Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Here on WUWT, Ron Cram has provided an interesting overview of a number of people’s ideas about desirable changes to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC). He proposes that the IPCC provide us with a majority and a minority view of climate science, rather than just a single Assessment Report.
I’m here to propose something very different. Some people think the IPCC should be disbanded. I’m not one of them.
Figure 1. The old time methods are still the best.
I think disbanding the IPCC is a bad idea. Instead, I think that we should take the IPCC to the crossroads at midnight and pound an aspen stake through its heart, stuff its head with garlic, and scatter the remains to be disinfected by sunlight so it can never, ever rise again.
Let me give you a list of my reasons why this is the preferable outcome, in no particular order:
• The IPCC has provided very little of value in the way of deliverables. The reports have been clearly political, heavily slanted, and shot through with third-rate science and worse, NGO puff pieces disguised as science.
• No other branch of science wants, needs, or has anything like the IPCC … which argues against it being a useful construct. Nor would most branches of science tolerate that kind of nonsense, a bunch of government bureaucrats summarizing the science.
• Instead of providing us with any kind of certainty or agreement, the IPCC has been the source of endless disagreements, arguments, and food fights. It is a force for dissension and division, not for scientific advancement and harmony. It has made the split worse, not better.
• Dr. Pachauri has shown repeatedly that he views his tenure as an Imperial Presidency, immune to comment or dissent. Indeed, his view permeates the entire organization.
• The “Summary for Policymakers” is done with lots of input from politicians. Letting politicians assist in the writing of the scientific summary for themselves and other politicians … bad idea.
• A number of underhanded, unethical, and generally dirty things have been done under the IPCC umbrella. As a result, there is a huge segment of the population who will automatically adopt the opposite position to any IPCC recommendations … and often with good reason.
• People don’t trust the IPCC. We have little confidence in the players, the science, the system, or the so-called safeguards. We’ve been lied to, systematically lied to, by the IPCC. How anyone can think the IPCC is still relevant to public policy after that is beyond me. Abraham Lincoln knew better. In a speech in 1854, he said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
And regarding the confidence of the public, nothing has changed in the last century and a half since Lincoln spoke … which is another reason why it is useless to try to keep the IPCC alive. Confidence in the IPCC is dead and it will not come back, it’s not pining for the fjords, it’s terminal, put it out of its misery.
• Previous dirty fighting has soured a number of excellent scientists on participating in the IPCC process.
• The participants are chosen by politicians of the various countries … hardly a scientific method for doing anything.
• The great Ravetzian experiment has been a failure. Jerome Ravetz is one of the founders of and hucksters for “Post-Normal Science”. He recommends including all stakeholders like politicians and planners and social scientists into the scientific process, just like the IPCC did. And he thinks that in times like the present, we need “Post-Normal Science”. (In the best Orwellian doublespeak fashion, this is not a science at all, despite the name.) Post-Normal Science holds that we need to substitute “quality” for truth. The IPCC fits right into Ravetz’s vision of “quality” and participation, and this is exactly what the IPCC claims to do — assess the quality, from the viewpoint of all the stakeholders, of the various parts of climate science.
I’m not saying Jerome Ravetz planned this in any way, he didn’t as far as I can tell. But quite unintentionally, for whatever reasons and circumstances, the IPCC has been a grand experiment in Post-Normal Science.
That experiment has failed. And not just failed, it has crashed and burned with spectacular pyrotechnics and outrageous sound effects. In addition to unending disputes, it has brought us the amusingly meretricious self-aggrandizement of third-rate scientists like Michael Mann.
The attempt to introduce some kind of “quality” assessment into climate science has not led to a greater agreement on where we stand and what to do. Instead, the IPCC and its post-normal science process has led to infighting, and to chapter authors promoting and hyping the “quality” and the “robustness” of their own work, and to questions and protests from reviewers being routinely ignored or run over, and to people gaming the system, and to everything but what the IPCC was supposed to lead to – some kind of agreement on the main points.
And that is why we need to drive a stake through its heart. It was based on false premises. One was the premise that we need something like the IPCC at all. No other arena of scientific endeavor has such a thing … oh, except for the UN bureaucrats latest power grab, a new “IPCC for the biosphere”. (OK, for those who don’t know how that will turn out, spoiler alert! The outcome will be another train wreck … I can see that many of you are surprised.)
Another very important false premise was the charmingly naive idea that Lead Authors would treat their own work the same as they treated the work of other scientists … BWAHAHAHA. Only a lapsed Marxist like Ravetz or one of his kin would be foolish enough to think that would end well. I strongly suspect that Ravetz must actually believe in the goodness of man.
Look, folks, the US Constitution works because none of the founding fathers trusted each other one inch. They didn’t believe in the goodness of man, they’d seen too many kings and tyrants for that nonsense to fly. That’s why the US has three equal branches of Government, so no one branch and no one man would get too powerful. They didn’t trust people a bit.
Why didn’t they trust anyone? Because they were realists who knew that given a chance, someone would grab the power and use it for their own interests and against the interests of the people.
Like, for example, what Michael Mann did when he was appointed Lead Author for an IPCC Chapter. Because the people who set up the IPCC believed in things like fairies, AGW, unicorns, and the basic goodness of humanity, Mann had no constraints on his scientific malfeasance. He was free to promote his Hockeystick garbage as though it were real science.
So that’s why I say kill the IPCC, deader than dead, and scatter the remains. It is built from the bottom up on false ideas, fantasies of human goodness and of the benefits of political involvement that will ensure failure even if the motives are good.
But if for our sins we have to have something like the IPCC, it needs to be set up so that no one faction can take control of the outcome. We need an IPCC Charter that is specifically designed, like the US Constitution, to prevent people from doing those things that we know they will otherwise gladly do. So if we have to have an IPCC, we need a new Charter for a new organization, a charter that starts from the premise that humans will definitely lie, cheat, and corrupt the science if given the slightest chance.
As a result, if we don’t kill the IPCC, the Fifth Assessment Report will be guaranteed to bring us at least three things among its cornucopian lack of benefits:
Liars, cheats, and corrupters of science.
My conclusion? Considering the widespread damage done by the first four attacks, I’m not sure that climate science is strong enough to endure the impending attack from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Kill the unclean beast now, while we still have a chance of saving the science.
w.
tallbloke says:
February 14, 2011 at 10:53 am
stephen richards says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:58 am
“before it’s too late and we start seeing some really cold summers as well as winters.”
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What the 400 years of the Central England Temperature record teaches is that the summers here don’t change as much as the winters do…..
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Whilst it is only a very short period of time the UK CET “Growing Season” April through October has cooled. 2010 mean was 13.0C, 0.6C down on 2009 and a full 1.6C down on its peak of 14.6C in 2006.
Too short a timescale, but my home grown veggies were a lot more productive in 2006!
Although I agree 100% I can’t see them going. Too many carbon scammers waiting for the next boost (and boy do they need it). Once the carbon shell game gets woven into the economy as deep as it is now there is no backing out, not even if we were entering an ice age.
Amen brother! Not sure if an aspen stake will do it. Maybe a sharpened hockey stick?
stephen richards says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:58 am
“I’m also totally convinced that the likes of Trenberth, Mann, Schmidt et al are well aware of what the future climate looks like and that’s why their responses are getting more and more shrill.”
Me too. That also explains the frantic rush to get the Copenhagen scam in place.
And when this mention of ‘Global Cooling’ popped up last spring, that was the clincher:
“The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations. Approximately 130 participants will attend of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds are from finance, industry, labor, education, and communications. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion.”
http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/meeting2010.html
A few related quotes:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Stephen Schneider
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
– Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.“
-Christine Stewart, fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.“
– David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive manager
Chris D. says:
February 14, 2011 at 5:57 am
While I too would like to see the IPCC disbanded, I don’t agree with the language used in this post. Kill the IPCC? There are plenty of people lined up to tangentially manufacture political hay from less violent imagery, as recently witnessed in the Palin-target-list kerfluffle. I do hope Anthony will keep a tighter rein on his contributors in the future.
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Chris, the thought that Anthony Watts will put a snaffle bit in my mouth, attach a leather strap and then pull on it is very disturbing!
[don’t worry, that will never happen]
There is no choice but to cut spending. And what better place to start than by eliminating UN subsidy payments?
Since Obama was elected:
Avg. retail price/gallon gas in U.S. UP 69.6%
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel) UP 127.7%
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel) UP 135.9%
Gold: London (per troy oz.) UP 60.5%
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL UP 78.1%
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL UP 42.3%
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. fob UP 164.7%
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall UP 23.7%
Unemployment rate, blacks UP 25.4%
Number of unemployed UP 24.7%
Number of federal employees [ex. military] UP 2.2%
Real median household income DOWN -0.7%
Number of food stamp recipients UP 35.1%
Number of unemployment benefit recipients UP 22.2%
Number of long-term unemployed UP 146.2%
Poverty rate, individuals UP 8.3%
People in poverty in U.S. UP 9.5%
U.S.rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings DOWN from #5 to #9
Present Situation Index DOWN -21.4%
Failed banks UP 17.1%
U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate DOWN -8.6%
U.S.money supply, M1, in billions UP 18.4%
U.S.money supply, M2, in billions UP 6.5%
National debt, in trillions UP 32.2%
Sending taxpayer money to the UN is like giving your savings to someone who intends to kill you.
Steven Mosher says:
The weakness in this statement is “How do we know the stakes are high?” We’re told the stakes are high by people who stand to gain by the Chicken Little behavior. As a geologist by education, I take the view that the Earth’s climate will change because that’s what the Earth’s climate does, and human activity has very little bearing on that. It’s better to be prepared to adapt to those changes rather than destroy the world’s economies with a wholesale transfer of wealth.
R. de Haan says:
February 14, 2011 at 3:12 am
Excellent suggestion Willis Eschenbach, I’m 100% with you but please leave out the part with aspen stake and the garlic. Skeptics should leave the use of medieval rituals to the warmists.
I agree.
Also, Willis’ plan would be a waste of both the aspen and perfectly good garlic.
They should be reserved for blood-sucking vampi… er, wait – now that I think about it, Willis is correct.
/grin
R. de Haan says:
February 14, 2011 at 3:12 am
“Skeptics should leave the use of medieval rituals to the warmists.”
Indeed. Which reminds me…
“The Age of Witch-Hunting thus seems pretty congruent with the era of the
Little Ice Age. The peaks of the persecution coincide with the critical
points of climatic deterioration. Witches traditionally had been held
responsible for bad weather which was so dangerous for the precarious
agriculture of the pre-industrial period. But it was only in the 15th
century that ecclesiastical and secular authorities accepted the reality of
that crime. The 1420ies, the 1450ies, and the last two decades of the
fifteenth century, well known in the history of climate, were decisive years
in which secular and ecclesiastical authorities increasingly accepted the
existence of weather-making witches. During the “cumulative sequences of
coldness” in the years 1560-1574, 1583-1589 and 1623-1630, again 1678-1698
(Pfister 1988, 150) people demanded the eradication of the witches whom they
held responsible for climatic aberrations. Obviously it was the impact of
the Little Ice Age which increased the pressure from below and made parts of
the intellectual elites believe in the existence of witchcraft. So it is
possible to say: witchcraft was the unique crime of the Little Ice Age.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32396573/Witch-Hunting-Maunder
“Look, folks, the US Constitution works because none of the founding fathers trusted each other one inch. They didn’t believe in the goodness of man, they’d seen too many kings and tyrants for that nonsense to fly. That’s why the US has three equal branches of Government, so no one branch and no one man would get too powerful. They didn’t trust people a bit.
Why didn’t they trust anyone? Because they were realists who knew that given a chance, someone would grab the power and use it for their own interests and against the interests of the people.”
This was indeed the most profound insight that guided the Founders in attempting to construct a model of governance that would be able to preserve human liberty through the ages. Unfortunately for more than a century the tyrannical impulse has been eroding that model and as we now stumble into the 21st century, we have as President a man, who was supposedly a lecturer in Constitutional Law, who is not merely oblivious to this insight but entirely antagonistic to it. He is not only the standard bearer for a political party which shares that antagonism, but has assembled an administration for which the litmus test for inclusion is complete devotion to it. They all share the view that the government is empowered to exert control over anything that strikes their fancy and that the Constitution is an antique document that is completely irrelevant and impotent to hinder their plans.
The blatant manor in which they attempted to enforce their schemes has at last awakened some in the populous to the “eternal vigilance” that the Founders warned would be “the price of our Liberty”, but the success the tyrants have achieved in turning virtually all of us into the willing receivers of the stolen property of others, makes the prospect of returning our government to its planned role of tightly constrained powers a daunting and highly uncertain task.
I’m awestruck.
Before doing them in, couldn’t we just march them around to a few choice locations (at choice times) where they can be exposed to the raw elements without the benefit of their big bucks, their central air conditioning and heating, clean water, plentiful food, fossil fuel energy, and fast Internet access? I’m thinking of Antarctica or Siberia or Alaska at its coldest . . . Death Valley or another desert at its hottest . . . some Gulf Coast locale in the path of the next F5 hurricane or Bangladesh at the height of its monsoon season . . . an earthquake- or volcano-ravaged location (preferably during the event) . . . or a riot- or war-torn location, right in the middle of the action. I keep getting the idea that these elites are too far removed from reality to remember that man is not the master of all things. Mankind didn’t “break” the climate, and mankind can’t “fix” it. I think it would be only fair to deprive them of the things they want to deprive most of the world’s population of — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If they want everyone else to give up those things, let them give them up first.
I would also entertain the idea of dying them all blue, a la “Liar, Liar” (the movie).
Green Sand says:
February 14, 2011 at 11:16 am
Whilst it is only a very short period of time the UK CET “Growing Season” April through October has cooled. 2010 mean was 13.0C, 0.6C down on 2009 and a full 1.6C down on its peak of 14.6C in 2006.
Too short a timescale, but my home grown veggies were a lot more productive in 2006!
True true, mine as well. I didn’t even attempt tomatoes last year at our latitude near Leeds.
I’m making a big effort this year to get hardy vegetables planted which will survive in the ground through frosty weather. Leeks, brussel sprouts, turnips, as well as my usual beans, potatoes, onions and lettuce.
LOL Willis but only if disbanding the IPCC doesn’t stop the bleeding ; )
Unfortunately, the IPCC AR5 train has already left the station, as indicated in this report from the
tropical island vacation/partyBali conference. I note that they have budgeted about $7 million dollars / year just to deal with the report writing bureaucracy. Supporting the actual work is likely consuming (as we speak) millions of additional dollars per year.On a related note, I recall that the new “Discovery” supercomputer cluster nodes (costing at least $5 million in “stimulus” funds) were added at GSFC in 2009 to help with IPCC “contributions” to AR5 from our friends at GISS, as recently documented here…
Let me know if anyone can get a good estimate of how much the IPCC work is costing all of the participating countries…as a taxpayer, I consider myself a “stakeholder”…
The IPCC is only one part of the “hideous symbiosis” of agw. The IPCC provides the official fodder needed by policymakers (ie: politicians). Politicians need the agw crisis to save the electorate who clamor for solutions. Bureaucrats need it to build their empires. The MSM needs it to enrage subscribers and keep up ratings and ad revenue. New cottage industries which have no other reason to exist in the free marketplace need the crisis for shear survival. Numerous scientists not willing to work for a living, need it to ensure constant replenishment of the trough of free grant money. Many scientists find a home in the IPCC. And the cycle continues.
Killing the IPCC would be a start, but the EPA needs its wings clipped, too. What needs to be done is de-fund this whole agw fraud from top to bottom. Most of the money comes from Uncle Sam. Hopefully, this Congress has the guts to pull the plug on all this agw crap and alternative energy nonsense.
tallbloke says:
February 14, 2011 at 1:10 pm
True true, mine as well. I didn’t even attempt tomatoes last year at our latitude near Leeds.
I’m making a big effort this year to get hardy vegetables planted which will survive in the ground through frosty weather. Leeks, brussel sprouts, turnips, as well as my usual beans, potatoes, onions and lettuce.
I am in Derbyshire, so similar conditions. Harvesting now, sprouts, leeks and swede all have wintered but not without damage. Over wintering onions all OK.
Anyhow enough of veg, good luck with the growing, have fun! Don’t want the growing season getting any cooler. When I get chance I will check it back through the full CET record.
PS keep up the good work with your blog, very interesting and informative.
Could you be a little more emphatic, Willis?
Actually, this post gets a standing ovation from me! As usual, you get right to the heart of things, but this time with a stake in the matter!
Baa Humbug says:
February 14, 2011 at 1:17 am
Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?
w.
Richard Hill says:
February 14, 2011 at 2:07 am
Since all of those are different organizations with different memberships and charters, there won’t be a “one size fits all” solution. We just have to keep pounding on the idea of involvement.
The problem is that people think the statements by those organizations actually represent the views of the members. In general they do not, they represent the views of a few activists in the leadership of the organization.
Do I have evidence for this? Well, consider that despite many requests, I know of no scientific organization which has actually polled its members about their views. In the absence of evidence that they have polled their members, the explanation that Occam would favor is that the statements don’t represent their membership.
So … keep up the good fight, is about all I can say.
w.
steven mosher says:
February 14, 2011 at 2:27 am
Thanks, Mosh. Perhaps I don’t understand PNS, you may be right. But I’m not the only one to make the claim that the IPCC represents PNS at its finest. There are peer-reviewed papers making the same claim. Do they not understand PNS either?
Stakeholders should be part of and have input to any process that affects them, yes … and this is somehow news that relates to PNS?
Stakeholder involvement is an old, old idea that has absolutely nothing to do with PNS. It has been a central tenet of village level and other development for at least the quarter century I’ve worked in the field. For PNS to claim it as a distinguishing factor is nonsense. Yes, we should include stakeholders … but that doesn’t mean we should include PNS.
This is part of why I may not understand PNS, because I find it very hard to get a good definition of what PNS is. Ravetz writes with his elbow, reading his work is like reading a faded Marxist newspaper under dirty dishwater as far as clarity goes. Ravetz says that “quality” should replace scientific truth … but neither he, nor you, nor anyone seems to be able to give a definition of “quality” that is useful for making the kind of distinctions Ravetz is interested in making.
In addition, I cannot find a single instance where the PNS method was used in business … and since uncertainty is a huge issue in business, if it were of any value in decision making under uncertainty, someone would be using it. Where are the success stories, where are the heartwarming “I saved my marriage and reduced my uncertainties with PNS” articles? Where has PNS worked where science has failed?
w.
PS: After coming up with the idea myself, upon further research I found that the idea that the IPCC is an example of PNS in practice is not new. It was discussed in the peer-reviewed literature a decade ago by Tuomo M. Saloranta in Post-Normal Science and the Global Climate Change Issue. His abstract says (emphasis mine):
Amen to that Willis.
LazyTeenager says:
February 14, 2011 at 2:33 am
Are you this foolish normally, or are you working at it specially today?
I did not say, nor did I imply, that climate skeptics or any other groups were excluded from that classification. We’re all human, which is why I used the word “human” to describe those actions.
So your post is nothing more than your sick fantasy. I said nothing of the sort, that one is 100% yours. Stop trying to put words in my mouth, it just makes people point at you and laugh.
I’m fed up with your nonsense, Lazy. Please go away and spew your ugliness elsewhere, your style of discussion is puerile, insulting, trivial, and unpleasant. You add nothing of substance here, you seem to be the perfect example of your username. You’re too lazy to do the thinking necessary to post, so you want to insult and demean others rather than do any work of your own. I invite you to either change your style or else take your onanism to some dark corner where you won’t bother decent folks, that kind of thing is not welcome here.
w.
[Yes, I think Lazy Teenager has earned himself an indefinite time out. ~dbs, mod.]
Chris D. says:
February 14, 2011 at 5:57 am
Oh, please. That is post-modernist rot. Are we such children that a call to kill the IPCC (not an individual, but an organization) is not politically correct? Take that pabulum away, I will have none of it. I call blueshift on the whole idea that somehow any but the most irenic imagery will drive the easily swayed proles to wholesale rapine and murder.
You don’t like that, Chris D? Well, you can just go jump in a lake … oh, wait, sorry, I meant “immerse yourself gently into liquid H2O while wearing a Coast Guard approved Type II personal flotation device”, don’t want to get the children all excited now, do we?
Chris, if you want a PG-13 or a G-rated post, this ain’t it. This blog is for grownups, people intellectually advanced enough to know that a call to “kill” an organization is different from a call to kill an individual. What’s next in your world, Senators won’t be allowed to kill bills? Performers won’t be able to ask the sound man to kill the microphone?
I fear you’ll have to ask your kids where to find such a PG-13 or G-rated blog if you can’t come up with one on your own. They’re outside my area of expertise.
w.
Baa Humbug says: February 14, 2011 at 1:17 am
As much as I agree with your sentiments Willis, there is NO CHANCE that the IPCC will be killed off.
The damned organization was set-up by the UN and Europeans, the MOST CORRUPT, NEPOTISTIC and SELF CENTERED bunch of politicians and beurocrats the world has ever seen.
So a little bit of Australiana for you, you got BUCKLEYS and NUN chance the IPCC will be disbanded.
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Baa H – I share you pessimism – except that revolution is in the air these days – If the Euros continue to screw themselves at the rate they seem intent on continuing, and the Irish, Greeks and Spanish hotheads get up enough steam (and as an Aussie you will know what these boys can do) there is a good chance that they will follow the Tunisians and Egyptians and deal to them. Well, one can at least hope! Don’t have any faith in the English – too much processing gone on there!
Cheers
Douglas
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:13 am
Too good.
w.