It needs catastrophe scenarios to sell their ideas
By Rupert Darwall (writing at NRO)
With the clock ticking toward December 2015 and the last chance to conclude a global treaty at the Paris climate conference, the job of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to ratchet up the alarm. This it did in its report, released at the beginning of the week, on the impacts of climate change. It scored a bull’s-eye in the Financial Times: “Climate change harms food crops, says IPCC,” the headline ran. “Climate Signals, Growing Louder,” the New York Times opined, though the reality is that the volume is being turned up by the IPCC, not the climate itself. For the IPCC, this is mission accomplished — at considerable cost to the body’s residual credibility and integrity.
The IPCC’s Working Group II, tasked with assessing the risks and impacts of climate change, could have chosen to make amends for its previous effort in 2007, which was widely panned for bias and numerous errors. Such was the outcry over the 2007 report that the Dutch parliament ordered the country’s Environmental Assessment Agency to carry out an audit. It found that the working group was dismissive of the potential benefits of climate change, and it criticized the group’s process for being insufficiently transparent.
…
Its most eye-catching claim (in the new WGII report) is that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are more common to date than positive impacts are. [Note: covered here at WUWT -Anthony]
This improbable claim finds only the weakest support in the main body of the report, with its qualification that climate change played a “minor role.” It is, the report states, “extremely difficult” to define a clear baseline from which to assess the impact of climate change, and many non-climate factors are often difficult to quantify.
More egregiously, the summary speaks of rapid price increases following climate extremes since the 2007 report. This negligence amounts to downright dishonesty, as the summary omits mention of one of the principal causes of the 2007–08 spike in food prices, which is highlighted in the main body of the report. It was not climate change that increased food costs, but climate policies in the form of increased use of food crops in biofuel production, exacerbated by higher oil prices and government embargoes on food exports.
In attempting to attribute changes in farm output to climate change, the IPCC makes heavy use of models linking climate to agriculture, most of which assume that farmers don’t change their behavior as the climate changes.
Read the whole thing here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374742/why-ipcc-report-neglects-benefits-global-warming-rupert-darwall
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Rupert Darwall is the author of The Age of Global Warming: A History.
Having read it, I highly recommend it. – Anthony
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CO2, the life-giving gas, not “Carbon Pollution”. A Limerick – and explanation.
What then is this “Carbon Pollution”?
A sinister, evil collusion?
CO2, it is clean,
Makes for growth, makes it green,
A transfer of wealth, a solution.
http://lenbilen.com/2014/02/22/co2-the-life-giving-gas-not-carbon-pollution-a-limerick-and-explanation/
IPCC is an inter government organisation that has the ‘last word’ on the already tightly directed reports based on 12,000 reports done by researchers for free [personally i would have felt like a ‘useful idiot’ doing political work for free for the govt hiding behind the mask of ‘science’ even if i did a get a nobel prize]
the ipcc do as they are told so who is doing the telling? who is the wizard of oz conducting this show trial of co2 to sell social ecology?
Actually, IPCC AR5 is a huge walkback from AR4. On the level of Napoleon’s walkback from Moscow.
If we see any more “advances to the rear” like this, they will disappear up their own rear.
For the skeptics, AR5 is what victory looks like. These things take time. After all, Rome wasn’t burnt in a day.
evanmjones says:
April 2, 2014 at 8:49 am
Actually, IPCC AR5 is a huge walkback from AR4.
Yeah, a “walkback” being promoted as “it is worse than we thought”.
Any admission of the benefits of global warming or the benefits of higher atmospheric CO2 levels will cause debate and the IPCC folks, as we all know, do not want that.
evanmjones says:
April 2, 2014 at 8:49 am
Actually, IPCC AR5 is a huge walkback from AR4. On the level of Napoleon’s walkback from Moscow.
If we see any more “advances to the rear” like this, they will disappear up their own rear.
For the skeptics, AR5 is what victory looks like. These things take time. After all, Rome wasn’t burnt in a day.
Unfortunately, the authors of the ‘Summary‘ for Policymakers are prepared to misrepresent what science there is in the WG reports in order to keep the gullible media publishing unsupported scare stories. The UN and politicians are fully aware that nobody reads the actual reports so they will continue to claim that ‘The Science’ provides full support for their malthusian policies based only on the reported ‘summary’. The main loser here is Science as trust in science is inexorably destroyed.
Re Ian W. “The main loser here is Science as trust in science is inexorably destroyed.” You are right, ‘science’ is now about non-science, alchemy, quackery, palm-reading, shouting, grant $, tenure, and fear-mongering to build up ever-more governmental control over the peasants. A true dark-age. Climate is a convection system, with about 1 million many:many relationships, a fact I remember learning in grade 9 science. IPCC + warmtards = grade 8 level thinking.
@Evan Jones. I enjoyed that. No, Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. But it certainly did burn 😉
Huge benefits,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130708103521.htm
So sad to see science used this way, but it is life as usual. Those seeking more power will use anything they think will give them more power.
How about this, from the International Food Policy Research Institute:
http://www.ifpri.org/pressrelease/agricultural-technologies-could-increase-global-crop-yields-much-67-percent-and-cut-foo
AR5 WG2 is actually reasonable in many of the details. I have been scrutinizing 4.3.2.5 on extinctions for a different purpose. But the summaries up get increasingly biased and distorted, so that by the SPM the statements made bear almost no relationship to the underlying information.
The detailed extinctions text recignizes many other causes, that the only climate ‘evidence’ in the literature is in central American amphibians, and that the attribution there is dubious because of invasive fungal disease chytrodiomycisis. Yet the SPM still talks about mass climate change driven extinctions. The only climb down was not providing a percentage estimate as in AR4 (since that is provably wrong). Just like no AR5 ECS estimate, because it would have been revised substantially downwards. The PR is worse than the SPM, and the SPM is much worse than the underlying actual evidence supports.
Next up for detailed scrutiny will be ocean acidification (corals and calcification).
Global warming = longer growing season = more production.
Global cooling = shorter growing season = less production.
The devastating effects of a cooling climate are well known.
evanmjones says:
If we see any more “advances to the rear” like this, they will disappear up their own rear.
Great visual, thanks for that. The IPCC is climbing down, and it must be very painful. But they were completely wrong, and they must acknowledge it. Otherwise, they will look like swivel-eyed fanatics, impervious to scientific evidence.
But not so with their True Believers, who have invested their time, their money, their reputations, and their egos in the carbon scare. Those people are being cast adrift by their Authority’s climbdown. This will make them really go ballistic, because they are incapable of admitting they were wrong. We see it here all the time.
The fact is that CO2 is harmless. There is no scientific evidence showing any global harm due to the rise in that tiny trace gas – from 3 parts in 10,000 to 4 parts in 10,000, over a century and a half. It has made no measurable difference at all. Global T is not rising, but Michael Mann is still insisting that carbon is gonna getcha.
CO2 is not only harmless, it is also very beneficial to the biosphere. More is better. The planet is measurably greening as a direct result of increased CO2.
That fact puts the alarmist cult in an unbearable position. All of their predictions have turned out to be wrong. The only results of more “carbon” are beneficial results. There is no identifiable downside.
The IPCC needs to climb the rest of the way down. That will require a few more IPCC scientists to publicly admit what the rest of us know: the IPCC was simply wrong.
Ottmar Edenhofer knows the real IPCC agenda — and it isn’t to protect humanity and the biosphere from ‘carbon’. The IPCC exists to legitimize expropriating the earned wealth of U.S. and Western citizens, and hand it over to those who didn’t earn it. The IPCC just needed an excuse. Fortunately, Planet Earth is sticking their excuse right where it belongs.
From the article:
Perhaps the recent crop of juvenile delinquents didn’t know about the effects of some of their predecessors’ policies. We should give them an “off-ramp”
The IPCC will be proven wrong by what really happens in the weather and overall climate of the earth. Unfortunately, most of us now living more than likely will not be around to see that day. The IPCC is becoming wise by making more cautious and long-term predictions.
The only climb down was not providing a percentage estimate as in AR4 (since that is provably wrong).
Don’t let’s forget how AR5 SPM gave “extreme weather” the old heave-ho.
That was huge.
The IPCC is climbing down, and it must be very painful.
I feel their pain. And I confess I am finding it enjoyable.
Maybe some day the IPCC will invite some farmers to submit their thoughts for inclusion in the next official report. Oh, wait… farmers are too busy to waste time on that kind of nonsense. Never mind.
/snark
Rud Istvan says:
Agreed.
“The Large Print Giveth, the Small Print Taketh Away.”
We see again a familiar pattern in this round of IPCC releases, this time the WGII SPM and Report. As previously, the SPM features alarming statements, which are then second-guessed (undermined) by the actual science imbedded in the report details.
For example, I looked the topic of ocean acidification and fish productivity. The SPM asserts on Page 17 that fish habitats and production will fall and that ocean acidification threatens marine ecosystems.
WGII Report, Chapter 6 covers Ocean Systems. There we find more nuance and objectivity:
“Few field observations conducted in the last decade demonstrate biotic responses attributable to anthropogenic ocean acidification” pg 4
“Due to contradictory observations there is currently uncertainty about the future trends of major upwelling systems and how their drivers (enhanced productivity, acidification, and hypoxia) will shape ecosystem characteristics (low confidence).” Pg 5
“Both acclimatization and adaptation will shift sensitivity thresholds but the capacity and limits of species to acclimatize or adapt remain largely unknown” Pg 23
“Production, growth, and recruitment of most but not all non-calcifying
seaweeds also increased at CO2 levels from 700 to 900 µatm Pg 25
“Contributions of anthropogenic ocean acidification to climate-induced alterations in the field have rarely been established and are limited to observations in individual species” Pg. 27
“To date, very few ecosystem-level changes in the field have been attributed to anthropogenic or local ocean acification.” Pg 39
I am finding much more credible the Senate Testimony of John T. Everett, in which he said:
“There is no reliable observational evidence of negative trends that can be traced definitively to lowered pH of the water. . . Papers that herald findings that show negative mpacts need to be dismissed if they used acids rather than CO2 to reduce alkalinity, if they simulated CO2 values beyond triple those of today, while not reporting results at concentrations of half, present, double and triple, or as pointed out in several studies, they did not investigate adaptations over many generations.”
“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”
They are sounding ever more like panicked politicians.
To say the IPCC is climbing down is to have not read the chapters on adaptation. IPCC is calling on local levels from mayors to regional commissions to school districts to regulatory frameworks to implement its human development , anti-inequality, look out for developing countries and impoverished groups approaches to get to equity without so much as a By Your Leave.
Chapter 20 even says “In considering possible needs for transformational pathways, extreme weather occurrences such as major floods, wildfires, cyclones and heat waves may focus societal attention on vulnerabilities and stressors and provide a ‘policy window’ for major changes.”
What is being changed first in the name of Climate Change and adaptation are values, beliefs, capabilities [levelling], deference to indigenous beliefs, and other aspects of what the report admits are human behaviors and the current socio-economic and political systems.
Well, CO2 levels are up and the weeds are taking over my yard. It is a terrible problem. I have to hire people to come pull the weeds to keep up.
It continues to baffle me that the ACGW crowd keeps saying that increased CO2 levels will cause declines in crop yields. And they say skeptics are “anti-science”!
Increased CO2 levels are how you improve crop yields. Anyone who asserts otherwise is going against settled science.
My bold in the quote below:
“Today the IPCC’s role is as defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
http://ipcc.ch/organization/organization_history.shtml
Because “benefit” does not equate to “risk”, expecting UN documents to acknowledge anything positive would not be in keeping with their directive.
A longer tomato ripening season would be a benefit. Not there. See?
Ron C. says:
April 2, 2014 at 10:47 am
“I am finding much more credible the Senate Testimony of John T. Everett, ”
That, I think, is this (15 page PDF; dated May 11, 2010; with charts, photos, and references):
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=db302137-13f6-40cc-8968-3c9aac133b16
I have never been a fan of dishonesty. Even the so called benefits of a little white lie are dubious at best. Many people, including myself, will lie out of fear and ignorance. While those lies have no redeeming value, they are at least understandable. But the blatant, manipulative, premeditated lying for the purpose of screwing people over, just makes my skin crawl. Its lying with a hefty helping of narcissism; where the liar feels completely justified in lying because they feel so superior and view everyone else as too stupid to matter. History tells us that these kinds of liars cause the most human disruption, including economic suffering, physical suffering and death.
First came the AR5 SPM and yesterday (here in the US) we witnessed the Obamacare miracle, where the complete debacle of the Affordable Health Care Act is miraculously transformed into a vibrant, shining example of Washington benevolence for the rest of the country. Of course, all the numbers were generated by the perpetrators, much like the AR5 numbers. And in both cases, the media immediately treats the numbers like Gospel, even when they are so obviously blatant lies told by blatant liars with a long history of blatantly lying!
My gobsmacked meter is pegged,
Even those who recognize the complete dishonesty still use caution and respect as they unfold the charade, saying things like “Time will tell if these numbers will hold up or not.” or, “There is very little evidence to support these claims.”
It is time to be blatantly honest about all of these liars. It is time to precede every discussion about the liars with the simple truth: They are lying for the sole purpose of controlling us, and the only reason why they think they will get away with it is that, up to this point, we have let them get away with it. It is time to call lies what they are…lies. They are not mistaken or confused. They are lying.
Do you really think that Richard Tol was the only one who understood the level of dishonesty in the AR5 report? I am quite sure that everyone involved is too intelligent to think that they actually published the best the science has to offer. Everyone of them knows they are lying to the world, but somehow rationalizes that elite control of the masses is justified, despite its dismal and deadly failure throughout human history.
Yesterday’s headlines gleefully shouted that 7.1 million uninsured have signed up for Obamacare. A far more honest and accurate headline would read: ‘Obama and the Media Hope American People Are Morons While Making Outrageous Unsupportable Claims!’ For climate change, simply substitute the ‘IPCC’ for ‘Obama’ and ‘global population’ for ‘American People’.
So far, the young men in their crisp uniforms carrying their shiny rifles are not herding us into railroad cars, but the are building fences, polishing their guns and pressing their trousers.
‘For the IPCC, this is mission accomplished — at considerable cost to the body’s residual credibility and integrity.’
Integrity? when did they EVER accrue any of that commodity?