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
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 Dobrowolski 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.
@ur momisugly 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.