The ever sharp Bishop Hill blog writes:
While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen’s at GISS. Lacis’s is not a name I’ve come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s report is simply breathtaking.
Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report – it’s the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made.
Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:
There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.
I’m speechless. The chapter authors, however weren’t. This was their reply (all of it):
Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.
Simply astonishing. This is a consensus?
(h/t to WUWT reader Tom Mills)
UPDATE: There’s an update to the story at Dot Earth.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/does-an-old-climate-critique-still-hold-up/
16 commentsDiscover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In context:
Had I been asked to write this chapter (which I wasn’t), I would describe “understanding and attributing of climate change” as simply a problem in physics, which it actually is. I would have started the Executive Summary with:
Human-induced warming of the climate system is established fact.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/nasa-scientist-adds-to-views-on-climate-panel/
Thinking about it a little more… the rhetorical question seems to be in regards to the resulting summary report, while Lacis’ statement of “fact” is in regards to the underlying scientific basis for AGW theory.
I see the point you’re trying to make here, but if there ever was an assertion that Lacis was a “denier” – which would be the exact opposite of his statement of “fact” – that was cleared up early on in the discussion on this issue.
Here is what he had to say about the resulting reports (of which the Executive summary is the subject of the rhetorical question) :
First, let me state clearly that I view the IPCC AR4 Report as a very successful and useful scientific summary of our current understanding of global climate and global climate change. The IPCC authors had a very difficult task of pulling together an enormous amount of scientific data and analyses into one coherent document, and also to prepare the so-called Executive Summaries incorporating sufficient political posturing to cater to the interests/concerns of policy makers from a hundred different nations. The whole effort required orchestrating on an international scale several hundred author/contributors and reviewers.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/does-an-old-climate-critique-still-hold-up/?permid=62#comment62
As I posted WAY up in the comments when this response came out, he seems to be significantly happier with the final version than the draft the review comments were in reference to. This, majority speaking, does seem to counterpoint the implications of the rhetorical question (I’m doing your job for you Hans 😉 but it doesn’t necessarily clear up every questions raised by his initial, or subsequent comments.
Lacis ended his latest reply with, again, “more detail to follow”… I’m curious to see what he has to say next
@NickB. (10:57:10) :
I do agree that Lacis raised some interesting questions in his initial review comments and his subsequent comments. I just don’t think the owner’s of this blog care. Either on their own or via quotations from another blog, the mods of this site continually post misleading information, distort it even more with a bit of editorial comment, and then fail to address or correct errors discovered after the post has been made. I’m not saying that every post follows this pattern (I don’t have nearly the free time it would take to investigate them all), but the majority of the ones I’ve read while visiting here do.
This could have been an interesting discussion about the IPCC process, the process for creating the Executive Summary, how the review process works, etc. Instead thanks to being positioned, incorrectly, as another look at how AGW is a hoax and even GISS scientists think so, we get another endless string of comments along the lines of “The IPCC is a sham”. Sad, especially for a site formally awarded the title ‘Best Science Blog’.
Hans Moleman (13:05:53),
You either misunderstand how this site works, or you are deliberately misrepresenting it.
For example, Gavin Schmidt, running the privately owned blog realclimate, spends large parts of his work days moderating and answering posts himself. To say that is cheating the taxpayers is an understatement.
That method is as if Anthony himself stepped in and answered numerous posts. But he rarely does that, and the moderators almost never editorialize following a comment.
At WUWT, everyone is welcome to post comments, even you [and if you posted with your attitude here at many of the alarmist sites, your post would never get out of moderation].
Every point of view regarding AGW, “carbon,” weather, etc., is allowed. But rather than the mods or Anthony arguing with comments like Schmidt constantly does, Anthony leaves it up to other commenters to give their points of view and do the correcting.
The truth is arrived at by this method. Eventually, those with untenable arguments are self-silenced, because they don’t want to further embarrass themselves [trolls are the exception].
This is a much better system than having one self-designated expert bring down the tablets from the mountain. And people seem to like it better than echo chambers like realclimate, deltoid, climate progress, etc.: 36 million hits and counting.
Smokey (13:26:22) :
“Every point of view regarding AGW, “carbon,” weather, etc., is allowed. But rather than the mods or Anthony arguing with comments like Schmidt constantly does, Anthony leaves it up to other commenters to give their points of view and do the correcting.
The truth is arrived at by this method. Eventually, those with untenable arguments are self-silenced, because they don’t want to further embarrass themselves [trolls are the exception].
This is a much better system than having one self-designated expert bring down the tablets from the mountain. And people seem to like it better than echo chambers like realclimate, deltoid, climate progress, etc.: 36 million hits and counting.”
Please explain how one can possibly guarantee that the truth is arrived at using the methods to which you assert this blog subscribes.
I’d also like to know how refusing to correct blog posts that are clearly in error in any way helps these discussions.
Finally, in order to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, why not tell me what “truth” you’ve arrived at after reading the posts on this thread. How do the facts measure up against the implications made in the above post by the WUWT mods?
I’m also curious whether the mods agree with Smokey’s description of how this blog operates…
[Reply: in agreement. ~dbs. mod.]
@dbs. mod.
Wow, that really does explain a lot. I was under the misunderstanding that this was a science blog but, as described by Smokey, it sounds more like a sociology experiment. How do you expect the “Truth” to rear it’s head in your comments’ section if you taint your posts with editorial comments that likely not only bias the presentation of whatever article, research paper, etc you’re discussing, but also serve to drive away those looking to have a scientific discussion about facts in the first place? Where are the voices of the scientists whose work you’re discussing? How do you find this “truth” without their participation? Doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’ll put the question to you guys that I put to Smokey. What’s the “Truth” you’ve arrived at after reading the comments here? Should the next blog that references your original post just take it at face value or do you see some comments here that alter the message and should be referenced in addition/instead?
Hans Moleman
I think you’ll find the philosophy of science and truth discussions over on the Ravetz thread.
charles the moderator (22:06:50) :
“I think you’ll find the philosophy of science and truth discussions over on the Ravetz thread.”
Thanks, but I think I’m done with this site now that I know how it’s intended to operate.
An influential “scientific” blog that knowingly leaves BS filled posts uncorrected so that the errors can be cut-and-pasted across the internet is not a place where I want to spend my time. I’m only a recent visitor here, but so far the inactions of the mods don’t seem to stem from a search for the “truth” so much as laziness and a desire to prop up their skeptical point of view, regardless of what the facts actually show.
So long. Though we may never see each other again, know that every time I read a post/article that mentions how Greenpeace was the only reference used by the IPCC AR4 report to link coral reef degradation with climate change I’ll think of you…
Hans Moleman (21:57:52),
Charles is right, but since there are about three or four people still following this thread, I’ll try to answer your concerns. Then you can have the last word if you like, because I’ll be moving on to the current home page articles.
The ‘truth’ I was referring to means the general conclusions arrived at by readers debating the questions. It is the same general way that peer review works: there is a comment stated, which then stands or falls based on the winnowing process of pro and con comments.
Regarding editorial comments by Anthony and his moderators, compared to most alarmist sites there is, well, no comparison at all. RC an the others constantly use in-line editorial comments by Gavin Schmidt, Tim Lambert, etc., to argue with comments that they don’t agree with – while WUWT lets other comments do the job.
That is a superior method, because the authority demonstrated by a blog owner pulling rank over a commenter changes the dynamics of the debate. Those in agreement with the blog owner tend to pile on, while those disagreeing tend to keep silent for fear of an in-line reprimand on their own post. But when the debate is left up to rank-and-file posts between those with different points of view, the tendency to speak out freely is uninhibited.
So the claim that posts are tainted by editorial comments by Anthony or moderator[s] comes across as projection; that is actually the method of choice of alarmist blogs, but it is very rarely used here.
Likewise, your comment, “Where are the voices of the scientists whose work you’re discussing?” is somewhat confusing. Those scientists you’re referring to are encouraged to respond, and they frequently do. Nobody here silences their voices.
Scientists like Dr Walt Meiers and others from the AGW side have submitted articles, which add to the debate and show that WUWT is a forum that promotes all points of view. That openness is very different from the routine censorship of readers’ comments at realclimate, climate progress, and others of that ilk.
Feel free to believe that this is a sociology experiment if you like. But IMHO it is simply a very popular and influential site model that owes its success to its refusal to censor opposing views, rather than using the authority of Anthony and the moderators to routinely insert their own editorial comments and arguments in response to posts that they may privately disagree with.
Other readers are perfectly capable of deconstructing illogical or false comments from either side, and people don’t get the impression that the teacher is correcting them. As an example, there is a comment pointing out that Dr Lacis changed his story on 2/10 – one day after the WUWT article appeared. No wonder you’re upset at the open discussion here. Tamino’s “Closed Mind” site avoids mentioning that problem [and probably censored comments that pointed it out]. Score another point for open debate.
Schmidt, Romm, Connolley, Lambert, Foster and the rest could learn a valuable lesson from the WUWT model. But they can’t resist the urge to control the conversation, up to and including the censorship of any ideas they don’t want to be seen by others. At WUWT, readers sort it out themselves in a much more democratic fashion. In the free market of ideas, WUWT has the superior business model, as its spectacular success has proven.
Ummm,
This was apparently taken out of context….
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/lacis-at-nasa-on-role-of-co2-in-warming/
“The bottom line is that CO2 is absolutely, positively, and without question, the single most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. It acts very much like a control knob that determines the overall strength of the Earth’s greenhouse effect. Failure to control atmospheric CO2 is a bad way to run a business, and a surefire ticket to climatic disaster.
My earlier criticism had been that the IPCC AR4 report was equivocating in not stating clearly and forcefully enough that human-induced warming of the climate system is established fact, and not something to be labeled as “very likely” at the 90 percent probability level.”
BNels (07:18:47)
Can we drop the context argument? His original comment basically said the summary draft report was an overly political and legalistic piece of crap that sounded like it was written by Greenpeace… I agree!
How can our agreement with the verbiage of his original statement be a willful misrepresentation/quote-out-of-context?
Why he said it, he has since explained… but think about it this way:
You say: I think so-and-so is being a jerk
I say: I think so-and-so is being a jerk too
You say: But you think so-and-so is being a jerk because of the way he dresses, but I think it’s because of that hat he’s wearing – you agreed with me out of context!!!!!!
Doesn’t make much sense does it?
Sorry for the double post here, but to finish off the thought…
I think the right word here is misunderstanding
The fact of the matter is that I would challenge ANYONE to read his original statement as “it’s too wishy washy, the scientific basis for it is perfect but it’s just not forceful enough”
What this whole episode essentially did is to ask the question of “what the hell was he trying to say there”? Nobody put words in his mouth, and as dumb founded as I still am that he would use Greenpeace to imply wishy-washy, overly careful, not forceful enough… I’ll still take him at his word
Smokey (07:38:26)
Very well spoken. Never realized that before but after looking at the warmist sites – it’s obvious.
And a big kudos to the Mod team and Anthony, as well.