It’s worse than we thought! Now the IPCC has been citing magazine articles, like this one from Climbing Magazine, issue 208, shown at left. We’ve heard the title before, according to their index: “Canaries in a Coal Mine,” – Feature on global loss of glaciers. But wait there’s more! If you think that’s crazy, we also learn that IPCC Chairman Pachauri has penned a “smutty” romance novel! Bizarre, but true.
The Telegraph reports on the magazine issue:
The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.
The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.
The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.
The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.
It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC’s report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.
This week scientists from around the world leapt to the defence of the IPCC, insisting that despite the errors, which they describe as minor, the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and its conclusions are unaffected.
But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC’s use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.
Professor Richard Tol, one of the report’s authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: “These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.
“Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.
“There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense.”
The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government’s worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people.
The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained within a table entitled “Selected observed effects due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming”.
It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and 2000.
The report also states that the section is intended to “assess studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report) of observed changes and their effects”.
But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific review process that research published in scientific journals must undergo.
The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s.
Mr Bowen said: “I am surprised that they have cited an article from a climbing magazine, but there is no reason why anecdotal evidence from climbers should be disregarded as they are spending a great deal of time in places that other people rarely go and so notice the changes.”
The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around 80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps.
read the complete article at the Telegraph
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ROFL. I wonder if the sea temperature stuff cites Yachting Monthly.
These stories keep coming and each is more of a knee slapper than the last.
“I’ll take ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ for 800, Alex.”
“For 800 dollars…the answer is, “‘IPCC AR4’,…or ‘Return to Almora’ ”
“What is, ‘A sexed up work of fiction’?”
“Correct for 200 dollars. Please select your next answer.”
“I’m gonna go for it Alex, how about ‘Graphs and Charts’ for a thousand.”
“For a thousand…’Used for playing an icy, goal oriented game'”
“What is, ‘A hockey stick’?”
First Climategate, now Climbinggate
Bill DiPuccio (20:18:18) :
I am keeping a record of these news stories under the IPCC section here.
Poptech, you are really an excellent resource.
Kudos.
solrey – ^5
Re: Edward – Entry Level Dilemma (19:24:22) :
Edward, your argument for including the masters dissertation was:
That argument does not include anything about a review process. It can be used for any piece of writing by anybody. ie. Its the content that determines whether its scientific or not. Using this argument means that they can include anything they wish, whether its a published paper, a blog entry, or a high school project (which presumably gets reviewed by a teacher).
Then your hopes would be sadly dashed. They make the assumption that if it is peer reviewed then it has already reached this minimum standard. Their function is to collate the scientific knowledge at a point in time and produce a report based on that knowledge. It isn’t to perform research or to peer review dissertations.
They have widened the scope of what can be used so as to include “grey” material. But I would argue that a masters dissertation isn’t even grey material. At least the reports by WWF had reasonably wide distribution prior to being included whereas the masters dissertation was probably only ever published on the authors home page and deep in the bowels of his University’s website.
As a climber for 15+ years (and climate skeptic for only a year or so), I can say this photo is not photoshopped. Lisa Rands is bouldering. (Climbing unroped relatively close to the ground. Someone is below, out of the photo. If she falls, that person(s) will push her so that she lands feet first on a “crash pad” placed on the ground.) She is moving up and right (from out point of view), in a relatively quick move (“dynamic” is the term used). Her hair, being subject to Newton’s Law, is going to move left from our perspective. This looks like a fairly hard move. Yes, a climber can keep one’s feet on overhanging terrain like this. A quick search turned up a number of videos. Here’s one:
Notice her hair. It swings back and forth. A picture taken at the right time would show her hair pointing down and left. V12 is the rating of the climb on this video. This puts Lisa in the upper echelon of climbers (men and women). I can barely do a V4 climb on a good day. (More on the “V” scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sherman_%28climber%29 )
Are you sure the IPCC doesn’t stand for International Panel of Comics and Comedians?
The IPCC is the gold standard in science studies. Only now is it being discovered that it’s pyrite.
“Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.”
Orwellian reporting. Yeah it’s no biggie IPCC is citing its claims from cuisine magazines or out thin air, no biggie CRU scientists have fudged the data, purged skeptical scientists from journals, and forged hockey sticks. No biggie the climate is not warming but cooling.
Our way of living is being considered to be completely changed and it does not matter that science does not back the theory of global warming. Facts don’t matter, it’s just a football game for the skeptics, who are seizing the opportunity to score some points.
It is disgusting how no journalists or scientist from the other camp have not broken ranks and do what is right.
Here’s a year-old article reporting on a UK government adviser, John Ashton, urging scientists to (in effect) be more alarmist about consequences and less nuanced about their degree of certainty in “communicating” with politicians. From the look of things in the UK, they’ve successfully followed his advice.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/4969047/Government-adviser-accuses-politicians-of-ignoring-science-of-global-warming.html
It looks as though this line of thinking is SOP at the IPCC as well.
I may get shouted down here but I don’t see a problem with anecdotal evidence.
Having said that, Where are the historical anecdotes?
By that I mean, Amundsen sailing the NW channel in both 1903 & 05, Syedoff drifting in open seas at 85ºN in December of 1938, not getting iced in until the 18th, then being free again in February of 1939.
Anecdotes are fine, it’s selective use of anecdotes then assuming attribution of cause that isn’t.
Hate to bust your bubbles, but these two sources are cited in table 1.2 and the work is not discussed anywhere in the relevant section.
This just ain’t a big deal.
Richard Gray cites me correctly. I’m glad he left out the more colourful language.
The average Swiss Diplomarbeit is of a higher standard than the average US or UK Master’s thesis. However, only 1% or so of Diplomarbeite are good enough to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
In this case, primary data were collected for the Diplomarbeit, which enhances the probability of subsequent journal publication, and it is on a subject for which there are no prior academic publications, which greatly enhances the probability of publication.
I have not seen this Diplomarbeit, so I do not know how good it is. Chances are, it would not pass journal peer-review.
Michael (18:37:51) :
That’s actually quite funny related to carbon trading. 😉
DaveE.
Re: Edward – Entry Level Dilemma (18:27:51) :
Does the fact that a student wrote it make a paper less scientific?
In addition to the not peer reviewed issue, the paper as summarized reported interviewing mountain climbing guides. ie. gathering a series of anecdotes from a limited time span. see previous comments about the plural of anecdote.
What follows that “Once upon a time…” must give us pause. It may be dreary fare, indeed.
“Mommy, tell me that story again, you know…”
“Sure, sweetheart, you mean the popular delusion around the 18th century about Tulip Mania… where everyone overinvested in tulip bulbs, and when the economic bubble came, there was a huge collapse…”
“No, no. I want to hear the one about Global Warming, where they said it was going to get so hot you could cook an egg on the hood of your buick. Could they really do that?”
If the kid wants a good fictional catastrophe tale, it has yet to be made in cinematic form. In fact, going way out on a limb here, one might say that nary a good disaster narrative has come from the Ghost of Global Warming Past, nor will it be uttered by the Ghost of Future Global Warming (as his NSF grants finally peter out). Don’t know why. Just a gut feeling. Proof, such as it is, is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disaster_films
Wiki’s “Global Warming” list of catastophe flicks cites:
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
Category 6: Day of Destruction (2004)
Category 7: The End of the World (2005)
Countdown: The Sky’s on Fire! (1998)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
The Fire Next Time (1993 TV)
Waterworld (1995)
Soylent Green (1973)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
The last two, though good entertainment, have naught to do with warming, ither in their literary or movie incarnations, that I can recall.
So, at least from a cinemaphile’s p.o.v., it’s certainly worse than we thought. It’s… unprecedentedly dreary!
This is another beatup,and a really mediocre one at that. The work here covers part of the European Alps,not the ‘world’s mountaintops”.
The glaciers of the Alps are clearly very thoroughly studied and documented. What has been and is happening there is not contentious,and anecdotal evidence from people who have spent working lives on the mountains, while hardly essential, is not a controversial addition to our knowledge. The implication from The Tele that professional mountain guides cannot distinguish between traffic damage and wholesale decadal changes to ice mass in the areas they work in is fatuous.
The two cited publications in Table 1.2 of AR4 WG2 Ch.1.3.1.1 are an inconsequential part of a larger table citing peer-reviewed work,and the totality of AR4 WG1 and 2 on the cryosphere runs to hundreds of solid references.
The media are producing obvious rubbish. How can you promote this as useful or credible?
Pauchauri’s novel: on a work like this, it is hard to distinguish between peer review and voyeurism. I can’t say, I have only peered at the excerpts.
Assuming we want to have our citations correct
it is Keystone Kops, not Cops
Someone might think you are trashing Pennsylvania’s finest.
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Hey, what’s the problem? If we can declare war on a country by citing a student’s dissertation, I am sure we can determine future climate trends on the same basis. 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier
Government by spin and mirrors – we have had more than 10 years of this nonsense.
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SOT . . but.
Has anybody compared the area of say, the Ganges, catchment area with the area of glaciers in it?
It looks to me that the glaciers are less than 1% of the total catchment area. So how can the partial melting of the glaciers have anything but a very small effect on the overall river flow. That certainly wouldn’t throw millions of people into a food deficit as claimed by the “boosters” in the IPCC.
I like the last sentence in the Telegraph article…
Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen (the IPCC and AGW) may soon be nearing its end.
Classic.
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Nick (23:22:31) :
Anecdotal accounts are not science, clearly not peer reviewed, subject to huge unscientific biases, and deserve no citation whatsoever in a report which is reportedly based upon purely peer-reviewed scientific publications. If they had peer-reviewed reports on the European Alps, why didn’t they cite them rather than a Climbing rag? Pachauri recently commented on the “pristine” nature of IPCC reports: “The IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment” and “The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments.” This example, along with many others, points out how disingenuous this statement is. Here’s a little historical perspective on how the IPCC corrupts it’s reports, which has led to several resignations of prominent scientists from the IPCC:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/falsified-ipcc-claims-redux.html