Excerpts: Meltdown of the climate ‘consensus’
By MATT PATTERSON
The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.
For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world’s governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium — and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to “save the planet.”
But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of “the best scientists and engineers worldwide” (as the group’s own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give “high-quality advice to international bodies,” has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices — and found them badly wanting.
…
Al Gore and many other warming alarmists have insisted that “the debate is over” — that the science was “settled.” That claim is now in shreds — though the grants are still flowing, and advocates still hope Congress will pass some version of the economically ruinous “cap and trade” anti-warming bill.
The warming “scientific” community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers — and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.
Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.
“If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.”
Great opening line! Unfortunately, many people with Fuzzy Studies degrees, who fancy themselves as being educated, think that the best way to arrive at the truth of a controversy involving science, is to trot out various mavens, and to let them duke it out. Apparently the winner is the biggest dinosaur on the block, or the biggest mafia, or the Neanderthal who screams the loudest.
I’m sorry, but appealing to authority is not critical thinking. It’s atavistic thinking.
Most of us do not have the time to become 100% current on all of the background info that’s relevant to the climate change discussion. But we do owe it to ourselves to check the batteries in our crap detectors occasionally.
Hmmm. Hiding raw temperature data from the very public that funds the research (GISS)? Red flag.
Blatant cherry-picking of tree ring data (Keith Briffa)? Bigger red flag.
Dry-labbing part of the temperature proxy data (Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann)? Infinitely large red flag.
Larry’s contribution to the Scientific Method:
When you put on your scientist’s hat, always tell the bloody truth, warts and all.
Is that too much to ask?
Here’s the direct link to the story:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/meltdown_of_the_climate_consensus_G0kWdclUvwhVr6DYH6A4uJ
Quote “Some IPCC practices can only be called shoddy.”
Ha! The IPCC is a political office. What do you expect? An insider describes it as “a shambles”. The only thing they’re really good at is pumping out “global warming” lying propaganda and spending taxpayers’ money.
Let’s go on…
…”Was science even a real concern for the IPCC? In January, the Sunday Times of London reported that, based in large part on the fraudulent glacier story, “[IPCC Chairman] Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corp. . . . and the lion’s share of a £2.5 million EU grant funded by European taxpayers.”
“Thus, the Times concluded, “EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognize as bogus.”…
…”What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who’ll produce the “right” results.
“The warming “scientific” community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers — and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.
“Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.”
Remind you of anything?
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
-Phil Jones, CRU.
When they come and they tell us we are the cause of the melting mountains of ice.
I usually ask, ‘who are “we” in your story?’
‘Well, us.’ They answer. ‘Us humans that is.’
I ponder this for a while, then I point out, ‘oh, so you mean you?’
‘Yes us too,’ they say.
Whereupon I go about and really give them a much needed beating for melting my damn ice.
I think we have a problem with the term scientist. Science is a process of discovery where we make observations of the real world, create a hypothesis about underlying causes and then make new observations to test the predictions of that model. Learning about someone elses model, exploiting their results or making untested predictions based on them is not science: at best it is engineering and at worst it is science fiction. There are very very few scientists in this world (in the same way as there are few philosophers) but many who claim the title. Almost all the members of the IPCC were politicians, industry lobyists and engineers who relied on the results of physicists outside the committees to provide fundamental data. Although, in general, I had little to argue with in the detailed technical aspects of the IPCC report the IPCC process is not scientific any more than writing a book review is literature. As we have discovered with the discussions on Tom Vonk’s hypothesis, if one starts with a micro focus it is difficult to discuss let alone predict the emerging properties of large complex chaotic systems if one does not have the chance to test the various ideas against what really happens. The IPCC have fooled us but more importantly they have fooled themslves. I personally do not think there was much collusion just a lot of self delusion.
@John Whitman – ‘or a great place not to have been after Elvis died . . .’
You just made my Friday.
——————–
David Spurgeon/phlogiston/Shevva,
On this thread there are many very good and serious (heavy) thoughts/ideas . So I wanted to try to put in a light thought just for some entertaining contrast. : )
John
An Aussie academic by name Clive Hamilton has writen a piece for our very left leaning public broadcaster, the ABC. He writes that “deniers” are gaining too much air time and column inches and that causes confusion for the general public. It is well known that the science is settled about MMCC and allowing discussion by those not on the list of qualified scientists is simply wrong. Now this guy is the head of the Ethics Dept at a major university. According to Clive the IPCC and it’s adherents are right and even the most qualified and published non conforming scientist is not to be heard.
Unfortunately Clive has many ignorant mates and they feed even more ignorant journos so that the common folk have to look elsewhere for truth. Thankfully WUWT, Jo Nova and many others are providing that service. I always thought some good would come from the www and now here it is. The days when politicians and crooked scientists could get away with murder are long gone. With honest scientists like Lindzen, Spencer, Carter, Plimer etc available we are all becoming better educated and informed. The blogosphere must be a real headache for the terminally corrupt at UN HQ, particularly the IPCC.
White House Press Release, 1 January 2011, 0001 EDST
“All Federal Funds to all ‘Scientific’ (and ‘Psyentific’) endeavours MUST be cancelled immediately and used to pay down the Deficit. All public and private donations, endowments and bequests, to any ‘Scientific’ (and ‘Psyentific’) endeavours MUST be taxed at the 99% level to pay down the Deficit. Sorry, all science (and psyence) is settled!!! There’s no other way to prevent global economic collapse! We MUST act now and fall bact to pre-1901 fiscal budget levels!!! There is NO OTHER WAY!!!
“This is MORE true than that Fat Albert rant about AGW. Please believe! You must all believe! There is no hope without faith! We CAN do this! It will be a little awkward at first. But when farmers start breeding more horses and mules, the economy will turn around and things will get much better. Life’s a beach! Sometimes you get a hurricane.”
“Thank You, Good Night, And may ‘you-know-who’ bless America!”
But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of “the best scientists and engineers worldwide” (as the group’s own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give “high-quality advice to international bodies,” has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices — and found them badly wanting.
Are there any details to this?
Neo says:
September 2, 2010 at 12:44 pm
I once read a story in a “executive” magazine about hiring consultants
Neo, another truism of business – you can tell your boss anything, but he will not believe it until he pays $50k to a consultant to hear it.
cal says:
September 3, 2010 at 1:21 am
…. I personally do not think there was much collusion just a lot of self delusion.
________________________________
I thin the word you want is corruption because there certainly was a lot of collusion and it has been documented in the climategate e-mails
Another example: The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cyncism that is rife among climate scientists…
richard telford says:
September 2, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Anderlan
Yes, but there was a mistake somewhere about something in the 3000 pages of IPCC AR4 which proves everything was a hoax and hence the laws of physics have been revoked.
_________________________________
How about the fact that Pachauri lied when he said all the information was from peer reviewed papers. He and the IPCC were certainly caught in an embarrassing situation and that is why this review was done in the first place.
The chairman of the IPCC repeatedly claimed that the report is based solely on peer-reviewed research.
The IPCC report is not based solely on research previously published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Nearly 5,600 of the sources upon which this document relies (30 percent) were found to be “grey literature.” Among these sources are press releases, news clippings, student theses, working papers, discussion papers, and advocacy literature produced by green groups.
PDF of Citizens Report
That does not include all the “mistakes” found in the report. WUWT has covered them so you can go look them up yourself.
The age of the dilettante (independent) scientist is long past. ‘Scientists’ are now locked into the employ of private companies or the service of Govt. Remember, they are human beings and have families to feed. Sure, they have their own agenda which will bring them wealth. It doesn’t matter if they support a religion (warmist) or any other view of life so long as they can profit from it. So called ‘science’ now has to be taken with a pinch of salt. You have to ask: ‘What’s in it for these guys?’ And yes, there are independent people out there who will speak the truth but sadly, they are few and far between. What can we do? At least keep hitting this blog and boost it.
Hope you and your family are OK, Anthony.
Gail Combs :
The folk at the noconcensus appear not to know that chapters in edited books are typically peer reviewed. Obviously their rather ridiculous effort was not peer reviewed.
In any case, the IPCC rules on citing grey literature have remained essentially unchanged for over a decade:
http://ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
PROCEDURE FOR USING NON-PUBLISHED/NON-PEER-REVIEWED SOURCES IN IPCC REPORTS
Because it is increasingly apparent that materials relevant to IPCC Reports, in particular, information about the experience and practice of the private sector in mitigation and adaptation activities, are found in sources that have not been published or peer-reviewed (e.g., industry journals, internal organisational publications, non-peer reviewed reports or working papers of research institutions, proceedings of workshops etc) the following additional procedures are provided. These have been designed to make all references used in IPCC Reports easily accessible and to ensure that the IPCC process remains open and transparent.
Kate says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:52 am
Quote “Some IPCC practices can only be called shoddy.” – of course that was Matt Patterson writing, not from the report.
And um, yeah, well, the Sunday Times retracted their story and issued an apology.
And, check here (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/02/august-global-temperature-still-in-a-holding-pattern/) re “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
-Phil Jones, CRU.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/30/iac-slams-ipcc-process-suggests-removal-of-top-officials/
I’m less excited about this op-ed than others appear to be. Although it was printed in the New York Post, it wasn’t written by an editor of the NYP. According to http://www.capitalresearch.org/about/bios.html, the writer, Matt Patterson, “edits Labor Watch and Green Watch. His work has appeared in some of the nation’s top newspapers and political sites, including the Washington Post, New York Post, Washington Examiner, American Thinker, and FOXNews.com. From 2009 to 2010, he was a Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute. Previously he served as research assistant to Charles Krauthammer and political coordinator for the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign.” This article will be too easily dismissed as a right-wing rant, and not “main stream” at all.