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/
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The “peer reviewed literature” has become a magic enchantment for many people. They identify the publication in “peer reviewed literature” with the truth.
The tons of nonsense including cold fusion that have been published in peer-reviewed literature don’t have to be enumerated. What’s funny is that sometimes the focus on the “peer reviewed literature” is promoted exactly by those who think it’s important for them to publish in “peer reviewed literature”, i.e. by those who keep on sending their papers everywhere until they’re accepted – i.e. by the bad scientists.
Lacis is of course almost completely right about the executive summary. Except that he says that it is only “like” if it were written by green activists. I think that the ClimateGate correspondence shows pretty clearly that these things and strategies are actually being designed within intense communication with the green groups.
Herman L (10:55:34)…
…Quotes the first line of the article:
“The ever sharp Bishop Hill blog writes …”
And comments:
The Bishop caught the comment. Did you?
And I’ll bet BH doesn’t spell ever as ‘every.’ That’s not too sharp, is it, Herman?
OT
They call sceptics “deniers” so I say why not call them “CLIMATE BANDITS.”
@ur momisugly Krishna Gans (12:24:08) :
When I pull that from my browser it comes up as:
9-74 A 3:4 3:37 “Anthropogenic warming of the climate system is pervasive ” ? The quantity that is Rejected. Anthropogenic warming is
being measured is temperature (of the surface, atmosphere and ocean). Temperature has both scientific and easily understood by
no identifying label that would make it possible to identify any given temperature change decision makers and others.
as being “natural” or “anthropogenic” in its origin. The term “anthropogenic warming” is
yet to be properly defined. In any case, it is hardly a scientifically credible description to
be attached to observational data.
[Andrew Lacis]
Definitely have to pay attention, the comments and notes (response) are jumbled all to hell… of course that could be because I’m all Bleeding Edge and using Chrome as my browser 😀
Indiana Bones (12:40:44) :
True. The US Naval Research Lab has spent some time and money confirming the presence of high energy particles in non-radiative reactions.
———-
Reply:
Yup. Google or Bing “LENR” (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions)
http://www.arm.gov/publications/proceedings/conf17/display?id=MzM3
From: ARM-CONF-2007, March 2007 Monterey, California
Geoengineering, a Timely Remedy for Global Warming?
Andrew Lacis NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The accelerated melting of Greenland ice is a clear indication that the consequences of global warming are real and impending. The underlying causes of global warming are well enough understood, but the necessary reduction of greenhouse gases to prevent irreversible climate change is unlikely to happen before the point of no return is reached. If a serious decision is made to reverse the impending sea level rise, geoengineering countermeasures may be required to counter the current global energy imbalance due to global warming. Of the many proposed remedies, deploying aerosols in the stratosphere offers the most realistic prospects. Sulfur injections into the lower stratosphere would have the cooling effect of naturally occurring volcanic aerosols, but black carbon (soot) aerosols in the middle atmosphere (40–50 km) offer prospects for more effective surface cooling than is possible with sulfur-based aerosols. Before contemplating the desirability of applying geoengineering countermeasures, a full and thorough evaluation of environmental impacts is required.
Simply summarizes Chapter 9, does it?
Well, that tells us all we need to know about Chapter 9 now, doesn’t it?
Some of you have referred to Lacis as a “hero.” While I’m sympathetic to his not going public, why didn’t he? There’s nothing ultimately heroic about his PRIVATE commentary; if he really cared about the integrity of science, he WOULD have been yelling from the rooftops!
I dont know how many people have read through the comments further through the comments, but comment 9-296 by Lacis:
“Effort should be directed toward understanding climate change and climate variability by investigating contributing causes and assessing the climate response …”
And the reply – short, sharp and sweet: “We Disagree.”
Dr A Burns (12:12:25) :
“Has anyone counted how many reviewers have commented ?”
Based on AR4SOR_BatchAB_Ch06-KRB-1stAug.doc [from Climategate files], I did a preliminary analysis of Briffa’s responses “on behalf of the chapter team”. He was the “chapter team” responder on 292 Comments. Of these, he Accepted (in full or in part) only 58. One paragraph [Page 29, Lines 40 to 51] had resulted in 37 comments from 8 Reviewers.
Pls. see http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/the-climate-change-game-monopoly-the-ipcc-version/ for details.
During the course of my analysis [but not mentioned in the above, because I was planning to do a further post], I also found that of the 292 to which Briffa responded, 22 were from Vincent Gray. All 22 were rejected.
Andrew Revkin has responded at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/does-an-old-climate-critique-still-hold-up/. He has quotes from Dr. Lacis and Chapter 9’s co-author. Basically, they say it’s much ado about nothing. Apparently, the Executive Summary was subsequently revised to Dr. Lacis’ satisfaction.
Just one comment on LENR. There are enough well performed experiments, with replications of same, to show that excess heat, together with neutrons, He4, and Tritium are produced. There is no current theoretical basis for this, but there are a number of proposals. Time will tell. It doesn’t matter that the “Consensus” is that “Cold Fusion” doesn’t exist – reality is independent of our view of it. Eventually the full story will appear – IMHO – it will show energy production is possible. I’m not sure that the control mechanisms are going to be easy to create. Just my opinion.
Interesting comments on the ES there. I note one from Kenneth Carslaw which reads (cannot copy and paste so typing errors are all mine):
“The Executive Summary says that we understand what caused the recent warming and that based on the god agreement of models and observations we can therefore deduce how much cooling was contributed by aerosols. The reverse calculation is afforded a much greater level of confidence than the forward calculation (very low LOSU in Ch 2for aerosol). I do not see how this can be possible. To be consistent, the large uncertainties highlighted in Ch 2 need to be taken into account when doing the reverse calculation…”
He carries on strengthening his argument in the comment:
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7798293?action=jp2zoomin&imagesize=1200&jp2x=0&jp2y=0&jp2Res=0.5&rotation=0&n=23&op=j&bbx1=0&bby1=0&bbx2=130&bby2=100&zoomin.x=9&zoomin.y=6
The ES evaluation group (whatever they are called) simply rejects the criticism as follows:
“Rejected. We feel that our “likely” assessment here accounts for the uncertainties in forcing, model formulation, etc.”
I am guessing that Kenneth Carslaw is probably this fellow and I applaud the clarity of your comment:
http://findanexpert.leeds.ac.uk/profile.aspx?UniqueID=57193
I’d love to know who the “We” are that reject such cogent criticism out of hand. Clearly the IPCC contorts the English language as much as it does the science.
Dr Lacis BA Physics, MS Astronomy, PhD Physics – i.e. a real scientist, not a soft science weatherman!
Boy, oh, boy…you can’t get worse than that.
So much misleading.
So much misrepresentation.
So much deceit.
Oh the web we weave, when first out we attempt to deceive.
It’s rotten to the core, this IPCC report, nothing but rot — garbage.
PS> I see Kenneth Carslaw has a lot more detail on pages 2-3
@ur momisugly mt (14:06:13) :
I don’t think anyone here really thinks that Hansen’s coworker/coauthor is a secret closet “denier”. Hell, Pielke Jr. is a “warmist” and we like him too
geo (09:53:37) :
There are several other Lacis criticisms if you skim through the document. The words “career limiting” sprung to mind after seeing all the scathing comments he wrote about this chapter. Perhaps he is positioning for director when the Lynch mobs get to Hansen?
hro001 (14:15:02) :
Dr A Burns (12:12:25) :
“Has anyone counted how many reviewers have commented ?”
Sorry, hit “submit” too soon … What I had found was that there were a total of 1234 comments made by 75 Reviewers, 10 of whom were Govt Representatives. The paragraph with the highest no. of comments was the one I chose analyse – and it just happened to be the “hockey stick” paragraph.
Andy Revkin’s post is up http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ and he has asked a reasonable question to which comes a reply from one of the authors, Gabriele Hegerl, – which to a lay reader is another reason for skepticism.
Not that we should expect climate scientists to be expert communicators, but Hegerl’s reply is unclear, convoluted and unable to answer Revkin’s inquiry without referring to the report’s technical sections. Here is a portion of his reply (granted out of context):
“In fact, the nominal statistical significance levels of all statements are quite a bit stronger than we assess them couched in likelihood language, in order to account for remaining uncertainties.”
Frankly, if these scientists cannot summarize in a paragraph how they distinguish man-made temperature from natural variation – they waste our time.
Bob (Sceptical Redcoat) (14:24:24) :
Dr Lacis BA Physics, MS Astronomy, PhD Physics – i.e. a real scientist, not a soft science weatherman!
Now we know a viable candidate to replace Mann at NASA.
The U.N. IPCC AR4 report was peer reviewed by the worlds’ foremost “Climate Scientist” Nobel winner Dr. Pachauri. What more could you possiably want?
The science is settled.
@ur momisugly Mike Abbott (14:16:12) :
Andrew Revkin has responded at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/does-an-old-climate-critique-still-hold-up/. He has quotes from Dr. Lacis and Chapter 9’s co-author. Basically, they say it’s much ado about nothing. Apparently, the Executive Summary was subsequently revised to Dr. Lacis’ satisfaction.
I’m not sure you can really say “satisfaction”, but he did seem to appreciate the subsequent rewrite:
”The revised chapter was much improved,” he said. “That’s different than saying everything in there is nailed down, but I think it’s a big improvement.”
Overall, he said, “I commend the authors for doing as good a job as they did. That’s the way the science process ought to work. You get inputs from everybody, find any bugs, crank through and the science moves forward.”
I’ll let his words stand on his own, but I do think this should be contrasted with what the IPCC author replied to Revkin with:
Andrew Lacis’ comment at the time seemed to result from not realizing that all the ‘meat’ in the chapter is BEHIND the executive summary (and he seems to have been satisfied as he seems to have commented only on technical issues on a later draft).
…
We felt Andrew Lacis’ comment reflected that he couldn’t clearly see where statements came from, which is why we strengthened the pointers from the technical sections to the executive summary.
Seems like this might be another case – like Pielke Jr., but probably not as bad as his situation – of the IPCC authors significantly misstating what someone meant. From Lacis’ statement I see no indication that this was simply a case of the-document-wasn’t-referenced-well-enough and I-don’t-understand-the-concept-of-an-executive-summary… but that’s just my reading of it and I could be wrong
“Bulldust (14:22:43) :
[…]
I’d love to know who the “We” are that reject such cogent criticism out of hand.”
The Hive.
“NickB. (14:41:55) :
@ur momisugly mt (14:06:13) :
I don’t think anyone here really thinks that Hansen’s coworker/coauthor is a secret closet “denier”. Hell, Pielke Jr. is a “warmist” and we like him too”
Lacis sounded like a scientist in his review comment – rejecting unfounded exaggeration. Similar to Von Storch. Warmist but open for scientific arguments or new evidence IMHO. (The label warmist has a slightly insulting tone, but it’s too descriptive to avoid.)