Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Here on WUWT, Ron Cram has provided an interesting overview of a number of people’s ideas about desirable changes to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC). He proposes that the IPCC provide us with a majority and a minority view of climate science, rather than just a single Assessment Report.
I’m here to propose something very different. Some people think the IPCC should be disbanded. I’m not one of them.
Figure 1. The old time methods are still the best.
I think disbanding the IPCC is a bad idea. Instead, I think that we should take the IPCC to the crossroads at midnight and pound an aspen stake through its heart, stuff its head with garlic, and scatter the remains to be disinfected by sunlight so it can never, ever rise again.
Let me give you a list of my reasons why this is the preferable outcome, in no particular order:
• The IPCC has provided very little of value in the way of deliverables. The reports have been clearly political, heavily slanted, and shot through with third-rate science and worse, NGO puff pieces disguised as science.
• No other branch of science wants, needs, or has anything like the IPCC … which argues against it being a useful construct. Nor would most branches of science tolerate that kind of nonsense, a bunch of government bureaucrats summarizing the science.
• Instead of providing us with any kind of certainty or agreement, the IPCC has been the source of endless disagreements, arguments, and food fights. It is a force for dissension and division, not for scientific advancement and harmony. It has made the split worse, not better.
• Dr. Pachauri has shown repeatedly that he views his tenure as an Imperial Presidency, immune to comment or dissent. Indeed, his view permeates the entire organization.
• The “Summary for Policymakers” is done with lots of input from politicians. Letting politicians assist in the writing of the scientific summary for themselves and other politicians … bad idea.
• A number of underhanded, unethical, and generally dirty things have been done under the IPCC umbrella. As a result, there is a huge segment of the population who will automatically adopt the opposite position to any IPCC recommendations … and often with good reason.
• People don’t trust the IPCC. We have little confidence in the players, the science, the system, or the so-called safeguards. We’ve been lied to, systematically lied to, by the IPCC. How anyone can think the IPCC is still relevant to public policy after that is beyond me. Abraham Lincoln knew better. In a speech in 1854, he said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
And regarding the confidence of the public, nothing has changed in the last century and a half since Lincoln spoke … which is another reason why it is useless to try to keep the IPCC alive. Confidence in the IPCC is dead and it will not come back, it’s not pining for the fjords, it’s terminal, put it out of its misery.
• Previous dirty fighting has soured a number of excellent scientists on participating in the IPCC process.
• The participants are chosen by politicians of the various countries … hardly a scientific method for doing anything.
• The great Ravetzian experiment has been a failure. Jerome Ravetz is one of the founders of and hucksters for “Post-Normal Science”. He recommends including all stakeholders like politicians and planners and social scientists into the scientific process, just like the IPCC did. And he thinks that in times like the present, we need “Post-Normal Science”. (In the best Orwellian doublespeak fashion, this is not a science at all, despite the name.) Post-Normal Science holds that we need to substitute “quality” for truth. The IPCC fits right into Ravetz’s vision of “quality” and participation, and this is exactly what the IPCC claims to do — assess the quality, from the viewpoint of all the stakeholders, of the various parts of climate science.
I’m not saying Jerome Ravetz planned this in any way, he didn’t as far as I can tell. But quite unintentionally, for whatever reasons and circumstances, the IPCC has been a grand experiment in Post-Normal Science.
That experiment has failed. And not just failed, it has crashed and burned with spectacular pyrotechnics and outrageous sound effects. In addition to unending disputes, it has brought us the amusingly meretricious self-aggrandizement of third-rate scientists like Michael Mann.
The attempt to introduce some kind of “quality” assessment into climate science has not led to a greater agreement on where we stand and what to do. Instead, the IPCC and its post-normal science process has led to infighting, and to chapter authors promoting and hyping the “quality” and the “robustness” of their own work, and to questions and protests from reviewers being routinely ignored or run over, and to people gaming the system, and to everything but what the IPCC was supposed to lead to – some kind of agreement on the main points.
And that is why we need to drive a stake through its heart. It was based on false premises. One was the premise that we need something like the IPCC at all. No other arena of scientific endeavor has such a thing … oh, except for the UN bureaucrats latest power grab, a new “IPCC for the biosphere”. (OK, for those who don’t know how that will turn out, spoiler alert! The outcome will be another train wreck … I can see that many of you are surprised.)
Another very important false premise was the charmingly naive idea that Lead Authors would treat their own work the same as they treated the work of other scientists … BWAHAHAHA. Only a lapsed Marxist like Ravetz or one of his kin would be foolish enough to think that would end well. I strongly suspect that Ravetz must actually believe in the goodness of man.
Look, folks, the US Constitution works because none of the founding fathers trusted each other one inch. They didn’t believe in the goodness of man, they’d seen too many kings and tyrants for that nonsense to fly. That’s why the US has three equal branches of Government, so no one branch and no one man would get too powerful. They didn’t trust people a bit.
Why didn’t they trust anyone? Because they were realists who knew that given a chance, someone would grab the power and use it for their own interests and against the interests of the people.
Like, for example, what Michael Mann did when he was appointed Lead Author for an IPCC Chapter. Because the people who set up the IPCC believed in things like fairies, AGW, unicorns, and the basic goodness of humanity, Mann had no constraints on his scientific malfeasance. He was free to promote his Hockeystick garbage as though it were real science.
So that’s why I say kill the IPCC, deader than dead, and scatter the remains. It is built from the bottom up on false ideas, fantasies of human goodness and of the benefits of political involvement that will ensure failure even if the motives are good.
But if for our sins we have to have something like the IPCC, it needs to be set up so that no one faction can take control of the outcome. We need an IPCC Charter that is specifically designed, like the US Constitution, to prevent people from doing those things that we know they will otherwise gladly do. So if we have to have an IPCC, we need a new Charter for a new organization, a charter that starts from the premise that humans will definitely lie, cheat, and corrupt the science if given the slightest chance.
As a result, if we don’t kill the IPCC, the Fifth Assessment Report will be guaranteed to bring us at least three things among its cornucopian lack of benefits:
Liars, cheats, and corrupters of science.
My conclusion? Considering the widespread damage done by the first four attacks, I’m not sure that climate science is strong enough to endure the impending attack from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Kill the unclean beast now, while we still have a chance of saving the science.
w.
Areal good one Wiillis, keep them coming, thanks to these idiots a wind turbine has just been built 300 meters from my house, what can you do about the noise? And the value ?
Willis, that’s one of the most profound posts on why the IPCC should be dismantled I’ve read so far. I’m happy to supply a nice big stake to do the job. I’ll even spring for the hammer as well.
Nominated this one for best post of the year award!
Bravo!
The IPCC is another example of why religion should be kept out of science. And also why religion should be kept out of politics: and also science out of politics.
And thanks for your insight that PNS has at its heart, the religious impulse. And so seeks to merge all three.
The bigger problem is not directly from the millenialist religion of the Warmists, (which is being exposed by the mere passage of time) but that their infiltration of Science and Politics gives justification to other Thanatics, Creationists, and Fundamentalists of all types.
From the tone I gather you too think there has been far too much PC lately. Like two decades of it. Finally members of Congress agree and I definitely agree and could never have said it better myself Willis.
I totally agree.
I fear that what might happen is some sort of political compromise whereby all the IPCC villains get golden handshakes and honourable retirements etc.
I think that if there is to be any justice the whole structure needs to be ripped apart and exposed for the absolute atrocity that it is.
ROTFL Willis you owe me a keyboard – but have a parrot
Bravo, the metaphorical image is wonderful. Good also to see skeptics start to say what they demand, rather than just complaining.
The IPCC has spawned a climate industry that has become a disseminated cancer in Australia, invading every level of government, schools and business. It must all go. Above all, it should not be allowed to survive by mutation through switching the goalposts to claim benefits of energy security, sustainability, business opportunity, ocean acidification or just some intrinsic beauty of being green. I would repeal every law with the word climate, spill every job with the title containing ‘climate’ and stop every subsidy, abolish every government department or office with names containing ‘sustainability’ or ‘climate’.
A few climate research centres should be re-established and publicly audited and transparent. Mild warming mitigated. True pollution should be tackled properly and rainforests protected for the right reasons. In time, as resources dwindle, leaps in technology and market forces will naturally find alternatives.
BTW, It is eerie how IPCC seems invisible already – Australia’s Climate Change minister Penny Wong referred to IPCC 15 times in her speech 12 months ago; I have not heard the government or warmists utter the words since. It’s a pity because near the end there, Pachauri’s and IPCC’s outrageous statements were the sceptic’s best friends.
Willis, check your email. If you don’t have an email from me, drop me a line please
Anthony
Willis, there is one sentence I would take issue with:
I think you have seriously over-rated Michael Mann. I know of some perfectly good fifth-rate scientists who do better work than the Mannster.
Thanks Willis, a nicely argued, heartfelt piece. You have my vote.
Willis, you have nailed it! Anyone in power who uses the words “Trust Me” is NOT to be trusted. This does not mean that we should not trust any person, but that we need checks and balances to ensure that public bodies act in trustworthy ways; the IPCC has been encumbered with no such strategies and cannot be allowed to continue as it will ruin the Western world if allowed to continue unchecked.
** rimshot, Willis!
I concur… and do the same to the UN while you’re at it. The whole thing is rotten to the core and always has been.
Willis, I’m totally with you.
But we still have a problem… all the “science” organizations worldwide like NAS, Royal Society, and their partners-in-crime like BBC.
I maintain strongly that we need a “two-party government system” for things to work. And I think that Bill Gates and Open Source have shown us the way for the future of Science. I think it has to be Establishment versus Open Source.
Therefore, I maintain, we need a wiki. Yes, I’m still working on this idea and actually have a wiki domain for this though currently it is simply asleep. All good ideas take time, this one is too much for me alone, and it needs to involve the whole sceptics’ community.
I’d like to pick up the wiki project again presently, but the step I’ve taken for now is a major edit, update and rewrite of my Primer (and associated pages). Click my name. I think this update stands tall in its own right, and could be useful to circulate more widely – and I’d like the sort of “peer review” one gets here too.
Go Willis !
As much as I agree with your sentiments Willis, there is NO CHANCE that the IPCC will be killed off.
The damned organization was set-up by the UN and Europeans, the MOST CORRUPT, NEPOTISTIC and SELF CENTERED bunch of politicians and beurocrats the world has ever seen.
So a little bit of Australiana for you, you got BUCKLEYS and NUN chance the IPCC will be disbanded.
Well said, Willis. I especially like what you had to say about our Constitution. It is too much for me to so trust humanity that I would sacrifice my liberties to a handful of self-proclaimed “experts” and their bureaucratic lackeys on this particular subject, or any other subject for that matter. As Lord Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Human history is full of examples of this, and IPCC is just another one.
If you need a hammer to drive that stake, I’ll be glad to help provide one.
Cross-posted from the NoTricksZone:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita/index.html
Spot on, Willis – and TWE and Lucy Skywalker, come to that, here in the comments. There is a whole vast tier of self-serving powermongers, who want to rule us all regardless of either our opinions or inconvenient physical fact, which needs to be stripped out and thrown away. Permanently.
Here in the UK, the Guardian is bewailing today that their beloved “Climate Change Committee” might suffer some damage in Cameron’s latest “Bonfire of the Quangos” (surprise! /sarc). Funny thing, from where I sit quangos and global power groups are more like the Hydra: every time you abolish one of them, three spring up to take its place, which is perhaps why we never see any smoke from the “Bonfire”. Kill ’em all. (the quangos and “global government” organisations that is, not the individuals – they need help.)
Excellent post Willis thanks.
It is heartening to be pipped by Willis’ better writing. For several years I have complained that climate “science” lacked the performance and credibility to be called a true science like Physics or Chemistry.
There are rules of conduct. Like taking accurate measurements. Like verifying them. Like carrying forward errors and stating them properly. Like mentioning confounding variables. Like letting the results speak for themselves, rather than towards a cause.
As a chemist, I know that in simple aqueous solutions, phenolphthalein changes to a pink colour above pH of about 8. This is observable, it is repeatable, it is explainable.
Although this is a very simple example, it stresses the point that it is not open to interpretation for a cause. Much of what I have read from the IPCC would challenge an assertion like this if it suited a political cause to do so.
The IPCC has yet to reference a publication in which greenhouse gases induce temperature changes on Earth to an accurate, verified, error-estimated extent, with quantification of confounding effects. I suspect that the IPCC would reject this assertion because I did not use the full IUPAC terminology for “phenolphthalein” – or some similar diversion.
Willis,
As Lucy S. says, the fact on the ground is that the “authorities” like NAS and UK-RS are promoting CAGW. Is must be understood that politicians will rely on them. They have to. Your post is fine, and you will get a lot of support from WUWT commentators, but it wont change a thing. Please use your intelligence and efforts to come up with a way to convince the NAS, the AMS, the APS and so on to change their tunes. Until the “Authorities” and the MSM change their tune, life will go on. I think what you are doing is called “preaching to the choir” in some countries. Do you know what I mean? The whole AGW thing is harming my own life. I spend so much time looking at it. It is angering my family. I want it resolved. Please tell us how to do that. If you cannot change the NAS etc., doesnt that mean that they are right? Your post only increases my personal stress. I think that is how they make lab rats go crazy. Present them with problems with no solution.
Well said Willis. Our dear leader is determined to have a carbon tax in July 2012 and an ETS in 2015. To this end she has employed an economist and a mammologist, who also happen to believe in MMAGW/CC and who have both made serious dough out of it, to brainwash the rest of us into believing her tax is vital to our survival. La Nina is playing havoc with the agenda because the forecast perpetual drought is over, for a while at least. The change could not have come at a better time; natures “climategate ” if you will.
There is considerably more discussion about nuclear which is driving the Greens spare. True to form they are hyping wind power and other renewables. During a recent hot spell in South Australia the state was drawing 3999 Mw of which 49 Mw was being supplied by wind. Problem is SA has 1050Mw of installed wind power. The excuses and the cries of cherry picking was more extreme than the weather.
Willis is right to call for the decapitation of the IPCC as it is responsible for the madness we see here and around the world as brainless governments try to “Stop Climate Change”.
Awww, c’mon, Willis. Don’t sugar-coat it. Tell us what you really think ;o)
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Some good arguments there. I’d like to see the counterpoint from an IPCC supporter explaining all the good that has come from the money spent. (crickets…)