Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
Nature News is carrying an interview with Professor Martin Parry, co-chair of IPCC WG II during the preparation of its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), titled Setting the Record Straight. Unfortunately, he is not asked about, nor does he address, any sins of omission. He does say, however, “I don’t think there’s a problem in the robustness, rigour and veracity of the entire volume. I don’t think there’s any systemic problem with the way the authors undertook their work.”
But can this be said for the Summary for Policy Makers, perhaps the only piece that policy makers and their advisors ever read?
In two previous posts I noted a number of the sins of omissions in the IPCC’s WG II Summary for Policy Makers:
- The IPCC: Hiding the Decline in the Future Global Population at Risk of Water Shortage — More Insidious than the Himalayan error. This post shows that, contrary to the impression conveyed to any reader of the IPCC AR4’s Work Group II Summary for Policy Maker, the net global population at risk of water shortage is likely to drop because of climate change (according to the studies that the IPCC relied upon). The “trick” to “hide the decline” was accomplished through artful wording. The SPM reported that “Hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress.” However, it neglected to inform the SPM’s readers that many hundreds of million more would actually see a reduction in water stress. This was also the subject of a report in the Wall Street Journal — Europe by Anne Jolis, titled, Omitted: The Bright Side of Global Warming.
- The IPCC: More Sins of Omission – Telling the Truth but Not the Whole Truth. This post discusses the omission of information from the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers that would show that even under the warmest scenario the contribution of climate change to hunger and malaria, two reasons frequently cited for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, ranges from the trivial (4% for malaria) to the small (21% for hunger), at least through the foreseeable future. [I define “the foreseeable future” as the 2080s.]
Clearly, inclusion of such information in the SPM with respect to water shortages, malaria and hunger, would have put climate change in the larger context of the problems facing this world, which would, inevitably, have made climate change seem much less threatening. It would have been quite informative to policy makers, many of whom are on record proclaiming that climate change is (among) the most important issues facing humanity, whether or not they had an open mind on the matter. Notably, water shortage, hunger and disease are among the reasons most frequently cited by our policy makers to do something dramatic about global warming.
Perhaps because I went to a Jesuit school too long, I have always regarded sins of omission as just as heinous as sins of commission.
In this case, the absence of context enabled by these sins of omission ends up skewing the world’s priorities, and threatening global well-being. In the hysteria over climate change we are now going to use funds that could have gone to help solve today’s truly urgent problems to solving the smaller problems of tomorrow — and which may or may not transpire even then (see here).
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Geeze what about all the references to pure advocacy propaganda as if it were science?
The core science behind the report may in fact be false. The temperature increases over the 20th century as computed by NOAA, Hadley/CRU and others are all suspect. Between “lost” original data, falsification of the effects of “urban heat islands” and highly error ridden national data from submitting countries what proof of unusual warming is there? Worse, all the science used the few sets of temperature data to conduct their own studies.
The IPCC is getting off far to lightly in the press and elsewhere. Its reports have no credibility.
Please return my red stapler…
Hard to pick your way through the “Truth” when there are so many lies. I thought that’s what an accurate accounting was for–so I didn’t have to do all the research over again.
It’s time the truth was told, instead of propaganda being shoved at us by the MSM, funded by billions of our own tax dollars. Let the guilty be punished and damages paid. It’s evident that the MSM are trying to keep the lid on all this. Good post.
AMDG
jorge
Robustness, rigour and veracity…
Now we are up to three terms that do not necessarily indicate good science, and perhaps should be avoided altogether.
Thankfully the English language has other synonymous terms to fall back on. For now.
A body in motion tends to stay in motion….
A belief system in motion tends to stay in motion….
A belief system in motion with monetary rewards for its proponents tends to weave a tangled web, seak and destroy opposition, and to stay in motion….
Evil Shaman; Thow two virgins into volcano. No more eruptions.
Smartalec; We threw a virgin in last month, it erupted anyway.
Evil Shaman; Yes, not enough virgins, that’s why two this time.
Smartalec; Look, I found the journal of your great great great grandshaman. It says here they threw a hundred virgins in, and the volcano still erupted.
Evil Shaman; Let me see. Oh look, note in margin in strange writing that only I can read.
Smartalec; Really? What’s it say.
Evil Shaman; To prevent eruptions, throw in two virgins and one Smartalec.
When I look at climate science, sometimes I feel overwhelmed, and sometimes I feel underwhelmed.
It truly seems like these climate “scientists” have done nothing but attempt to obfuscate a very simple and soft science by doing a lot of weird calculations and making odd predictions. They want to make it seem much more complicated and harder than it is in order to pull the old “It’s much too complicated for you to understand, so just trust us.”
Just read Gavin’s posts over at RealClimate – he attempts to make things as complicated as possible. He lies, tells half truths, and obfuscates everything and in the end he just is a zilch.
I dunno. Just seems odd.
OT but I just noticed you have scienceofdoom listed under skeptical views. NOT a skeptic!
Yeah, that Wikipedia Hockey Stick was robust alright. So was it’s replacement–already debunked by Steve M.
The only thing robust about IPCC WG II is its chicanery. The same may be said for the editors at Nature.
If they are gonna make up scary scenarios why just make up new ones instead of pretending they have any basis for the old ones (mega-hurricanes, inundation of all coastal cities, malaria in Sweden, simultaneous drought and flooding , etc).
It’s getting stale. It’s like Halloween IV or some other weak horror sequel. In this report I want to see giant mutant man-eaters or widespread genital atrophy by 2050 or waves of toxic locusts and 5-pound hailstones.
This could be the last go round for the IPCC so why not go out with a bang?
Do the models take into account the orbital decay rate of the planet i wonder?
And how much of an effect would it have on temperature?
I was reading this article which puts it at 20m/year so 400m closer to the sun for the last 200 years if my maths is up to par ( which it isnt!)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13057928/Planets-acceleration-and-orbital-decay
Correction, 17.7 metres a year.
Anthony, this is ot, but you might be able to pick up some discussion topics from the recent USDA Agriculture Forum. Theme was “Sustainability”, and included many presentations related to climate change, energy, food production, etc., many of which are available here: http://www.usda.gov/oce/forum/
“But can this be said for the Summary for Policy Makers, perhaps the only piece that policy makers and their advisors ever read?”
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They didn’t need to read it. It was written to support their agenda. They created an “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, and climate change they got.
Done venting 🙂
How many ways can you spell “evasion” …
I have to assume that this gentleman is banking on the fact that most people reading the interview are not conversant with the hockey stick scandal, the surface station problems, and all the rest.
And if this is true, it is an extraordinary exercise in bad faith. Or some sort of reality warp – or both.
Which makes it all very interesting indeed.
After reading Lacis’ latest reply to Revkin (which no longer has anything to do with clarifying his review statement) I think I’m starting to see the real problem/disconnect.
Lacis at least, if not they (whoever they is), really do consider the underlying science closed. I wish I had the link handy (on my phone, so no copy/paste but it’s towards the bottom of the comments in the Lacis post), but he essentially explains how “it’s just a simple physics problem”. To him, which is even more bizarre, the entire stability of the climate is centered on CO2.
The point is, from that mindset, the only point of the IPCC and further research seems to be to attribute observations to CO2 driven global warming. It’s really no surprise that they would produce a one-sided, and overly concrete sounding report if that were the prevailing mindset.
I guess my question is… if it’s so settled why even bother? Might be because the only place it’s settled is in the minds of the people writing the report – not in the hard science, and thank goodness not i the minds of the public and leadership of 2 of the leading polluters
Authors of the Summary for Policymakers-The Dirty Dozen. Names, please. So, maybe it’s a baker’s dozen. I’m tellin’ ya’, what they cooked up should’ve been run by the Royal Taster before being served to the masses. There are a few poisoned kings feeling a little sick at the moment.
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George Tobin (14:03:47) :
“If they are gonna make up scary scenarios why just make up new ones”
The ice caps melt, the centripetal force of the planets rotation moves the water all to the equator. This changes the distance of the mass of the water that was at the poles further from the Earths axis of rotation. Since the angular velocity must be constant the Earth will spin slower, lengthen the day and the night. This will increase daytime heating and night time cooling, leading to later and earlier frosts in the spring and fall and also more and higher maximum summer daytime temperatures.
Then as a bonus the actual tilt of the Earth will change because of the increase of mass at a distance from the axis (it will become more plane to the orbit about the sun) which will virtually eliminate all seasons anywhere on earth.
The tropics will bake completely and the grain growing regions in the Northern temperate zone will freeze often because they are stuck in a perpetual spring/fall (and the days are longer, see above). Food production will drop by 80%, starting major regional conflicts and then nuclear war between India and Pakistan, then China and India. Russia move south into the Balkans and ….
It WILL happen.
Andrew30 (14:53:12) :
Interesting theory… but as Nihls Monier (spelling?) says, thats all very measurable… so far no indication of that (and we should be seeing indications by now….. but we aint…)
If you want to see war and fighting for resources/space… just wait till the ice age commences…
(that definately IS comming) And we know that the earth has gone into Ice age with much more co2 in the atmosphere than we have now .
cheerio..
What about the overwhelming number of scientists who commented on the relevant IPCC findings saying they disagreed with them? What about the case where one of them threatened to sue the IPCC if they didn’t remove his name from the list of reviewers in the IPCC report since he didn’t approve them to do it? Isn’t it time to threaten legal action on the IPCC fraud?
davidmhoffer (13:49:46) :
“OT but I just noticed you have scienceofdoom listed under skeptical views. NOT a skeptic!”
There are different levels of skeptics. I think scienceofdoom would appropriately be called a mild skeptic, or perhaps a lukewarmer.
I think he gives his fundamental position in his post – http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/01/26/the-ipcc-and-the-credibility-of-climate-science-2/
JimR (16:37:58) :
re: “Interesting theory…”
Sorry, it’s just that it is getting a lot more difficult to top the ones that have already been published.
I think that one of the newspapers should have a contest to see which of their readers could come up with the worst imaginable scenario of CO2 affect on the Earth. The readers would be asked to, in 500 words or less go from the first breath of a newborn harp seal (the tipping point) to the Earth either falling into the Sun; or flying out into interstellar space; or breaking apart into a new asteroid belt; or collapsing into a singularity. The readers would be restricted to only referencing information in, or referenced by, AR4 to support their conclusions.
The top 10 submissions would be includes in AR5.
First prize would be an aquarium full of trilobites.
Re: Andrew30 (Feb 20 14:53),
Boring. How do you sell a script (i.e., suck up more funding) with a lame plot like slow earth rotation if the the poles melt…. Now, if frozen sea monsters are released from under the ice to feed on the corpses of drowned polar bears then head south to attack Manhattan….
George Tobin (18:01:34) : “Boring.”
OK, similar but with a bit of a different spin. You could do the movie in flashbacks, the incremental disasters pretty much write themselves, lots of possibility to re-user old footage.
The ice caps melt. The water is pulled to the Equator, this raises the tides. With the increased mass at a slightly increased distance from the rotational axis of the Earth the Earths rotation slows to maintain angular velocity. Since the force of gravity is inversely proportional to distance the pull on the Moon in increased slightly by the bulge of water at the Equator. This combined with the slowing of the rotation of the Earth increases the pull on the Moon and slows the Moons orbit. The Moons orbit decays and it slowly begins to fall into the Earth. It eventually strikes the Earth and the combined mass of the Earth and the Moon in the existing Earth orbit, with the orbital velocity of the Earth, are not sufficient to maintain an orbit around the Sun, so the Earth is pulled into the Sun.
Let’s see the IPCC top that one!