and Media Matters don’t mention is that the current temps have actually regressed to close to the mean; 2008 and 2009 were the coldest years since 1998</a<, and very close to the average for the last century.
And third, commas are used after an element in a list, to indicate a subordinate clause, or around a parenthetical phrase.
Glaciers and hurricanes are certainly not the only issues that call into serious question the effectiveness and validity of the IPCC’s much vaunted “rigorous procedures” and peer-review.
I did preliminary analysis on (lead author) Keith Briffa’s responses to the reviewer comments on the 2nd Order Draft of Chapter 6 (based on what I had found in AR4SOR_BatchAB_Ch06-KRB-1stAug.doc – in the Climategate files).
In my post, I trace Briffa’s responses “on behalf of the chapter team” on the paragraph [Page 29, Lines 40 to 51] that had elicited the highest number (37) of reviewer comments. For those who might be interested in a look behind the curtain of this Pachauri polluted process in action, pls. see: “The climate change game … Monopoly: the IPCC version”
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/the-climate-change-game-monopoly-the-ipcc-version/
To the moderator: sorry about the duplication in 48 & 49. My MSIE crashed while submitting 48, and wasn’t visible to me when I restarted browser. Pls. delete 48 and this one!
Thanks.
Charles – While we occassionally disagree, I enjoy your columns immensely and think (hope?) that what you are saying is slowly seeping through to others who are not as informed.
skeeziks @ #43: It is unsurprising that 2000-2009 maybe the warmest decade on record (being for the last 150 or so years and not for the last 4 billion). Yet temperatures can still have decline. Remember, the decade 2000-2009 stands at the end of a long warming period that began about 350 years ago (Michael Mann notwithstanding). So it stand to reason that decade is going to be warmer than any previous decade. Nonetheless, that does not preclude the temperture from having declined within the decade. To put it somewhat differently, it’s the difference between where you are and where you are going. You may have been at the summit of a mountain, but you could have started downhill from the summit. Your still up high, but you’re going down.
Fortunate Son @ #44. I had a somewhat comparable experience (although I was never booted off, I just stopped going there). What happened was that I had argued that the neo-Darwinian hypothesis is untestable and untenable and hence, not science. Well, the response was just vile. It was almost as if those defending the hypothesis had accepted the hyothesis as a religion.
Speaking as someone who called shenanigans on AGW back in the early 1990s, this news is very good indeed.
Bear in mind though: these IPCC clowns have provided governments the world over with an excuse for literally taxing everything that moves. Having come this far, they’re not going to give up just because the so-called scientific basis for their scheme has evaporated.
We have a long way to go and we must keep the heat on (pun intended).
Jack, don’t worry about disagreeing with me; I disagree with everyone eventually. But then, I’d never learn anything new if I didn’t. Thanks for the kind words.
The debate is indeed over: it is now undeniable that there has been either incompetence or dishonesty among the AGW proponents.
A post at small dead animals http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/013197.html has some more AR4 information. The post reads:
“Donna Laframboise http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-dodgy-citations-in-nobel-winning.html has been playing with the AR4 search function;
When one types “WWF” into an AR4 search box dozens of references are returned.
For example, a WWF report is cited twice on this page as the only supporting proof of IPCC statements about coastal developments in Latin America. A WWF report is referenced twice by the IPCC’s Working Group II in it concluding statements. There, the IPCC depends on the WWF to define what the global average per capita “ecological footprint” is compared to the ecological footprint of central and Eastern Europe.
Elsewhere, when discussing “mudflows and avalanches” linked to melting glaciers, the oh-so-scientifically-circumspect IPCC relies on two sources to make its point – an apparently still unpublished paper delivered to a conference five years earlier (Bhadra, 2002) and a WWF document.
Similarly, the only reason the IPCC can declare that “Changes in climate are affecting many mountain glaciers, with rapid glacier retreat documented in the Himalayas, Greenland, the European Alps, the Andes Cordillera and East Africa” is because a WWF reportmakes this claim.
In a section on coral reefs and mangroves, a WWF report is the IPCC’s sole reason for believing that, in “the Mesoamerican reef there are up to 25 times more fish of some species on reefs close to mangrove areas than in areas where mangroves have been destroyed.”
When the IPCC advises world leaders that “climate change is very likely to produce significant impacts on selected marine fish and shellfish (Baker, 2005)” it doesn’t call attention to the fact that the sole authority on which this statement rests is a WWF workshop project report….”
If you haven’t already done so I recommend a visit to Kate MacMillan at SDA; voted the best conservative blog of 2008.
[...] Two major errors based on poor science. Not a good week for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [...]
“Poor science”? – how ’bout “Mike’s Nature trick”?
“Poor science”? – I find that those, and many other “poor science” mistakes in the warmists’ activity look more like WILLED attempts at forcing a scientific theory follow a desired direction, than some accidental goofs -
50. Charlie Martin:
And third, commas are used after an element in a list, to indicate a subordinate clause, or around a parenthetical phrase.
Chuck Marty, let’s talk grammar. From your, oh what do you call it, um, er, uh, well, oh yeah, blog:
“Now, that attracted a number of, um, interesting commenters, including one guy from My Old Home Town (extra credit to anyone who catches that literary reference) who I’ve run into off and on for years. He’s a commenter who lurks on the edge of trollery most of the time, but manages to be somewhat interesting.
No comma needed after an introductory prepositional phrase of a single word.
The addition of devices like “um” serve to highlight the writer’s inability to create a sense of contrast or irony through effective word choice or efficient construction.
There is a difference between objective and subjective; you should discern that difference before deciding “To M or not to M.”
Choosing to nudge the word “interesting” into a role as substitute for what you really mean is nothing more than cowardice.
Commas require a conjunction when joining two independent clauses. When the second clause is dependent, no comma or conjunction is needed.
I suggest you strunk your white a few more times before trying that lame crap again.
Anyone out there interested in an example of good grammar gone bad should check out Chuck Marty’s, er, blog.
Thus endeth the lesson
My 4 year old grand daughter has figured out the tooth fairy. She isn’t all that sure about the Easter Bunny and knows for a fact that Santa is real and exploits elves as slaves. She will grow up. AGW nutters won’t, regardless of where you put your comma.
Strunk and White are proper names.
“The addition of devices like “um” serve to highlight the writer’s inability to create a sense of contrast or irony through effective word choice or efficient construction.” This was an incomplete sentence and it wasn’t your only one. See if you can find others.
What is endeth? Maybe you should consult your dictionary before you make up your words, smart guy.
#59 Skeezix: That’s style, son. I presume that this means you agree that my other points — that the “warmest year” thing was a misstatement of the issue in context, and that media Matters is a poor source — were correct.
I’d like to sign a petition calling for a re-evaluation of the scientific data prior to any policy change. We want a second opinion!
“Endeth” is simply a deliberate archaism, intended to evoke or imply long-ago times. You’ll probably find it in some old stories; however, it doesn’t seem to appear in Shakespeare. You’ll find the “-eth” ending, though, in places like the poetry of Coleridge: “It is an ancient mariner, and he stoppeth one of three.” (By the way, I’ve heard those last five words quoted to describe a shortstop who, let us say, fell short of perfection in his fielding abilities).
And I have often heard “endeth” in church as in “thus endeth the reading of the scripture.” The “eth” ending is common in the King James Bible. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound there of…” No man knoweth the time or the hour…” etc.
Jim Baker, ain’t you ever read the good book?
The word is not in the dictionary and my point was that you should be more careful with your words and phrases if you are attempting to teach a lesson on the formal writing of the English language. Please see the silly diatribe from sheeziks. (By the way, a badly hit ball just out of reach of our hapless shortstop can be called a duck snort, and a grounder that doesn’t bounce can be called a worm burner, and the same color commentator can exclaim that there was a line shot to short and the game endeth!)
Dwight, yes I have. You can count me as one of the “Oh ye of little faith” crowd. I assume “endeth” can be found somewhere in the language of 2000 years ago.
The dominoes of Voodoo “Climate Science” are falling at last!