While Oxburgh writes a 5 page book report that most college professors would likely reject due to incompleteness, we have this report from Donna Laframboise of Toronto and a team of citizen auditors. The mission? Determine how much of AR4 met IPCC’s own standards for peer review by reviewing every reference in the report to determine if it comes from peer reviewed literature, grey literature, or if they “simply made stuff up”, like glacier melt dates.
21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations’ Nobel-winning climate bible earned an F on a report card we are releasing today. Forty citizen auditors from 12 countries examined 18,531 sources cited in the report – finding 5,587 to be not peer-reviewed.
Contrary to statements by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the celebrated 2007 report does not rely solely on research published in reputable scientific journals. It also cites press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, working papers, student theses, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called “grey literature.”
We’ve been told this report is the gold standard. We’ve been told it’s 100 percent peer-reviewed science. But thousands of sources cited by this report have not come within a mile of a scientific journal.
Based on the grading system used in US schools, 21 chapters in the IPCC report receive an F (they cite peer-reviewed sources less than 60% of the time), 4 chapters get a D, and 6 get a C. There are also 5 Bs and 8 As.
In November, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri disparaged non-peer-reviewed research in an interview with the Times of India (see the end of the article):
IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.
Between Oxburgh’s failure to write a credible report and this obvious failure of IPCC to follow their own rules, is it any wonder why people are beginning to laugh at the “robustness” oft touted in climate science?
This news article came from Reuters, how true is it?
Glacier breaks in Peru, causing tsunami in Andes
By Marco Aquino
LIMA, April 12 (Reuters) – A huge glacier broke off and
plunged into a lake in Peru, causing a 75-foot (23-metre)
tsunami wave that swept away at least three people and
destroyed a water processing plant serving 60,000 local
residents, government officials said on Monday.
The ice block tumbled into a lake in the Andes on Sunday
near the town of Carhuaz, some 200 miles (320 km) north of the
capital, Lima. Three people were feared buried in debris.
Investigators said the chunk of ice from the Hualcan
glacier measured 1,640 feet (500 metres) by 656 feet (200
metres).
“This slide into the lake generated a tsunami wave, which
breached the lake’s levees, which are 23 metres high — meaning
the wave was 23 metres high,” said Patricio Vaderrama, an
expert on glaciers at Peru’s Institute of Mine Engineers.
Authorities evacuated mountain valleys, fearing more
breakages.
It was one of the most concrete signs yet that glaciers are
disappearing in Peru, home to 70 percent of the world’s
tropical icefields. Scientists say warmer temperatures will
cause them to melt away altogether within 20 years.
In 1970, not far from Carhuaz, an earthquake triggered an
avalanche of ice, rock and mud on the mountain of Huascaran
that buried the town of Yungay, killing more than 20,000 people
who lived below Peru’s tallest peak, which sits 22,204 feet
(6,768 metres) above sea level.
(Writing by Luis Andres Henao; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Kilde: Reuters (via NTB)
Many references are out of context, as has been noted above several times, Richar Tol did a graet job on this. Checking the relevance of a ref or cit with the claim being made is a very time consuming job. This job has been made extremely difficult (by intent?) due to the very large number of refs. Eliminating 30% helps for this second phase;))).
Dear moderator: I’m very sorry. I’ve just submitted a comment that’s missing an tag. It should appear after “Advertised” in the first sentence. My apologies. Also, if you’re feeling particularly kind-hearted, in the 3rd paragraph the removal of “are supposed to be” would make things more readable.
Donna Laframboise
[Already been fixed. ~dbs]
Max Westin (09:33:29) : the use of the word “selected” implies that something has a particular or special value that sets it apart. That 30% of the cites are from non-peer reviewed sources seems a very large stretch in the use of the word.
Reference those who say the IPCC standards allow use of non-peer reviewed sources, and that the “F” grade is thereby invalidated. The standards specify:
“5. Treatment in IPCC Reports Non-peer-reviewed sources will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports. These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources. These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
I checked one chapter in WG2’s report and (in an admittedly cursory scan) found 0 (zero) notes about non-published references, and 1 (one) that told how to access a report, but even it did not state whether it was published. There were a number of website URLs, but none that I found identified explicitly peer-review vs non-peer review.
So, the statement that non-peer reviewed sources are permitted is true. What it IMPLIED, that the standards allowed them to be quoted without identifying them as such, is not.
My concern with this is related to the fact that Donna Laframboise just happens to be launching a book about this.
I find it tougher to fight the points with pro-agw people when they can just turn around and say
“she made it into a book, of course she made it sound bad!”
Snouts are in the trough on both sides of this debate. Might be time to write a book Anthony, before it becomes a saturated market.
Incestuous Science
Papers such as the Guardian and the Independent dislike economic development as much as they dislike poverty, which limits their options somewhat. They fall back on token efforts to reduce poverty, such as Fairtrade, which don’t threaten to make the poor any more of a burden on the world’s resources, while at the same time campaigning against “climate change” in the hope that a marginally different future climate will prevent poverty getting even worse.
In much the same way, we find the Third World development charity Oxfam, another stalwart of modern environmentalism, increasingly campaigning against both “climate change” and Third World development.
Is it true that “there is no politics in science”? As we can see, alarmism projects itself through the seemingly-scientific projection. Might this have been made possible because of the way Ch.10 itself came into existence? For example, an interesting bias emerges when Ch.10’s authors are surveyed:
USA: number of researchers 28, Secondary affiliation, 1.
UK: number of researchers 17, Secondary affiliation 3.
Germany: number of researchers 7, Secondary affiliation 1.
Japan: number of researchers 7, Secondary affiliation 0.
France: number of researchers 6, Secondary affiliation 0.
Switzerland: number of researchers 6, Secondary affiliation 0.
Canada: number of researchers 4, Secondary affiliation 0.
China: number of researchers 3, Secondary affiliation 2.
Belgium: number of researchers 3, Secondary affiliation 0.
Australia: number of researchers 3, Secondary affiliation 0.
Russian Federation: number of researchers 2, Secondary affiliation 2.
Netherlands: number of researchers 2, Secondary affiliation 0.
ECMWF (LINK): number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Finland number: of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
India: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Monaco: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Sweden: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Senegal: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
TOTALS: number of researchers 94, Secondary affiliation 9.
Non – US/UK: number of researchers 49,
US / UK: number of researchers 45,
(Some contributors to Ch.10 are listed as belonging to 2 countries).
In the case of the UK, at least, two decades of emphasis that politicians have placed on climate research has had a dramatic effect. Also interesting is that it is the country which for a long time has been considered the enemy of action to prevent climate change – the USA – which appears to have contributed most to the development of climate models. But on an per-capita basis, no country rivals the UK.
That the UK is a world leader in a field of climate research is not necessarily a bad thing. But it does speak about the priorities and prejudices that dominate the political sphere, which, in turn, is reflected in the constitution of academic climate science, represented in Ch.10. The UK since Thatcher, and increasingly in recent years, has sought to establish its moral authority on the world stage by embracing the “climate issue”, and making it the principle substance of international relations, and latterly its domestic polices: its “Green New Deal”, its “Industrial Strategy”, its “sustainability agenda”, its energy policy, and so on . Whether or not these politics are expressed in the science, it somehow leaves a footprint that is politically-shaped, even if it isn’t politically-driven.
It’s a mainstay of the argument for “action” on “climate change” that the “overwhelming majority” of climate scientists are in agreement on the need for it. Yet as the table above shows, there are just 94 authors responsible for compiling the report in which, alarmists argue, the case for alarm rests. “Ah, but…”, says the alarmist, “it’s the weight of evidence that counts”. Never mind that there is no evidence for something that hasn’t happened yet – the catastrophe which is the object of the alarmism – these 94 researchers do not draw from a wealth of research, but manage instead to cite themselves a whopping 317 times in a document that contains references to just 550 papers (including references to previous IPCC reports).
If we excluded those papers in which the chapter’s authors were directly involved, there would be only 292. Just eight researchers manage to cite themselves no less than 110 times – over a third of the chapter’s self-citations, and a fifth of the total.
Researcher: Jonathan M Gregory, Country: UK, number of Citations 19
Researcher: Gerald A Meehl, Country: USA , number of Citations 17
Researcher: Thomas F Stocker, Country: Switzerland, number of Citations 13
Researcher: T M L Wigley, Country: USA, number of Citations 13
Researcher: Myles Allen, Country: UK, number of Citations 12
Researcher: P Huybrechts, Country: Belgium, number of Citations 12
Researcher: Sarah C B Raper, Country: UK, number of Citations 12
Researcher: R J Stouffer, Country: USA, number of Citations 12
TOTAL: 110
Between the USA and UK, there are 208 self-citations from the 45 researchers. Authors from just two countries produced nearly half the entire body of “evidence” for alarmism, which they “review” for themselves.
The population of self-citing climate modeler-projectionists are so small in number, and so interconnected that there may be an argument that it constitutes a community with its own insular politics. Given the predominance of certain individuals from that population in the climate debate, it seems hard to argue otherwise. That’s one for sociologists to mull over, perhaps.
Don’t think I’m throwing out these numbers in order to argue that the science presented in ch.10 is rubbish. There’s nothing strange about self-citations or geographical bias or the dominance of small subsets of individuals in science. You would find similar dynamics in pretty much any other specialist field. This example gives an idea of the workings of a research community that has provided the raw material on which much of the “man-made global warming” alarmism is based.
The alarmist’s case does not reflect the opinion of an “overwhelming majority of scientists”, and there is not an “overwhelming body of evidence”. There is clearly a political dimension to the constitution of both the body of WGI Ch.10 authors, and the research it draws from.
The real casualty is not climate science, but climate alarmism, and by retreating to the firm scientific ground of WGI, alarmists demonstrate that clearly. Without WGII and WGIII, there are no grounds for alarm. All the promises, projections and prophecies are contained in WGII and III. Without a scientific basis for alarm, all you have left at your disposal is precaution, as Ed Miliband has discovered.
Alarmist articles oscillate wildly between headlines that proclaim “How the ‘Climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies” and “Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review”. First, they appear to be suggesting that those behind the climate emails are the victims of “lies”, and then they “reveals how [the same] researchers tried to hide flaws in a key study”. On the one hand, the alarmists want to hold with the political arguments they have long been making, but they are also working double-time with doublethink to explain what happened to the science that was only recently “incontrovertible”.
It’s a bed the alarmists have made for themselves. They wanted a catastrophe, and now they’ve got one.
Now – let’s have a look at the “peer reviewed” papers which rely on IPCC AR4 or cite IPCC AR4 – especially those which end with the term: “… we still believe in ….”
Some people make of all this way too complicated. As a common (well educated but non-scientist) person it really boils down to this: we hired a group of individuals to produce a scientific report; they produced a report that they claimed was science based; now we (the people who hired the report makers) take a look at the final product and realize that it isn’t what we paid for, and it isn’t what they claimed it to be. It honestly doesn’t matter one bit to me whether or not you can find in the fine print of the IPCC rules that non-peer reviewed literature would be allowed to be included. They were hired to produce science, they claimed to have produced science, and now we find they produced something of the quality of a newspaper article. This isn’t what we were paying them to do, and it isn’t what they said they had done!
Smokey, Don Shaw and anyone else:
You can see here that some minor wording was changed in Annex 2 back in 2003, meaning that it was in existence before then (most likely since at least 1999 since that’s the last time the Procedures were amended before 2003): http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session20/doc10.pdf
1- It just came out and you can already judge it’s quality, methods etc?
2 – It is not clear what IPCC’s stand on non-peer reviewed material
3 – Even if IPCC has/had a rule: only peer-reviewed, it is a stupid rule
4 – Grey material ranges from rubbish to superior compared to peer-reviewed
articles. For instance, extensive reports from FAO or Swedish Env Inst are not
as limited in scope and well resourced in man-hours put down.
5 – The problem is that you have to actually read the grey product to assess
its merits, but actually the same often applies to peer-reviewed articles
6 – Fundamentalism in this context is wrong; in the end only the evidence
and the arguments presented matters.
vigilantfish (11:30:42) :
bubbagyro (10:24:34) :
This audit is a great start, but let’s not fall into the “if it’s peer reviewed, it’s OK”. How many of the “peer reviewed” papers are from controversial journals like Science or Nature?
Your phrase 1 – I fully agree
Your phrase 2 – maybe a problem here: with rejection rates 90%, you will
have a lot of people in the world disagreeing with Nature or Science editors
H.J. Durham and Donna LaFramboise:
I think you are interpreting Annex 2 different from the IPCC authors. Just do a quick search for the term “unpublished” in IPCC AR4 and you will find several references labeled as such…unpublished references. Here’s one example page that includes an unpublished reference: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch11s11-references.html
[snip]
Does this confirm that a political agenda was more important than quality science?
And, those that are pro-AGW, what say you?
If good science is your goal, how can you support this?
I agree with Donna,
The IPCC and its proponents used the peer-review argument over and over again to shut down dissent, declaring the science settled, and there’s nothing you can present that could possibly change that.
Jo Nova puts it beautifully:
“Every time the IPCC have spat on a scientist with “that’s not peer reviewed”, they have set themselves up to look like duplicitous fools when caught relying on student theses, magazine articles, and boot cleaning guides.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/04/the-ipcc-5600-small-white-lies/
This reminds me of a joke I recently heard.
———————–
A mathematician, an accountant and a climatologist apply for the same job at the UN’s IPCC.
The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks “What do two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies “Four.” The interviewer asks “Four, exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says “Yes, four, exactly.”
Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The accountant says “On average, four – give or take ten percent, but on average, four.”
Then the interviewer calls in the climatologist and poses the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The climatologist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says “What do you want it to equal?”
Kate
Good piece!
FairTrade is not going to help anyone get out of poverty. Free enterprise, property rights, and individual freedom are what they should be supporting. And if they are worried about climate change adversely affecting the poor, the emphasis should be on fight poverty.
Wealth allows people to adapt to a changing world. Wealthier people are also more concerned about the environment. Poor people are worried about short-term survival and have no means to pay for pollution controls and environmental cleanup.
Donna earns an A++. Stellar job. Kudos to all the citation sleuths.
She is 1,000% correct when she says the IPCC CANNOT BE TRUSTED. They have lied before, they are lying now, and chances are good they will continue to lie.
Garbage In, Fraud Out.
bubbagyro (10:43:31) :
“I agree with Sphaerica.
Almost all of the articles in the IPCC, peer reviewed or not, are cherry-picked to support their hare-brained hypotheses, or else their membership in the Club Gore and access to lucrative grants are jeopardized.”
Since most peer-reviewed articles on AGW are from proponents, there
is no need for cherry-picking.
One would think that IPCC’s evident acceptance of the validity of grey
litterature would suit the sceptics, since you feel discriminated by
journals and could thus find other channels, which would be
impicitly acknowledged by IPCC, in principle that is.
The content will always decide in the end.
“climategatestuff (11:51:07) :
My concern with this is related to the fact that Donna Laframboise just happens to be launching a book about this.
I find it tougher to fight the points with pro-agw people when they can just turn around and say
“she made it into a book, of course she made it sound bad!”
”
So we should dismiss what Hansen says based on the facts that he sells books based on it? Good point!
We should also dismiss everything the Club Of Rome says. They sell their reports in book form.
Oh, and a lot of peer reviewed pro AGW papers are behind pay walls.
You’re a concern troll.
Funny that all the chapters in Working Group 1, where the actual climate science is laid out, seemed to get A’s. One could argue that Working Group 1 is the only one that really matters, considering that that’s where the climate science is. Of course Working Groups 2 and 3, on fuzzier stuff like adaptation and energy, are going to be less rigorous scientifically.
Oxburgh did the job he was hired to do. The exoneration of Jones and his motley CRU in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary was depressingly predictable. And still the BBC is reporting “hacked” climategate emails. My TV screen is becoming blistered and warped with all the swearing I’ve aimed at it over recent weeks…
As for the IPCC report – a big round of applause to all the people who pored over the contents and made Pachauri’s claim of 100% peer review a complete nonsense and a damnable lie!