But…there’s that word again, “robust” used in the context of error admission. Now all we need is an apology from Chairman Dr. Rajenda Pachauri for statements that claims that this error existed were “arrogant” and “voodoo science“. Will he give one? His track record suggests it is doubtful.
UPDATE: It seems Dr. Pachauri is getting a bit miffed over all the attention he’s getting over his ties to TERI and questions raised by Richard North and Christopher Booker in the UK telegraph. He’s threatening a lawsuit:
Angry Pachauri threatens to sue UK daily
This is the best thing that could happen, as it will mean independent discovery.
IPCC statement on the melting of Himalayan glaciers1
The Synthesis Report, the concluding document of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (page 49) stated: “Climate change is expected to exacerbate current stresses on water resources from population growth and economic and land-use change, including urbanisation. On a regional scale, mountain snow pack, glaciers and small ice caps play a crucial role in freshwater availability. Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.”
This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment.
It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment2 refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.
The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of “the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report” 3. We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance.
===============================================
1 This statement is from the Chair and Vice-Chairs of the IPCC, and the Co-Chairs of the IPCC Working Groups.
2 The text in question is the second paragraph in section 10.6.2 of the Working Group II contribution and a repeat of part of the paragraph in Box TS.6. of the Working Group II Technical Summary of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
3 This is verbatim text from Annex 2 of Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work.
PDF of the announcement is here
h/t to WUWT reader Nigel Brereton
I don’t think that ‘robust’ means what they think it means.
Anyone who refers to ‘skeptics’ and ‘deniers’ is going to make ‘group think’ mistakes.
In the ‘real world’ one has their work checked by a ‘skeptic’. I am a computer analyst by trade. The last person to check my work should be anyone on my ‘team’. Our team never spots it’s own mistakes.
Until the clowns at IPCC start viewing ‘skeptics’ as essential to quality control, they will continue to make outrageous mistakes.
Joe Romm on Climate progress is using robust talking points to smear legislatures that don’t promote “green slush funds”
Meltdown Mann is getting Robust funding to validate the efects of the phenomena formerly known as global warming/climate change on disease.
Now Algore…Talk about robust!!!
Ro-Busted!
I note that the text does not retract the “melt by 2035” claim, or even acknowledge that it is erroneous. Only that it is “poorly substantiated”. I don’t suppose that was an oversight.
“In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly” – wait, what could these procedures be?
– Have it reviewed by a RealClimate guy
– Use spell checker
– Check facts using the wikipedia
…
An apology without a sorry. They won’t admit to being wrong.
and entirely consistent with the underlying science
… and entirely consistent with the false assumption of CO2 forcing …
There. Fixed.
And the peer reviewed data turns out to be a dodgy meme, misheard on a bad phone line by the exaggeration-prone author of “The Last Generation” and overstated like “Nepalese whispers” by a chain of overenthusiastic warmists. Repeat until true.
What I find fascinating is how they love to be frightened and are indignant if some of us don’t buy their horror stories.
How many more of these glitches are there in the pro-AGW “dataset”?
“This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment.”
You know, considering that most of the IPCC’s “assessment” is based entirely on computer projections that are calibrated against tree ring data, the relative veracity of the Himalayan glacial meltdown prediction (as blurted out in an arbitrary phone conversation and reported in a non-peer-reviewed WWF article) does seem perversely robust by comparison. At least we can say that it’s entirely consistent with the overall quality that we’ve come to expect from the IPCC.
Thus is the sorry state of consensus-based climate science.
Someone on an earlier WUWT thread on this topic argued that the effect of this changing meltwater pattern in the eastern Himalayas would actually be positive for the downstream populations. Does anyone remember what he said?
“… the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards…” , which have proven to be pretty low .
I suspect that the “high confidence” placed on this blunder will be what profoundly affects the public trust in the IPCC.
Harry:
I agree. I always want the most skeptical person I can find shoot holes in my work before I go to trial with it (I am an expert witness on many matters). Once I send the work out, it is subject to some REALLY hostile criticism from my opponents. Judging by their reaction to some innocent interrogatories, if these guys at IPCC were subject to a good cross examination from a hostile attorney, or from a REAL peer’s scrutiny at a scientific conference where you are presenting something contradictory, they would not be able to take it.
Peer review with this crowd is rather as it was in old England when a Lord could only be tried by his PEERS (other Lords); e.g., an action was brought against Lord Cardigan (the idiot responsible for the Charge of the light Brigade) who insisted that his right was to be tried by a jury of his peers. So a jury of other Lords was convened and promptly acquited him of all charges, even though he was patently guilty of those charges.
Harry,
You wrote: “Until the clowns at IPCC start viewing ’skeptics’ as essential to quality control, they will continue to make outrageous mistakes.”
First, I don’t know where you come off calling the scientists who participate in the IPCC effort “clowns.” On what basis do you make that assessment? It seems a rather rude interpretation of people who devote their life’s work to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Secondly, and more importantly, there are plenty of skeptics in the IPCC. They may not be skeptical of everything in every instance. They may be only skeptical at the level of how accurately a particular number wa calculated. You see that throughout the IPCC report where specific items are rated regarding the level of scientific knowledge, or or where a probability range is assigned to a value.
I have read other sources which discuss this matter of the Himalayan glaciers and they point out that there were a number of comments submitted over the Working Group II information on glaciers — this matter in particular — that were skeptical of what the report said. The quality control was there; the comments are all publicly available for all to see. The problem was that in this one case the quality control failed to catch an error.
Like you, I am a computer analyst by trade. I happen to work in a shop with an advanced CMMI rating. And despite our best efforts at peer review, at quality control, and at testing, errors happen and make it into production. Rather than point to an error and call that team clowns, we sit down as a group and try to figure out how tp prevent errors like that from happening again. I hope your group works the same way. That is exactly what I read in the last paragraph of the IPCC’s statement.
IPCC
Crap they caught us on that one, the response
“a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment2 refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.”
Translation:
but it was only on rivet holding the wings on the plane, but not to worry there are 937 more inspected and testede by the same people who missed that one
Harry (12:19:54) :
“In the ‘real world’ one has their work checked by a ’skeptic’. I am a computer analyst by trade. The last person to check my work should be anyone on my ‘team’. Our team never spots it’s own mistakes.”
An IT team might see the value in having a fresh pair of eyes cast over their work. A PR department certainly wouldn’t want their ‘forward looking statements’ critically analysed and be made to justify what they said.
It’s clear that the role of the IPCC isn’t to produce a dispassionate review of the science of AGW, for and against, it’s to select scientific (and not so scientific) pronouncements to construct a scaremongering, pro-AGW narrative, with the apparent authority of science, to justify political initiatives.
When one pillar crumbles, they put another pillar in place and try to forget quietly the one which failed. Hockey Stick anyone? Problem is, they have a few pillars crumbling right now and people aren’t forgetting the ones which failed. More people are looking at the pillars they have and asking questions as to how sound they are.
Ok the weirdest thing happened in my previous post the (e) for the word “one” attached itself to the word “tested”…. wandering e’s could prove a problem in future posts….
Redo…
IPCC
Crap they caught us on that one, the response
“a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment2 refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.”
Translation:
but it was only one rivet holding the wings on the plane, but not to worry there are 937 more inspected and tested by the same people who missed that one
From James Delingpole, quoting Richard North’s work:
Dr Hasnain’s claim that the glaciers would disappear within forty years was picked up by the WWF, whose concerns expressed in a report enabled our friend Dr Pachauri’s TERI to approach the wealthy Carnegie Corporation of New York for grant funding to support further research into this most important issue.
Pachauri gets it in the IPCC report, from which TERI gets money, and Hasnain gets a position with TERI.
What else wound up in that IPCC report that TERI is using for marketing and fundraising? How objective is Pachauri, a self-described full-time salaried employee of TERI?
@Rick:
“An apology without a sorry. They won’t admit to being wrong.”
The IPCC is understood to be both sorry and wrong by default. This explains why only politicians, naive 17-year-old activists, and Europeans believe the IPCC assessment reports.
Herman L.,
Do you refer to your quality control people as “arrogant” and accuse them of using “voodoo science” when they find an error in your work? Do you then refuse to correct the error until the error makes it into production and the media picks up the story?
@ Herman L.
I’d suggest that ‘clown’ is an accurate term for someone who makes you laugh by doing stupid things. You’ll find a lot of examples of clownish behavior by climate scientists in most of the articles on this site. Honestly, it’s better than ‘Days of Our Lives’.
“The problem was that in this one case the quality control failed to catch an error.”
Other than CO2 being the cause of current climate change, perhaps?
“Rather than point to an error and call that team clowns, we sit down as a group and try to figure out how tp prevent errors like that from happening again. I hope your group works the same way. That is exactly what I read in the last paragraph of the IPCC’s statement.”
Simple remedy in this case – actually do what you are telling people you have been doing… Oh, not making statements like this about this issue to the press, when you are the head of the IPCC would be a good start, too:
However, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”
Pachauri certainly acted like a clown in this interview.
Herman L. (12:59:49) :
Harry,
You wrote: “Until the clowns at IPCC start viewing ’skeptics’ as essential to quality control, they will continue to make outrageous mistakes.”
First, I don’t know where you come off calling the scientists who participate in the IPCC effort “clowns.” On what basis do you make that assessment? It seems a rather rude interpretation of people who devote their life’s work to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
——-
For an example of why calling the IPCC so-called scientists (i.e. the ones who wrote the final report) “clowns” is entirely appropriate can be found in a Roger Pielke Jr.s blog today.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-does-pielke-think-about-this.html
The IPCC’s 4th Report completely misrepresented Pielke’s work used in the report by suggesting that the events of 2004-5 would change Pielke’s conclusions that hurricane activity had not been increased. Rather than asking him for his opinion, the authors simply imputed an opinion to him, which was the opposite of that he himself expressed elsewhere at that time, in the published record.
Note that this IPCC “retraction” does not actually say what the claim was that was not properly substantiated, or even whether they now reject that claim.
It merely affirms that their conclusions were right even though their facts were not properly documented in the full report.
There can be little doubt that such an admission of error from the ipcc would never have come about in the pre-climategate heady days when it was even promoted that fraudulent means justified the noble ends of envirojihadists.
Thanks, Nigel Brereton, for keeping the spotlight of public attention focused on the Climategate iceberg.
Beneath the tip of this iceberg is decades of deceit and data manipulation by those that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the InterNational Academy of Propaganda (INAP) has been funding.
Follow the money and incredibly poor science will be revealed at many of the most prestigious research institutions and research publications.
Today’s WUWT exposed Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Keep up the good work!
Oliver K. Manuel
off Topic….
Yellowstone going again
http://quake.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Quakes/quakes0.html
There can be little doubt that such an admission of error from the ipcc would never have come about in the pre-climategate heady days when it was even promoted that exaggeration and half truths were means justified by the noble ends of the agw cause..
I get the impression that whatever Rajendra is smoking is pretty robust.
“Sydney Sceptic (13:32:59) :
[…]
However, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.””
He’s a political stooge and he insulted a politician. His days are numbered.
They were robustly robust because of their robustness. It would be nice, just once, if someone from that camp could just say “Oops, we were wrong.” Because they won’t, they are reduced to the above “apology” and things akin to Somerville’s juvenile retort.
Herman L
Re: clowns
It must be great to be so virtuous that you can actually talk down to us lesser individuals. You are so … self-right.
Does your virtue include fact-checking ?
Do you not know of the proven fact (see Climategate letters; McIntyre exchanges) that the so-called peer-review process used by the IPCC heavily favors papers supportive of catastrophic AGW ?
For some reason, your virtue does not extend to the condemnation of the scandalous conduct of the IPCC scientists. As far as I know, only Landsea has had the courage to step down from the IPCC.
Not good enough. There’s ample evidence that the chairman of the IPCC was warned about the falsehoods. He should be charged with fraud.
Should there not be long term albedo re-calculations here from the ipcc?
Apparantly, there are still some people who believe the IPCC are a bunch of simple scientists diligently searching for the truth. I wonder how long it will take before the penny drops?
“We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance.”
I was afraid of that…
Vincent, the penny will drop when the IPCC predicted models become a laughing stock of the world as the disparity between modeled and observed temperatures increases more and more.
Examples of IPCC Robustness are Michael Mann’s Hockey stick, manipulated temperature data and peer reviewed science.
The IPCC seems like a good target right now for ‘lets shrink government spending’ in tough economic times. They don’t do any direct science, if all they can do is screw up the compilation of other people’s science it is time to give them the boot.
Calling members of the IPCC clowns is an insult to all clowns. A true clown is a proferssional who has sharpened his skill by years of hard work before the most demanding of audiences. These guys only talk to themselves. Their idea of peer-review would be better called “peer-review of each other’s work.”
Honestly, it is blatant misdirection, like watching a bad magic trick.
It’s like, let’s take this opportunity (of having to admit to a mistake) to tell everyone how authoritative, comprehensive, exacting, and correct we are.
It must have been very painful for Pachauri to issue this statement. Imagine having to eat your very public words and be proven wrong.
Next time I find someone launching a barrage of ad hominem attacks on skeptics I might remind them that if it weren’t for skeptics, errors like this would still be around. It’s not like the IPCC is checking and correcting it’s own work.
This incident will do far more to erode public trust and faith in the IPCC, because unlike climategate, it’s a simple story, easy to tell and easy to understand. A guy makes an unresearched remark in a phone interview. It goes into a magazine as such. The WWF pick it up and print it as fact. The IPCC include that report, mark it as fact and then build a whole story around it. It was false all along and their quality control procedures are faulty. Everyone can understand this, and make the same conclusion : what else in these reports is wrong? Maybe the science isn’t settled after all.
Even if this is the only error in the IPCC report, I don’t think anyone can underestimate the amount of damage it has done and will do in terms of public confidence and trust.
Should there not be long term albedo re-calculations here from the ipcc?
Not on the basis of this error. The Himalayan glacier melt citation appeared in Working Group II Report “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” of the IPCC 4AR. That reference was cited nowhere else. Albedo is analyzed in Working Group I Report “The Physical Science Basis,” specifically
Surely a man who flies from the US to India just for cricket practice gets to see an awful lot of the Himalayas.
I trust “Gulfstream” Pachauri on this one.
To ‘help’ the glaciers how about reducing soot in the region. Why must CO2 always be the worst culprit?
@Herman L.
Please don’t confuse science with scientists. One is a principle, like the law. The other is the people, of varying human ability, who work with the matter in real life, like the lawyers. Law & lawyers. Science & scientists. Art & artists.
Yes mistakes happen to the best of people, but the best of people don’t make the worst mistakes most often. If they do then something is wrong, and perhaps, well there could be any reason or a combination; they are misguided, uninformed, acting in bad faith, politicized, following ideology, whatever. It doesn’t really matter.
Most skeptics are basically still scratching their head over certain issues in climate science. These are skeptics who are professionals in their own right, working in fields that overlap climatology (statistics, astrophysics, forecasting, etc.) It is like an metallurgist talking to a structural engineer talking to an architect talking to an artist. There is a chain of overlapping disciplines. The metallurgist gets to question the artist’s intentions.
The stuff in climate science that people scratch their head over…. well I’m scratching my head over the “explanation” that “something caused warming, and then 800 years later CO2 feedback caused the rest of the warming for the next 4000 years” (words to that effect). It may be… but the simpler answer is that the CO2 is the effect and not the cause. This is a huge question mark in a field that is *claimed* to be settled. It leaves me wondering whether the “settled” claim is simply a public relations strategy.
I am pretty OK guessing that these scientists are qualified and privately they KNOW how to research. But what they choose to tell the world could be something quite different. Remember, the general public is not scientists, so whilst privately amongst themselves, these scientists know what they are doing, what they choose to tell the general public and the politicians could be something quite different. We’re not scientists, so they can’t talk science to us, they have to talk public relations. So please let’s not confuse science with scientists and scientists with public relations. (Discernment is the key to cognitive ability).
Now, I personally have no problem with the ideal of a united humanity that lives lighter and doesn’t get bogged down in nationalistic self interest. I consider myself a world-citizen. I grew up in several countries. To me, Nationalism, country borders, where the poor are poor just because they happened to be born in a poor country, is a form of Apartheid. One day the world will move beyond that. But trying to scare the population into moving that way, is a mistake, it seems to me. Fear of disaster just causes people to become more isolationist and competitive and mean. It is the wrong direction. Even if AGW is happening, the IPCC public image and message is 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
“he might pursue legal action”….like all warmist propaganda, nothing’s for sure.
Stefan (14:17:42) :
“It’s like, let’s take this opportunity (of having to admit to a mistake) to tell everyone how authoritative, comprehensive, exacting, and correct we are.”
Exactly what you’d expect from a PR/marketing department though, and that’s about what they are.
@ Robert Townsend
If you check out pages 154-157 in the TERI annual report for 2008/9 you will find an immense number of engagements that Patchy would have had to of flown to. This guy has a bigger carbon footprint than a small town!
http://www.teriin.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19
Glaciers are very poor proxies for global climate. History shows that they have always grown or shrunk, with often opposite patterns for different glaciers in the same region.
Would have been good for the arrogant Pachauri to have said sorry about the mistake instead of trying to plug the crack in the dyke. Won’t be long before the full truth about what the UN and the IPCC have been up to. There are too many holes appearing in the flimsy façade of deceit. The UN is an organisaton that has outlived it’s usefulness.
Why are so few people able to discuss the Himalayan glaciers paper
Mr. Pachauri called “arrogant” ? It seems few blog participants and
fewer MSM reporters have bothered to read:
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/MoEF%20Discussion%20Paper%20_him.pdf
WUWT ?
I’d like to nominate Anthony Watts and Bjorn Lomborg to co-chair the new, improved IPCC. One climatologist, one economist, one American, one European, two sensible balanced views of what’s happening and what is really needed in terms of adapting to climate change.
REPLY: Thanks, but I don’t want the job, too much travel. – A
IPCC made a false attribution: Syed Hasnain
Glaciologist Syed Hasnain on Wednesday (January 20) alleged that the statement IPCC used to base its report on the Himalyan glaciers on is a false attribution to him. He added that he never pin pointed a certain date when the glaciers would disappear.
http://www.timesnow.tv/IPCC-made-a-false-attribution-Syed-Hasnain/videoshow/4336777.cms
Hasnain throws the ball back into Pachauri’s court…
Chris McDowell
We need to have a serious discussions about the political implications of the Himalayan glacier ‘blunder’. See my entry referring to the influential Failed States Index of 2009 which takes the IPCC prediction and centres it as the most likely cause of war in the region. http://chrismcdowell.wordpress.com/
I miss in that statement in what the “error” consists, ok w e know it.
Did IPCC realise it ?
Not more ?
Pachauri, is that that man living from air, love and water, who intend to reincarnate 6 times ( this one incarnation is too much) to eliminate his CO2 footprint, and never saw a peace of money ?
My live since today was an error, it seems.
this is also the kind of stuff the public will understand because public funds are often involved:
Unintended Consequence of Technology: New LED traffic lights can’t melt snow
Crews in St. Paul, Minnesota, use compressed air to keep their lights clean. In Green Bay,
Wisconsin, city workers brush the snow off by hand in a labor-intensive
process.
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/12/16/unintended-consequence-of-technology-new-led-traffic-lights-can/
20 Jan: LEDS Magazine: Momentum builds for LED street lighting, more traffic
lights converted too
Moving to traffic signals, LED traffic lights were in the news a few weeks
back because of safety concerns focused on snow blocking LED bulbs with
winter storms ravaging the US. In the past few days, however, cities across
the US have moved forward with more aggressive LED-traffic-light-deployment
plans.
Just this past week, for instance, Texas comptroller Susan Combs announced
that 15 Texas cities would receive $6 million in federal grants for traffic
signal projects. The grants are specified for signal upgrades to LEDs, but
that will be a prime use of the funds. For example, the Brownsville Herald
reports that the money received by that city will go to LED signals
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/7/1/16
LED advantages outweigh potential snow hazards in traffic signals
Colorado, meanwhile has satisfactorily deployed the aforementioned Snow
Scoop Tunnel Visor. McCain VP of Manufacturing Greg Johnson describes the
visor “like an air scoop on a hot rod.” ..
It turns out that the new visor offers a very economical solution to the
problem. The Snow Scoop can be added to most existing traffic signals and
cost around $20.
(READERS COMMENT: The slot as a wind louver seems a great idea, until the
Sun comes out. Signals facing East or West will exhibit “sun-phantom” when
the Sun’s angle matches up with the louver slot. Reducing sun phantom is the
purpose of the visor in the first place. Just use caution with the
application)
http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/7/1/4
CNET: A tale of solar panels, snow, and roof rakes
But the white stuff delivered an unexpected hit to the electric output of
the solar panels I had installed last spring. It’s hard to calculate a
precise impact, but my December electric bill offers a clue: it’s more than
twice the previous month…
A week earlier, I had bought a snow rake. (These are hot items this year
given all the snow and problems with ice dams.) A snow rake–the one I
bought was about $75–is just a flat aluminum plate with a long handle. Run
it down your roof and the snow comes off.
When I mentioned what the rake was for, the guy at the hardware store
cleverly recommended I attach a squeegee-like strip on the bottom so I
didn’t risk damaging the expensive panels.
My roof rake allows me to reach about 20 feet up. In practice, that means I
can only clean off the bottom of the panels; the ones near the roof ridge
remain stubbornly beyond my reach. (Be careful of mini avalanches if you try
this.)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10156471-54.moves
UK Tele: Wind farms produced ‘practically no electricity’ during Britain’s
cold snap
The cold weather has been accompanied by high pressure and a lack of wind,
which meant that only 0.2pc of a possible 5pc of the UK’s energy was
generated by wind turbines over the last few days…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6957501/Wind-farms-produced-practically-no-electricity-during-Britains-cold-snap.html
Germany 2003: RISK ANALYSIS OF ICE THROW FROM WIND TURBINES
Especially in the mountainous sites or in the northern areas icing may occur
frequently and any
exposed structure – also wind turbines – will be covered by ice under
special meteorological
conditions. This is also true if today’s Multi Megawatt turbines with
heights from ground to the
top rotor blade tip of more than 150 m can easily reach lower clouds with
supercooled rain in
the cold season, causing icing if it hits the leading edge.
If a wind turbine operates in icing conditions which are described in [1],
two types of risks
may occur if the rotor blades collect ice. The fragments from the rotor are
thrown off from the
operating turbine due to aerodynamic and centrifugal forces or they fall
down from the turbine
when it is shut down or idling without power production…
Ice
sensors and also ice detection by using power curve plausibilisation or two
anemometers – one
heated, one unheated – is not reliable enough at the moment and needs to be
improved.
There is still a lot of information required from operators after icing
events in their wind farms.
Observation of the turbines and especially the blades by web cameras proved
to be a suited,
but time consuming method in the Tauernwind project…
As a general recommendation it can be stated that wind farm developers
should be very careful
at ice endangered sites in the planning phase and take ice throw into
account as a safety issue.
Each incident or accident caused by ice throw is an unnecessary event and
will decrease the
public acceptance of wind energy.
http://web1.msue.msu.edu/cdnr/icethrowseifertb.pdf
Michigan: Tribe moves forward with wind energy and biodiesel projects
According to Rachel Smolinski, environmental services director for the
tribe, these projects will be initially funded by its recent stimulus
funding, which was provided through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy
Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program.
Three other communities within the state also received grant funding,
including Wayne County ($4,914,200), the city of Grand Blanc ($143,600) and
Little River Band of Ottawa Indians ($54,400).
http://www.petoskeynews.com/news/article_f6d584a4-05c4-11df-abc8-001cc4c03286.html
Only one flaw?
They’re really keeping up at CP.
“In all that work, I suppose it’s good that only one flaw like this has been has been found”
http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/18/science-ipcc-melting-ice-himalayan-glaciers-2035-sea-level-rise/#comments
“Memo to IPCC: Please reanalyze ALL of your conclusions about melting ice and sea level rise”
carrot eater says:
January 18, 2010 at 4:15 pm
You can emphasize the big picture, but one should also address the specific flaw. It is just weird that a reference to a non-peer reviewed work ended up in there. In all that work, I suppose it’s good that only one flaw like this has been found, but it still really should have been caught at the time.
In a positive light, we do see that errors are acknowledged and fixed when actual errors are found.”
Veronica (12:46:15) :
How many more of these glitches are there in the pro-AGW “dataset”?
Enough to keep them twisting and squirming from now until the next ice age.
It’s interesting that the “Synthesis Report” doesn’t rely on its “underlying assessments” for its robustness. It does rather beg the question, what were the working groups for, if not to form the conclusion?
“The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance”.
That’s my kind of prof; you don’t even have to hand in a paper and you still get a C.
Has anyone gone back to read the famous little case study? I have my doubts that this sentence (from p. 493 of 938), means what they think it means:
“The Gangetic basin alone is home to 500 million people, about 10% of the total human population in the region.”
Ooops…well, I guess it depends on how one defines “region”. This “region of the solar system”, perhaps…
This old BBC article describes the begin of the reign of the Great Pachauri. It reads rather funny. As if The Great Pachauri was installed by Big Oil himself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1940117.stm
(I call him The Great Pachauri because important circus artists often have such bynames as “The Great”)
Wait a minute. Did I miss something?
Where does it list the False Claim that they made, so that people can know
they were duped and stop using the claim?
They pat themselves on the back for generalized blather.
But the key glacier scare claim that has been trumpeted around the world
many times regarding the date of complete melting isn’t listed at all?
There must be another page that makes the false claim clear, no?
How can you claim an error without ever specifically stating the error
and then stating how the correction should now read?
What am I missing here?
From the cited “carrot eater” post, “It is just weird that a reference to a non-peer reviewed work ended up in there”.
If you look a bit more closely, you’ll find several other instances of non-peer reviewed WWF work finding its way into WGII’s document. Check out chapter 8 (which cites the same WWF 2005), and Chapters 11, 12 & 13. In some cases, the only source cited is a work by the WWF. I would bet there are other examples to be found in the compendious 4AR.
Veronica (14:58:35) : I’d like to nominate Anthony Watts and Bjorn Lomborg to co-chair the new, improved IPCC.
A better idea would be to split IPCC into two competing parts, one focusing on AGW and another focusing on natural climate change.
BTW. Keep Lomborg and other non-scientists out of the business. We do not need another absurd farce with lawyers, politicians, economists talking nonsense about matters they do not understand. People that cannot explain, for example, the laws of thermodynamics in great detail with all the subtle partial differential equations involved should not be allowed to attend.
Dr Pachauri is threatening legal action hey? People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
The IPCC says “On a regional scale, mountain snow pack, glaciers and small ice caps play a crucial role in freshwater availability. Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century…”
Unless a glacier melts, there is no fresh water available from it. I have to assume that if we were all “saved” from global warming, snow would accumulate, less would melt, and fresh water supplies would drop.
Even if there were no snow, but just rain, the population could build a dam and reservoir to catch the water, just like every place that does not have a snow-capped peak nearby.
So, if water is the problem, it isn’t the appearance or disappearance of a glacier that counts, but total precipitation. I think they are studying the wrong thing, if their concern if fresh water.
…and entirely consistent with all the other imaginary threats.
I wonder what was the state of the Himalayan Glacier during the Medieval Warming Period, which was 2C warmer that the peak of the present Modern Warm Period?
These people will NEVER give up! They were flat out wrong on this and they minimize it to one paragraph. ha! they have been caught red handed LYING! what is it going to take to get them to shut up and go away? to slink away humiliated and embarrassed? to never have jobs in any scientific field ever again?
/ i can dream, can’t i?
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 57 mins ago
“However, a number of scientists, including some critics of the IPCC, said the mistakes do not invalidate the main conclusion that global warming is without a doubt man-made and a threat.” [my bold]
They state that their standards were not followed, but they are NOT altering the report. They also managed to refer to it by number without describing exactly what was wrong in the section.
AlexB (15:36:36) :
“Dr Pachauri is threatening legal action hey? People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Neither should people in greenhouses…
The link from Seth:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/sci_un_climate_change;_ylt=AhtuQAasCLgeUrUO4u9FmhGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNwZXEwcHIwBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTIwL3NjaV91bl9jbGltYXRlX2NoYW5nZQRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzkEcG9zAzYEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0BHNsawN1bmNsaW1hdGVyZXA-
I reread the story but couldn’t find the names of the scientists (and critics) that said
“global warming is without a doubt man-made and a threat.”
,blockquote>Veronica (14:58:35) :
I’d like to nominate Anthony Watts and Bjorn Lomborg to co-chair the new, improved IPCC. One climatologist, one economist, one American, one European, two sensible balanced views of what’s happening and what is really needed in terms of adapting to climate change.
REPLY: Thanks, but I don’t want the job, too much travel. – A
OK – so let’s have the new improved IPCC do all it’s work by video conferencing?!
Oh bother! My first attempt at a blockquote and I screw it up.
Mike D. (13:44:56) :
I get the impression that whatever Rajendra is smoking is pretty robust.
LOL. I nominate that for the next quote of the week.
Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change:
“But that does not alter the inevitable consequences, unless rigorous action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is taken.”
without a doubt? inevitable?
Roger Pielke’s, Jr.’s blog for today points out flaws in that defense. An IPCC insider, Georg Kaser, revealed that:
1. He had alerted the IPCC staff about the error prior to publication, but they refused to correct it.
2. None of the other reviewers pointed out this glaring error.
3. The people in charge of the Asia section of the report lacked relevant expertise. (“They were without any knowledge of glaciology.”)
4. Everyone in the IPCC is now aware of the fault and intends to correct it in the next report. This means that Pachauri’s vigorous defense of the flawed report against criticism by a non-alarmist recent Indian government report implies that either he was unaware (out of touch) or aware (deceitful).
Here’s the link to Pielke’s article: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/stranger-and-stranger.html
“The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of……”
So may I respectfully request through, The Chair, The Vice Chairs, and The Co-Chairs, who, within the IPCC, might be responsible for the “absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report”?
Responsibility, interesting word, means the ability to respond. So who was in the only position to respond to this document before publication? Who reviewed it? Who put their names to it? Could it not possibly be, The Chair, The Vice Chairs and The Co-Chairs?
A truly great man, uttered something along the lines of “A camel is horse designed by a committee”
The Chair, The Vice Chairs, The Co-Chairs…. Better than going by Thomas Cook?
Mr. Herman L.,
it has, however, recently come to our attention that the leg of yours we incidently amputated refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of inspection. In performing the surgical procedure in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the clinic’s procedures, were not applied properly.
The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the clinic regret the poor application of well-established clinic procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the clinic’s standards, including thorough review of “the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into a surgical procedure” 3. We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance.
———————————————————————
This, Mr. Pachauri, is worth some trillions of damage – excluding the $500,000 TERI got.
“Secondly, and more importantly, there are plenty of skeptics in the IPCC. They may not be skeptical of everything in every instance. They may be only skeptical at the level of how accurately a particular number wa calculated……” None of these sceptics had ever recalculated Mr. Hansen’s data or looked into his computercode. None had the idea of asking Mr. Jones for the raw data and adjustment procedures! Quality controll in even the worst GM factory is better than in the IPCC. Scientists? No, Mr. Herman L., never. Amateurs! They can devote whatever they want to whom they want. Have a look at Surfacestations Gallery (link on the right) and then you can see the quality of these scientists.
There are trillions and trillions of dollars at stake, which are blown in the wind. And this clown Pachauri and his staff kept it secret for two years! Money that could feed the poor, make children happy or pay for health insurance or even petrol. But it is other peoples money which is blown in the wind or somebody’s pocket.
So this makes three strikes … Next batter?
If this wasn’t so serious the UN IPCC would be laughed off the science stage.
What was their charter anyway?
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.'” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature” — but beavers and their dams are.
But the contradictions go deeper than this prima facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred for his own race — i. e., his own self-hatred.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Look at the faces of Mann, Hansen, Briffa, Al Gore, Sommerville, Pachauri et. al. These people got where they are now, and received all their inflated titles for being conformists, for telling their bosses and sponsors (politicians) whatever they wanted to hear. These people know it, and they hate themselves for it. The main reason for eco-fanaticism is internal guilt.
rabidfox (12:16:38) :
I don’t think that ‘robust’ means what they think it means.
Or as Inigo Montoya says ” You keep saying that word. I think it does not mean what you think it means”
Keep trying. I’ve been much happier with the appearance of my posts since I started using it about two weeks ago. Incidentally, here’s a little tip: after you’ve typed in <blockquote> at the start and pasted in your quoted material, hold down the up-arrow key until you get back in front of the tag, copy it, hold down the down-arrow key to get down to the end of the quote, paste it, then back up and insert the backslash to terminate the “block.”
Now maybe I am a simple man, but doesn’t melting glaciers and snowpacks mean more water delivered downstream? What water stress are they talking about? Flooding?
Or maybe there will be some sort of sublime intervention?
(Yes that was intentional)
Peter of Sydney (13:49:44) :
Not good enough. There’s ample evidence that the chairman of the IPCC was warned about the falsehoods. He should be charged with fraud.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I thought I had read somewhere that Lord Monckton was lodging fraud charges against Pachauri, but I can’t seem to put a finger on a reference. Maybe it was just a pleasant dream 🙂
Harry (12:19:54) : said
“Until the clowns at IPCC start viewing ’skeptics’ as essential to quality control, they will continue to make outrageous mistakes.”
All drafts of AR4 were publicly posted. Christopher Monckton apparently got to review it. What more do you want? Editorial approval by Exxon?
“… poorly substantiated …”???
I think they mean UNsubstantiated.
UPDATE: It seems Dr. Pachauri is getting a bit miffed over all the attention he’s getting over his ties to TERI and questions raised by Richard North and Christopher Booker in the UK telegraph. He’s threatening a lawsuit.
In the UK, loser pays all. So sue away.
I’m really starting to mourn the buzzwordification of “robust”. It was a fine, useful term 10 years ago. Now you can’t turn around without bumping into it. When everything is “robust”, nothing is. . .
UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers Seattle Times January 20, 2010 at 3:03 PM
Herman,
“First, I don’t know where you come off calling the scientists who participate in the IPCC effort “clowns.” On what basis do you make that assessment? It seems a rather rude interpretation of people who devote their life’s work to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.”
So exactly how does a claim that the Himalaya’s will melt by 2035 get thru a quality control check if it was reviewed by a skeptic? There wasn’t even one scientific paper that concluded that. Nothing, nada..an off the cuff remark in a magazine interview.
It fit the reviewers ‘belief system’.
We all ‘see what we expect to see’…
The most common example is how many of us fail to notice our wifes new hairdo…while others readily notice it.
NASA had on it’s web site until today a claim based that the “Himalaya’s would melt by 2030”. So NASA reviewed the IPCC as well…and they didn’t catch that there was ‘no scientific evidence to support the claim’ either.
Herman L mentions that “You see that throughout the IPCC report where specific items are rated regarding the level of scientific knowledge, or or where a probability range is assigned to a value.”
But from the original newspaper article: When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was “very high”. The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.
What is so disturbing is reading their reports full of probability ranges that have no basis in science or even simple reality. The glacial melt and Greenland ice melt are among the worst examples and they are the main basis for the predictions of catastrophe. The glaciers in Greenland lose about 100 km2 per year and the ice sheet is about 1.7m km2. At linear rates that’s 100,000 years, but the rates will likely be less since the present loss from outlet glaciers is orders of magnitude higher than interior glaciers.
The Himalayas have a similar issue with the volume of ice versus the current rates, it will simply take centuries for it to disappear. To claim that a probability range of 90% was somehow calculated scientifically is laughable. How are we supposed to take any of their other alarmist probabilistic claims seriously?
“On a regional scale, mountain snow pack, glaciers and small ice caps play a crucial role in freshwater availability. “
This is an absolute lie.
The glaciers could disappear tomorrow and the rivers would still flow. Think about it a little bit.
If the glaciers stopped melting they would contribute NO water to rivers on a yearly basis. Then were does all the water in the rivers come from? Snow and rain. Most of the water flowing off glaciers is the melting of snow that was deposited the prior winter.
In winter same snowfall is also falling everywhere else on the entire mountain, valleys, hills, and planes surrounding the mountain. Far more snow falls on those areas than the comparatively small areas occupied by glaciers.
This study of the Himalayas in Nepal states that “The most salient finding of this study is that the glaciers of the Nepal Himalaya do not appear to make a
significant contribution to the total streamflow of the rivers of Nepal.”
What the study found was that 4% of the studied area was covered by glacier and only ~4% of the runoff came from the glacier. But that is right around what would be expected just from annual percipitation that would fall on the glacier.
will any of the following appear on TV News, which is the only way most of the public will know about it?
except for Fox, do no real reporting, eagerly tell us this doesn’t change AGW an iota, don’t represent hasnain correctly or ignore him altogether, etc.
CNN: Matthew Knight: U.N. climate chiefs apologize for glacier error
Despite the admission, the IPCC reiterated its concern about the dangers melting glaciers present in a region that is home to more than one-sixth of the world’s population.
“Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes)…”..
In the article, “Flooded Out,” Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain speculates that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming. ..
Zemp also believes that the errors shouldn’t shake people’s belief in climate science.
“Glaciers are the best proof that climate change is happening. This is happening on a global scale. They can translate very small changes in the climate into a visible signal,” he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/01/20/glacier.himalayas.ipcc.error/?hpt=Sbin
ABC: U.N.: Himalayan Glaciers Warning Not Backed Up
By ELIANE ENGELER Associated Press
The U.N. panel did not give a new estimate of when Himalayan glaciers might melt away, but said “widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century.”..
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=9609395
CBS: Seth Borenstein, AP: Nobel Prize-Winning Panel Apologizes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/20/tech/main6121986.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.13
Fox: U.N. Panel’s Glacier-Disaster Claims Melting Away
By Gene J. Koprowski
Contacted by FoxNews.com at TERI, officials would not respond to a request for additional comment…
“The data, all the data, needs to come to light,” says Dr. Jane M. Orient, president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and an outspoken skeptic on climate change.
“Thousands of scientists are capable of assessing it. The only reason to keep it hidden, locked in the clutches of the elite few, is that it decisively disproves their computer models and shows that their draconian emission controls are based on nothing except a lust for power, control and profit.”
The IPCC “made a clear and obvious error when it stated that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035,” added Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, in an interview.
“The absurdity was obvious to anyone who had studied the scientific literature. This was not an honest mistake. IPCC had been warned about it for a year by many scientists.”
A letter just released to the Science Web site underscores the mistake. Written by J. Graham Cogley of the department of geography at Canada’s Trent University, it points out that “the claim that Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035 … conflicts with knowledge of glacier-climate relationships, and is wrong.”
The dustup is the latest scandal in global warming science, coming after the disclosure of attempts to shade climate-science research findings at the U.K.’s East Anglia University and the failed talks in Copenhagen by environmental policymakers last month. ..
“Most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is two to three feet per year, and most are far lower,” Don Easterbrook, a professor emeritus of the department of geology at Western Washington University, told FoxNews.com.
Pachauri, the IPCC chief, is under attack on another front, as well, as newspaper reports in India have commented repeatedly on his reportedly lavish lifestyle. TERI receives funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, both of which did not respond to requests for comment from FoxNews.com. Reports indicate that there also are concerns in the United Kingdom surrounding 10 million British pounds in funding for TERI, and questions about TERI’s objectivity.
“It’s about time that somebody started following the money trail to the big interests that want to prosper from the green regime, while the rest of the economy is crushed,” Orient told FoxNews.com. “It’s not as though the amount were a trickle.”
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/20/panels-glacier-disaster-claims-melting-away/?test=latestnews
fantastic!
UK Financial Times: UN abandons climate change deadline
By Fiona Harvey in London and Anna Fifield in Washington
The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday after the UN waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit.
Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month…
But Yvo de Boer, the UN’s senior climate change official, admitted that the deadline had in effect been shelved.
“By [the end of] January, countries will have the opportunity to . . . indicate if they want to be associated with the accord,” he said. “[Governments could] indicate by the deadline, or they can also indicate later.”
“You could describe it as a soft deadline,” Mr de Boer said. “There is nothing deadly about it. If [countries] fail to meet it, they can still associate with the Copenhagen accord after.”
Countries pushing for a new legally binding treaty on climate change will be disappointed, as The waiving of the deadline sets a bad precedent for efforts to finalise a deal this year. The next scheduled meeting is not until late May, in Germany, with another in late November, in Mexico but many officials say more will be needed…
The result of Tuesday’s Massachusetts senatorial election, which took away Barack Obama’s super-majority in the Senate, is likely to push climate change further down the US agenda. It was the latest in a series of setbacks that have caused efforts to push a cap-and-trade bill through the Senate to grind to a halt, making it harder for the White House to participate meaningfully in global climate negotiations.
Instead, the administration has been pressing ahead with steps to limit the US’s carbon emissions through regulation..
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87479ee2-0600-11df-8c97-00144feabdc0.html
reminds me of a piece a few days ago:
State of the World Forum: 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign
Dear Friends,
I want to inform you that we have decided to postpone indefinitely the
Washington conference Feb. 28 – Mar. 3. I apologize for any inconvenience
this might cause you. There is simply not a critical mass of receptivity at
this time for the kind of “Climate Summit” we have designed, which has
emphasized an integral approach to climate change and the need for an
“urgency coalition” to come together to take immediate and decisive action
to resolve the climate crisis..
As disappointed as we are that the conference will not take place, the
considered opinion of all our conference partners has been that this is
simply not the right time to convene a major conference of this kind in the
nation’s capitol. It would have virtually no impact on either the thinking
or the agenda with which the U.S. Congress and the president are now
engaged, such is the paralysis to which Washington has succumbed with regard
to any action on global warming. In due course, this situation will no doubt
change, probably induced by a sufficiently strong climate related
catastrophe, but this is the stark reality we face at the moment. As a
result, raising funds and registering sufficient numbers have been extremely
challenging.
State of the World Forum will in time convene a Climate Summit in Washington
but that time is not now. ..
http://www.worldforum.org/2009WashingtonDC.htm
Wow. AP’s report on this is incredibly slanted.
AP makes it sound as if all’s that happened is 2035 was transposed from 2350. Only a cursory implication that they pulled the number from non-peer reviewed literature. They also state that no scientists argue that the glaciers are disappearing, when it is my understanding that there are some scientists, particularly Indian ones, who are doing just that.
Roger Pielke Jr. gets quoted, but the bulk of the article makes the errors in the IPCC assessment seem like simple editing errors, and not the systemic bias errors they really are.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/20/tech/main6121986.shtml
[snip – we don’t need to stoop to this level, the IPCC is doing fine on its own -A]
Sorry!
brc
this is just another example of how the warmistas think. Do you remeber the Polar bears stranded on the ice flow? This one picture was snapped up by people wanting to put their angle on it, passed on to willing promoters around the world as evidence of the evil of modern man without one ounce of sweat being raised to check the source and background to the photo. Assumption is the mother of all stuff-ups. I am being a bit generous in saying ‘assumption,’ because we are talking about ‘believers’ here.
When it finally came out that a visiting Australian scientist took these innocent photos of Polar Bears doing their normal thing it was too late, the damage had been done. Once again there was no actual admission of error, no apology to right the wrong. There can be no wrong when your cause is sooo right! These people are preaching to other people who want to be heros that either save a species that isn’t endangered, or a planet that is in verygood health thank-you verymuch! Give the folks what they want. Don’t be a spoil-sport and put reality, truth or anything else in the way.
“Rivers fed by melting snow and glaciers supply water to over one-sixth of the world’s population–well over a billion people. But these sources of water are quickly disappearing: the Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers in India, China, and other Asian countries could be gone in 25 years. ”
This is the opening passage from MIT Technology Review’s piece on “The Geoengineering Gambit”
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24157/
Most of the remaining piece is dedicated to goofy ‘geo-engineering’ schemes like SO2 spraying and artificial trees, and of course the mandatory fawning and begging of funds from Obama adviser Daniel Schrag and ‘White House Scientist’ Joe Holdren.
All because the IPCC said the glaciers were melting and the United Kingdom’s Royal Society declared that geoengineering ideas are not kooky anymore.
And these people are not clowns?
Sounds like RatherGate to me. The IPCC is claiming fake but accurate.
AGW has progressed from being junk science to being pseudo science.
Junk science is when scientists get a bit over subjective and enthusiastic when selecting data to fit their theories. It has little value but at least it was sincerely done
Pseudo science is pretend science. Wrapping up theories in fake science without even trying to make it fit with any raw data or real life observations. Like making some speculative comment over the telphone and then publishing the comment as if it were the conclusion of some research paper and then telling everyone it has been checked and peer reviewed.
Like knowingly including inverted upside down graphs in your data and then expecting no one to notice what you have done to reach your falsified conclusions. And then calling it science.
How many more examples of pseudoscience are out there waiting to be exposed?
I clicked on the email contact info at the bottom of the pdf that IPCC issued with this correction and inquired about the error in table 10.9 of AR4 WGII chapter 10.
The table has an entry for the average retreat of the Pindari glacier of 135.2 meters/year from 1845 to 1966. This appears to have been calculated by dividing the observed 2,840 meters of retreat by 21 years rather than the 121 year span between 1845 and 1966.
This error was picked up by a commenter in one of the blogs I frequent — this one, or Climate Audit, or Lucia’s blackboard … I forget which.
===================
I’ll report back the response, if any, from the IPCC-Sec@wmo.int
Charlie A (20:11:29) :
Considering what has been coming out of the IPCC as ‘science’, there’s every reason to suspect that it was intentional. Modelus Operandi. They just happened to have misplaced a “1” .
“In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly”.
Who do they think they are trying to fool? I just finished reading a 149 page recount of the leaked emails from east Anglia by John P Castello (clearly the most thourough, damning account I’ve read) The WG1 IPCC paper is totally and absolutely WORTHLESS.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/climategate_analysis.html
People will go to jail
To be a glacier scientist in tropical and temperate zones requires both scientific training and mountaineering skills. In most of the Himalayas, those with mountaineering skills are tribal people, and those with scientific training middle-class and urban.
“This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment”.
Oh really? Here is an email exchange between Tom Crowley of the Department of Oceanography at the Texas A&M university and Malcolm Hughes September 22, 2000: email 0969618170
“Alpine glaciers also started to retreat in many regions around 1850, with one-third to one-half of their full retreat occurring before the warming that commenced about 1920”.
One third to one half of their FULL RETREAT OCCURRED BEFORE 1920. You don’t say. Here is Hughes’s reply..
“I tried to imply in my e-mail, but will now say it directly, that although a direct carbon dioxide effect is still the best candidate to explain this effect, it is far from proven. In any case, the relevant point is that there is no meaningful correlation with local temperature”.
In other words, these glaciers have been melting for 160yrs, most of it happened even before the 1920’s warming beagan and THEY DON’T KNOW THE CAUSE.
Spare us the lies.
geo (17:28:43) :
” When everything is “robust”, nothing is. . .”
Nice shot.
Why don’t they just admit that they made a robust error and be done with it?
Eroneous climaticus robustus. Greens for short.
Guess I’m a bit confused.
1. Glacier size remains stable: spring runoff consists of winter snowpack.
2. No glaciers: spring runoff consists of winter snowpack.
What am I missing?
Andrew_M_Garland (15:40:13) :
Even if there were no snow, but just rain, the population could build a dam and reservoir to catch the water, just like every place that does not have a snow-capped peak nearby.
Implying that as glaciers disappear it will stop raining exactly there, ‘is a feature not a bug’ and even touted as “robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment.”
So if they haven’t already thought of it, no doubt it’s only a matter of time before the Tropics becomes Desert?
Shocker, Google News has RealClimate at the head of news for IPCC:
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=ipcc
Not listed as a blog, or under the category blog, but as a mainline news story:
“The IPCC is not infallible (shock!)”
“This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of “the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report”
And for a shining example of the “absolute adherence” to this “thorough review” – in all its gory glory – I invite you to take a look at “The climate change game … Monopoly: the IPCC version”
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/the-climate-change-game-monopoly-the-ipcc-version/
As Canada’s National Post columnist Peter Foster wrote on Jan. 20:
IPCC Meltdown
Now the question is whether Rajendra Pachauri should resign
“[…] the lead author of the relevant IPCC chapter, Murari Lal, rejected the notion that the IPCC had screwed up. “The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them,” he said.
“Never were truer words spoken. The IPCC’s task has always been not objectively to examine science but to make the case for man-made climate change by any means available.”
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/01/19/peter-foster-ipcc-meltdown.aspx
And in an OpEd in the same edition of the same paper, Lorne Gunter quite correctly concluded:
First Climategate, now Glaciergate
“You also get to see how the “settled” science behind climate change alarmism was arrived at — not by scientific consensus, but rather by manipulation, misrepresentation and strong-arming.”
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2461494
The term “voodoo science” describes the IPCC/WWF/Greenpeace party line pretty well. Check out this explanation of voodoo from CNN:
Afro-Creole religion, known as Vodou, still underpins the philosophy of many Haitians, though by no means everyone. A spirit-priest I know reads the earthquake as an allegorical message from the spirits who infuse the land. “The land is our mother,” he said. When you abuse the land — deforest her, plant only one crop, overpopulate her, erode her soil — she explodes, searching for a way to rebalance.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/18/mcalister.haiti.faith/index.html
Here’s yet another scandal, this time in Canada’s arctic. Read this and weep (or maybe not).
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=2465231&s=Home
I’ve just watched a national geographic special called: “Six Degrees Could Change the World” which can only be described as a compenium of lies.
With appearances by all of the recently disgraced “experts” i wonder how long until this movie gets retracd / apologised for, since the science they presented has clearly been unmasked as hype.
It is completely over the top fear mongering … presented as unbiased science.
D. King (18:48:25) :
[snip – we don’t need to stoop to this level, the IPCC is doing fine on its own -A]
Am I alone in being curious to know just how low D. King did stoop?!
Clawga (17:04:38) :
rabidfox (12:16:38) :
I don’t think that ‘robust’ means what they think it means.
Or as Inigo Montoya says ” You keep saying that word. I think it does not mean what you think it means”
In a similar vein:
“Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word ‘safe’ that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
Arthur Dent – Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
“Gilbert (22:50:12) :
Guess I’m a bit confused.
1. Glacier size remains stable: spring runoff consists of winter snowpack.
2. No glaciers: spring runoff consists of winter snowpack.
What am I missing?”
The glaciers do affect the timing of the runoff. Snow melts later and slower and the summer low in river runoff is consequently mitigated.
What is so obvious is that anyone who can do basic O level mathematics and actually does some basic calculations can’t help but be sceptical of almost any IPCC claim. I became sceptical because I plotted annual temperature data on the temperature prediction graph of the 2001 report and could clearly see that it fell below the entire range of predictions – even outside the envelope. How could that be ? And how could anyone claim AGW is accelerating ?
In this case, an application of basic maths to divide glacier thicknesses by the annual melt rate would have shown something very awry. And we have that idiot Pauchuri claiming anyone who does so is practicing ‘voodoo science’. These people are PATHETIC ! It makes my blood boil – the arrogance, self-righteousness and downright incompetence of people who claim to have the only truth. Call me Mr. Angry – but I’ve had enough of them.
Jimmy Haigh (01:47:23) :
Am I alone in being curious to know just how low D. King did stoop?!
Low enough Jimmy. It was a deserved snip.
Dave
Eric (skeptic) (17:49:06) writes:
But from the original newspaper article: When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was “very high”.
Go back and reread the IPCC WG II report. There’s no mention of a “very high” probability related to Section 10.6.2, which is where the Himalayan glacier report in question is cited. I don’t know which newspaper article you are referring to here, but if the author of that article was reading 10.6.2 and assigned a probability to it, then he was mixing up two unrelated sections of the report. Based on that assumption (which I will gladly correct once I see the article you refer to), this strikes me as poor science journalism.
Harry, (17:37:16) :
You wrote: “So exactly how does a claim that the Himalaya’s will melt by 2035 get thru a quality control check if it was reviewed by a skeptic? There wasn’t even one scientific paper that concluded that. Nothing, nada..an off the cuff remark in a magazine interview.
It fit the reviewers ‘belief system’. ”
This is true and always true if you assume people never make mistakes. I do not accept that assumption. I’ve already addressed to you how quality control systems sometimes fail. You’ve chosen not to respond to that point, so I don’t know what your analysis of that is. WGII, chapter 10 has some 25 authors/reviewers cited on page one, and about 500 reference cited throughout. In a document that complex, it is very easy to see how an error could happen.
I’m not defending the error. I am merely pointing out that I am not going to assume improper motives to any individuals without proof. I don’t understand why you appear to do that (correct me if I am wrong about this assumption).
@Herman L: Here’s a comment I’ve previously posted twice on WUWT in the last two days:
Roger Pielke’s, Jr.’s blog points out flaws in that defense. An IPCC insider, Georg Kaser, revealed that:
1. He had alerted the IPCC staff about the error prior to publication, but they refused to correct it.
2. None of the other reviewers pointed out this glaring error.
3. The people in charge of the Asia section of the report lacked relevant expertise. (“They were without any knowledge of glaciology.”)
4. Everyone in the IPCC is now aware of the fault and intends to correct it in the next report. This means that Pachauri’s vigorous defense of the flawed report against criticism by a non-alarmist recent Indian government report implies that either he was unaware (out of touch) or aware (deceitful).
Here’s the link to Pielke’s article: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/stranger-and-stranger.html
Herman L,
Let me put this in terms AGW enthisiasts can understand.
The EPA used as basis for it’s legal authority to regulate CO2 the IPCC report.
In the US the EPA has full authority to determine what it may or may not regulate based on it’s interpretation of the ‘scientific evidence’.
Scientific Evidence is a legal term. One year all the Drunk Driving Convicitions in Wa State were thrown out. The breathalyzer machines had been calibrated with a thermometer that hadn’t been calibrated according to ANSI standards. The State argued that at most the error would mean a difference in .0001 in the breathalyzerI reading. The Drunks Association argued that it did not matter how much the error was, the evidence given by the breathalyzer failed to meets the standards of ‘addmissable scientific evidence’. The Drunk Association won.
Big Coal, Oil etc now have incontrovertible proof that part of the IPCC report fails to meet the standards of ‘Admissable Scientific Evidence’.
Big Coal et al will argue that since part of the IPCC report incontrovertibly fails to meet the standard of ‘scientific evidence’, the entire report must be excluded from evidence.
Without any evidence, EPA has no legal basis to regulate CO2.
How would you describe the people who provided ‘gift wrapped’ evidence to the Coal Industry?
From the statement:
In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.
In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, consisting of utilization of inappropriate, manipulated, scientifically invalid proxy data massaged with improper, non-verifiable statistical procedures and selectively published in restricted peer-reviewed journals were properly applied.
Fixed!
Tom G(ologist) (12:58:44) :
Peer review with this crowd is rather as it was in old England when a Lord could only be tried by his PEERS (other Lords); e.g., an action was brought against Lord Cardigan (the idiot responsible for the Charge of the light Brigade) who insisted that his right was to be tried by a jury of his peers. So a jury of other Lords was convened and promptly acquited him of all charges, even though he was patently guilty of those charges.
In the interests of accuracy you’re referring to Lord Lucan not Cardigan. The British commander, Raglan, ordered Lucan to tell Cardigan to lead the charge which he did. Since the correct target was not clearly identified to Cardigan the wrong one was attacked! Subsequently Raglan blamed Lucan and Lucan was sent back to England, as a result Lucan demanded a Court Martial to clear himself which was declined, so he used his right to speak in the House of Lords to give his side of the story.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/lucan.html
Your story about a jury of his peers etc. did not happen.
Roger Knights (06:23:21) writes:
Roger Pielke’s, Jr.’s blog points out flaws in that defense. An IPCC insider, Georg Kaser, revealed that:
Pielke’s blog contains much of the Agence France-Presse article. The article is clearly wrong on an important factual point that I raised earlier. The article writes “a prediction of catastrophic loss of Himalayan glaciers… said in 2007 it was “very likely” that the glaciers … would vanish by 2035.”
As I previously stated, the Himalayan glaciers reference (10.6.2) did not — NOT!! — contain an IPCC prediction of “very likely” or any other probability asessement. So the reporter got that wrong, probably mixing up two parts of the report — possibly WG I and WG II. He puts it at the top of his article to make the error look like it covers the IPCC’s assessment of glacier melt. Anyone who has read the IPCC report (I doubt that includes this article’s author) knows that’s not correct.
Later on, the author writes: “The prediction for the Himalayan glaciers was contained in the separately published Working Group II report, which assessed likely impacts of climate change.”
Wrong again. There’s no mention anywhere in WGII of this “prediction” being part of the groups assessment of anything that is “likely.”
1. He [Kaser] had alerted the IPCC staff about the error prior to publication, but they refused to correct it.
“Staff” is your word. Kaser said “I pointed it [the error] out,” but to who and in what forum? He says he went through the comments and found nothing. But then the question is: did he not follow the IPCC process and submit a comment on his own? Or is he saying he submitted a comment and it wasn’t there? I want to know. The difference matters regarding who he pointed out the error to.
As for “refused,” that’s your word — not Kaser’s . Kaser said: “For a reason I do not know, they did not react.” For all we know, an email message could have been deleted by a spam filter.
2. None of the other reviewers pointed out this glaring error.
“Glaring” is your word. Not Kaser’s, not the writer of the Agence France-Presse article. If it is so “glaring,” why did Kaser wait so long to talk about it?
The basic premise of the IPCC report is that ALL global temperature change is due to CO2 and that the temperature of the world would be static and unchanging without the influence of CO2. It is that core belief that is the foundation of the religion of AGW. All climate research is then done to substantiate that core belief, and a little distortion of facts is acceptable.
Investor’s Business Daily wrote this particular subject up in an editorial titled “The IPCC’s Abominable Snowmen “; http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518615
The editorial closes with “Like the infamous “hockey stick” graph purporting to show sudden and man-induced warming, and the Climate-gate e-mails showing the efforts by researchers associated with Britain’s Climate Research unit to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, the Himalayan glacier claim, like the IPCC report itself, is science fiction and not science fact.”
I suppose we can add this bit of IPCC peer reviewed stuff to all the other IPCC peer reviewed stuff..
MBH Hockeystick
Patched up with Briffa Hockeystick
Sea level rise
Hurricane activity
Troph hotspot
Polar Bears (was that peer reviewed?)
……..have I missed any?
I think the point is that the IPCC is so flawed in its mission statement, that the cause of the error is systemic.
The error isn’t a bug in some code, it is more like the error is that the entire feature spec is being driven by marketing rather than practical user needs. IOW, scrap it and start again.
mikef2 (10:25:57) : have I missed any?
Sea Ice
Effect of Clouds/Water Vapour
Positive effects of CO2 increase – more plant growth
Positive effects of a warmer climate – less deaths from cold which is much higher than from heat.
Herman L (09:24:58) :
Just Copied from 10.6.2
“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
Herman L (09:24:58) : combine the words “likelihood” and “very high”.
By pure happenstance, I have just read “The Neuroscience of Screwing Up” by Jonah Lehrer at wired.com. He summarizes a four year study on failure in scientific research. I have a few doubts about the absolute accuracy of the Penzias/Wilson story (one commentator has already pointed out one minor error). BUT, there are some real gems in the article about the value of “heated questions” by skeptics, the need to check assumptions and consider whether the Hypothesis being tested is in error, the value of discussion with those in different disciplines and the dangers of preconceptions. Several of the bloggers have made the point that if the main AGW proponents and the IPCC had taken such advice the world of climate science would be better off.
on the BBC website today, “Glaciers in meltdown”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/01/20/glacier.melt.comparison.climate.change/index.html
The pictures speak for themselves.
“I have found that pictures are powerful and I can virtually step aside from making pronouncements on global warming,” Arnold told CNN.
Carl F (09:54:42) :
The basic premise of the IPCC report is that ALL global temperature change is due to CO2
Incorrect. Read IPCC technical Summary and tell me where it says that.
A C Osborn (10:51:57) :
Just Copied from 10.6.2
“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
I stand corrected. I did not check the orginal source prior to my latest post. Yes, it says that, and I was wrong to write as I did without qualifying my language correctly.
The language in 10.6.2 “very likely” was not promoted or cited anywhere else. That is what I implied. Chapter 10 only applies medium confidence to “more rapid melting of glaciers” in Asia and elsewhere only cites 10.6 as “Glaciers in Asia are melting faster in recent years than before.”
pp. 22-23 of the technical summary list “Very likely” as > “90% probability” and “Medium confidence” as “About 5 out of 10 chance.” So the chapter 10 authors overall downgraded 10.6’s 90% to 50% when when combined with all other reports. Does this clarify that?
@ Herman L (09:24:58) : I’m not responding to the first part of your criticism, about the “very likely” phase not being in 10.6.2, since A.C. Osborne has done so already.
He was looking in the comments not for his own direct feedback to the staff (see below for more on that) but for comment-criticism by other glaciologists:
It’s very unlikely that it wasn’t made in the proper fashion and to the proper persons, since Kaser was a Very Important Insider and had communicated successfully with other IPCC participants, either directly or via formal comments:
Your suggestion such a VIP in the IPCC might have had his e-mail and/or comment blocked by a spam filter is ludicrous:
1. On its face.
2. Because his other (acted-upon) comments got through. Why should this one have been blocked?
3. Because, if the Asia group had not received his comment, they would have defended themselves by saying, “Show us your e-mail — we never got it.” Or they would have had a IT flunky at the UN dig into archives to show that the spam filter caught it.
4. Most importantly, because if Pachauri could have shifted the blame off the IPCC’s staff and onto a technical or clerical error, he would have done so. Instead, he has conceded that proper procedures were not followed by the IPCC. (I.e., by its staff.)
Kaser was, it should be obvious, being “diplomatic,” as anyone would be (especially a UN-affiliated bigshot) in such a situation. The staff didn’t react because they deliberately disregarded his criticism. That’s synonymous with refusing.
Glaring” is synonymous with “far out of any order of magnitude,” no?:
It’s not because he is a dissimulating dioxide dissenter. He’s a committed warmist and didn’t want to embarrass the IPCC:
Herman L.
Please see Figure SPM.4. of the Summary for Policymakers and fig. TS.32 of the Technical Summary. There are charts of what the IPCC calculates the temperatures would be with and without anthropogenic forcings. I am certain that I read a statement by the IPCC somewhere (maybe an old document) stating flatly that without people, the global average temperatures would not change. It is apparently not so stated in the current report, but the charts say essentially the same thing, showing nearly no change warmer or colder if CO2 remains constant.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/main.html page 79
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf page 11
I was looking at the climateprogress version of this story and noted in the comments that many people were seeing this as a failure of the ‘skeptics’ (or was it deniers?) to point this out – there was much piling on and sayings ‘yes, if those skeptics were so clever, why didn’t they point this out’.
I submitted a comment to point out the Roger Pielke Sr. had noted this in his blog some months back, as had many other skeptics, all while the IPCC was standing behind the ‘fact’. Mysteriously my comment awaited moderation and then was deleted – I suppose some sort of glitch with the blog software /sarcasm. I guess I’m on a denier blacklist now.
REPLY: Keep trying, Romm is exceptionally stubborn. Also to shorten links that might otherwise get automatically sent to SPAM, I suggest using tinyurl.com to shorten them. -A
very big mistake ,no one expected IPcc can do it.
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/but-when-will-the-ipcc-apologise-for-pachauri/
A poster on this site (no 2) points out another error….
“There is another “interesting” error in the same section as the 2035 claim. See table 10.9, line 2. The entry for Pindari glacier shows that its snout has retreated 2840 meters between 1845 and 1966. IPCC then uses some creative math to calculate an average retreat of 135.2 meters/year.
But 135.2 is what one gets when dividing 2840 by 21 years. If you use the correct time span of 121 years between 1845 and 1966 the average retreat is 23.5 m/yr.”
Strong words indeed, from a Government Minister in this mainstream article :-
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/himalayan-glaciers-to-melt-down-pachauri-claim-alarmist-reiterates-ramesh/569313/
which wasn’t the easiest to find.
Or try this version if the link above isn’t working right:-
http://202.138.124.118/latest-news/himalayan-glaciers-to-melt-down-pachauri-claim-alarmist-reiterates-ramesh/569313/
Good day I really impress about your topoc this day I hope you will post a new story every day.. Great..
Roger,
Your post contains so much conjecture I have a difficult time deciding where to begin:
Kaser was a Very Important Insider…
such a VIP in the IPCC…
they would have defended themselves …
Kaser was, it should be obvious, being “diplomatic,” …
He … didn’t want to embarrass the IPCC
Do you have evidence for this up or are you just making it up?
For the record, I did not claim that any emails were removed by a spam filter. I said that, for all we know, that may have happened. We don’t have the facts. And what you wrote has precious few to add.
Carl f,
In response to Carl F (14:55:43) :
You seem to have overlooked Figure TS.5 (p. 32) and Table TS.2 (p. 33) in the 4AR Technical Summary. They detail a significant number of greenhouse gases other than CO2 responsible for climate change (CH4, NO2, Ozone, etc.) . CO2 is the most pronounced (measured by its RF), but it is NOT the only one.
OK, let’s begin here.
I documented those assertions. I quoted, from the AFP article, the fact that Kaser was a “lead author,” which makes him an IPCC VIP, and I boldfaced that key phrase so you wouldn’t miss it:
What’s your excuse for pretending my claim was a mere conjecture?
Next:
This was hardly conjectural on my part. YOU “conjectured” that the Asia group might not received a communication from Kaser.
I applied a logical test to that conjecture: that if they had not received a comment or e-mail from Kaser, members of the Asia group would have said so. (I.e., they’d have denied Kaser’s accusation that they ignored his correction.) Since they failed to make such a denial in the face of worldwide curiosity, the other possibility must be the truth: that by their silence they implicitly conceded Kasor’s claim. This is remorseless logic, not guesswork. There’s no other explanation possible.
This is further supported by Pachurai’s similar failure, in his concession of the IPCC’s error, to deny that Kaser had warned the IPCC about it before publication. Under what conceivable circumstances would he not have issued such a denial if the most damning part of Kaser’s charge had been inaccurate? (Hint: none.)
Those statements also represent only inferring the obvious in a situation where there are only two realistic alternatives, not woolly conjecture. Here’s the context. You had asked,
Your apparent implication was that might have been making up his claim that he’d submitted a comment long ago, for if he had done so and it had been ignored, why hadn’t he made a stink about it then?
My response, in effect, was that that argument would make sense only if Kasor had been a climate skeptic and had wanted to embarrass the IPCC. I therefore pointed out that the facts, and therefore the conclusion to be drawn from them, were the contrary: “He’s a committed warmist and didn’t want to embarrass the IPCC:”
At this point I WILL venture into conjecture and add that he probably wanted to continue working as a lead author at the IPCC in its next report, and also that Kaser might not have come forward spontaneously with his claim. It’s possible (likely, IMO) that the AFP reporter was directed to Kaser when he started asking questions of IPCC insiders (who knew the inside story) about how the absurdly wrong 2035 date had been missed.
Just in case you’re suggesting, with the words “for the record,” that I somehow misrepresented what you said as being a “claim,” let the record show that I did not:
……..
“For all we know”! We know that the Asia team hasn’t denied receiving and ignoring Kaser’s e-mail, nor has Pachauri, despite the worldwide embarrassment and worse that his claim has caused them. Pachauri’s statement, in the face of worldwide curiosity as to whether the IPCC staff was really responsible for such a reckless and arrogant act as trashing a correction of their boner, made no denial.
Are you seriously suggesting that he and/or wouldn’t have denied such a serious and public accusation if possible, and that at this point we must suspend judgment until an explicit confession is proffered?
Get serious! We have all the facts we need.
You wish. Get real.
Oops: “he and/or wouldn’t” should have been:
“he and/or they wouldn’t”
Roger,
I stand by my initial statement that the vast majority of what you write is conjecture.
Roger Knights (07:51:32) :
Herman L (04:59:39) :
Roger, there are non so blind as those who WON’T SEE and Herman is right at thr the top of those.
Mother Nature Network’s cherry-picking of Matterhorn photos fails miserably in their effort to debunk Glaciergate
http://algorelied.com/?p=3564
From todays WSJ:
A Glacier Meltdown
The Himalayas and climate science.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013393219835692.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
… the error is of a piece with other glib, and now debunked, global warming alarms.
Among them: that 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States (it was 1934); that sea levels could soon rise by up to 20 feet and put Florida underwater (an 18-inch rise by the year 2100 is the more authoritative estimate); that polar bears are critically endangered by global warming (most polar bear populations appear to be stable or increasing); that—well, we could go on without even mentioning the climategate emails. …
Kaser claims seems a bit odd in the light of some of his emails from the CRUGate.
On email 1123708417.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=581&filename=1123708417.txt
in response to Kevin Trenberth on Wed Aug 10 17:13:37 2005
he says (line 129):
“Georg Kaser wrote:
Kevin,
Have many thanks for compiling and editing 3.9. I agree that the “radiatively forced”
and the “amplified hydrological cycle” should be removed and I also
…
There are some other points in the text which I would like to comment:
….
3. “If continued, some may disappear within the next 30 years.” This sentence can stand
for every mountain region in the world and should not be used for tropical mountains
only. Everywhere, many small glaciers have disappeared since the 19th Century maxima and
many will disappear soon in the Alps, the Caucasus, in the Asian High mountains etc. as
well as in the Tropics.
…..
So then it was “” “If continued, some may disappear within the next 30 years.” This sentence can stand
for every mountain region in the world “”
but now it happens that “it is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing” ….
a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?
Thu Jan 28, 03:10:58 AM MST
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