We’ve been admonished by others in the blogosphere when we report on record cold weather or record snow stories of interest by hurling the maxim: “weather is not climate“. Yet when the IPCC does that, linking specific weather events in the IPCC AR4 report, such as a single heatwave, the same people have no complaints. As Davis Rose on the Times reports, the IPCC, under Pachauri’s leadership, botched that too. Now it looks like the IPCC will have to withdraw yet another part of the report.
Rose writes:
The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC’s 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s”.
The problem is that the IPCC cited a study on severe weather event frequency that wasn’t complete yet. When it was complete in 2008, it came to an entirely different conclusion about linkage to global warming:
The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.
When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.
Read the complete Times article here: UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters
As an example of citing a single weather event as being connected to “climate change”, we can look to the IPCC AR4 report online and find this citation about the 2003 heat wave in Europe:
And here is where the IPCC tries to link a single weather event to climate change aka global warming:
As such, the 2003 heatwave resembles simulations by regional climate models of summer temperatures in the latter part of the 21st century under the A2 scenario (Beniston, 2004). Anthropogenic warming may therefore already have increased the risk of heatwaves such as the one experienced in 2003 (Stott et al., 2004).
But, it’s apparently OK when peer reviewed scientists do it.
h/t to WUWT reader Dirk H for the IPCC reference.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
If it’s hot, it’s Global Warming.
If it’s wet or windy, it’s catastrophic Climate Change.
If it’s cold, cautiously try Climate Change but don’t push it too hard. If that doesn’t work, it’s weather. It may be safer to say weather right off.
The big worry about all this negative publicity for the IPCC and “Global Warming” is that it may end up killing any and all interest and government backing for research into climate change.
Climate change happens. No-one disputes that. The only dispute is attempting to link this to human activity and predicting catastrophe if we don’t all retreat to the stone age or pay vested interests huge sums of money.
There may be good reason to continue research into climate change, not to look for culprits, or ways to make money out of it, but to guide governments on any policy and investment changes that may be prudent to make.
For example, if we really are on the edge of a Bond event, investment in building up energy resources as quickly and cheaply as possible may be warranted if we don’t want to see large numbers of people freeze to death.
But because of these criminals, the reaction may be that of governments that have been bitten by people crying wolf once too often.
Sorry for being off topic here, but Pielke Jr. has just uncovered something that sounds equally bad regarding the Stern Report…
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-tangled-web-we-weave.html
This really is starting to resemble a Whitehall farce; I’m expecting Brian Rix to enter stage right and drop his trousers at any moment 🙂
We know there are more scientists being bypassed/silenced in the process. Maybe they will come forward one by one now.
Sea-levels next to go? Just dont let the frequence of such news be too high. Its going too fast now. Once every 14’th day will do nicely.
James F. Evans (11:36:16)
=======================
The IPCC don’t seem to be weathering the current climate very well.
Poochie and his IPCC are seriously past their Expiration Date. Toss ’em in the dumpster for hauling to the nearest landfill.
As I understand it, weather is observed with instruments and climate is observed with computer models.
The funny thing is that the “it’s weather, not climate” mantra has been invented for the sake of protecting AGW from the vagaries of the real world. Trouble is, such a way of thinking quickly drags “climate” into the realm of the absolutely irrelevant.
The Warmists are caught in a Chinese Finger Puzzle: The harder they struggle…. the deeper the journalists dig into thier closets.
The IPCC Big Rig is jack-knifed with a load of garbage in rush hour traffic.
Want to get away ?
The Snickers are on the house.
nemesys,
I think the official definition of climate is 30 years.
However if I go by my local glacier advance/retreat cycles its more like 50-60 years. 30 years advance + 30 years of retreat completes one cycle.
Every single piece of evidence FOR CAGW, turns out to be wanting when examined honestly.
Wanting in simple math, wanting in higher physics, wanting in statistical analysis, wanting in common sense, wanting in ethics, wanting in scientific protocols… but with an overabundance of the taxpayers hard earned money…
Edmund Burke (11:30:42) :
Soon they’ll be reduced to claiming the sun rising in the east is irrefutable proof of AGW. It’s about the only thing they can’t goof on at this stage.
They would be incorrect about that also. Only rises in the East twice a year.
The underlying problem is that there is, a global cabal of major wealth holders, who want to be in power, and the viability of the developed world keeps heading them off.
This current UNIPCC fiasco is just the current attempt to pull strings, on placed puppets to hand them what they want, so they don’t look implicated just opportunistic. When this phase ends they will try a new tactic, from a more sinister hidden agenda.
Reed Coray (11:25:33) : “Philosophical Question: How many rotten bricks does it take bring an edifice down?”
That depends on how much tax money they can continue extort from us to keep shoring the edifice up.
philincalifornia (11:28:49) : “…I’m registering purely to vote against that unelected freak….”
And which unelected freak would that be? There are more than one, if you think about it…
Edmund Burke (11:30:42) : “Soon they’ll be reduced to claiming the sun rising in the east is irrefutable proof of AGW. It’s about the only thing they can’t goof on at this stage.”
That depends on what your definition of the word “is” is.
What do you mean “another retraction”? The IPCC has not retracted anything. They only said some mistakes were made, but I haven’t seen any statement that they are changing their material.
PJP (12:16:30) :
“The big worry about all this negative publicity for the IPCC and “Global Warming” is that it may end up killing any and all interest and government backing for research into climate change.”
I don’t think it would end up killing all interest and funding in climate research. We might see a cull of the institutions which have most veered from science to AGW propaganda. I don’t see that as a bad thing. For instance, I’d welcome the Met Office taking far less interest in climate change and especially AGW advocacy, and concentrating on weather forecasting.
As it is, I’d say there was too much effort directed to climate research, some of it very dubious such as computer modeling, at the expense of other things. The political interest has inclined it to produce conclusions favourable to its paymasters.
There’s also an overflow where work not obviously related to climate change has to declare its relevance to AGW, which is not IMHO healthy, and a set of NGOs and university units etc, carrying on about the social consquences of AGW and also involved in advocacy. I wouldn’t be sad to see that pruned out as frankly there are better things to spend the money on.
I don’t know about the definition where weather events become a sign of the climate but this coming event forecasted should be interesting if you’re thinking anecdotal evidence is piling up. (people in the west would probably be happy the link isn’t talking about them)
http://markvoganweather.blogspot.com/2010/01/m-vogans-official-forecasts-exciting.html
Uh oh! O.o
Steve in SC (11:11:54) :
Your comment is right on! I would only add that it may be more than frayed but is unraveling.
The money problem has finally been addressed via this article. It says the faked ‘natural disaster’ prediction was used as basis for demand of $100 billion in Copenhagen from so-called rich nations to poor ones. The US said it would contribute (based on a now proven lie). The second home run from this article, it quotes Obama saying the world can expect more storm activity (a conclusion that could only have been based on the fake report, not that he needed the help having been in on the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange, having declared climate a national security issue, and that his EPA is prepared to act based on false data, and the Supreme Court 5-4 decision that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant has to remain to back up the whole grab). Article also quotes Miliband and Gordon Brown predicting disasters. Al Gore’s movie now has no grounds to be in any school.
Here’s evidence of the BBC treating hot weather as climate: “Scientists believe that such unseasonal temperatures are the result of global warming and of the climate’s natural variability. “.
So a case of warm August in Australia == climate, though BBC doesn’t say which scientists.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8235111.stm
There are lies, damned lies and the IPCC AR4 report.
James F. Evans (11:36:16) :
When it rains it pours.
It’s raining buckets on the IPCC right now.
Ah-ha! But if there was no dramatic warming then it would be snow! See, the IPCC is right, a weather event is proof of AGW. Refute that, skeptic!
News story five years from now…
Northwest Territory
Al Gore Builds Compound
Al Gore and the last 47 believers of the debunked CAGW theory have purchased 14 acres here and are building “eco huts” that will be powwered by solar, wind and elk dung energy. Al Gore said, “The rest of earth’s population is gonna feel pretty silly when they are burning and watching my group thrive here.”
In a related story, the polars bear’s numbers have increased at an astonishing rate and are moving south to escape the unprecedented cold weather…
PJP (12:16:30) :
“The big worry about all this negative publicity for the IPCC and “Global Warming” is that it may end up killing any and all interest and government backing for research into climate change.”
How about backing up and learning how to predict next weeks weather?
Maybe just get one hurricane right?
These bozos are so far out of their league it’s not even funny.
And yes climate is weather.
If it isn’t, why are they using the same computer programs?
” Edmund Burke (11:30:42) :
Soon they’ll be reduced to claiming the sun rising in the east is irrefutable proof of AGW. It’s about the only thing they can’t goof on at this stage. ”
Please let them do that, it would be the biggest possible “goof”.
Depending up on the latitude and the time of the year, the sun rises in an arc of 180 degrees varying from due north to due south. It only ever rises in the east in the tropics and even then it is dependent on the time of the year. A “scientific” paper should not include generalised common “knowledge” but proper measurements and error ranges. I could just see it, “The sun rises in the East plus or minus 90 degrees.” In an IPCC document (or other warmist lierature), no way!