Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Judith Curry posted here on WUWT regarding rebuilding the lost trust we used to have in climate science and climate scientists. This is my response to her post, an expansion and revision of what I wrote in the comments on that thread.
First, be clear that I admire Judith Curry greatly. She is one of the very, very few mainstream climate scientists brave enough to enter into a public dialogue about these issues. I salute her for her willingness to put her views on public display, and for tackling this difficult issue.
As is often my wont in trying to understand a long and complex dissertation, I first made my own digest of what Judith said. To do so, I condensed each of her paragraphs into one or a few sentences. Here is that digest:
Digest of Judith Curry’s Post: On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust
1 I am trying an experiment by posting on various blogs
2 Losing the Public’s Trust
2.1 Climategate has broadened to become a crisis of trust in climate science in general.
2.2 Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. Trust in the IPCC is faltering.
2.3 The scientists in the CRU emails blame their actions on “malicious interference”.
2.4 Institutions like the IPCC need to ask how they enabled this situation.
2.5 Core research values have been compromised by warring against the skeptics.
2.6 Climategate won’t go away until all this is resolved.
3 The Changing Nature of Skepticism about Global Warming
3.1 Skepticism has changed over time.
3.2 First it was a minor war between advocacy groups. Then, a “monolithic climate denial machine” was born. This was funded by the oil industry.
3.3 Because of the IPCC reports, funding for contrary views died up. It was replaced by climate auditors. The “climate change establishment” didn’t understand this and kept blaming the “denial machine”.
4 Climate Auditors and the Blogosphere.
4.1 Steve McIntyre’s auditing became popular and led to blogs like WUWT.
4.2 Auditors are independent, technically educated people mostly outside of academia. They mostly audit rather than write scientific papers.
4.3 The FOIA requests were motivated by people concerned about having the same people who created the dataset using the dataset in their models.
4.4 The mainstream climate researchers don’t like the auditors because Steve McIntyre is their arch-nemesis, so they tried to prevent auditors publishing in the journals. [gotta confess I couldn’t follow the logic in this paragraph]
4.5 The auditors succeeded in bringing the climate establishment to its knees because people trusted the auditors.
5 Towards Rebuilding Trust
5.1 Ralph Cicerone says that two aspects need attention, the general practice of science and the personal behaviours of scientists. Investigations are being conducted.
5.2 Climate science has not adapted to being high profile. How scientists engage with the public is inadequately discussed. The result is reflexive support for IPCC and its related policies.
5.3 The public and policy makers don’t understand the truth as presented by the IPCC. More efficient strategies can be devised by recognizing that we are dealing with two groups: educated people, and the general public. To rebuild trust scientists need to discuss uncertainty. [“truth as presented by the IPCC? say what?]
5.4 The blogosphere can be a powerful tool for increasing credibility of climate research. The climate researchers at realclimate were the pioneers in this. More scientists should participate in these debates.
5.5 No one believes that the science is settled. Scientists and others say that the science is settled. This is detrimental to public trust.
5.6 I hope this experiment will demonstrate how the blogosphere can rebuild trust.
Having made such a digest, my next step is to condense it into an “elevator speech”. This is a very short statement of the essential principles. My elevator speech of Judith’s post is this.
Climategate has destroyed the public trust in climate science. Initially skepticism was funded by big oil. Then a climate auditing movement sprang up. They were able to bring the climate establishment to its knees because people trusted them. Public and policy makers don’t understand the truth as presented by the IPCC. To rebuild trust, climate scientists need to better communicate their ideas to the public, particularly regarding uncertainty. The blogosphere can be valuable in this regard.
OK, now what’s wrong with Judith’s picture?
Can The Trust Be Rebuilt?
First, let me say that the problem is much bigger than Judith seems to think. Wiser men than I have weighed in on this question. In a speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854, Abraham Lincoln said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
So it will not be easy. The confidence is forfeit, that ship has sailed.
The biggest problem with Judith’s proposal is her claim that the issue is that climate scientists have not understood how to present their ideas to the public. Judith, I respect you greatly, but you have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. The problem is not how climate scientists have publicly presented their scientific results. It is not a communication problem.
The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as peer reviewed climate science is simply junk science, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence. The lack of trust is not a problem of perception or communication. It is a problem of lack of substance. Results are routinely exaggerated. “Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”. Advocacy is a common thread in climate science papers. Codes are routinely concealed, data is not archived. A concerted effort is made to marginalize and censor opposing views.
And most disturbing, for years you and the other climate scientists have not said a word about this disgraceful situation. When Michael Mann had to be hauled in front of a congressional committee to force him to follow the simplest of scientific requirements, transparency, you guys were all wailing about how this was a huge insult to him.
An insult to Mann? Get real. Mann is an insult and an embarrassment to climate science, and you, Judith, didn’t say one word in public about that. Not that I’m singling you out. No one else stood up for climate science either. It turned my stomach to see the craven cowering of mainstream climate scientists at that time, bloviating about how it was such a terrible thing to do to poor Mikey. Now Mann has been “exonerated” by one of the most bogus whitewashes in academic history, and where is your outrage, Judith? Where are the climate scientists trying to clean up your messes?
The solution to that is not, as you suggest, to give scientists a wider voice, or educate them in how to present their garbage to a wider audience.
The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science. The solution is for you establishment climate scientists to police your own back yard. When Climategate broke, there was widespread outrage … well, widespread everywhere except in the climate science establishment. Other than a few lone voices, the silence there was deafening. Now there is another whitewash investigation, and the silence only deepens.
And you wonder why we don’t trust you? Here’s a clue. Because a whole bunch of you are guilty of egregious and repeated scientific malfeasance, and the rest of you are complicit in the crime by your silence. Your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes.
And you still don’t seem to get it. You approvingly quote Ralph Cicerone about the importance of transparency … Cicerone?? That’s a sick joke.
You think people made the FOI (Freedom of Information) requests because they were concerned that the people who made the datasets were the same people using them in the models. As the person who made the first FOI request to CRU, I assure you that is not true. I made the request to CRU because I was disgusted with the response of mainstream climate scientists to Phil Jone’s reply to Warwick Hughes. When Warwick made a simple scientific request for data, Jones famously said:
Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
When I heard that, I was astounded. But in addition to being astounded, I was naive. Looking back, I was incredibly naive. I was so naive that I actually thought, “Well, Phil’s gonna get his hand slapped hard by real scientists for that kind of anti-scientific statements”. Foolish me, I thought you guys were honest scientists who would be outraged by that.
So I waited for some mainstream climate scientist to speak out against that kind of scientific malfeasance … and waited … and waited. In fact, I’m still waiting. I registered my protest against this bastardisation of science by filing an FOI. When is one of you mainstream climate scientist going to speak out against this kind of malfeasance? It’s not too late to condemn what Jones said, he’s still in the news and pretending to be a scientist, when is one of you good folks going to take a principled stand?
But nobody wants to do that. Instead, you want to complain and explain how trust has been broken, and you want to figure out more effective communication strategies to repair the trust.
You want a more effective strategy? Here’s one. Ask every climate scientist to grow a pair and speak out in public about the abysmal practices of far, far too many mainstream climate scientists. Because the public is assuredly outraged, and you are all assuredly silent, sitting quietly in your taxpayer funded offices and saying nothing, not a word, schtumm … and you wonder why we don’t trust you?
A perfect example is you saying in your post:
Such debate is alive and well in the blogosphere, but few mainstream climate researchers participate in the blogospheric debate. The climate researchers at realclimate.org were the pioneers in this …
For you to say this without also expressing outrage at realclimate’s ruthless censorship of every opposing scientific view is more of the same conspiracy of silence. Debate is not “alive and well” at realclimate as you say, that’s a crock. Realclimate continues to have an undeserved reputation that it is a scientific blog because you and other mainstream climate scientists are unwilling to bust them for their contemptuous flouting of scientific norms. When you stay silent about blatant censorship like that, Judith, people will not trust you, nor should they. You have shown by your actions that you are perfectly OK with realclimate censoring opposing scientific views. What kind of message does that send?
The key to restoring trust has nothing to do with communication. Steve McIntyre doesn’t inspire trust because he is a good communicator. He inspires trust because he follows the age-old practices of science — transparency and openness and freewheeling scientific discussion and honest reporting of results.
And until mainstream climate science follows his lead, I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret — I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored. I don’t want you learning better ways to propagandize for shoddy science. I don’t want you to figure out how to inspire trust by camouflaging your unethical practices in new and innovative ways. I don’t want scientists learning to use clever words and communication tricks to get people to think that the wound is healed until it actually is healed. I don’t want you to learn to use the blogosphere to spread your pernicious unsupported unscientific alarmism.
You think this is a problem of image, that climate science has a bad image. It is nothing of the sort. It is a problem of scientific malfeasance, and of complicity by silence with that malfeasance. The public, it turns out, has a much better bullsh*t detector than the mainstream climate scientists do … or at least we’re willing to say so in public, while y’all cower in your cubbyholes with your heads down and never, never, never say a bad word about some other climate scientist’s bogus claims and wrong actions.
You want trust? Do good science, and publicly insist that other climate scientists do good science as well. It’s that simple. Do good science, and publicly call out the Manns and the Joneses and the Thompsons and the rest of the charlatans that you are currently protecting. Call out the journals that don’t follow their own policies on data archiving. Speak up for honest science. Archive your data. Insist on transparency. Publish your codes.
Once that is done, the rest will fall in line. And until then, I’m overjoyed that people don’t trust you. I see the lack of trust in mainstream climate science as a huge triumph for real science. Fix it by doing good science and by cleaning up your own backyard. Anything else is a coverup.
Judith, again, my congratulations on being willing to post your ideas in public. You are a rara avis, and I respect you greatly for it.
w.
PS – In your post you talk about a “monolithic climate denial machine”?? Puhleease, Judith, you’re talking to us individual folks who were there on the ground individually fighting the battle. Save that conspiracy theory for people who weren’t there, those who don’t know how it went down.
This is another huge problem for mainstream climate scientists and mainstream media alike. You still think the problem is that we opposed your ideas and exposed your errors. You still see the climate scientists as the victims, even now in 2010 when the CRU emails have shown that’s nonsense. Every time one of your self-appointed spokes-fools says something like “Oh, boo hoo, the poor CRU folks were forced to circle their wagons by the eeevil climate auditors”, you just get laughed at harder and harder. The CRU emails showed they were circling the FOI wagons two years before the first FOI request, so why haven’t you noticed?
The first step out of this is to stop trying to blame Steve and Anthony and me and all the rest of us for your stupidity and your dishonesty and your scientific malfeasance. [Edited by public demand to clarify that the “your stupidity” etc. refers to mainstream climate scientists as a group and not to Judith individually.] You will never recover a scrap of trust until you admit that you are the source of your problems, all we did was point them out. You individually, and you as a group, created this mess. The first step to redemption is to take responsibility. You’ve been suckered by people like Stephen Schneider, who said:
To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
That worked fine for a while, but as Lincoln pointed out, it caught up with you. You want trust? Disavow Schneider, and STOP WITH THE SCARY SCENARIOS. At this point, you have blamed everything from acne to world bankruptcy on eeevil global warming. And you have blamed everything from auditors to the claimed stupidity of the common man for your own failures. STOP IT! We don’t care about your pathetic justifications, all you are doing is becoming the butt of jokes around the planet. You seem to have forgotten the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Read it. Think about it. Nobody cares about your hysteria any more. You are in a pit of your own making, and you are refusing to stop digging … take responsibility.
Because we don’t want scientists who are advocates. We’re not interested in scientists who don’t mention their doubts. We’re sick of your inane “simplified dramatic statements”. We laugh when you cry wolf with your scary scenarios. Call us crazy, but we want scientists who are honest, not scientists who balance honesty and effectiveness. You want trust? Get honest, kick out the scoundrels, and for goodness sakes, get a clue about humility.
Because the truth is, climate science is one of the newest sciences. The truth is, we know little about the climate, we’ve only been studying it intensely for a couple decades. The truth is, we can’t project the climate of the next decade, much less that of the next century. The truth is, we have no general theory of climate. The truth is, we don’t know if an average temperature rise of a couple degrees will be a net benefit or a net loss. The truth is, all of us are human, and our knowledge of the climate is in its infancy. And I don’t appreciate being lectured by infants. I don’t appreciate being told that I should be put in the dock in a Nuremberg style trial for disagreeing with infants. You want to restore trust? Come down off your pedestals, forsake your ivory towers, and admit your limitations.
And through all of this, be aware that you have a long, long, long climb back up to where we will trust you. As Lincoln warned, you have forfeited the confidence of your fellow citizens, and you will be damn lucky if you ever get it back.
[Update: please see Dr. Curry’s gracious response below, at Judith Curry (04:34:45)]
[Update 2: Dr. Curry’s second response is here, and my reply is here]
[Update 3: Dr. Curry steps up and delivers the goods. My reply.]
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Willis, you are not leaving any room for dancing… Thank you, Mike
Here’s an astounding document, all about how people should be selling AGW. This is the digest of his brilliant recommendations:
1. Don’t debate the science, it’s already settled.
2. Focus on who funds the “deniers”.
3. Preach to the “independents” and the liberal bloggers
4. Highlight extreme events, like heat waves and floods, as evidence of “climate change”.
5. Don’t use scientists to spread the gospel, use farmers and generals and business leaders.
Man, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
[Your accusation of Willis quoting you out of context does not stand the smell test. You accused him of deleting posts and censoring. Live with the consequences of your ill-founded accusations or just apologize for them. Willis is a respected commenter and poster here. Playing games with words while continuing to insult him in oblique ways will not be tolerated by me any longer. ~ charles the moderator]
May I add, Charles, that I very much appreciated your heads-up TO Willis the first time he made the “lying” charge. Unfortunately that did not mollify him in the least and he repeated his charge more forcefully right after that. Once again, I ask you to do the right thing, here.
Bob Tyson
Reply: I have done the right thing. You continue to try and sneak back-handed insults in through seeming subtle use of language and assume you can feign innocence when you wish. Adding additional sentences to what you wrote does not add any context which helps you. Anyone who thinks you were quoted out of context can read your original comment on this page. What I admonished Willis for was not what you think I admonished him for and I’m not going to explain it you you. I commented on your previous post and left it for Anthony in the morning. I’m going to bed and then to take care of a friend in the hospital tomorrow. Goodnight. You have not been a polite guest. You must be used to people falling for your high falutin fancy talk. You do not impress with it here. ~ ctm
FWIW I can’t remember a more fruitful discussion than what Mr. Eschenbach has started here. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Charles, I wish the best for your friend.
Sorry god-dog-bob. Too bad, so sad. Looks like you just whacked your last tennis ball not only over the line and off the court, but over the fence and into the ditch, where it has floated off with the stream. Game- Set-Match, by default!
I’ve seen more than one (but thankfully not many) folks with science degrees participating in industry and/or academia that don’t know or apply the scientific method, but c’est la vie!
Judith Curry (13:32:51) :
So there are many pieces of the IPCC that provide accurate assessments, it is how this is all woven together to address the issue of “dangerous climate change” that the UNFCCC is looking for to inform its policies is where things get dodgy.
So my point is that serious skeptics should not make blanket statements about things they know nothing about
—————-
” …I stated that the meat of the WG1 report was credible…”
“… it is how this is all woven together…”
“…should not make blanket statements about things they know nothing about …”
How-the-pieces-are-put-together is your point of view.
Being able to pick out the ‘point-of-view’ is what I do well. The point-of-view is by definition a blanket statement. Thus, I am appropriately providing you with a blanket response.
” …I stated that the meat of the WG1 report was credible…”
Yes the meat is credible. The meat that you refer to is a finely ground mince.
For example: That physicists know how to construct a thermometer which is reasonably accurate is probably true. There is truth in those individual grains which make up the whole lump.
As you point out … “it is how this is all woven together …. where things get dodgy.”
A bunch of accurate, reliable temperature measurements do not ‘convincingly’ weave together to create a dense substantive lump called ‘Climatology’ meat.
Example of Failure-to-Integrate: The average global temperature.
Here and elsewhere it has been pointed out that the average global temperature is a mostly meaningless measure. It’s usage is to reveal the trend as in a single ‘measure’ so as to demonstrably alarm or reassure.
Climate is about temperatures and people who live in cities and in places where they don’t normally have central heating. It is about rain and drought, about humidity and wind, about the arrival of unexpected frost.
Climate is about it’s impact on people who live in large population centers. It is about UHIs, the formation of inversion layers, and the accumulation of air pollutants. For the farmer, it’s about droughts, floods, cloudy, cold summers and lack of snow in the winter time.
If a scientist is going to study ‘climate science’, they ought to be considering all these commodities, duly weighted as per location and significance of impact.
If a scientist is going to study ‘climate science’, they ought to be considering all these commodities as factors fluctuating over intervals of time, of the follow on consequences of long term trends.
Frankly the ‘average global temperature’ could be constant, fluctuating or decreasing over time, yet the change in climate and it’s impact on humanity could nevertheless be devastating and worsening in a monotonic manner because of the localized, multifaceted, variously sited, episodic and periodic quality of ‘climate’.
Weaving all those fragments of ‘solid science’ together to form a single measure is opportunistic, misleading and motivated by advocacy.
“it is how this is all woven together …. where things get dodgy.”
It’s not the weaving, nor even the material that is dubious. …
It is the very notion of combining all things into the single sound-bite-hype of “THE WARMEST YEAR IN RECORDED HISTORY” that reeks of incredulity.
Climate is about many things, considered in many places, in various ways, over multiple intervals of duration. By all means weave-it-together. Just don’t force what doesn’t converge to single point.
——————
Judith Curry (13:13:16) :
“Willis, one point. I am prepared to condemn certain practices that are unethical or counterproductive to science. I am prepared to critique an individual piece of research, or even an entire assessment report. However, I am not prepared to denounce individual scientists.”
The IPCC Chairman, Prof. Pachauri doesn’t have a problem with declaring the IPCCC’s participation in advocacy.
Should scientists who whom agree to participate in ‘advocacy’ be seen as having renounced their own impartiality?
It is a tricky and confusing situation.
My position and the position of many others is more nuanced than the AGW publicists acknowledge. First, I don’t deny AGW — I just don’t think there is compelling evidence that it is the primary global temperature forcing. My opinion is that GCR’s and our solar system’s journey through the spiral arms is the major forcing for temperature. Second, I believe that the advocacy for AGW began (with Mr. Gore) long before the science was mature because he had and has a financial interest in advancing cap and trade legislation. I don’t fault Mr. Gore for that — he’s a business man after all — I fault the scientific community for ignoring the conflict of interest and leveraging it to gin-up funding.
That position is a far cry from “denial.” I don’t know how transparency will fix that at this point.
Interesting discussion and website.
I think Willis Eschenbach is correct in his analysis & tend to agree with him.
I would have to describe myself as an Anthropogenic Global Warming Skeptic based on considerable research and following this issue for quite a time now.
Climategate has been a huge revelation along with Ian Plimer’s book ‘Heaven & Earth’ & several of his lectures which I have personally attended.
I look at what’s happening in the world around me & I see that much demonised chemical compound carbon dioxide rising and global temperatures trending … unclear! Possibly rising very slightly, possibly stable, possibly even cooling slightly. This looks to me very much as though the alarmist hypothesis of “rising C02 = dangerous & *rapid* climate change” is a myth that has been busted.
I think the Climatologist community needs to step back and start again – without repeating the errors of or even incl. at all Phil Jones, Mike Mann, James Hansen & their like. Those latter three along with the scientifically unqualified polemicist Al Gore must be publicly disowned & their words explictly rejected by serious and honest climatologist “scientists” before many in the public and especially skeptical community will be willing to consider trusting you again.
You need to get politics out and have full open, accountable science that is rigourously tested, displays clear error bars of uncertainty and avoids making scary scenarios based on not much that’s valid.
That’s my opinion for whatever it may be worth as an interested “layperson” and amatuer astronomer with an interest in this issue.
Thankyou for your contributions all.
Judith,
You are most polite and demur effectively to Willis’s tendenciousness. But this same trait seems to keep you from responding to a central question of intradisciplinary discipline.
I’m not willing to submit that every example of purported malfeasance that Willis cites has reached the Q.E.D. stage, but I do believe that several instances of refusal to share data are reasonably well documented at this point outside of climategate e-mails.
Are you maintaining that it is not your place to criticize individual scientists for such behavior, even when you believe a preponderance of readily available evidence requires criticism? Or do you really mean that criticizing a failure to release data is criticizing the scientific and coordinate skeptical processes and it is incidental should the actions criticized be traceable to a single individual, i.e. that such condemnation is not ad hominem criticism or criticizing the person?
Are we to assume because you seem to have assiduously avoided singling out any particular incidents (with the exception I believe of Phil Jones arguing that sharing data and methods is not the norm in climate science), or responding to particular incidents raised by Willis, that you don’t feel yourself convinced that even in the narrow arena of sharing data for verification that condemnation of individual actions (if not individuals) is requiste?
I don’t advance this as a snide insinuation of ostrichism, but I do think that while it is unreasonable to expect each individual to grapple with the full range of issues, the perception of egregious and damaging behavior within the discipline would be important enough to you to run some of these issues down on your own without saying you are relying on investigations. After all, weren’t we all relying on the climate community until a few months ago. What evidence is there that the investigations are any more reliable than the science they are investigating?
Further, even the simplest of allegations require running down. While Willis seems to take much for granted (and this may be not unsupported, but because of his own endeavors in validating such allegations sufficiently to convince himself). In the meantime, as an aside, the question of response to criticism and transparency is not a one way street.
I have for several weeks been trying to get anyone within the skeptical community to respond to substantive criticsm of the Antony’s recent paper with Joe D’Aleo on the Surface Temperature Record by Zeke Hausfather , along with underlying substantive criticism of The Klotzbach et al graph presented as the first exhibit in the paper by Gavin Schmidt. Now I’m not maintaining that these gentlemen are necessarily objective fonts of wisdom, but to the same extent that skeptics arguments should not rise or fall on the persona of those offering them, I think these substantive challenges deserve dispassionate address.
I don’t imagine that it is anyone’s duty to jump at my beck and call, but it does seem that skeptics can get caught up in the policy blogosphere at the expense of substantive debate as well.
Best regards,
Brian
I am like the man from Pluto, but I must add that I am totally disgusted at having found out that this whole carbondioxide scare turns out to be one big horrible scam. It clearly was intended to play on people’s feelings and to get government grants (to do no research whatsoever that I am aware of that would either prove or disprove that CO2 causes warming).
This truly must be the biggest hoax and scandal of the past two decades. The reason why it is not played out in (all) the media is because they are all in on it. They have to protect their own pensions. In the end, it (this”science”) is just all about money……the truth is not important.
That is why everything will stay just as it is,
until perhaps, until…. we really start falling into a little ice age and it really starts getting very cold….
I am not excluding that possibility after having carefully evaluated a lot of the posts here on WUWT….
Henry, I think the left-stream media will eventually come around, since they will see the fraud for what it is: A GREAT STORY that will sell their “product” – and they could care less who or what is the target – even if it is their own grandma. In the end, like the climate, it is all self-correcting.
I see that Nature Magazine has signed on to “the problem is not the science, it’s the public relations” mantra (emphasis mine) …
I love the part about the “acknowledged mistake”. Pachauri was told about it a couple months before it became public. Despite that, he called it “voodoo science” and continued to claim that everything was perfectly fine … and Nature thinks that better PR will fix that kind of action?
The story lasted weeks because Pachauri denied it. For Nature not to even mention that is shameful. Nor did they mention that this was not a scientific “mistake”, it was a claim from a WWF propaganda piece. Nor did they mention the other non-peer reviewed wild claims on the Amazon and on the coral reefs and on Canadian forest fires. These included citations to a magazine and a student’s dissertation and three freakin’ newspaper articles, for goodness sake. No less than eight Greenpeace reports and sixteen WWF reports were cited … and meanwhile Pachauri the honest says that the IPCC reports are based on 100% peer reviewed science, and dismissed the true Himalayan information because it was not “peer reviewed” and had few ” scientific citations”. From Reuters:
Nor did Nature mention that one of the expert reviewers asked for a citation for the Himalayas claim:
The IPCC response was:
They can’t get hold of Journal of Climate and Nature magazine references? This is claimed to be a premier organization?
Nor is this the only example. In Chapter 3, WGI we find (emphasis mine):
But John Christy, an expert reviewer, said about Kilimanjaro:
And as for Nature’s claim that the error was discovered by scientists? Well, yeah … the guy who put the claim into the IPCC report just admitted he knew it was a lie all along, so I guess that counts as discovering it …
It is this structural failure to present a balanced picture that is the real issue here. Reviewers comments are ignored, some 40% of the cited references are not peer reviewed, Pachauri covers up and abuses people, the scientist admits the lie about the glaciers was put into the report purely for political reasons … and Nature thinks the solution is better PR?
Riiiiight …
w.
Brilliant, heard this many times but you expressed the concept most clearly.
Did not read all the comments, so I apologize if this has been expressed before:
You want to fix yer ‘communication’ problem? Then properly communicate that yer AGW science is fulla crap.
Also, publicly ‘communicate’ that you feel what these ‘climate scientists’ have done is not just a crime against science, but a sin against humanity.
That’ll fix yer ‘communication’ problems right there. And kick ya about 10 yards closer to the goal of ‘the public’ trusting you again. Only problem is, none of you seem to realize that yer several football fields away from the goal.
Rant done, that is all. Thank you.