Dr. Richard North, who does investigative journalism at the EU referendum blog, has a comprehensive analysis and backgrounder on the latest in a series of blunders by the IPCC that have been uncovered. It complements the just released story by Jonathan Leake of The Sunday Times that highlights a leading British scientist calling for IPPC to “tackle the blunders or lose all credibility”
Here is Dr. North’s introduction to the issue:
Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major “mistake” in the IPCC’s benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.
Similar in effect to the erroneous “2035” claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.
Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this “50 percent by 2020” claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora. He, therefore, bears a personal responsibility for the error.
In this lengthy post, we examine the nature and background of this latest debacle, which is now under investigation by IPCC scientists and officials.
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What follows is a detailed investigation by Dr. North, I highly recommend reading it here:
EU Referendum: And now for Africagate
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I like the term…
“Robustly Wrong”
for The Team’s new motto..
I like the Term…
“Robustly Wrong”
to summarize the IPCC and Team Stick
I’m now quite sure that these revelations of GATES will make at least three people read IPCC’s AR5 cautiously, if ever it comes into being some day ……..
O/T
These days i’m constantly trawling the english and german versions of google news to see how the media bias shifts. While most hits on the first page for global warming in the english version are circling around the IPCC’s failings, germany is still in a deep slumber. Articles for “Erderwärmung” (Global warming) still center around how we can all do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint.
Funnily, a section of the german Greens are firm believers in chemtrails:
http://www.gruene-glashuetten.de/index.php?dom=1?=22&p=74
Sigh. This party was part of the government coalition til 5 years ago. Even the UK has no match for these morons.
Autonomous Mind (17:28:24),
Great, add MetGate to the list.
””’jorge c (15:42:48) : it is worst than we thought…
what i don’t understand it is that IPCC “report” has been presented 2 years ago… only now are they founding mistakes??? has it not been studied before???
sorry for my awful english…””’
Jorge,
My view of why the two (plus) years that apparently nobody read the AR4 is:
1. It was those blogs who allowed skeptical analysis of AGW that continously chewed on the the kinds of non-science that was presented in the AR4 report. These blogs were chewing on AGW non-science for many more than 2 (plus) years.
2. MSM was on the AGW agenda train, so for 2 (plus) years it would not critically review AR4 nor would MSM report on the knowledge in blogs that allowed skeptical analysis.
3. the precipitating event that lead to MSM eventually allowing reporting critical to AGW was the release of the UEA CRU emails/files. It tremendously strengthen the position of the blogs that allowed sekptical ananlysis of AGW.
4. MSM stories critical of AGW then “get legs”. So here we all are MSM and those great blogs together, picking apart the bible of AGW, the AR4 as written by its many apostles.
John
here comes MET-Gate:
UK Daily Mail: How Met Office blocked questions on its own man’s role in ‘hockey stick’ climate row
Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.
And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.
By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland.
In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today.
Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate.
But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.
Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.
Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders. …
The email, dated July 17, 2008 – when Mr Holland was also trying to get material from the Met Office and the CRU – provides clear evidence of a co-ordinated effort to hide data. Sir Brian wrote:
‘I have made enquiries and found that both the Met Office/MOD and UEA are resisting the FOI requests made by Holland. The latter are very relevant to us, as UK universities should speak with the same voice on this. I gather that they are using academic freedom as their reason.’..ETC
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249035/How-Met-Office-blocked-questions-mans-role-hockey-stick-climate-row.html
let’s add MoD-Gate, one of the elephants in the rooms all along.
Strongly recommend leaving Prof Jones alone. We all make mistakes… I am sure he could still have a great career in Climate Science, especially now that they are having another look at the situation in a realistic light ie: probably wise to throw the C02 connection away…
I like robustgate…..
……and hope to never hear that word again
This may make it even more likely that China, India, Brazil and South Africa may split from the IPCC and from their own ‘non-Aligned’ climate science group.
They have ALL now been officially slandered by the IPCC as irresponsible custodians and poor defenders of their parts of the planet.
”””Stephan (18:23:36) : Strongly recommend leaving Prof Jones alone. We all make mistakes… I am sure he could still have a great career in Climate Science, especially now that they are having another look at the situation in a realistic light ie: probably wise to throw the C02 connection away…””’
Stephan,
Yes, I agree with your recommendation. Being professionally critical of him as a professional scientist is one thing. But, I think, we all should refrain from personal attacks him in his current state of mind.
John
Because I’m doing research for an article about the CRU manipulation of data for the sparse Czech airports stations they use (where some years even decades of data just nobody in Czech Met Office doesn’t know where they come from, because teh Czech Met Office doesn’t have any such data from the stations for 50ties) I was also looking what the GHCN is doing with the data from this same stations. It looks like they adjust them to make the beginning cooler some 0.2-1°C (to get steeper warming trends?):
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climgraph.aspx?pltparms=GHCNT100AJanDecI195020080900111AR61111518000x
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climgraph.aspx?pltparms=GHCNT100AJanDecI195020080900111AR61111782000x
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climgraph.aspx?pltparms=GHCNT100AJanDecI195120080900111AR61111723000x
All the three stations are on the recently substantially enlarged main Czech international airports, so one would expect, they would adjust the UHI in recent years, but instead, they consistently adjust the past values since 50ties to mid 80es – you guessed it – DOWN…
I thought Anthony’s surface stations study/survey exposed the North America-gate, the very first one that hit the fan. No one realize what it started at the time. Congratulations everybody–Anthony–you all—we all were at the forefront!!
Stephan (18:23:36) :
“Strongly recommend leaving Prof Jones alone.”
Unlike many he is not exactly a pawn in the play, but he is also not quite a bishop. Either way as long as he continues to defend the king, he remains a part of the game.
It does however look like the king (whom ever that may be) is contemplating sacrificing the queen (Pachauri).
So who or what is the king?
P.S. I hope Phil Jones gets the help he needs.
“I’m no crook!” First it was Richard Nixon, and now it is Phil Jones.
Remember folks, most of this junk science was also in the TAR and SAR. So just sacrificing Pachauru the Love Guru is not enough. Others must be held accountable, starting with the UNFCCC head (and Pachauris boss) Yves De Boer
The IPCC has already lost all credibility. They are fraudulent at worst, and grossly incompetent at best. The should be replaced by a “Climate Study” group, not a “Climate Change” group. By being chartered to study “Climate Change” their conclusions were predetermined.
There is nothing they can do to restore credibility, because anything and everything they say is now suspect.
Another blunder on animals;
Quote “ACCUSATIONS that “less meat means less heat”, inferring that cutting back on livestock production is a panacea for global warming, are wide of the mark according to the Australian Farm Institute (AFI).
The Insitute’s executive director, Mick Keogh, points to some flaws in the way livestock emissions are accounted for in several life-cycle analyses (LCAs) that have been used to make cases against red meat production”.
More here;
http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/livestock/news/less-meat-less-heat-climate-argument-flawed-afi/1741506.aspx
“Estimates of carbon-dioxide emissions from nuclear power stations and claims that suggested they were cheaper than coal or gas power stations were also taken from the website of the World Nuclear Association, rather than using independent scientific calculations. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html
I wonder if this could be the source of really big money behind the IPCC, from companies pushing for Cap and Trade like GE ?
Not coincidentally, GE is one of the world’s leading manuafacturers of nuclear power stations and wind turbines. GE owns CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Mun2TV, Sci-Fi channel, Trio, and USA network.
http://www.medindia.net/news/Climate-Changes-And-Increased-Rainfall-Greening-the-Sahara-Desert-Becoming-Green-Due-to-Climate-Change-55735-1.htm
Sahara rainfall increasing from climate warming…. global warming is therefore good for African countries and will boost crop yields, contrary to Patchy’s claims.
“…yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.”
What a bunch of hacks.
Has anyone done a study on how high BS can be piled before it collapses? Seems to me there would be a “tipping point” for that, which apparently the IPCC and Pachauri has encountered.
I think there have been additional two, more prominent and pernicious Gates, namely the suspected concoction of temperature data for the two regions:
NAUgate (for northern Australia)
NEUgate (for northern Europe)
Am I wrong?
I thought the IPCC would go down one brick at a time but this is an avalanche of self-destruction that continues to pick up momentum and it still hasn’t completed it’s full slide down the mountain.
Remember the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy finds there’s only a timid little man pulling levers behind a curtain? I see a 2010 sequel called the Wizard of the IPCC with Pachauri as the Chief of Humbug.