Last night I pointed out how NASA had quietly purged IPCC AR4 referenced glacier melting claims from its climate.nasa.gov website, especially since they upped the year from 2035 to 2030 on their own. Now Roger Pielke Jr. points out that another curious purge has been spotted:
Excerpts:
There is another important story in involving the Muir-Wood et al. 2006 paper that was misrepresented by the IPCC as showing a linkage between increasing temperatures and rising damages from extreme weather events. The Stern Review Report of the UK government also relied on that paper as the sole basis for its projections of increasing damage from extreme events. In fact as much as 40% of the Stern Reivew projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of the Muir-Wood et al. paper.
…
As I was preparing this post, I accessed the Stern Review Report on the archive site of the UK government to capture an image of Table 5.2. Much to my surprise I learned that since the publication of my paper, Table 5.2 has mysteriously changed! Have a look at the figures below.
The figure immediately below shows Table 5.2 as it was originally published in the Stern Review (from a web archive in PDF), and I have circled in red the order-of-magnitude error in hurricane damage that I document in my paper (the values should instead by 10 times less).
Now, have a look at the figure below which shows Table 5.2 from the Stern Review Report as it now appears on the UK government archive (PDF), look carefully at the numbers circled in red:
There is no note, no acknowledgment, nothing indicating that the estimated damage for hurricanes was modified after publication by an order of magnitude. The report was quietly changed to make the error go away. Of course, even with the Table corrected, now the Stern Review math does not add up, as the total GDP impact from USA, UK and Europe does not come anywhere close to the 1% global total for developed country impacts (based on Muir-Wood), much less the higher values suggested as possible in the report’s text, underscoring a key point of my 2007 paper.
I’m betting that instituions around the world are working fast to distance themselves from some of the IPCC claims. We’ll likely see more of this.
I wonder if there’s ever too much of a good thing?
George Orwell was a genius.
This story has a ‘bathtub’ ring to it.
The stain isn’t coming clean.
Hide the decline!
More beautiful work, from intelligent sceptics and WUWT alike.
You guys do realise you’re causing acute embarrassment to Warmists, , don’t you?
Splendid.
The Ministry of Truth is busy, busy, busy.
Wow! I’m so grateful that vigilant individuals in several of today’s posts are recording these sleazy and underhanded alterations of scientific writings. These practices further undermine trust in science and make the written scientific record in its online version as untrustworthy as photography or any other easily-altered source. Do paper versions of the original Stern Review Report exist? Obviously the NASA stuff which followed the 2035 party line was purely online material, but surely something like this existed in hard copy too? (Of course, these can also be made to disappear…)
Am I missing something.
Changing that one number should have affected the global figure which now appears rather silly
Which professional organization will be the first to disavow the IPCC, NASA, CRU nonsense?
It won’t even take any courage at this point…
I wish someone would mention this to a certain naive reporter who is currently blogging about the 2035 debacle and attempting to formulate an alternate theory of Himalayan glacial meltdown by employing the Stern Report as a reference point. This guy (who claims to have published articles in Science, Nature, and National Geographic) apparently believes that the annual global mean surface temperature will rise from 14 degrees Celsius to 45 degrees Celsius by the year 2060. I kid you not:
http://notin2035.com/?page_id=2
Don’t ask me how I stumble across these sites… maybe it was the voodoo.
Clearly the Mainstream Media, the scientific media, and legislative commitees have simply accepted, as gospel, IPCC pronouncements.
What we need is to continue the kind of thorough evalution of IPCC science and economics as WUWT, Cliomate Audit, and others have been doing. After the many errors and falsehoods have been found and proven, they all need to be identified and characterized in a large coherent, highly publicized, Report, maybe just before the next big alarmist event or publication.
Please, everyone in the UK who reads this site , write to the MPs on the S and T review committee asking them to truly, hand on heart, examine the leaked emails and the influence the small number of “scientists” had on the IPCC report. The email revelations only make sense if the whole story is understood. Suggest that they, or a researcher, spend a day looking at the dissenting views and not rely on the settled science of the ICPP reports.
Can’t be right,
“I underestimated the threat, says Stern”
“Lord Stern of Brentford has warned that the gloomy predictions of his high-profile review of the future effects of global warming underestimated the risks, and that climate change poses a bigger threat than he realised.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/18/climatechange.carbonemissions
He who controls the past controls the future.
Down the memory hole. What bothers me is the secretiveness. Thank goodness there are people taking notes, downloading earlier versions, and using sites like these to collate the squalid little do-overs. My concern here is not merely the cowardice and contempt shown by these unnamed “editors” toward the public they claim to serve. It is the asymmetry of the informational fight. A lie comes out and creates an indelible first impression, even if the liar recants promptly, contritely, and with as much publicity as was given to the original lie. The damage propagates onward, certainly in those who don’t hear the recantation, and even in those who do (remember Hitler’s observation in “Mein Kampf” about the continuing resonance of the “big lie” in all who hear it, however they may scoff).
So the sloppy and fraudulent assertions will never be fully corrected. The result is that those who bring in the truth must work twice as hard and long just to reach break-even. Meanwhile the public gets more confused and either misremembers the whole story or tunes out the corrections as “too much information.”
Any chance of making a sub group of easily searched purge reports for sourcing in the future?
Its likely this is going to be a long process so having it doced properly will make arguing easier.
When one sees things like this and the previous NASA modification one begins to wonder if we are really living in George Orwells 1984.
Interesting to note that despite the decadal decrease, the description that doubling Carbon Dioxide will increase hurricane windspeed by 6% still applies.
Now that is truly Voodoo Science!
The truly disturbing thing is that after the switch anyone checking the points in Dr. Pielke’s paper would probably go to the online reference; see that the numbers don’t match up and either think Dr. Pielke screwed up or madeup an incorrect figure. This could have damaged Dr. Pielke’s reputation in the scientific community.
It should come as no surprise to us in the UK . We have got used to “spin ” (ie economical with the truth or worse) over the last 20 yrs or so….
It is no surprise the the IPCC, which is a political body no matter what reporters say… (How do you define a UN institution if not political? ), can put all their prestige on tenous “facts”. Say it enough and it will be believed, especially if most journalists do not have a scientific background.
This is huge, because as recently as a couple of weeks ago I heard a branch of the TV MSM interviewing some AGW profiteer quoting the Nicholas “Nick” Stern report. The guy parroted the usual AGW nonsense: “If we don’t act now things will be waaay worse in the future, blah, blah, blah. Just look at the “Nick” Stern analysis! Spend, spend, spend!” Of course the MSM interviewers had no capacity to challenge any of his statements, although they did nice bobble-head impressions.
These sorts of shocking revelations seem to be coming rapid fire now, on a near daily frequency. I have to wonder just how badly the entire green movement will be damaged by the CAGW collapse. So sad that the very people who sought to move this agenda forward seem to have crippled it beyond belief by throwing away their objectivity. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Unfortunately, there are some very good causes on the Green side that are probably set back because of the damage done by the activist-scientists. The REDD movement seemed to have some real potential. I would love to see re-forestation take root for its own sake, but not on a false premise.
M. Simon (13:13:46) :
“He who controls the past controls the future.”
He who controls the present controls the past.
“Daniel H (13:04:14) :
[…]
annual global mean surface temperature will rise from 14 degrees Celsius to 45 degrees Celsius by the year 2060.”
Sorry, nothing to be found under your link. I tried with google but the worst i could find was the good ole MIT dartboard predictive model:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-05-20-global-warming_N.htm
I think it’s probably going to be very important for us to be able to prove what actually went on this year (possibly in court) for everyone to keep all copies of old reports, documents, web pages etc that they may have in their possesion.
Owning the past and trying to control the future isn’t quite so easy when Joe Public has his own records that disprove what the offical line has suddenly become.