IPCC fires back – "challenges are without foundation"

SteveE, as has been shown in a peer-reviewed paper, 80% of all peer reviewed literature is shown to be wrong after just 25 years. Those who run to peer reviewed papers instead of invoking critical thinking will end up looking like fools. 4 out of every 5 are wrong. In fact, you probably just referenced two of them. Think about it.
The peer review process is not intended to produce facts. it produces ideas that will hopefully move science ahead, that’s why so many of them turn out to be wrong. They often miss many salient features of the intended subject, but that alone might get someone else to produce a better theory.
So, you can believe whatever you want, I will continue to doubt any and all theories about climate until real empirical evidence supports it. That will probably take several more decades.

SteveE:
You don’t actually have proof that they included things solely to promote activism, you have proof that they made a mistake by not check the origin of that one comment.
Why don’t you try and find the proof that the rest of the document is incorrect? So far you found that the the glacier comment was mistake. Surely if it’s all wrong as you seem to suggest, it’d be easy to disprove the whole thing as false.

1. It wasn’t just a mistake: It was a glaringly absurd error. It should never have been included even in a first draft, given that experts were supposedly in charge of drafting the document.
2. Supposedly this document was gone over with a fine-tooth comb by hundreds of reviewers and commenters over a multi-year period — that’s part of its claim to authority. It’s no excuse to point out that some one-man blog-post might just as easily have been mistaken, and therefore that this 2035 flub is equally excusable. This error should have been caught, given the procedures in place. The fact that it wasn’t is a hint (at the least) that those reviewers didn’t want to spoil a good story.
3. Several reviewers raised their eyebrows over this claim in the comments, but their concern was treated in a pro forma fashion. Here’s what blog-commenter PaulM said about it:

In the second round of comments someone queried the statement about disappearing by 2035 being alongside the statement about reducing to 100,000 km^2. Also the lack of references was pointed out.
In the government comments, Japan picked out this sentence as important and asked what the confidence level was. They also queried the lack of references for the sentence about glacier melt being due to AGW.
The response was ‘Appropriate revisions and editing made’. The revision seems to consist of putting in the WWF reference and inserting ‘likely’ after ‘will’.

IOW, this flaw didn’t just “slip by” the editors in the Asia team. Their attention had been directed to it. They CHOSE to let it stand rather than drop it.
4. Georg Kaser, a lead author of another section, sent an e-mail to the IPCC’s technical support team before publication pointing out this gross error. The team CHOSE to ignore it.
5. Subsequently, Kaser wrote a letter to Dr. Lal, head of the Asia group, asking him to issue a retraction. Lal CHOSE to ignore it. (Lal claims he never received the letter. To me, this denial is an exact parallel of Pachauri’s falsified denial that he was warned in months in advance of Copenhagen about the 2035 error, and Pachauri’s dismissal of the Indian government’s non-alarmist glacier report as “voodoo science.” Both denials further undermine the credibility of the IPCC, by seeming to indicate an alarmist bias so strong they are willing to go to any length to defend it.)

However that argument swings both ways. Saying that an entire document is false and the concept of man made global warming is a lie because of a couple of sentences were wrong is just as alarmist in my opinion.

There are four things wrong with that paragraph. First, as I argued above, this isn’t just an error; this looks like evidence of systematic bias in the direction of alarmism.
Second, it’s a strawman (an exaggerated and easily refuted caricature) to characterize the contrarians’ position as being that the whole document is false, although a few posters here have implied that. Because many posters feel they won’t be heard unless they shout, there’s a tendency to go overboard. You must realize that this site contains many wild-and-wooly posts, especially post-Climategate, that are unrepresentative of skepticism’s sensible selvage.
What I have repeatedly said — and what I’m sure is the mainstream opinion, at least among the regulars here — is that such evidence of bias and sloppiness taints the “settledness” of “the science” and implies that the IPCC’s work, and climatology generally, needs to undergo a “do-over,” or review, under the auspices of independent panels of scientists, with skeptical input. This review is not only justified to purify “the science”; it’s a necessary condition for regaining the public’s trust. There will be no CO2 legislation in the US unless that trust is regained. This could be incorporated into the IPCC process as another layer of review. It might delay publication of AR5 by a year. Tough.
Third, it’s not only this one flub — 2035 — that undermines the authority of AR4 and the IPCC. Glaciergate included other howlers that point to sloppiness and/or bias, such as (excuse me if I’m overstating a bit here) the incorrect (vastly overstated) figure given for the size of the Himalayan glacier cap, and the incorrect math for how much of that extent was being lost per year. Harder to pin down are the errors of omission in Glaciergate: the failure to give adequate weight to the impact of soot, to acknowledge that the glaciers in the western Himalayas are growing, to acknowledge that the great height of the Himalayas means that melting in the upper reaches is impossible, and to acknowledge that the impact on water supplies even if total melting occurred would be minor, since snow melt would continue to provide water throughout the year. These are indicators of bad faith.
Fourth, it’s not just Glaciergate. It’s also Amazongate, Disastergate, Water-shortage-gate, Desert-gate, and several others that were less outrageously wrong. These all are evidence of a strongly propagandistic intent covered by smarmy dissimulation, which severely undercuts the authority of the report and the organization, procedures, and personnel that created it.
A thorough housecleaning is needed. The IPCC can pay now (by being embarrassed) or pay later (by being ignored).

SteveE (09:11:47) :
Gail Combs (08:43:43) :
Just because it’s written on this site doesn’t make it so.

Oh sure. But you should be aware of where our side is coming from and why we are so disenchanted with the IPCC’s work. That way you wouldn’t think we’re making a mountain out of a molehill over 2035.

SteveE (09:02:05) :
I think that is a very healthy approach to take. The problem comes though if we wait for several more decades and find out that man made climate change is occurring the damage and cost is likely to be much more than if we do something about it now.
I appreciate your doubts, but in my opinion the available data at present points towards MMGW caused by increased CO2. It’s not perfect but it’s the best guess at the moment.
Prevention is better than cure.
Are you sure. You can remove a person’s heart and thus prevent any possibility of a heart attack. Seems to fit your definition.
I believe that with continued technology advances and by limiting economic impacts we will be positioned much, MUCH better in the future to deal with any problems that might arise. Think back 50-100 years and look at what we can do today that we couldn’t accomplish then. And, if we cut the heart out of the economy instead …
I’m all for doing smart things now to limit environmental damage no matter what might cause it, let’s just not start doing stupid things like raising the price of energy needlessly.