jkoci
Watcher of the Skies
Here is an interesting side note to this lengthy debate.
BBC News - "Climategate" scientist contemplated suicide
BBC News - "Climategate" scientist contemplated suicide
-
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Bent Faith
Says you...
See pixel, like this.
Anyway, I am on your side in this.
---------- Post added at 04:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:49 PM ----------
Bullseye.
I had to add this sentence because bullseye was "too short".
Anyway, I am on your side in this.
---------- Post added at 04:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:49 PM ----------
Bullseye.
I had to add this sentence because bullseye was "too short".
Rick Deckard
Paranormal Maven
A strange admission from someone who has done nothing wrong and is entirely confident about his conduct in this matter.
I also thought the reference to Dr. Kelly's "suicide" was interesting, seeing as the medical staff who attended his body have publicly stated that they have serious doubts about the circumstances of his death - UK Guardian Article. But then, their opinion is at odds with the official verdict and therefore doesn't count, right?
Schuyler
Misanthrope
Phil Jones is the same guy who, when skeptic John Daly died, said, "In an odd way, this is cheering news!"
So now we're supposed to what? Feel sorry for this guy as he tries to play the victim card?This same guy is the one who said he would delete data rather than release it, suggested everyone delete their emails, and vowed that rather than allow two peer-reviewed skeptical papers into the IPCCv4 report, he would change the definition of what 'peer review' is.
Rick Deckard
Paranormal Maven
Funny (not humerous) you should mention 'feeling sorry' - our current Prime Minister (Gordon Brown) who is in very real danger of losing the imminent general elections over here, gets all teary-eyed in an interview he's just completed with one of his spin-doctor's (Alistair Campbell) slimey mates (Piers Morgan). Emotional manipulation of the lowest order.
Schuyler
Misanthrope
Apparently AGW proponents want it both ways. This is via EUReferendum from a National Geographic article in Global Warming causing the Sahara to turn greener. But wait! Last week rainfall was going to decrease crop yields by 50%!
"No sooner is the Africagate piece up then Bishop Hill comments on it. That brings up further comments which identify this article from the National Geographic News.
Confirming the observations of the Tunisian government in its "initial national communication" (where it suggested that rainfall might increase), the National Geographic article is headed: "Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?"
It states that, contrary to the picture painted of "desertification, drought, and despair" by the IPCC, emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
Scientists, we are told, are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. Furthermore, it seems, this desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
Crucially, much of this relies on work done in 2005, when a team led by Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, forecast significantly more future rainfall in the Sahel. The study in Geophysical Research Letters predicted that rainfall in the July to September wet season would rise by up to two millimeters a day by 2080.
Haarsma now says that satellite confirms that during the last decade, the Sahel is indeed becoming more green. Nevertheless, as one might expect, climate scientists don't agree on how future climate change will affect the Sahel: Some studies simulate a decrease in rainfall. "This issue is still rather uncertain," Haarsma says.
Max Planck's Claussen says North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modellers. Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen adds. "Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."
That precisely reflects the uncertainty projected by Professor Conway and others, and completely contradicts the doom-laden certainty offered by Dr Pachauri and his IPCC colleagues. More to the point, since Haarsma was carrying out his studies in 2005, when the IPCC was in the throes of writing up the Fourth Assessment Report, it could or should have been aware of the work.
Instead, it relies on a secondary source written by an obscure Moroccan academic, and published by an advocacy group, which did not even accurately reflect its own primary sources. Yet, it takes bloggers to bring this to the fore, and more bloggers to expand and develop the theme, backed up by their readers with their invaluable input on comments sections, forums and e-mails.
In the free (and rapid) exchange of information and ideas (and mutual criticism), it is us working as a loose community who most closely approach the scientific ideal. This is, of course, why we are winning the intellectual argument. The political battle, though, has yet to come."
"No sooner is the Africagate piece up then Bishop Hill comments on it. That brings up further comments which identify this article from the National Geographic News.
Confirming the observations of the Tunisian government in its "initial national communication" (where it suggested that rainfall might increase), the National Geographic article is headed: "Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?"
It states that, contrary to the picture painted of "desertification, drought, and despair" by the IPCC, emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
Scientists, we are told, are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. Furthermore, it seems, this desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
Crucially, much of this relies on work done in 2005, when a team led by Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, forecast significantly more future rainfall in the Sahel. The study in Geophysical Research Letters predicted that rainfall in the July to September wet season would rise by up to two millimeters a day by 2080.
Haarsma now says that satellite confirms that during the last decade, the Sahel is indeed becoming more green. Nevertheless, as one might expect, climate scientists don't agree on how future climate change will affect the Sahel: Some studies simulate a decrease in rainfall. "This issue is still rather uncertain," Haarsma says.
Max Planck's Claussen says North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modellers. Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen adds. "Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."
That precisely reflects the uncertainty projected by Professor Conway and others, and completely contradicts the doom-laden certainty offered by Dr Pachauri and his IPCC colleagues. More to the point, since Haarsma was carrying out his studies in 2005, when the IPCC was in the throes of writing up the Fourth Assessment Report, it could or should have been aware of the work.
Instead, it relies on a secondary source written by an obscure Moroccan academic, and published by an advocacy group, which did not even accurately reflect its own primary sources. Yet, it takes bloggers to bring this to the fore, and more bloggers to expand and develop the theme, backed up by their readers with their invaluable input on comments sections, forums and e-mails.
In the free (and rapid) exchange of information and ideas (and mutual criticism), it is us working as a loose community who most closely approach the scientific ideal. This is, of course, why we are winning the intellectual argument. The political battle, though, has yet to come."
For a greater understanding of IPCC's error regarding Himalayan Glacier retreat, I recommend the following as it goes in depth as to the true review process. It comes from the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media. It is a definitive report on how a single malformed paragraph created a firestorm of controversy. It also reveals much of the process with regards to to IPCC working group review and how it's done. Spend five minutes, it's worth it.
Undoing 'The Curse' of a Chain of Errors
Anatomy of IPCC’s Mistake
on Himalayan Glaciers and Year 2035
By Bidisha Banerjee and George Collins | February 4, 2010
The Editors Intro to the above linked article.
Drilling Down: An In-Depth Examination
Of IPCC’s Himalayan Glaciers Mistake
The IPCC, and by extension the world’s responsible climate science community these letters have come to symbolize, is under attack like never before. The criticisms this time result from mistakes, errors, and shortcomings of IPCC’s own doing. The difference now is that the criticisms aren’t coming solely from the vocal, but comparatively small, legion of climate contrarians and skeptics. This time, the criticisms are coming from within and from beyond IPCC, and from many who could fairly be considered impartial observers.Color them now trending toward skeptical, in the best sense of that word.
IPCC’s allegiance to the established scientific method has made it a bastion of credibility and respect in the field. It’s just that standing that some now are calling into question. Some see this episode as an example of science righting itself through its ongoing self-correcting process. In that case, the events surrounding the Himalayan-glaciers-gone-by-2035 fiasco might in the end prove to be a worthwhile learning experience, something from which positives - and not just negatives - can be gleaned. When, after all, is the last time you heard of the most determined contrarians publicly rethinking and correcting their positions?
That said, timing is everything. In basketball, ballet, music, politics, and climate science. And the timing in this case could hardly have been worse. The appropriate, understandable, and necessary brouhaha over the IPCC’s handling of the melting Himalayan glaciers conclusion comes in the wake of the comparatively far less serious (in terms of impact on actual climate science, if not popular perceptions) hacked e-mails fiasco. And of the disappointments with the Copenhagen climate summit. And of the shrinking prospects for significant legislative action on climate change from a weakened congressional leadership still reeling from the loss of its “veto-proof” 60-vote majority, a testy electorate, and nagging economic and unemployment woes.
But all these eventually can and do have a cumulative impact, certainly on the public perception of things, and therefore also on political and policy responses. It’s just what any serious doctor would not prescribe, just when an already ailing political process needed it least. How the climate science community - IPCC and the thousands of scientists on whose shoulders its work depends - responds is critical. First, we must fully understand exactly how and why the mistakes about the Himalayan glaciers occurred, keeping in mind that there is still no doubt that the world’s glaciers indeed are at heightened risk in our warming world.
Bidisha Banerjee’s and George Collins’s comprehensive analysis helps to answer the important “How did this happen?” question. The next question involves how IPCC addresses flaws in its procedures to prevent recurrence of such a mistake. In doing so, it can maintain its standing as the science community’s, and indeed the world’s, most authoritative voice on climate change. The world is watching. IPCC must act quickly to repair the damage and return the world’s attention and focus to the real story – the causes and consequences of, and potential solutions for, anthropogenic climate change.
The world’s glaciers, after all, aren’t sitting by idly waiting. For them, the clock is ticking.
Undoing 'The Curse' of a Chain of Errors
Anatomy of IPCC’s Mistake
on Himalayan Glaciers and Year 2035
By Bidisha Banerjee and George Collins | February 4, 2010
The Editors Intro to the above linked article.
Drilling Down: An In-Depth Examination
Of IPCC’s Himalayan Glaciers Mistake
The IPCC, and by extension the world’s responsible climate science community these letters have come to symbolize, is under attack like never before. The criticisms this time result from mistakes, errors, and shortcomings of IPCC’s own doing. The difference now is that the criticisms aren’t coming solely from the vocal, but comparatively small, legion of climate contrarians and skeptics. This time, the criticisms are coming from within and from beyond IPCC, and from many who could fairly be considered impartial observers.Color them now trending toward skeptical, in the best sense of that word.
IPCC’s allegiance to the established scientific method has made it a bastion of credibility and respect in the field. It’s just that standing that some now are calling into question. Some see this episode as an example of science righting itself through its ongoing self-correcting process. In that case, the events surrounding the Himalayan-glaciers-gone-by-2035 fiasco might in the end prove to be a worthwhile learning experience, something from which positives - and not just negatives - can be gleaned. When, after all, is the last time you heard of the most determined contrarians publicly rethinking and correcting their positions?
That said, timing is everything. In basketball, ballet, music, politics, and climate science. And the timing in this case could hardly have been worse. The appropriate, understandable, and necessary brouhaha over the IPCC’s handling of the melting Himalayan glaciers conclusion comes in the wake of the comparatively far less serious (in terms of impact on actual climate science, if not popular perceptions) hacked e-mails fiasco. And of the disappointments with the Copenhagen climate summit. And of the shrinking prospects for significant legislative action on climate change from a weakened congressional leadership still reeling from the loss of its “veto-proof” 60-vote majority, a testy electorate, and nagging economic and unemployment woes.
But all these eventually can and do have a cumulative impact, certainly on the public perception of things, and therefore also on political and policy responses. It’s just what any serious doctor would not prescribe, just when an already ailing political process needed it least. How the climate science community - IPCC and the thousands of scientists on whose shoulders its work depends - responds is critical. First, we must fully understand exactly how and why the mistakes about the Himalayan glaciers occurred, keeping in mind that there is still no doubt that the world’s glaciers indeed are at heightened risk in our warming world.
Bidisha Banerjee’s and George Collins’s comprehensive analysis helps to answer the important “How did this happen?” question. The next question involves how IPCC addresses flaws in its procedures to prevent recurrence of such a mistake. In doing so, it can maintain its standing as the science community’s, and indeed the world’s, most authoritative voice on climate change. The world is watching. IPCC must act quickly to repair the damage and return the world’s attention and focus to the real story – the causes and consequences of, and potential solutions for, anthropogenic climate change.
The world’s glaciers, after all, aren’t sitting by idly waiting. For them, the clock is ticking.
Bent Faith
Says you...
Jonah, after reading this thread, I see you place great value in using the motives of the backers of research papers, organizations, etc..., to discredit the information.
Well, the report that you posted is from The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media has this statement on the web page:
The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is grateful for the generous financial support of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and of individual Yale University alumni.
The Grantham Foundation is an environmentalist group that supports, among others, Greenpeace. Hardly an objective party with no self-interest in the outcome of the report.
Using your own reasoning, I discount the article.
The politics of climate change, the impossibility of conservatism, and the role of the imaginary
One of the accusations frequently made by climate change deniers or ’skeptics’ against those who would like to see concerted action taken to ameliorate the impacts of anthropogenic global warming is that of being somehow apocalyptic. A related charge is that climate change activism is somehow a screen or cover for an unstated political agenda. Futile as the attempt to deny and disavow the fact that a process of climate change is occurring, and that human actors are causal agents, it’s nevertheless the case that this discourse is not without its effects in the world. So it’s worth analysing this phenomenon. There is no doubt that apocalyptic politics are in style. Writing in his recent First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, Slavoj Žižek diagnoses the range of contemporary apocalyptic politics. He quotes Ed Ayres:
Historians identify a number of points where action could have been taken – as late as the 460s – which may have prevented this. History, after all, is contingent, and events only appear necessary in retrospect. But what was blocking such action was precisely the inability to see and conceptualise the processes occurring as anything other than contingent and passing. At the same time, particularly after the sack of Rome in 410, apocalyptic predictions were in the air. For Žižek, transformations are at work which call forth such a doubled effect:
What is certain is that a conservative stance (the Romanitas of the current aeon) is an impossibility. There is nothing to conserve. Global capitalism relies on constant change and upheaval, and the drive towards accumulation brings destruction in its path. It is the nature of the beast. So, a stance of denial towards climate change is – in its effects – a death drive, an imperative to maintain an illusion long past its necessary confrontation with the spectre of the Real. Think Peak Oil, think the colonisation of the biological and the Commons by commerce, think the destruction of forests and species. All this is real, and it may well be that limits to growth are fast approaching. The end of non-renewable resources, a phenomenon whose timing is the only issue over the next century or so, is a fact. To proclaim, metaphorically, “let’s party like it’s 1999″, is not an answer. So, in a way, the psychology of conservative skepticism is “Après moi, le déluge”. And, of course, for Louis XIV, or rather for the mode of being that he embodied, the deluge arrived a few decades afterwards. It will become increasingly clear, over the next few decades, that business as usual with a few tweaks is an impossibility. The current noise of ‘climate change skepticism’ will not survive confrontation with the Real; it’s a symptom of a fractured utopia. Because the actual utopians in this picture are those for whom history has ended; the liberal ideologues whose complacency has already been disturbed, whose only response to transformational change is to deny it, because we already live in the best of all possible worlds. The conditions of possibility for such an attitude are already collapsing. So, what is to be done?
It’s here that the role of the imaginary is crucial. There is no necessity or certainty to the course of human affairs. It is eminently possible that the impacts of climate change, politically, might be a future of violent conflicts over resources, an increasing abrogation of human freedoms, uncontrolled population movements, and the continued reduction of politics to a corporate game. In fact, that may well be the track we’re on. But it’s not necessarily so.
As I alluded to above, events only appear necessary in retrospect. The necessity of the present moment is driven by a failure of imagination, or more properly, a refusal to imagine and a blockage of the imaginative faculty. If politics is the contest of the delineation of the contours of the social, economic and cultural; that is to say, the establishment of the conditions for how we shall live, then we don’t have much of it at the moment. We have the ‘administration of things’, and the best that we can manage is elite-driven technocratic tinkering. We need to revive our faculties of imagination, in a future anterior mode. That is to say, we need to conceive of the end state we want to see – a juster, fairer and sustainable world order which can accommodate itself to the exigencies of climate change – and work backwards from there. In order to avert the apocalypse. That is a political task, and let there be no mistake about what we’re engaged in. So, in fact, secular ecologists need to work against the ‘end of days’; and to do so with an eye to the long term, not the short term noise of rabid denialism. “Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect” isn’t a bad slogan, still. We need to be realistic to confront the effects of the Real.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/01/0...f-conservatism-and-the-role-of-the-imaginary/
One of the accusations frequently made by climate change deniers or ’skeptics’ against those who would like to see concerted action taken to ameliorate the impacts of anthropogenic global warming is that of being somehow apocalyptic. A related charge is that climate change activism is somehow a screen or cover for an unstated political agenda. Futile as the attempt to deny and disavow the fact that a process of climate change is occurring, and that human actors are causal agents, it’s nevertheless the case that this discourse is not without its effects in the world. So it’s worth analysing this phenomenon. There is no doubt that apocalyptic politics are in style. Writing in his recent First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, Slavoj Žižek diagnoses the range of contemporary apocalyptic politics. He quotes Ed Ayres:
We are being confronted by something so completely outside our collective experience that we don’t really see it, even when the evidence is overwhelming. For us, that “something” is a blitz of enormous biological and physical alterations in the world that has been sustaining us.
Žižek argues that “the dominant ideology is mobilising mechanisms of dissimulation and self-deception which include a will to ignorance”, and cites Ayres again to characterise this effect:
A general pattern of behaviour among threatened human societies is to become more blinkered, rather than more focused on the crisis, as they fail.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire is exemplary here. Throughout the fifth century, the distinction between Romans and barbarians is sharpened, the ideology of Roma Aeterna hyperbolised, even as the Empire’s military power begins to depend more and more on ostrogothic armies to play off against other militarised populations in movement. The seat of power is the site not of stability, but of vicious contestation. Then, one day, Odoacer topples the house of cards, and takes power himself, without bothering to erect the screen of another puppet Emperor. Suddenly, the illusion is shattered, and the situation can be seen – in retrospect – in its true light. The Real reveals itself. (An apocalypse, properly understood, is a mode of veiling and unveiling a truth.)
Historians identify a number of points where action could have been taken – as late as the 460s – which may have prevented this. History, after all, is contingent, and events only appear necessary in retrospect. But what was blocking such action was precisely the inability to see and conceptualise the processes occurring as anything other than contingent and passing. At the same time, particularly after the sack of Rome in 410, apocalyptic predictions were in the air. For Žižek, transformations are at work which call forth such a doubled effect:
If this sounds apocalyptic, one can only retort that we live in apocalyptic times. It is easy to see how each of the three processes… refer to an apocalyptic end point: ecological breakdown, the biogenetic reduction of humans to manipulable machines, total digital control over our lives… At all these levels, things are approaching a zero-point; “the end of times is near”.
So there is no surprise that such profound tendencies towards paradigmatic change in the conditions of being human in the world call forth the twin ideological effects of blinkered conservatism and apocalyptic endism. In Žižek’s mind, there are four types of the latter: Christian fundamentalism, New Age spirituality, techno-digital post-humanism and secular ecologism. Note that Žižek is not employing the concept of apocalypticism pejoratively. The apocalyptic is a mode of experiencing time, and it may be, that confronted with a genuine prospect of catastrophic transformation, it is the most germane, while the linear mode of continued progress and development is illusory. As with other political phenomena, apocalypticism in itself is a form rather than a content; an empty signifier which can attract to itself a variety of beliefs and imperatives. To dismiss something as apocalyptic, then, is in itself a mode of disavowal.
What is certain is that a conservative stance (the Romanitas of the current aeon) is an impossibility. There is nothing to conserve. Global capitalism relies on constant change and upheaval, and the drive towards accumulation brings destruction in its path. It is the nature of the beast. So, a stance of denial towards climate change is – in its effects – a death drive, an imperative to maintain an illusion long past its necessary confrontation with the spectre of the Real. Think Peak Oil, think the colonisation of the biological and the Commons by commerce, think the destruction of forests and species. All this is real, and it may well be that limits to growth are fast approaching. The end of non-renewable resources, a phenomenon whose timing is the only issue over the next century or so, is a fact. To proclaim, metaphorically, “let’s party like it’s 1999″, is not an answer. So, in a way, the psychology of conservative skepticism is “Après moi, le déluge”. And, of course, for Louis XIV, or rather for the mode of being that he embodied, the deluge arrived a few decades afterwards. It will become increasingly clear, over the next few decades, that business as usual with a few tweaks is an impossibility. The current noise of ‘climate change skepticism’ will not survive confrontation with the Real; it’s a symptom of a fractured utopia. Because the actual utopians in this picture are those for whom history has ended; the liberal ideologues whose complacency has already been disturbed, whose only response to transformational change is to deny it, because we already live in the best of all possible worlds. The conditions of possibility for such an attitude are already collapsing. So, what is to be done?
It’s here that the role of the imaginary is crucial. There is no necessity or certainty to the course of human affairs. It is eminently possible that the impacts of climate change, politically, might be a future of violent conflicts over resources, an increasing abrogation of human freedoms, uncontrolled population movements, and the continued reduction of politics to a corporate game. In fact, that may well be the track we’re on. But it’s not necessarily so.
As I alluded to above, events only appear necessary in retrospect. The necessity of the present moment is driven by a failure of imagination, or more properly, a refusal to imagine and a blockage of the imaginative faculty. If politics is the contest of the delineation of the contours of the social, economic and cultural; that is to say, the establishment of the conditions for how we shall live, then we don’t have much of it at the moment. We have the ‘administration of things’, and the best that we can manage is elite-driven technocratic tinkering. We need to revive our faculties of imagination, in a future anterior mode. That is to say, we need to conceive of the end state we want to see – a juster, fairer and sustainable world order which can accommodate itself to the exigencies of climate change – and work backwards from there. In order to avert the apocalypse. That is a political task, and let there be no mistake about what we’re engaged in. So, in fact, secular ecologists need to work against the ‘end of days’; and to do so with an eye to the long term, not the short term noise of rabid denialism. “Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect” isn’t a bad slogan, still. We need to be realistic to confront the effects of the Real.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/01/0...f-conservatism-and-the-role-of-the-imaginary/
Rick Deckard
Paranormal Maven
Gene and David describe these forums as "dynamic" on their podcast - there's nothing dynamic about parroting alarmist propaganda...
...does this new forum have an ignore list?
...does this new forum have an ignore list?
Bent Faith
Says you...
Jonah, the publisher of First As Tragedy, Then As Farce is a company called Verso.
From their own web site:
[SIZE=-1]Verso (meaning in printers’ parlance ‘the lefthand page’) was founded in 1970 by the London-based New Left Review, a journal of left-wing theory with a worldwide readership of 40,000. The company remains independent to this day.
[/SIZE]
Using your very own reasoning, I discount the entire book.[/SIZE]
Schuyler
Misanthrope
Another noted epert on climate waxes eloquent on the consequences of Global Warming
RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC
By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
12/21/09
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.
Having shoveled my walk five times in the midst of this past weekend's extreme cold and blizzard, I think perhaps RFK, Jr. should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.
RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC
By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
12/21/09
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.
Having shoveled my walk five times in the midst of this past weekend's extreme cold and blizzard, I think perhaps RFK, Jr. should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.
U.S. conservative’s definition of ‘fascism’: Defending climate science from Exxon-Mobil corruption
Right-Wing pollster Scott Rasmussen baselessly accuses climate scientists of "Data Falsification"
December 6, 2009
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The right-wing swiftboating campaign against climate scientists dubbed “Climategate” by its perpetrators is becoming frighteningly unhinged, accusing climate researchers of Hitlerian fascism for fighting against corruption of science by oil-funded ideologues. On Wednesday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the top Republican on the House global warming committee, claimed these scientists were engaging in “scientific fascism.” After Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) denounced his egregious attack, Sensenbrenner defined “scientific fascism” of “intimidation in the scientific community of people who wish to be contrary what the convention wisdom is”:
Transcript:
Right-Wing Pollster Scott Rasmussen Baselessly Accuses Climate Scientists Of ‘Data Falsification’
Joining the Climategate swiftboating campaign against climate science, conservative pollster Scott Rasmussen has accused scientists of falsifying data about global warming — an incendiary charge. In the most recent of his instapolls designed to reinforce conservative talking points, Rasmussen finds that “[f]ifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data. ” Rasmussen goes on to make the baseless charge that there is confirmation of “such data falsification“:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/...m-climate-science-exxon-mobil-rasmussen-poll/
Right-Wing pollster Scott Rasmussen baselessly accuses climate scientists of "Data Falsification"
December 6, 2009
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The right-wing swiftboating campaign against climate scientists dubbed “Climategate” by its perpetrators is becoming frighteningly unhinged, accusing climate researchers of Hitlerian fascism for fighting against corruption of science by oil-funded ideologues. On Wednesday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the top Republican on the House global warming committee, claimed these scientists were engaging in “scientific fascism.” After Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) denounced his egregious attack, Sensenbrenner defined “scientific fascism” of “intimidation in the scientific community of people who wish to be contrary what the convention wisdom is”:
I’ll define what I mean by scientific fascism. These emails trash the scientific conclusions by those who have disputed Michael Mann’s hockey stick theory. There are information in the emails that the scientific publication Climate Research in which they were published ought to be boycotted because they weren’t doing the politically correct thing. And I understand that the editor of Climate Research ended up getting fired as a result. There is intimidation in the scientific community of people who wish to be contrary what the convention wisdom is.
The incident to which Sensenbrenner is alluding in fact involves an admirable event in scientific history, when the scientific community successfully resisted attempts by Exxon-Mobil and Republicans to politicize and corrupt climate research. In 2003, the journal Climate Research published a paper by astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon which argued that “the current global warming trend is not unique and that an even more dramatic episode occurred centuries ago, before widespread combustion of oil and coal.” As illegally hacked emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit indeed reveal, the publication of this paper shocked climate researchers, who discussed an array of responses in March, 2003, from a joint response explaining the paper’s flaws to asking colleagues to shun the journal or encouraging the journal to “get rid of the offending editor,” contrarian Chris de Freitas. What Sensenbrenner and the other smear merchants fail to mention is that the researchers were correct in their concerns that the journal had been taken over by biased ideologues. Despite Sensenbrenner’s claim, no editors were fired because of the climate realists. Rather, the editor of Climate Research, Hans Von Storch, quit in July 2003 because he was suppressed by the journal’s publisher when he attempted to disown the paper’s “severe methodological flaws“:
A science journal editor who recently published an article questioning whether industrial emissions are driving up the earth’s temperature has resigned, saying he was not allowed to publish an editorial repudiating the article.
Five editors — half the editorial board of the journal — soon joined Von Storch in a mass resignation — while Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) held a hearing to promote the blatantly flawed paper during the debate on the McCain-Lieberman climate bill. The Soon-Baliunas paper turned out to be crass Big Oil propaganda, “underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute and promoted by nonprofit organizations that receive support from energy interests, primarily ExxonMobil Corp.” Journal publisher Otto Kinne eventually admitted in August, 2003, that the Soon-Baliunas claims “cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper” — but only after the paper had served its political purpose. We return to the present day, where mainstream environmental reporters have abetted this new, disgusting character assassination campaign. Reporters from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and the Associated Press — among many others — have wrung their hands about the ethics of the scientific community while the Fox Business Network compares scientists to Hitler and Stalin and Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com compares them to Nazi eugenicists. One wishes these reporters would at least read their own, earlier reporting on the Soon-Baliunas affair.
Transcript:
INSLEE: Mr. Sensenbrenner suggested that there’s some “scientific fascism,” and that’s a quote. Is there any evidence of fascism in the NASA organization, “scientific fascism” associated with this?
HOLDREN: I’m not even sure exactly what that term would mean. But I don’t — I’m not aware of any cabals, conspiracies, misbehavior in the characterization and use of data in NASA or NOAA.
INSLEE: I tell you, it’s troublesome to me that people who put man on the moon, people who discovered water on the moon, the people who are doing great research figuring out how the oceans are acidic, some of whom are my constituents — It’s disturbing to me that people would come to this chamber and call them fascists!
I gotta tell you, I got a problem with that. I don’t think that’s right. These men and women to provide us data and conclusions to the best of their ability. And they through their professional work have created a very very strong consensus on these scientific issues, who are working for Uncle Sam. I think it’s wrong to say that about them. And there’s a little bit of emotion in my voice because I’ve seen in my neighborhood what this phenomenon is doing. I’d like to be able to catch salmon and my grandson who celebrated his first birthday on Sunday to catch salmon that live on terapods maybe fifty or sixty years from now. And when people watch what I watched and say that this is just a big scientific fascist conspiracy that are ginning this stuff up, I got a problem with that….
SENSENBRENNER: I’ll define what I mean by scientific fascism. These emails trash the scientific conclusions by those who have disputed Michael Mann’s hockey stick theory. There are information in the emails that the scientific publication Climate Research in which they were published ought to be boycotted because they weren’t doing the politically correct thing. And I understand that the editor of Climate Research ended up getting fired as a result. There is intimidation in the scientific community of people who wish to be contrary what the convention wisdom is.
[JR: Of course, the hockey stick was essentially vindicated by the National Academy of Sciences (see NAS Report and here). See also "Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science and responds to the illegally hacked emails." That was a Wonk Room repost. Here is another repost.]HOLDREN: I’m not even sure exactly what that term would mean. But I don’t — I’m not aware of any cabals, conspiracies, misbehavior in the characterization and use of data in NASA or NOAA.
INSLEE: I tell you, it’s troublesome to me that people who put man on the moon, people who discovered water on the moon, the people who are doing great research figuring out how the oceans are acidic, some of whom are my constituents — It’s disturbing to me that people would come to this chamber and call them fascists!
I gotta tell you, I got a problem with that. I don’t think that’s right. These men and women to provide us data and conclusions to the best of their ability. And they through their professional work have created a very very strong consensus on these scientific issues, who are working for Uncle Sam. I think it’s wrong to say that about them. And there’s a little bit of emotion in my voice because I’ve seen in my neighborhood what this phenomenon is doing. I’d like to be able to catch salmon and my grandson who celebrated his first birthday on Sunday to catch salmon that live on terapods maybe fifty or sixty years from now. And when people watch what I watched and say that this is just a big scientific fascist conspiracy that are ginning this stuff up, I got a problem with that….
SENSENBRENNER: I’ll define what I mean by scientific fascism. These emails trash the scientific conclusions by those who have disputed Michael Mann’s hockey stick theory. There are information in the emails that the scientific publication Climate Research in which they were published ought to be boycotted because they weren’t doing the politically correct thing. And I understand that the editor of Climate Research ended up getting fired as a result. There is intimidation in the scientific community of people who wish to be contrary what the convention wisdom is.
Right-Wing Pollster Scott Rasmussen Baselessly Accuses Climate Scientists Of ‘Data Falsification’
Joining the Climategate swiftboating campaign against climate science, conservative pollster Scott Rasmussen has accused scientists of falsifying data about global warming — an incendiary charge. In the most recent of his instapolls designed to reinforce conservative talking points, Rasmussen finds that “[f]ifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data. ” Rasmussen goes on to make the baseless charge that there is confirmation of “such data falsification“:
This skepticism does not appear to be the result of the recent disclosure of e-mails confirming such data falsification as part of the so-called “Climategate” scandal.
There is, in fact, no such confirmation or evidence, which would mean the end of the careers of any scientists who would engage in that kind of practice. Rasmussen’s libel is groundless. As Nature’s editors explain:
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists’ conspiracy theories.
Scott Rasmussen is just the latest right-wing hack to embrace this unprincipled and unhinged smear campaign against climate scientists on the eve on international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, following the lead of everyone from Glenn Beck to Newt Gingrich. One of these smeared scientists, renowned climatologist Ben Santer, has decided to fight back against the “forces of unreason“:
We are now faced with powerful “forces of unreason” – forces that (at least to date) have been unsuccessful in challenging scientific findings of a warming Earth, and a “discernible human influence” on global climate. These forces of unreason are now shifting the focus of their attention to the scientists themselves. They seek to discredit, to skew the truth, to misrepresent. They seek to destroy scientific careers rather than to improve our understanding of the nature and causes of climate change.
Josh Nelson has more at the aptly named SwiftHack.com.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/...m-climate-science-exxon-mobil-rasmussen-poll/
Schuyler
Misanthrope
This just in. Another 'Gate,' this time false claims of drought in Australia caused by AGW, and yet another hot on the IPCCv4 reports, relying on greenie activists instead of 'peer reviewed' literature. This is several places today including Watts up with That.
Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun digs up another issue with non peer reviewed World Wildlife Fund reports in the IPCC AR4. It turns out a new paper in GRL handily disputes the cause of the drought.
He writes:
Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:
And guess which scandal-ridden and alarmist IPCC report relied on Karoly’s claims? Reader Baa Humbug:
Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun digs up another issue with non peer reviewed World Wildlife Fund reports in the IPCC AR4. It turns out a new paper in GRL handily disputes the cause of the drought.
He writes:
Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:
BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…
In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.
“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”
But the latest evidence shows that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, this new study:In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.
“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”
Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual timeseries of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…
However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.
What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.
And guess which scandal-ridden and alarmist IPCC report relied on Karoly’s claims? Reader Baa Humbug:
Karoly was cited very extensively in the AR4 WG1 paper.e.g. Chapter 9 9.4.2.3 Studies Based on Indices of Temperature Change and Temperature-Precipitation Relationships.”Studies based on indices of temperature change support the robust detection of human influence on continental-scale land areas. Observed trends in indices of North American continental scale temperature change, (including the regional mean, the mean land-ocean temperature contrast and the annual cycle) were found by Karoly et al. (2003) to be generally consistent with simulated trends under historical forcing from greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols during the second half of the 20th century. In contrast, they find only a small likelihood of agreement with trends driven by natural forcing only during this period.
And so reading the article at the link provided, there is absolutely no mention of the Murray Darling Basin - and even if that is an acurate quote, the qualifier "likely" does not infer an absolute. So what?
So let's see those reports. And of course, it was Nelson who stated the absolute without qualifier, and so rightly was taken to task by Rudd.
If anyone bothers to read the abstract at the link provided, you'll notice that nowhere does it say the below. I'm not sure where it comes from but it is disingenuous (as per usual) to attach and attribute this statement to scientific research found at the link. And until the we can access the entire paper, who knows how valid the science is or what the rebuttal might be. No where in the abstract does is it implied that there is "no evidence" as Bolt implies.
The preceding statement is -NOT- found in the abstract but is rather an attempt to mislead -again- as usual. And even if it is part of the paper, no one has implied that AGW is the "sole basis" for the attribution of cause. I hope you can see how desperate the denialist are as they twist, lie and bend the science to fit there own fallacious viewpoints. And like you've seen in this thread, it's a lot easier to make shit up and keep throwing it out there in an effort to obfuscate and wear down the opposition. It doesn't matter if it's truth or not, as long as the muddies the water. Right out of the Exxon denialist playbook. Quite transparent really if one steps back and see's the pattern. And I don't doubt that the playbook recommends attaching the word "gate" to the end of all this BS, right Schuyler?
Quite pathetic and sickening...but what can one expect from right wing conservative misanthropes such as Bolt (and his devotees).
Bent Faith
Says you...
Typical, resort to name calling when you are losing. You are soooooo predictable Jonah.
Prediction: (Concentrating)..... I ssseeeeeeeeee ..... Jonah posting again with more meaningless babble straight out of the Earth First battle plan.
Selectivity (Cherry Picking) (See Andrew Bolt)
Category: Denialism Defined • Selectivity
Posted on: May 1, 2007 8:00 AM, by MarkH
For our next installment of the big five tactics in denialism we'll discuss the tactic of selectivity, or cherry-picking of data. Denialists tend to cite single papers supporting their idea (often you have to squint to see how it supports their argument). Similarly they dig up discredited or flawed papers either to suggest they are supported by the scientific literature, or to disparage a field making it appear the science is based on weak research. Quote mining is also an example of "selective" argument, by using a statement out of context, just like using papers or data out of context, they are able to sow confusion. Here at denialism blog we'll use the cherries to denote the presence of selectivity in a denialist screed.
Examples abound. Such as when HIV/AIDS denialists harp about Gallo fudging the initial identification of HIV (a famous dispute about whether or not he stole Montagnier's virus) to suggest the virus was never actually identified or that the field rests on a weak foundation. Jonathan Wells likes to harp endlessly about Haeckels' embryos to suggest that the tens of thousands of other papers on the subject of evolution, and the entire basis of genetics, biology and biochemistry are wrong.
One of the main reasons this is such an effective tactic to use on science is that when something is shown to be incorrect, we can't "purge" the literature so the bad papers stay there forever. Only when a paper is retracted is the literature actually restored, and there's a lot of research and researchers that got things wrong on the way to figuring out a problem. It's really just the nature of research, we make mistakes, but the self-correcting nature of science helps get us incrementally closer to some form of scientific truth. It is up to the individual researcher to read and quote more than the papers that support their foregone conclusion, as one has to develop theories that effectively synthesize all the data and represent an understanding of an entire field, not just quote the data one likes.
Then there is the issue of selective quotation of perfectly good science or scientists. For example, see our post on how the Family Research council misrepresents data on contraception to promote their political agenda. Talk Origins has an entire quote-mine project devoted to documenting how creationists misrepresent scientists to advance their agenda.
This tendency towards quote-mining and misrepresentation of science is really the clearest proof of the dishonesty inherent in denialist tactics (with the possible exception in the case of Intelligent Design Creationism of the wedge document - but an internal statement of denialists' goals is usually hard to come by). Selectivity is exceedingly common, and proof that many denialists aren't just intellectually, but morally bankrupt.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/05/selectivity_cherry_picking_1.php
Category: Denialism Defined • Selectivity
Posted on: May 1, 2007 8:00 AM, by MarkH
For our next installment of the big five tactics in denialism we'll discuss the tactic of selectivity, or cherry-picking of data. Denialists tend to cite single papers supporting their idea (often you have to squint to see how it supports their argument). Similarly they dig up discredited or flawed papers either to suggest they are supported by the scientific literature, or to disparage a field making it appear the science is based on weak research. Quote mining is also an example of "selective" argument, by using a statement out of context, just like using papers or data out of context, they are able to sow confusion. Here at denialism blog we'll use the cherries to denote the presence of selectivity in a denialist screed.
Examples abound. Such as when HIV/AIDS denialists harp about Gallo fudging the initial identification of HIV (a famous dispute about whether or not he stole Montagnier's virus) to suggest the virus was never actually identified or that the field rests on a weak foundation. Jonathan Wells likes to harp endlessly about Haeckels' embryos to suggest that the tens of thousands of other papers on the subject of evolution, and the entire basis of genetics, biology and biochemistry are wrong.
One of the main reasons this is such an effective tactic to use on science is that when something is shown to be incorrect, we can't "purge" the literature so the bad papers stay there forever. Only when a paper is retracted is the literature actually restored, and there's a lot of research and researchers that got things wrong on the way to figuring out a problem. It's really just the nature of research, we make mistakes, but the self-correcting nature of science helps get us incrementally closer to some form of scientific truth. It is up to the individual researcher to read and quote more than the papers that support their foregone conclusion, as one has to develop theories that effectively synthesize all the data and represent an understanding of an entire field, not just quote the data one likes.
Then there is the issue of selective quotation of perfectly good science or scientists. For example, see our post on how the Family Research council misrepresents data on contraception to promote their political agenda. Talk Origins has an entire quote-mine project devoted to documenting how creationists misrepresent scientists to advance their agenda.
This tendency towards quote-mining and misrepresentation of science is really the clearest proof of the dishonesty inherent in denialist tactics (with the possible exception in the case of Intelligent Design Creationism of the wedge document - but an internal statement of denialists' goals is usually hard to come by). Selectivity is exceedingly common, and proof that many denialists aren't just intellectually, but morally bankrupt.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/05/selectivity_cherry_picking_1.php
Schuyler
Misanthrope
Now the former head of the IPCC weighs in--and jumps ship. But by all means, Keep the Faith!!
The past chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has joined the growing list of IPCC critics. According to the Sunday Telegraph, Rajendra Pachauri, the disgraced current IPCC chair, now faces criticism from his immediate predecessor, Robert Watson. The Telegraph reports that Watson “stressed that the chairman must take responsibility for correcting errors.” In another indication that Watson is taking pains to distance himself from the organization he once headed, the Sunday Times, in a story entitled Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility, reports that Watson warned the IPCC that it must tackle its blunders.
Watson’s comments come on the heels of another glaring embarrassment to come out of the IPCC, this time a claim that global warming could cut crop production in north Africa by up to 50% by 2020. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change,” Watson stated. “I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report.”
In this latest high-profile IPCC gaffe, which has been repeated around the world, including by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the IPCC seems to have relied on a 2003 report from a Winnipeg-based think tank called the International Institute for Sustainable Development. The report, which was not peer-reviewed, in turn seems to have relied on submissions to the UN by civil servants from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, which also appear not to have been peer-reviewed.
Apart from his post as past IPCC chair, Watson is also the UK’s highest level environmental scientist, as Chief Scientist at the UK’s environment ministry. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in 2007, Watson was Chair of Environmental Science and Science Director of the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia, the same university caught up in the Climategate scandal.
Watson’s new-found scepticism of the science being produced by the IPCC represents an ironic reversal. In 2002, he remarked that "The only person who doesn't believe the science is President Bush."
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...sertion-its-own-past-chair.aspx#ixzz0ezGiweAO
The past chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has joined the growing list of IPCC critics. According to the Sunday Telegraph, Rajendra Pachauri, the disgraced current IPCC chair, now faces criticism from his immediate predecessor, Robert Watson. The Telegraph reports that Watson “stressed that the chairman must take responsibility for correcting errors.” In another indication that Watson is taking pains to distance himself from the organization he once headed, the Sunday Times, in a story entitled Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility, reports that Watson warned the IPCC that it must tackle its blunders.
Watson’s comments come on the heels of another glaring embarrassment to come out of the IPCC, this time a claim that global warming could cut crop production in north Africa by up to 50% by 2020. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change,” Watson stated. “I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report.”
In this latest high-profile IPCC gaffe, which has been repeated around the world, including by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the IPCC seems to have relied on a 2003 report from a Winnipeg-based think tank called the International Institute for Sustainable Development. The report, which was not peer-reviewed, in turn seems to have relied on submissions to the UN by civil servants from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, which also appear not to have been peer-reviewed.
Apart from his post as past IPCC chair, Watson is also the UK’s highest level environmental scientist, as Chief Scientist at the UK’s environment ministry. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in 2007, Watson was Chair of Environmental Science and Science Director of the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia, the same university caught up in the Climategate scandal.
Watson’s new-found scepticism of the science being produced by the IPCC represents an ironic reversal. In 2002, he remarked that "The only person who doesn't believe the science is President Bush."
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...sertion-its-own-past-chair.aspx#ixzz0ezGiweAO
AnnetteMarie
Skilled Investigator
Doesn't anyone else see how exciting this is? We are at a spot in history where we can actually witness the making of the emperor's new clothes!!!
Schuyler
Misanthrope
I can't believe how fast this stuff is coming out. Here's more on Glaciergate. This was sent to me by a friend of mine who is a professional meteorologist. It's obviously copied from somewhere British, but he didn't provide a reference. The part about the WWF not getting their math right is priceless.
Glacier scientist: "I knew data hadn't been verified."
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.’
Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035
Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.
According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.
The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.
It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.
The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.
Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.
Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’
In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.
Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.
‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said.
Forced to apologise: Chairman of the IPCC Raj Pachauri
‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’
One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’
When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’.
Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures.
It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’
However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.
For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.
In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.
The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked.
The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft.
Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue.
Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said.
The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.
Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.
Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’
Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.
Glacier scientist: "I knew data hadn't been verified."
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.’
Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035
Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.
According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.
The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.
It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.
The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.
Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.
Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’
In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.
Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.
‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said.
Forced to apologise: Chairman of the IPCC Raj Pachauri
‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’
One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’
When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’.
Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures.
It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’
However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.
For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.
In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.
The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked.
The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft.
Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue.
Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said.
The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.
Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.
Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’
Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.