This is a bit disturbing, though in retrospect, not surprising. One of our local IPCC wonks at Chico State University, Jeff Price, is a biologist, but lectures me about climate all the same. – Anthony
by Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
I had intended to return to this point when I originally posted about this debate last week, but time got away from me. Thankfully, my colleague Roy Cordato brought it up today:
During the question and answer session of last week’s William Schlesinger/John Christy global warming debate, (alarmist) Schlesinger was asked how many members of United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were actual climate scientists. It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all. Its president, for example, is an economist.
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC – trained initially as a railway engineer
This question came after Schlesinger had cited the IPCC as an authority for his position. His answer was quite telling.
First he broadened it to include not just climate scientists but also those who have had “some dealing with the climate.” His complete answer was that he thought, “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.” In other words, even IPCC worshiper Schlesinger now acknowledges that 80 percent of the IPCC membership had absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.
This shatters so much of the alarmists’ claim, as they almost always appeal to the IPCC as their ultimate authority.
Yes Smokey,the whole show is political. There is a debate going on at RC. about the Australian bush fires. This is one of the blog comments
“Re #11 Miranda Devine’s b*****t
The only way you will get any change is to email her and SMH and complain (as I have done) plus suggest this link.
We need to get out more, and push as hard as is reasonable.
Unfortunately we have a short attention span to deal with, so, as nasty as it feels we should use the current shock and grief to make our point while we may have some effect.
Comment by Al Breingan — 16 février 2009 @ur momisugly 8:15 PM”
Thus using over 200 deaths, 2000 homes destroyed, 7000 homeless and 100’s square miles of land rendered sterile as a political ploy to press their case.
James S (20:26:38) :
The IPCC therefore is a group of modellers who base their work on a small group of climate scientists say the climate will be like. It is no more and no less than that.
Well, after all, it was only one chicken ( I believe it was reported that it was Chicken Little) who started the stampede of “the sky is falling”. A small group is best for this job.
The real story is not how many of the x thousand scientists (and others) who participated in the IPCC were climate scientists, however defined.
The real story is how many of those scientists agreed with the IPCC report and the Summary for Policymakers.
All we can say for sure is that some of the scientists participating disagreed with the conclusions, because they have come out and said so.
We do not know how many participants agreed in absolute numbers or as a percentage.
The error (aka dishonesty) is to promote the number who participated as the number who agreed with the conclusions.
We can not even say a majority of the participants agreed, because they never voted on any part of the IPCC report or its conclusions.
BTW, this is why the word ‘consensus’ is used so often. It’s because they can’t produce any numbers to support the claim of most participants agreeing.
And were you to write a scientific paper with no data to support its conclusions, just claims of ‘consensus’ in some appointed group, you would be laughed out of the room.
Interesting.
When a skeptic points out these well known facts, he’s branded a denier and publicly vilified for daring to question the party line. Meanwhile, the major media keeps on posturing about how the 2000+ scientists with the IPCC have given us a consensus overview of out dire future.
That an AGW proponent admits how few scientists make up the IPCC panel will surely be unreported by the major media — an inconvenient truth.
Drawing a straight edge over a global temperature graph of 1975-1998. Tah-dah! See? Warming during over two decades of the hundred-year record! Proof!
The whole “Appeal to Authority” argument is a dead loss…
In the 1600s the Catholic Church maintained that the Earth was the centre of the Universe – because it said so – and burned those who had the audacity to disagree. For example Giordano Bruno.
From the Wiki article his “sins” included,
Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.
Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
Dealing in magics and divination.
Denying the Virginity of Mary.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
Appeals to Authority are no more valid now then they were then, and represent an inability or unwillingness to deal honestly with actual hard empirical evidence.
(Not that I’m saying the GB was right on everything…. – just a useful example)
“Can anyone really be an expert in climate? I doubt it. So, I don’t really cast aspersions on people in the field based on their background.”
I agree, and I recently posted something similar. But the fact highlighted at the start of this thread mkes a great Tu Quoque (You Too) whenever some snooty warmonger dismisses a critic for not being a climate scientist, or appeals to authority in the form of the IPCC.
“But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.”
If you know which way the wind blows, you needn’t be a weatherman.
=============
Incidentally, if AGW is debunked, its promoters and their doctrines will be tainted as well, including:
Persons who promote regulation & redistribution & demonize monied interests (socialists),
Governmental bureaucracies like NASA & the EPA,
the UN,
The scientific establishment (gatekeeper editors + the officialdom of scientific bodies like the NAS),
Scientism–the idea that the scientific process is disinterested and self-critical enough to weed out error, and that “pseudoscience” is primarily an amateur, uncredentialed affair.
The authority of any future scientific and/or social “consensus,”
The mainstream media,
Advocacy research in general
“Concerned” + crusading persons in general (fanatics, alarmists, insisters, single-vision types)
IOW, these people have a lot to lose if AGW is disposed of. So they’re redoubling their efforts to avoid being put in the wrong. (Which makes them even more discreditable. They’re digging themselves a deeper hole.)
If you haven’t seen the debate, it’s worth watching if you like to see facts and reason crush opinion. Click on link provided in intro…
DJA (20:45:26) :
“There is a debate going on at RC. about the Australian bush fires. ”
whoa – but I had it on good authority from a greens councilor called El Gibbs in the dickheads thread here that it was way too early to blame anything & we musn’t talk about it. Paid up member of the greens in NSW… naturally she/he would be over in comments there telling them to calm down & wait for the Royal Commission?
Among more heretical beliefs, Giordano Bruno also claimed that the Sun was a star.
Jim Greig
I wrote: “But all are probably socialists, and that is what we are really dealing with.”
to which you wrote: “I’m not sure I agree with your assessment that economists, psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists are at all qualified to comment on the validity of a theory as dangerous as anthropogenic global warming.”
I don’t follow your reasoning.
Nice picture of Pachauri. For a second there I thought it was Tim the Enchanter warning Arthur and his Knights about about the Killer Rabbit. Perhaps Pachauri is telling the public to be wary as “The Killer CO2 Monster has really big teeth”.
I have a Bachelor of Science, but it’s in Aviation Management. However the study of meterology was required in my degree program. Interestingly the very first page in my meterology text book stated that the Sun was the driving force for all weather on Earth. Of course this was in 1982 and much has changed since then. Perhaps there is a future for me at the IPCC…. nah!
AnonyMoose (21:39:11) :
pwl (19:20:55) :
…
Ok, really seriously, what I’d like to know is what experiments “prove” that AWG is happening?
Drawing a straight edge over a global temperature graph of 1975-1998. Tah-dah! See? Warming during over two decades of the hundred-year record! Proof!……
AnonyMoose
That is only proof that the earth warmed from 1975 – 1998. It is not proof that the warming was due to AGW.
“Among more heretical beliefs, Giordano Bruno also claimed that the Sun was a star”
And from this data it can be extrapolated, with 1- 100% accuracy, that 99% of discusions about the sun will get you burned! lol 😉
this is it on the nose, nice one Anthony!
my Alma Mater
http://www.lssu.edu/
But when I post just asking a question, and read in RC and others
WE ARE NOT climate scientists so there for we are stupid deniers!!!!
humm????
Joel Shore (19:09:59) : No, it doesn’t stand in his way because astrophysics provides an excellent background for studying climate science
Oh really? Which other planet has a 70% water ocean surface? I must have missed it…
and because he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals.
You know, I’ve been pondering this constant din of “PEER REVIEWED LATEST PAPERS!!!” that gets tossed about by the AGWs. Don’t really ‘get it’. Sure sounds like an attempt to ‘pack the jury’ by having your friends choose who got published lately. “Widely cited” sounds a lot like a popularity contest…
Me, I like the old dusty papers that have stood the test of time. I like the paper that took a decade to get published because it overturned the ‘good ol boys’ network with a new, correct, thought. Einstein. Wegener. Ovshinsky. Alfven. and a long list of others… ( I expect that Landscheidt will join the list and I’m pondering Vukcevic’s stuff… it makes me think long and hard, and that’s a good thing… but it will be 10 to 20 years before we hear the jury on their insights… the sun has only now started voting…)
Never had much use for fads nor for social networking control structures. And don’t fool yourself, the peer review process is as much about social control as anything else. The history of folks fighting if for 20 years to finally get published, with ideas that then changed the world, make it more parody than peer, IMHO… And the list of peer reviewed junk is, er, well, a bit on the long side…
But you’re welcome to your opinion. Becoming enough of a media darling with friends in the right places is all it takes to become the recognized expert? OK, I’ll put that one in the old hip pocket against the day you yelp “But he hasn’t got a degree in climate science!” Me? I’m gonna stick with the guy who can correctly and clearly state how things work, demonstrates his work, has clue, and came up with a really neat bit of truth that explains things. Something that makes my jaw drop with it’s clarity, especially if the ‘peers’ are squealing… That, unfortunately, is not Hansen. He likes buckets with more hole than bucket, but it looks nice and his friends like the color. I like buckets that hold water; and have done so for decades…
You do realize that the IPCC has three working groups for its assessment reports because their mission is not just to review the climate science, but also its affects and how we can adapt to it and mitigate it? This necessarily involves such diverse fields as biology, economics, engineering, etc.
You mean like “Umbrella or sunscreen? Decisions decisions…”. Look, we have an annual swing of about 75F / 45C where I live and I’m not going to get excited about 0.anything C or F. Heck, even 1.something C or F is a joke. Add in the fact that you can’t even define what the ‘global average temperature’ is, or means, and that the error band is about 1C+ and season with the fact that GIStemp ‘cooks’ the data and I’m positively completely uninterested in what all the IPCC engineers and economists and biologists have to say about a non-existent problem that they are fantasizing about based on broken models using bad cooked input data.
So you can take all the unelected UN political appointee leaches and their junkets and ‘projects’ needing funding and put them on yourdime, not mine, and have them tell you how to live your life, not mine. And then I won’t care what degrees they have or where they publish. Not my problem then…
Until that day, any chance I get to do the ‘salt on a slug’ truth test on their claims, well, let just say I can make a lot of salt with a little sunshine in the right places…
Sorry if someone has already pulled him for this but;
Joel shore said
No, it doesn’t stand in his way because astrophysics provides an excellent background for studying climate science
Isn’t one of the IPCC contentions that external factors such as the sun have no bearing on AGW
As someone who takes a passing interest in this (as I believe the arrogance implicit in AGW is mind boggling) isn’t this a little bit of a contradiction?
Joel
I think you sort of miss the point. Hansen is an astronomer, Steve Mc , is a reviewer not a contributor, In fact Steve complains bitterly at times that his review comments get ommitted and last but not least, Steve is a STATISTICIAN and that is actually the key skill required for climate assessment.
Oh and Joel
Have at look at this UNIPCC scientist’s view
http://lostconservative.blogspot.com/2008/06/real-truth-about-agw.html
Manfred (20:07:40) : I would expect this includes climate scientists, meteorologists, geologists and others with a science degree. Then 80% are politicians, economists, lawyers, untrained indviduals et cetera
As an Economist, I’d expect them to be counted among the ‘has some dealing with’ since we have to pay a fair amount of attention to climate and weather as they impact crop production, government policies, and population dynamics (fancy words for death from famine…) and there is a long history of Economists being involved with weather and solar issues (William Stanley Jevons work on sunspots and business cycles, for example.)
I don’t think that makes them the right folks to pronounce the existence of global warming (I’d take a TV weatherman over an economist or an astrophysicist or even a climate computer modeler…), but I do think that it would, for the purposed of the UN speaker, put them in the ‘some dealings’ arena…
The “media” have been “reporting” doom and gloom stires about every possible subject since the late 19th century.
As for the idiots claiming the Victorian bush fires are as a result of AGW, really, you kow nothing about his country at all and makes me furious. As I’ve stated before, summer here started very cool, bit a bit warm for a short while, is now cool again, but will warm up a bit in the next few day. As at the start, temperatures well down (On average).
I think that this should close another avenue of attack from alarmists against the increasing number of scientists who are sceptical of AGW. As massive amounts of money has become available to study the climate, more and more scientists from other backgrounds and disciplines have been tempted into this field of study. Many of them are now finding that upon closer scrutiny, the AGW hypothesis is flawed.
However it is the fact that many of these scientists did not specifically train in climate science originally that the alarmists constantly attack any sceptical scientist, regardless of their actual qualifications or of the merits of the argument or hypothesis presented. Strange how they support any scientist that is NOT sceptical, regardless of their original speciality. The same argument should apply work both ways!
Although it is all nonsense in the sense that a rigorous scientific approach IS a rigorous scientific approach whatever the specialisation of the scientist involved.
Likewise car salesmen can just as easily adapt their selling skills to sell double glazing. Selling is selling. Or a computer programmer in banking can just as easily write code for internet shopping. Coding is coding. Science is science. Provided the scientists spends enough time familiarising themselves with the contemporary literature and then applies known rigorous scientific methods to evaluate the hypothesis presented, then science is science.
So the next time an alarmist claims a sceptical scientist is not a CLIMATE scientist, just tell them (a) it does not matter as science is science and (b) neither is Al Gore, Dr Hansen, or 80% of the IPCC so does the original scientific specialisations of the IPCC invalidate the IPCC then?
Science is science! End OF!
AnonyMoose (21:39:11) : Drawing a straight edge over a global temperature graph of 1975-1998.
Please define the ‘global temperature’. Show that it is calculated based on sound numbers and that these sources are distributed over the globe in such a way as to support your definition and it’s use as described. Show also that the data are not subject to unsupported manipulation after collection, and in the creation of the ‘global temperature’. Then describe what physical properties this ‘global temperature’ reflects and what it responds to. Finally, show that this ‘global temperature’ is not changing from completely natural causes (address the PDO, AMO, ENSO, and related ocean oscillations, solar variations, GCR effects, cloud formation) and pay particular attention to explaining Bond Events and the historic episodes of Optimum and Minimum climate; then show that the 1970-2000 period is not just a 30 year PDO cycle that has flipped in the 2000-2009 interval.
Oh, and after that, show that you meet the Nyquist requirements for sampled data for cycle control and show how you will implement that control (and state what your set point will be, your feedback mechanisms, and how you will measure time lags in your control circuit…
Joel Shore:
You say of Hansen “he has shown his expertise in climate science by publishing many widely-cited peer-reviewed papers in the field in prestigious journals.”
The trouble is that the field of “climate science” would not know peer-review if it tripped over it. I bet the peer-reviewers of Hansen’s work (his buddies, who knows?) and the prestigious journals he publishes in really give him a hard time.