A formal announcement was made in a press conference made at 12:30PM EST by the IPCC, which is getting press, for example here. But at the time of this writing, there’s no mention of it whatsoever on the main IPCC web page here:
UPDATE: They’ve finally added a mention of the press release, click link to see the updated main page.
From the The Times by Ben Webster
The United Nations is to announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility.
A team of the world’s leading scientists will investigate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and ask why its supposedly rigorous procedures failed to detect at least three serious overstatements of the risk from global warming.
The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The review will be led by Robbert Dijkgraaf, co-chairman of the Interacademy Council and president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
…
More at the Times
However having a look at the IPCC web page and lack of any mention of it on the main page that I can find, it would seem the announcement is more about PR than procedure. It doesn’t share the side bar or center stage with the upcoming AR5 or any of the other blurbs they’ve released in their defense in the last couple of months. [Note as mentioned above, they’ve added a link on the main page now. ]
To find it, you have to visit the Press Information page where they write:
====================================================
 |
 |
Launch of Independent Review of IPCC Processes and ProceduresNew York, UN Headquaters, 10 March 2010 |
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC Chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri launched an Independent Review of the IPCC Processes and Procedures at a Press event held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday 10 March 2010. This was followed by a Press conference, where Robbert Dijkgraaf, Co-Chair of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), spoke to correspondents and answered questions.
The entire event was available live to journalists via the UN webcast at:: http://www.un.org/webcast/
The IPCC alerted media correspondents before it took place.
Accompanying documents are:
PRESS RELEASE – “Scientific Academy to Conduct Independent Review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
Processes and Procedures at Request of United Nations and IPCC”
Terms of Reference for the Independent Review by the IAC
Letters by the Chair of the IPCC and the UN Secretary General to the Co-Chairs of the InterAcademy Council (IAC)
(to be made available as soon as possible)
===================================================
It would seem they don’t much care for putting an attempt to restore credibility on the main page. Makes you wonder.
It will be interesting to see how they explain away some of the more blatant issues, like this one: IPCC Ignored Wildfire Corrections — 3 times
“The United Nations is to announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility.”
Good luck with that!
(Thanks for playing, IPCC, and here are some lovely parting gifts.)
Its a step in the right direction so I’m not going to knock them for that.
Its still a long way from Umbel pie though.
If Choo-choo Pachauri welcomes it, what does that tell you? Another thorough UN self examination.
The BBC web site says this review is a response to “small errors” in the last report.
… and that UN SG Ban Ki-moon reiterated that “I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of [the IPCC’s 2007] report.”
Obviously, his idea of credible evidence is evidence that supports his foregone conclusion.
Plainly not a visitor here.
The BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black, has just dismissed the howling errors in the last IPCC report as follows: “The IPCC has been under pressure over small errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. ” Would somebody like to take him apart for this?
I suspect the IPCC will be hand picking these “reviewers”
Here in the Netherlands we know Robbert Dijkgraaf as an AGW-believer. Not too long ago he said on television that there is an consensus amongst the climate scientists….
So, like we say in our little country: “the butcher is asked to test his own meat”.
Independent review?
Robbert Dijkgraaf is far from independent. He himself believes there is a consensus.
‘Wat je de afgelopen jaren ziet is dat er binnen de wetenschap zorgvuldig gebouwd is aan een consensus, iets waar iedereen zich eigenlijk wel in kan vinden.’
translated in English it says:
What you see is that in recent years within the scientific consensus on a carefully constructed, something that everyone can in fact be found.
The grammar is a bit crooked, because it is translated by google and I am not English myself.
This is an attempt to save face.
Heavy snow in Spain.
The weather events are in error
You write: “It would seem they don’t much care for putting an attempt to restore credibility on the main page. Makes you wonder.”
What’s this link on the right hand side for?
“Launch of Independent Review of IPCC Processes
and Procedures
New York, UN Headquarters,
10 March 2010
Follow this link”
I think a correction is in order.
REPLY: You missed the phrase “at the time of this writing” it is now a few hours later- perhaps somebody pointed this out to them after reading WUWT. -A
“UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC Chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri launched an Independent Review………”
Independent Review??? The Chair of the IPCC??? Reviewing the – – IPCC.
Ah ha! Right! Had to look that one up. In the dictionary under the word “corruption” there are two words – “Untied Nations.” Enough said.
In other news, US Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, in commenting about the IPCC’s climate-science reports to a WSJ editor said, “It’s frustrating, but scientists are human beings. Society has produced a greenhouse-gas layer that is absolutely, positively due to humans. But the uncertainties (of precise impacts) are quite large.”
Which begs the following “doubtful” questions: 1) Was there doubt about scientist being – human?, 2) Was there doubt that what a society of humans produces is due to – humans?, 3) Shouldn’t we doubt “the science is settled” with all these “uncertainties” – as large as they are?, 4) Greenhouse-gas LAYER? Ah, Dr. Chu, the AGW models assume, and require, CO2 to be a well-mixed gas…. Where exactly is this layer you speak of?
There is a “crowd-sourcing” project to audit the amount if peer-reviewed material in AR4:
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/03/help-audit-un-climate-report.html
You can volunteer your time.
It’s only to count the amount of peer-reviewed papers, not to make any judgment on their content.
” Mr Ban said the overall concept of man-made climate change was robust, and action to curb emissions badly needed.”
“Let me be clear – the threat posed by climate change is real,” said Mr Ban, speaking at UN headquarters in New York.
“I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of [the IPCC’s 2007] report.”
So no matter the outcome he will not a change his mind.
Robbert Dijkgraaf, the council’s co-chair, said the review panel will be chosen so that it includes both inside knowledge of the IPCC and outside perspectives.
“The panel will look forward and will definitely not go over all the vast amount of data in climate science,” he said.
Why not look backwards ?, are they so scared of what they may find ?, will it show that past results do not match past statements or future expectations ?.
Oh yeah . An AP article (seen on Drudge) written by the UN propagandist Seth Borenstien. What a surprise. AP and Seth, you suck.
@Jeremy 2 (11:50:35) :
“The BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black, has just dismissed the howling errors in the last IPCC report as follows: “The IPCC has been under pressure over small errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. ” Would somebody like to take him apart for this?”
I’d absolutely love to take him apart for this – and to feed him, Shukman and Harrabin to those poor polar bears.
But rationally, I wouldn’t want to stoop to their level. So I’d be quite prepared to settle for none of them ever receiving a groat of Licence Fee Payer’s (or tax payer’s) money, ever again.
@ Jeroen
What Jeroen wanted to say in the translation of the quote of Dijkgraaf:
‘Wat je de afgelopen jaren ziet is dat er binnen de wetenschap zorgvuldig gebouwd is aan een consensus, iets waar iedereen zich eigenlijk wel in kan vinden.’
is
“What we observed the last few years, is that within the scientific community they moved meticulously towards a concensus, something everybody can agree to”
Did anyone hear Lord Rees on Radio 4 this morning talking about “one or two errors” in IPCC’s fourth report?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8559000/8559209.stm
Mybe Leon Trotsky foresaw the demise of the AGW clique when he wrote; You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go now where you belong from now on-into the dustbin of history!
The UN has never conducted an “independent review” of any internal issue that didn’t amount to anything more than a white wash. There is a huge difference between an independent review and an unbiased review.
O.T.
First victims of global cooling????
“In its budget last week, the Harper government provided no new money for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences. The foundation is the country’s main fund for scientists studying everything from global climate models, to the melting of polar ice and frequency of Arctic storms, to prairie droughts and shrinking Rocky Mountain glaciers.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/budget-deep-freeze-will-lead-to-end-of-climate-research-lab/article1495628/
It is a start.
Probably the start of a coverup.
The funniest part of the report for me is that some AGW promoter is demanding that the review include the wicked denialist industry.
But at least they acknowledge ‘minor errors’.
Now we get to see them continue to hide the major errors.
OT, but sigificant:
The sun is not acting anything close to what the NASA consensus was for this cycle.
The sun is currently nearly blank of sunspots, and its activity stats are very low.
“Headquaters”? Looks like the byline wasn’t peer-reviewed.
Gee, a picture of a desert.
@jeroen: it is impossible to translate the flow of the dutch idiom literally.
What Dijkgraaf says:
“Over the past years the scientific community has carefully built a consensus that is acceptable to everyone.”
Independent, my ass.
” … attempt to restore its credibility.” Is this like “Hide the Decline”?
Ack (12:01:53) :
Yes, Ack, it will depend on who the reviewers are.
Wanna bet those reviewers will be bought and paid for by those friendly to the IPCC objectives?
I’d love to be proved wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.
The ‘independent review’ is to be carried out by the IAC, which is an umbrella organisation for National Science Academies who, by and large, have already come out in favour of AGW and the IPCC!
How ‘independent’ is that?
I’m sure we can predict it’s findings to within the accuracy of one of their
thermometers. It’s bit like crime reporting: it’s all that ever gets reported. I’m sick of crime reporting. Don’t need to hear about another single crime. The IPCC is getting close to those same nerve endings!!
The IPCC needs to call in a hazmat team. That place is contaminated with bad papers and rotten findings.
Just so I understand the situation:
An unelected body of career government workers now implanted in a bureaucratic organization that answers to no one and has clear expansion-of-funding goals is going to find an independent review of it’s own policies and practices to determine the source of errors that went undiscovered for years until citizens of multiple countries posted about them on the internet.
*sigh*
“We’re super cereal this time.”
I am on pins and needles waiting to hear the conclusions of this
independent review. Oh dear, oh my…what’s it going to be?
Their webpage, with camels crossing a hot, dry, dusty desert, just screams bias. A hot steamy jungle would have conveyed too much life, and we know there won’t be any left.
Haha… that’ll be the day! They’ll probably get Jones, Hansen, Gore, Schmidt, and similar ilk to sit on that panel.
‘The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s Royal Society’
Was it the Royal Society who wrote to Exxon-Mobil castigating them for their ‘inaccurate and misleading view of the science of climate change’ (google ‘royal society letter to nick’).
That’ll be be fair then.
With the BBC desperately cutting services to save money, if I were Richard Black I’d be worrying just his ‘small’ those errors really are.
Doh ! His = how. iPhones and predictive text !
Keep an eye on what the Chinese do with this. They have already telegraphed that they want AR5 to say what they want it to say:
“Stressing the fact that more scientific and consistent views are required, Xie said: …we will enhance cooperation in the report to make it more comprehensive.”
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/basic-ministers-task-ipccneed-for-rigour-in-climate-reports/383602/
The IPCC should be defunded. It is just another UN corrupt organization with no check and balances.
Just wanted to make a point of thanking all the worldwide contributors here, especially from parts of the world that most Americans get very little news of, such as The Netherlands, UK, Australia, etc. You provide valuable context to the little news from overseas that we do receive.
Interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning The Royal Society’s President Lord Reece
Interviewer: Do you think the current leadership of the IPCC should step aside?
Reece: I think we need to have every confidence in whoever is going to do the 5th assessment report.
Interviewer: With respect what does that mean for the current leadership?
Reece: I wouldn’t want to comment on the current leadership – we want to look forward and this committee needs to ensure that whoever does the next report learns from the mistakes made in the last report.
So it looks like there is a bullet with Pachauri written on it.
Feb 26: Breaking News: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry
Mar 10: Pachauri co-launches “Independent Review of the IPCC Processes and Procedures”
Seemingly likely future Pachauri statement: “I did nothing wrong! I followed all the rules! And it is the rules, as you can now see, that are a total mess!”
I have something I want the UN IPCC to answer: Please define “independent”.
I am sure the concensus will be that the investigation was very robust.
From BBC: “Robbert Dijkgraaf, the council’s co-chair, said the review panel will be chosen so that it includes both inside knowledge of the IPCC and outside perspectives. “The panel will look forward and will definitely not go over all the vast amount of data in climate science,” he said.”
So everything that is in AR4 from a scientific and factual basis will be explicitly excluded from the scope. Neither will it assess the methodologies in AR4, other than as something to improve upon. You can bet that they will try to spin this as validating and exonerating AR4, however: you see when they report in August, they won’t be making it clear that the facts, evidence and methods weren’t in their purview.
So they are just going through the motions so that they can keep the politicians off their back, without changing the message to the politicians in any way.
“Let me be clear – the threat posed by climate change is real,” said Mr Ban…”I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of [the IPCC’s 2007] report.”
It doesn’t matter how much evidence is produced that challenges the conclusions, the UN can always declare it “not credible”. That means one of two things: it’s “not credible” because it is not worthy of being believed; or it’s “not credible” because they choose not to believe it.
Andy Scrase (12:26:15) :
There is a “crowd-sourcing” project to audit the amount if peer-reviewed material in AR4:
(…)
Does it really matter how much peer-reviewed material was used, given how many of those “peers” live in the same small echo chamber, and the IPCC defenders say it doesn’t matter that they used “grey literature” anyway?
old construction worker (13:49:32) :
The IPCC should be defunded. It is just another UN corrupt organization with no check and balances.
Didn’t you hear? All 2500 to 4000 full-fledged scientists who worked on “the FAR” were all unpaid volunteers. Yup, absolutely, every last one of them. Even poor Pachauri only has his lowly TERI salary to get by on. Not a single person was paid to work on it. None at all. Nada, zip. So what will de-funding the IPCC accomplish?
BTW, future acronym: the Fourth Assessment Report-Certified Exonerated
(you can put it together yourself)
It will be with us! 🙂
Billy Liar (13:37:04) :
“Was it the Royal Society who wrote to Exxon-Mobil castigating them for their ‘inaccurate and misleading view of the science of climate change’ (google ‘royal society letter to nick’).”
Yes, the same Royal Society that tried to have Channel 4 (TV channel in UK) censured for showing the opinions of Christy, Singer, Lindzen, Reiter, Calder, Philip Stott and other prominent sceptics.
President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, who destroyed the careers of scientists who have dared to try to publish material that exposed the fallacies in the work he did as an astronomer in the 1960s and 1970s, said that the Ofcom judgment was wrong that exonerated Channel 4, which ruled that they had a duty under the terms of their licence to show minority reports! Wrong on the basis that it was DANGEROUS to allow the public to hear the views of sceptics lest they be persuaded by them. Yes, this man is the head of the Royal Society.
James F. Evans (13:10:12) : “Wanna bet those reviewers will be bought and paid for by those friendly to the IPCC objectives? I’d love to be proved wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Bribery is not a requirement. They need merely be offered a free tour of the UN building in Vienna:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1224377/British-nuclear-experts-17th-floor-UN-death-plunge-suicide.html
This whole thing reminds me of Sadam’s Oil For Food Program. That when horribly awry, so any guess about this going in the same direction?
Not a great confidence builder, is it? What a joke the UN is, at any and all levels and in all their endeavors.
If this bunch does an evasive, halfway job, like the Warren Commission, it’ll just make things worse for the UN by adding to the litany of mistakes and bad faith that can be heaped upon their side.
But they have no choice — how can they dig into matters like Dr. Lal’s claim of not receiving Georg Kaser’s letter, etc.? Any thorough rock-turning would be fatal.
If they were acting in good faith they would ask for a submission of questions to be investigated, and post them online, the way the UK’s Parliamentary Inquiry did earlier this year.
If they think they can restore credibility by getting a gang of institutions that have signed up to be “on message” to come up with a report that amounts to: “lots of silly mistakes, but the basic science is still sound” then they can sit on it and swivel! Despite all the scandal, they still are not even going to consider that there may be a problem with AGW!
This whole thing is a box-ticking exercise so that the western liberal oligarchy can proceed to strongarm in a UN-based carbon trading scheme.
“We’ve audited the IPCC and found overwhelming evidence that we are still in deadly danger” says Ed Millipede, staring wildly at the camera and foaming at the mouth…
The IPCC starts an independent review.
A large flock of birds suddenly falls from the sky.
Deforestation has yielded the (possible) discovery of a giant impact crater in Central Africa.
The inconsistencies are adding up, multiplying, growing exponentially, then being homogenized and averaged to normalcy. The matrix is destabilizing. Prepare for reboot.
“In view of the relevance of the IPCC assessments for global and sub-global policy-making processes, and to reduce the occurrence and minimize the potential impact of errors in the preparation of reports, further strengthening the IPCC processes and procedures is necessary to ensure continued scientific credibility of its assessments.”
Translation: We need to find new ways to stoke fear, without getting caught. However, until there is an investigation into the professional integrity of the IPCC Chair and associates – there is no “credibility.”
Robert Dijkgraaf will dress your windows, mark my words !.
Unfortunately, Britain’s Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences are no longer objective scientific societies but are themselves perpetrators of, and participants in, the AGW fraud.
The UN review will be a whitewash along the lines of “Mistakes were made, but the overwhelming scientific evidence … blah blah blah …”
Then, I hope some journos stand up at the press conference and demand to see this evidence.
@ Milwaukee Bob (12:26:02) : Do you have a link to the Chu comment re: greenhouse gas layer?
ML (12:46:59) :shhh…. we don’t want the warmers to know how utterly sensible Canada is!
So are they going to review the ‘errors’ with Phil Jones? At his interview with parliament ?
I see two things … first this dog and pony show won’t hunt. Second the only real science now is open science, all above boards, all done in public, open to anyone.
So why not we just start over …
This just in (-:10 Mar ’10, 16:36 PST:-) :
“A team of the world’s leading scientists investigated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and asked why its supposedly rigorous procedures failed to detect at least three serious overstatements of the risk from global warming.
“The review was overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members were drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“The review was led by Robbert Dijkgraaf, co-chairman of the Interacademy Council and president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“No mistakes were noted. End of report”
____________
Woooo, that’s fast work!
Of course they haven’t even started, how could it already be over? Unless,… no… no something like that couldn’t happen… you don’t think they’ve already decided what they’re going to find and say, do you?
Would you want to be on this Investigation Team looking at
the UN’s Climate Mafia?
The Royal Society in the UK is not a disinterested party when it comes to AGW. See http://royalsociety.org/Preventing-dangerous-climate-change/. So what are they doing on this panel? Then again, would one expect the UN really to set up an “independent” panel?
Well, what d’you know? Further to my post at 11.50, I re-visited the BBC website to re-read Richard Black’s article and found that ‘small errors’ has been changed to just ‘errors’! Could it be that somebody at the BBC has taken to reading WUWT?
Kinda says it all.
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.”—Upton Sinclair“
Data always beats theories. ‘Look at data three times and then come to a conclusion, ‘ versus ‘coming to a conclusion and searching for some data.‘The former will win every time.”—Matthew Simmons, ASPO-USA conference, Boston, MA, October 26, 2006
(Sweden)
Martin Rees?
Independent?? Hahahhahahahahah!!!!! Hahahahahahahah!
Royal Society independent?? Hahahahahahahah!
Dijkgraaf independant?? Hahahahahahahah! Hahhahahahahaha!
UNSA independant?? Hahahahahahahahahahah!
They have allready gone all in the AGW race!
Why should they do a rewiew when they allready declared the outcome?
Do they belive that the world is populatet intirely by morons??
This is an intellectual insult and a contempt of the people.
They have obviously lost all contact with reality.To start an obvious white wash at this stage…Im lost for words ….are trying to start a civilwar or a french revolution ?????? They wont get a way with this …not ever!!!
They are so desperate that they`ve turned blunt stupid!
Today, a provincial politician had gotten off with a $500 traffic violation fine as a plea bargain by the government for Drunk driving and Cocaine possession.
Can you see what IPCC will try to pull with their stacked review panel of peer reviewers?
SSDD
Unfortunately for them, it is an illusion to think this exercise will restore credibility – science in general has been so tainted by this mess that no one will trust the independent reviewers any more than the IPCC. Dismantling the IPCC would be a good start in restoring credibility, but to fully regain credibility, any replacing organization would have to be completely an open source environment. Only then can credibility start to be restored.
kadaka (14:36:23) :
‘Didn’t you hear? All 2500 to 4000 full-fledged scientists who worked on “the FAR” were all unpaid volunteers.’
Yea, I know. All those unpaid volunteers had to hitchhike to the last IPCC meeting, sleep on park benches, beg for food and wrote the “Summary” used paper. No Tax Payer funds involved.
If you point out a discrepancy between what the “consensus” says and the raw data, the in-house (but “independent”) review will find the pointer outer guilty. Trust me, I know.
Pamela Gray (18:11:07) :
If you point out a discrepancy between what the consensus says and the raw data, the in-house (but independent) review will find the pointer outer guilty. Trust me, I know.
Sounds like your employment sucked!
Hmm. The Royal Society. I’m sure Prince Charles will believe them.
Meanwhile, over at ClimateDepot.com they have an astonishing article from a site called Faxts.com – not to be confused with facts – that reveals just how desperate the gang is getting and what is coming.
They are already playing the victim card full tilt, and being as honest as usual.
Here’s the gist of it, starting with a fantastic headline based entirely on ‘expert’ speculation:
ENVIRONMENT: Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists
Tuesday, 09 March 2010 16:43 Written by Stephen Leahy
“UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 9 (IPS) – Climate change science has come under full-scale attack in a last-ditch effort to delay or prevent action by the U.S. government against global warming, experts warn.
U.S. Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma and climate change denier, in late February released a list of leading climate scientists he wants prosecuted as criminals for misleading the government. Those scientists are receiving hate mail and death threats.
”I have hundreds” of threatening emails, Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University in California, told Tierramérica.
He believes scientists will be killed over this. ”I’m not going to let it worry me… but you know it’s going to happen,” said Schneider, one of the most respected climate scientists in the world. ”They shoot abortion doctors here.”
This backlash against the evidence of climate change and the scientists themselves is not just a U.S. phenomenon. It is happening in Canada, Australia, Britain, and, to a lesser extent, in other European countries.
On the surface, this campaign is about a few errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2,800-page report released in 2007 and some 10-year-old personal emails stolen from Britain’s University of East Anglia.
But deeper down, this is the last big effort by the fossil fuel industry to delay action on fighting climate change, just as the tobacco industry successfully delayed understanding of the harmful effects of smoking for several decades, says Schneider…”
Etc., etc. And at the end they were kind enough to provide the source of this propaganda:
“(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)”
Thanks Anthony!
This site has the perfect conditions to become an established bastion of uncorrupted published climate science. It’s allready an established forum for open transparent peer rewiew, only the official declaration of it is what’s missing. A contrast to the bunker mentality of the IPCC.The completely idiotic idea to release a chapter every 3-5 years is as much out of date as the similar five year plans that where produced in the old CCCP.
So what’s missing? Founding! I think that we all who frequently visit this site have an obligation to contribute in some way. We know that its very important to develop and obtain this site. Because its a site we trust! To secure the intrest of the authors I think Anthony should set up a fund to finance both his work and the article authors publishing on the site. I’m sure funds will tick in.
In a situation where the old “papers” been published in “Nature” aso when it comes to climate science. The competition is weak now Anthony! Just go for it!!
When it comes to visitors, who beats this site?? You have all ready established a new way and attracted a new big public to the peer rewiew process. And for the science of climate it’s a boost!! Obviously, it’s hard to get papers published if you’re not pro AGW. Well on WUWT it may be easier to publish but harder to be approved to start with.
From the deepest of my heart I would like to thank Anthony and all the fantastic authors and their efforts and success to “publish” articles in a way that even laymen like me can understand. You are also by your actions fighting the blunt deep and wide corruption of both the Science and democracy. I know some of you are sticking your career necks out on behalf/in favor of us who only read and comment.
From the bottom of my heart, Thank you all! And thanks all of you who engage yourselves in this subject for all its complex democratic and scientific importance.
Maybe we will see this Buisiness card soon:
Anthony Watts
Chief Editor WUWT
The leading publishing/site of climate science
It’s hard for the UN to do good work when it has to rely on “deadbeat” nations for funding:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/white-house-sla.html
Look at Major League Baseball – the teams with the worst payrolls usually do the worst – Nationals, Pirates, Padres (all in the bottom 4 of 30 teams):
http://baseball.about.com/od/newsrumors/a/09teamsalaries.htm
You want quality work – you gotta pay for it:
2009 Yankees – largest payroll, World Series Champs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Major_League_Baseball_season
Al Gored!
Well??? They haven’t understood that “big oil” is funding the AGW movement.
Just check under “contributors” on East Anglia you will see.The problem with the AGW ers is that they don’t care about facts at all
.And when they after acting like drill sergeants plays the role of the “princess on the pea” it gets pathetic.And of course people gets angry when lied to and bullied.
Slabadang (17:10:21) :
(Sweden)
Martin Rees?
…
Do they belive that the world is populatet intirely by morons??
———
I knew a scientist who had been a PhD student of Dr. Rees, who spoke of him on occasion.
Dr. Martin Rees, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society, author of more than 500 research papers, and one of the first to propose that enormous black holes power quasars (and recently created Baron Rees of Ludlow, of Ludlow in the County of Shropshire) believes the world is populated largely by morons.
I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century. — Dr. Rees
(written in the 21st century)
Hope this helps.
Anu (20:24:49),
You’re getting desperate with your analogies. No one picked up Einstein in his rookie years, when he formulated special and general relativity. So enough with your baseball analogies.
Arguing that we should shovel good money after bad into the thoroughly corrupt UN is nothing but pathetic world government boot-licking. That is a completely hare-brained idea after the Oil-For-Food corruption, and the blue-helmeted raping and pillaging by UN soldiers who were sent to stop raping and pillaging.
We can provide more effective direct aid than the UN can, doubled and squared, with the same amount of money. So why should we funnel our tax money through the sticky fingers of the UN kleptocrats, who only leave the crumbs for the people who need it, and who pocket the rest?
The United Nations is to announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility.
They cannot gain any ground toward credibility until they remove and denounce Pachauri.
“The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.”
britain’s royal society has long been taken over by WWF activists,
the american NAS is run by stephen schneider and his streetfighters including michael mann’s enabler Gerry North.
the chinese academy of science, however, is an unknown.
Anu (20:24:49) :
It’s hard for the UN to do good work when it has to rely on “deadbeat” [U.S] nations for funding
Agreed, Anu – since Bali and Copenhagen certainly did not suffice, permanent quarters for the UN at Club Gitmo would appear to be the only answer, that is, short of also asking Big Oil for more funding.
Looks to me as if IPCC is going to get dumped and replaced with a bright, shiny IPCC release 2.0.
Bye bye choo choo.
I see some comments in your blog about Consensus. Has anyone ever looked up the word Consensus in a dictionary? Consensus actually means that there is no agreement on the matter under consideration. So are we all being duped? Following is an extract (part of page 3) from a 5 page article on this subject by a man named Sinai Waisberg. The link to the complete article is shown at the end. It confirms in my mind that it is control of the masses that is the ultimate goal.
Extract from Sinai Waisberg document, Global Warming Consensus:::
It is noteworthy that in the realm of politics there is a strong tendency for consensus to be formed only among the worst elements of society. The reasons for such were put forward by the economist Friedrich A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. The following passage contains the core of his argument:
In the first instance, it is probably true that, in general, the higher the education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and ―common instincts and tastes prevail. This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards. It merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar are the people with low standards (…) Here comes in the second negative principle of selection: [a political dictator] will be able to obtain the support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently (…) It is in connection with the deliberate effort of the skilful demagogue to weld together a closely coherent and homogeneous body of supporters that the third and perhaps most important negative element of selection enters. It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off-than on any positive task. The contrast between the ―we and the ―they, the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses (…)
Read complete 5 page document here:
http://www.globalwarmingconsensus.com/files/global-warming-consensus.pdf
@Al Gored (19:45:59)
————————————————————-have an astonishing article from a site called Faxts.com – not to be confused with facts – that reveals just how desperate the gang is getting and what is coming.
————————————————————-
Thank You!, here’s the Link:
http://faxts.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=505:environment-violent-backlash-against-climate-scientists&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=121
I wouldn’t give up on Dijkgraaf just yet.
He is a brilliant physicist and believes in true and unbiased peer review. And so he will not be very understanding of IPCC lead authors arrogantly dismissing legitimate reviewer comments.
It is true that he has said that there was a “consensus” among scientists that AGW is a fact, but in his mind at the time there was… Like many others he knew nothing of the sceptics arguments. How could he? He is not a climatologist and he was exposed to the same IPCC propaganda as the rest of us.
I think that it is quite possible that he will grind the IPCC into the ground.
We don’t do “whitewash” in Holland, which our prime minister discovered only a few weeks ago (regarding Iraq). Pachauri could be in for a big shock.
How long will it take for the scientific community to get its credibility back after the IPCC has destroyed it so compressively? With its peer-reviews, fudging of facts, independent reviews and politicising of science. Years? Decades? Or generations? (I guess its how much damage they do to the world)
Science was the only subject that held my attention at school (and Miss Hedges), I have completely lost faith in scientist, my new heroes are statisticians, well 80% of them.
They can’t even get the terms of reference correct and which should read ‘…….independant review of the deliberate errors made ……
Concerning the remarks of Robert Dijkgraaf, who is accused to be not independent:
First: he is chosen as he is the chairman of the Dutch Academy of Sciences and
co-chairman of InterAcademy Council, which is really a very logical choice.
Secondly: what is important is that a group of non-climate scientists are going to review IPCC. Of course, almost every scientist will have already some opinion on this matter by now, but that’s is hardly avoidable, that does not make them not independent. Independent does not mean opinionless, independent means he has had nothing to do with IPCC or climate science. Which scientist would you rather choose, McIntyre, Lindzen, PielkeSr, they are also hardly independent are they?
What is important is that Dijkgraaf is not a climate-scientist nor has he ever published anything concerning climate change. Furthermore, Dijkgraaf is not going to do this on his own, but he will form a committee of scientists who are gointg to do the review. But of course it easier to start shouting that it is not an independent review and the conspiracy has widened and now includes all national academy of sciences, (such as NAS (US) and the Royal Society (UK)). So, my question to the people here: who would you have appointed as “independent” reviewer, if not some respected non-climate scientist?
Somebody needs to point out to the BBC that if it were a few small errors there’d be no need for a review. If the governments in the vicinity of the Himalayan Glaciers had taken notice that AR4 had predicted the melt of the glaciers over the next tweny seven years billions of $$ could have been spent and people moved from their homes to make dams, or for their own safety. I don’t call that a small error. In fact it wasn’t an error at all it was a deliberate attempt to frighten, WG2 refused to use the predictions of WG1 and used the WWF instead. Georg Kaser the Austrian glaciologist wrote to Dr. Lal in 2006 pointing out the error and was ignored.
@Manfred
britain’s royal society has long been taken over by WWF activists,
the american NAS is run by stephen schneider and his streetfighters including michael mann’s enabler Gerry North.
Ah, I see the conspiracy has already widened! So NAS and RS are also not to be trusted, I should have known…
Has anyone had a look at the InterAcademy Council Web site here:
http://www.interacademycouncil.net/
The first item that struck me was “Toward a Sustainable Energy Future”, a project that relies on there being a need for low-carbon emission energy. Does this constitute a conflict of interest?
The second thing that I noticed was that the review only covers “processes and procedures”, not content (side bar on right).
Being an academy of science maybe their priority will be to see if the IPCC has actually follwed the scientific method, formed appropriate hypotheses and null hypotheses, which they then rejected with a sufficient confidence interval, based on rigorous experimental procedures, and that the experimental data is available for review etc.
If “integrity” (trustworthiness) were bestowed by titles I would have trusted every American President back to Truman, as it turned out, the last President I “trusted” was Truman –I was too young then to know the ways of the world.
@Leigh
The second thing that I noticed was that the review only covers “processes and procedures”, not content (side bar on right).
Correct and I think that is the right approach. It is really not possible for a relative small group of “outsiders” to review whether the content is correct, what is important is that should be reviewed whether the process itself was flawed or not.
“Being an academy of science maybe their priority will be to see if the IPCC has actually follwed the scientific method, formed appropriate hypotheses and null hypotheses, which they then rejected with a sufficient confidence interval, based on rigorous experimental procedures, and that the experimental data is available for review etc.”
I strongly disagree. The IPCC does not do any science itself, so they do not have to use the scientific method. The IPCC only reviews the current state of the science of climate change. So the committee should review whether that has been done in a fair way. Furthermore I think it is important to reconsider whether it is allowed to use grey literature and if so, under what conditions (and in which part of the report)
What standards is the “independent” review team auditing? Is there an international standards for scientists that the IPCC participating scientists were to adhere to; an instruction manual, so to speak, of how scientists are to go about the process of doing science? I work in automotive. The auto industry driven standard is ISO/TS16949. Documented transparency and communication between customers and suppliers is of utmost importance. Phil Jones didn’t seem to care much for documentation or transparency.
In regards to the time tested rules of scientific work, IPCC scientists failed to adhere to the process. That much is obvious. The “independent” review could come to that conclusion. To say AGW has consensus and the conclusions are valid or invalid may end up not being part of the scope of their “independent” review.
The question is, will AGW politicians finally admit that since the process is corrupted, then the data and models are suspect as well and should not be relied upon until the hypothesis has been tested over and over with similar results.
The “Worlds Leading Scientist” reviewing “The Worlds Leading Scientist”?
Sounds like a consensus to me!
Anu (20:24:49) :
The world would be a better place without the UN.
So the independant review of a UN bureaucracy begins, under funding of the UN, and they are not examining AR4 for content errors, just the process of building it so as to affect the next report. Huh! Sounds like the objective is to find a better way to deceive going forward.
The parameters of this “review” are as self-serving as the parameters for the IPCC itself.
Anu (20:24:49) :
It’s hard for the UN to do good work when it has to rely on “deadbeat” nations for funding:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/white-house-sla.html
++++
Oh, please. Go ahead and calculate what percentage of the total UN yearly budget is spent directly on the IPCC by the UN, and multiply that by the US shortfall in UN contributions for a total amount the IPCC is hurt by what you’re pointing at.
Then calculate how much free “in kind” contributions the IPCC receives from the participation of scientists funded wholly or primarily by the US government (and paid for directly out of the US budget instead of the UN budget). And not just US-based scientists either, as Dr. Jones pointed out in his emails that he has/had several US DoE grants.
Be sure to come back and tell us which number is larger, and by how much.
The InterAcademy Council is clearly a biased group – they have produced reports in the past where Rajendra Pachauri and Steven Chu were in the “study group”
See: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/IPCC_IAC.htm exposing the bias of this “independent” group.
geo (11:56:15) :
The total annual budget for the WMO is $56 million.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/Word_template_-_Assessed_Contributions_to_UN_Specialized_A.pdf
The total annual budget from the UN, for UNEP, is about $13 million. The rest of their budget is voluntary contributions:
http://www.unep.org/rms/en/Financing_of_UNEP/Regular_Budget/index.asp
The IPCC was was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The US owes about $1.6 billion.
It’s not the only country that owes money:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/un-finance/tables-and-charts-on-un-finance/the-core-un-budget/27405.html
but most of the other countries owe money for “peacekeeping” missions, not regular budget UN programs.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/un-finance.html
As of October 31, 2009, members’ arrears to the Regular Budget topped $829 million, of which the US owed 93% .
The UN Regular Budget is $2.073 billion.
Any way you slice it, the UN is missing a huge chunk of its budget.
I’ll leave it to you to show how many $millions Michael E. Mann’s volunteer work for the IPCC is worth.
This will destroy the reputations of all the national academies when the attempted coverup is exposed. They have been the gate keepers in so many fields its unknown what damage they have done. Like guilds and unions they can only prosper by enforcing a form of monopoly on labor keeping the independent operators and scabs out. If the InterAcademy Council (IAC) takes a hit we will see all sorts of fields opened up. You may not like the results but it will be very interesting.
If you believe in true science, that evidence can disprove a popular theory, then this wont effect you much. However much of what is taught is disputed in obscurity and often with experimental proofs that have gone for decades shut out of mainstream peer review. This is what the mainstream media and science fear most.
Curiousgeorge (16:15:30) :
sorry it took so long. didn’t see your “request” till now. hope your still checking.
WSJ
MARCH 8, 2010
Politics and Policy
Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the administration’s game plan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575104621269451154.html
And here is a few of the things they need to review – borrowed from another website:
1. The head of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has no background in Climate Science. His PhD is in economics and he worked as a railway engineer before becoming the head of the IPCC.
2. Only 52 scientists contributed to the 2007 IPCC summary for policy makers, although diplomats from over 115 countries contributed.
3. A paper that became a key reference source for the IPCC’s claimed that the effect of urban warming in eastern China was “negligible”. It turned out that 49 of the 84 climate monitoring stations used for the report had no history of their locations at all, meaning no one could verify where the data came from. This included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest no fewer than 18 “had been moved” during the study period to warmer urban areas. When the source data was re-examined it was found that urbanisation was responsible for 40% of the warming previously reported and claimed as evidence for “man-made” global warming.
4. When asked to independently review the IPCC’s last two reports on claimed sea-level rises, the reviewing scientist was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors was a sea level specialist”.
5. Up until 2003, the IPCC’s satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend in sea level, so the IPCC used an increase of 2.3mm recorded on a single Hong Kong harbour tide-gauge to claim a global sea level increase of 2.3mm.
6. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that the Himalayan glaciers were melting was derived from nothing more scientific than a phone interview with someone who wasn’t even a scientist.
7. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that “man-made” global warming would lead to increasing numbers of natural disasters, such as Katrina scale hurricanes, was based on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to critical peer-review.
8. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that “man-made” global warming was going to result in deficiencies of up to 50% in African agriculture was also based on a non peer-reviewed claim in a non-scientific paper.
9. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that “up to 40%” of the Amazonian rain forest could react drastically to even a slight reduction in rainfall was based on a non-peer-reviewed non-scientific paper.
10. The IPCC’s claim that 55% of the Netherlands was below sea level, rather than the actual 26%, has now been retracted.
11. According to the United States Historical Climateology Network (USHNC) 90% of US climate-monitoring surface stations have been found to be poorly situated, meaning that they have a margin of error greater than one degree Centigrade, which is huge in climateology terms.
12. In 1978 there were 6,000 climate-monitoring surface stations; today there are only about 1,200.
13. The vast majority of lost climate monitoring stations were sited in rural areas, meaning that overall results are distorted upwards due to a much greater percentage of such stations being located in urban areas, often on top of warm office blocks.
14. Carbon dioxide contributes only 4.2% to 8.4% of the greenhouse gas effect.
15. Only approximately 4% of carbon dioxide is actually man-made.
16. Water vapour accounts for between 90% and 95% of the green house gas effect.
17. An estimated 99.99% of water vapour is natural, meaning that no amount of de-industrialisation could get rid of it.
18. There have been many times when the temperature of the planet has been higher than it is now; these include the Medieval Warming Period, the Holocene and the Jurassic periods.
19. Antarctic ice core samples prove that increases in carbon dioxide follow increases in temperature by about 800 years, not precede them as claimed by the IPCC.
20. A leading figure in the “Climategate” scandal now admits that there has been no “statistically significant” global warming since 1995.
21. 2008 and 2009 were the two coolest years of the decade, neither of which are likely to be as cold as 2010.
22. During the Ordovician period carbon dioxide concentrations were twelve times higher than what they are now – yet the temperature was lower.
23. Solar activity is highly correlated with temperature change.
24. Studies show that half of all recent warming was solar in cause.
25. The planet Mars has warmed by about half a degree Centigrade since the 1970’s, which is about as much as the Earth over the same period; as far as we are aware there is no industry on that planet.
26. The 0.7 degree Centigrade increase in temperature over the last century is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, climate trends.
27. The distance between the Earth and the Sun varies; thus affecting the amount of heat energy the earth receives.
28. Earth’s axial tilt oscillates between 21.4 degrees and 24.8 degrees, which affects the distribution of the sun’s energy across its surface.
29. Antarctica has 90% of the earth’s ice and it is growing, not shrinking as claimed by the IPCC.
30. The Arctic sea ice has now returned to its 1979 levels, which is when monitoring began.
31. The Arctic ice caps have recovered from their loss in 2007.
32. The Arctic is now one degree Centigrade cooler than it was in the 1940’s.
33. Sea level 81,000 years ago was one metre higher than it is now while carbon dioxide levels were lower.
34. According to satellite data sea level has been decreasing since 2005.
35. Instead of damaging forests, the increased level of carbon dioxide has been helping them grow.
36. Some climate scientists argue that urban warming is responsible for half of the global warming trend from 1980 to 2002.
37. According to a leaked “Climategate” email, temperatures recorded in Darwin, Australia, were shown to be falling by 0.7 degrees Centigrade per century – but after IPCC “homogenisation” they were recorded as increasing at 1.2 degrees Centigrade per century.
38. It is alleged by Russian scientists that Britain’s Hadley Climate Research Unit “cherry picked” climate data from just 25% of Russia’s surface weather monitoring stations, thereby overstating Russia’s warming by a very significant two-thirds of a degree Centigrade for the period between the 1870’s and 1990’s.
39. It is alleged that Britain’s Hadley Climate Research Unit, the body at the centre of “Climategate”, threw out original temperature data that could have been re-examined to verify its findings, because it claimed it did not have “storage space”.
40. The owners of the trading floor where the carbon credits will be traded, allegedly including Goldman Sachs and Al Gore, stand to make trillions of dollars if cap-and-trade is passed by the US administration.
From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031002891.html?hpid=topnews
“An outside review of a U.N. panel — promised after flaws were uncovered in the panel’s most recent report on climate change — will not recheck that report’s conclusions and will instead focus on improving procedures for the future, officials said Wednesday.
U.N. officials defended their decision, saying that there is still no reason to doubt the most important conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a landmark report in 2007, the panel found “unequivocal” evidence that the climate was warming.
“Let me be clear: The threat posed by climate change is real,” Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York. “Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change, nor does it diminish the unique importance of the IPCC work.”
Anu (17:38:15) :
Nice try. The total UN yearly budget is on the order of $40B/year. If we take $69M (your number for WMO and UNEP), and assume 25% of that is for IPCC (which is probably still high) then that is .04% of the UN budget. .04% of $1.6B is $640K.
Yes, I think it is clear that voluntary “in kind” contributions of scientist time paid for directly or indirectly out of the US budget is well north of that.
milanovic (03:55:02) :
your consiracy attribut is misleading.
there is no proven global conspiracy.
however, there is proof of conspiracy on local and chapter scale. the cru emails made this obvious to anyone.
the schneider group obviously intends to use the NAS as their tool to propagate their own agenda.
WWF acivists have produced dozens of misleading “scientific reports”, to influence governments, the public and the IPCC and they now occupy leading positions in politics and sicence, particularly in the UK.
the philantropist billionaire branch finances his own global network.
so there are quite obviously strings and networks of likeminded people whose intention is not to work openly and to follow scientific ethics codes.
though there is no proven global conspiracy (with another line of puppetmasters in he background), I think conspiracy laws are sill applicable to these perhaps independant groups.
geo (10:36:34) :
Anu (17:38:15) :
Nice try. The total UN yearly budget is on the order of $40B/year. If we take $69M (your number for WMO and UNEP), and assume 25% of that is for IPCC (which is probably still high) then that is .04% of the UN budget. .04% of $1.6B is $640K.
—–
In 2007, the UN Regular Budget was $2.054 billion.
The budget for UN Specialized agencies was $2.198 billion.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/un-finance/tables-and-charts-on-un-finance/un-system-budget/27505.html
If your total budget for an organization was $4.252 million, and one of your accounts receivable owed you $1.6 million for years (37.6% budget shortfall), exactly where would you cut expenses ? Any one item might seem negligible, but you must make up for a huge shortfall. Quality would suffer.
Yes, I think it is clear that voluntary “in kind” contributions of scientist time paid for directly or indirectly out of the US budget is well north of that.
I heard Al Gore makes about $500 billion a year, so if he donates 3 hours of his time to the IPCC, that’s worth about $300 million off of the US debt (he works 100 hour weeks).
@Manfred
For the record: I was being sarcastic, but anyway thinking in terms of conspiracies is not very productive in the discussion I think. The same goes the other way round: there are also ample conspiracies of oil companies paying the denialist movement, it can be just as well argued that they do not work openly or follow scientific ethics code. But both arguments are not productive.
If I see the comments here, it appears that the majority is believing in conspiracies of “global warming alarmists” and that is very difficult to take seriously.